I shifted in my seat and ran my tongue along my teeth while he kept talkin’. Even though I was lookin’ at him, I wasn’t locked into shit he was sayin’ ’cause my mind had already moved past this room and on to what actually mattered. And that was the fact that I had already made the call and set everything in motion before these muthafuckas even thought about puttin’ me in cuffs.
Kelli was already on this shit.
I ain’t heard from that nigga since we was locked up together, but I kept his number for a reason. The moment I hit him and told him what I needed, he ain’t waste time askin’ me questions or tryna get extra details out of me like he ain’t understand what type of time this was. He just locked in and moved like I knew he would.
So… while they had me sittin’ here tryna read me and build they little story, I already knew the real work was bein’ handled somewhere else. I trusted that more than anything they thought they had on me.
The day until the evenin’ kept draggin’ with them bringin’ up me cheatin’ on my wife and fuckin’ Echo like that was supposed to shake me. They kept talkin’ about what she said about me publicly and in court, how she accused me of bein’ obsessed with her and sayin’ I forced myself on her, and how all that tied back to what happened to her brothers like they was tryna paint a picture where everything led back to me no matter what.
I let that shit pass right through me.
“That’s what she said,” I told them. “Don’t make it true.”
Buddy watched me for a second like he was waitin’ on somethin’ to crack, then he switched it up again.
“We have footage,” he said.
That made my attention sharpen just a lil’. It wasn’t enough for them to see it, but enough for me to lock in on what dude wassayin’, ’cause I already knew what that meant if they was tellin’ the truth.
“Of what?” I asked.
“Of the murder, Kay’Lo,” he said. “And the person appears to be a larger person. I’m sure you know who this person could be.”
That hit in a way I felt, ’cause I knew exactly what Toni look like right now. She was far from small, but I kept my face the same and leaned back like it ain’t mean nothin’ to me.
“A’ight,” I said, noddin’ once. “Let me see it.”
He watched me for a second like he was tryna figure out if I was bluffin’, then he reached for the iPad or whatever the fuck it was like he was ready to prove his point and end all this shit right there.
And while he was tappin’ through the screen, tryna pull it up, I already knew what was goin’ on behind the scenes without even seein’ it. Kelli had been workin’ all through the night and into the mornin’, and by now he wasn’t just “tryin’” to get in, he was already inside the apartment’s login system, movin’ through it on some real how-the-fuck-you-even-get-in-there type shit.
As soon as I shot him the address, he ain’t even have to fly out here and go to the buildin’. All he had to do was trace who actually ran they security, find the company behind the system, and work his way into the account that controlled all the cameras. Everything at places like that ran through one backend where all the footage got stored and accessed. All it took was one weak point for him to slip through. And that’s exactly what he did. I ain’t gon’ lie… Kelli was a cold white boy. Shit, I could see that back when we was locked up together, just off how he moved.
I done seen that nigga get up out his bunk and disappear like he just walked through a wall, then pop back up later like nothin’ even happened. Next thing you know, we in the back room, passin’ a blunt back and forth.
He was sneakin’ shit in, movin’ around like the rules ain’t apply to him, and the whole time, guards was walkin’ past like they ain’t see a damn thing. I remember lookin’ at him one time like, yeah… this nigga different.
So, when he told me he was a hacker and knew how to get into systems, I ain’t look at him like he was just talkin’ to sound good. I believed that shit ’cause I had already seen how his mind worked and how he moved when he wanted somethin’ done.
By the time they had me sittin’ in this room talkin’, Kelli had already pulled up every angle from that night, found the exact time Toni was out there, and handled it the only way that wouldn’t throw up red flags too fast. ’Cause just deletin’ footage would’ve had them diggin’ deeper right away.
So, he replaced it…
He took clean footage from around that same time and laid it over that window, so when they went to play it, it would look like nothin’ ever happened, like it was just another regular night with people comin’ and goin’ and nothin’ out the ordinary.
The crazy shit about it was, it had the same timestamps, the same cameras and same angles… just no Toni.
The detective frowned at the screen while he was tappin’ through it, then he tapped again like it was supposed to load somethin’ different. When it didn’t, his whole expression changed like he ain’t understand what he was lookin’ at.
“Hold on,” he muttered, tappin’ again.
The other detective leaned over. “What’s wrong?”
“It was right here,” he said, lower this time, like he was tryna make sense of it.
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms like I had all the time in the world, watchin’ him go back and forth with the screen like it was gon’ fix itself if he kept touchin’ it.
“You good?” I asked, real casual, like I was just sittin’ here watchin’ him struggle with somethin’ simple.
