“Can I touch it?”
“Yep, forensics did their thing.”
I flipped the card over and stilled.
“You recognise it?” Thomas asked, his voice low and commanding, as if he knew this was important before I said a word.
“I do. Sean gave me the flash drive that was found with Larson. The same tarot card was included in the files that were on it.”
Thomas tilted his head a little, jaw locking. “Sean and I haven’t managed to catch up yet, so apologies for not being up to speed.”
I held the card between my thumb and finger, taking in the details that perfectly matched the other copy I’d seen. “Noproblems. You can’t be expected to know everything all the time.”
Thomas snorted out a derisive laugh because this was the exact opposite of the way this man worked.
“Where was it found?” I asked, placing it down and pushing it back to him.
“Inside the pocket of a dead judge.”
“Murdered?”
“Heart attack… well, that’s the prelim finding.”
“Right. Why do I feel like there’s a but?”
Thomas ran his fingers through his dark hair before saying, “It has Larson’s fingerprint on it.”
“Okay, I wasn’t expecting that,” I replied honestly. “What do you need from me? I can’t get much tech info off a tarot card.” I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my temple, as if I was connecting with it psychically. Thomas tutted.
“See what you can find on our latest body. His name was Judge Gilbert Preston.”
My eyes popped open as I tried not to make a joke about the name Gilbert. Instead, I reminded myself I was a professional. “Leave it with me.”
“What you got?”I stood behind Wren’s chair, my arms folded over my chest. He turned his head to his husband, who was never far from his side. “You ready, babe?”
Lev pushed his glasses up his nose with his long finger before nodding. “Yeah.” He typed something, and then Wren’s machine pinged with an incoming email.
“You have it all now.”
Wren rolled his chair back from his desk and leaned over to drag an empty one from nearby so I could sit.
“Thanks,” I said as I lowered myself into it, waiting to hear what they’d found on our two dead victims.
“Gilbert Preston, sixty-two, widowed. There’s some suggestion he had step kids, but I can’t find any record of them after their mum died, so I’m guessing they went to live elsewhere,” Wren started.
“Names?”
He frowned. “Nothing. It’s like they were wiped clean, so I presume he didn’t want any connection to them or saw them as a liability and was worried they’d come after him for money or something.”
“Weird. Okay, what else?”
“Preston was a high court judge, highly thought of by his peers.”
I didn’t bother replying because I could tell from how anxiously Lev stared on that this wasn’t the end of this story.
“However, behind the scenes, our judge was about as corrupt as they come.”
I coughed, trying to hide my shock because this wasn’t the direction I thought this was going. I thought maybe Larson was blackmailing Preston, but now I wondered if it might be the other way round.
