“It’s a bug?” Reno asked, squinting his eyes to see it.
“That’s exactly what it is. But only it doesn’t just receive sound, it gives sound. And just after the young lady yelled for Katrina not to shoot because a family was in that van, I heard another voice.”
Trina frowned. “Another voice?”
“Yes. And that voice was coming from that device. I’m going to amplify it for you to hear it.”
Hammer pressed another button. And they could hear Latoya yelling for Trina not to shoot. And then, immediately after she stopped talking, they all heard another voice. A male’s voice with a panicked tone. “He’s got a gun, Trina. He’s got a gun! Shoot to save yourself. Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”
And that was when Trina fired those rounds at that van.
Trina was shocked. She looked at Reno. Reno was so happy he could hardly contain himself. “Do you know that voice?”
“Yes! That’s Javon’s voice. I’ll know that voice anywhere.”
“I’ll be damn,” said Mick. Even he was blown away.
“You shot up that van,” Hammer said to Trina, “because you were told what the young lady had said to you from the beginning: it was a threat. He had a weapon. You had to do something. And you did.”
But Trina was still perplexed. “But why wouldn’t I remember that?”
“You did initially. Look.”
Hammer showed, on that video, where Trina was looking around as if she was looking for somebody else to be there. But she found no one. “You looked around for that person to appear. But no additional person was out there. So you seemed to chalk it up to your nerves. That you thought you heard something when you really didn’t. And then you were so traumatized by what you had done, you totally forgot what you heard. All you could remember was what you did.”
“Wow,” said Big Daddy. Not since he thought his wife had died, only to find out she wasn’t dead and all and that Hammer had a hand in that too, was he so blown away. “Wow,”he said again. But Reno was elated. He picked Trina up and let her back down.
“You didn’t murder anybody, Katrina,” said Hammer. “You were manipulated into believing you had killed those people in cold blood when all you were doing was protecting yourself and that young lady.”
Reno placed his hand around Trina and squeezed her. Everybody in that room were congratulating her.
But Trina was dazed. That news had staggered her. She looked at Hammer. “What was Javon’s motive?”
“He’s dead now,” Reno said before he realized who was in that room with them. “At least that’s what I heard! We’ll never know now.”
“We know,” said Hammer. “He recorded another video. It was an oldie but goodie too.”
“Then what was his motive?” asked Trina.
“He was obsessed with you. He thought, by getting you to take out some lowlife guy who would bring his whole family to a payoff, would dirty you up enough that you wouldn’t find him so objectionable. Because he was dirty too. When you ran away from that boyfriend of yours in Reno, Nevada, he searched for you. He was certain you had gone back to your hometown, so he spent many years looking all over Mississippi. When he found you, you had already hooked up with Reno. And that was when he knew all was lost and he might as well go on with his life. You were too close to power. He couldn’t get next to you. Until he went bankrupt, was flat broke, and needed a big pay day.”
Trina shook her head. “I had no idea,” she said. “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”
“Here,” Hammer said as he handed her the folder he had in his hand.
Trina looked at the folder, and then she looked at him. “What’s this?”
“I notified the Justice Department that you were working, at the time of that incident, as an asset for me. You may or may not know this, but at that time I was a high-ranking official in the CIA. Because of the work that you did for us, you have been granted full immunity from any form of prosecution related to that incident.”
Trina’s eyes lit up. So did Reno’s. “Immunity? She can’t ever be arrested for what happened?”
“Never,” said Hammer. “And it’s signed by me in my current role as Special Ops Director, and by the Attorney General of these United States.”
Trina and Reno and the whole family gathered around Trina and that sheet of paper on Government letterhead and embossed with the Department of Justice insignia. They looked upon it as if it was the golden child.
“Oh Tree,” Reno said, as he continued to hold her and shake her and hold her again. “That was my biggest fear that somebody would find that video, turn it over to the cops, and they would arrest you. Oh Tree!” They hugged again.
Then Trina looked at Reno. “You knew all along,” she said, her hand on the side of his sincere face. “You had more faith in me than I had in myself.”
