When they did, My hands were shaking. Not from the adrenaline of what I'd just pulled off, but from something else. Something I'd heard in that deleted recording.
A name I hadn't heard in eight years.
Demontae Sullivan.
I sat there staring at nothing, my mind going back to being seventeen years old. To the summer before senior year. To the boy who'd made me feel like I was the only girl in the world. At one moment in time, he was my everything. That was short lived and only lasted a summer.
Demontae Sullivan had been fine as hell. Older than me, he was nineteen to my seventeen - with money, confidence and a smile that made girls lose their minds. He'd approached me at a pool party thrown by one of my girl older cousins. Had asked my name like he actually gave a fuck what the answer was. Had taken me for rides in his car and made me feel grown.
For three months that summer, Demontae Sullivan had been my entire world. And one day, he wasn’t. The way things ended hadbroke my heart and I mourned him and our relationship for the longest. He was my first love, but as I got older and realized he’d never came back for me, I started to figure out that I wasn’t anything to him to begin with. I was a naive teenager that he manipulated, and since then, since the stunt he’d pulled and made me apart of all those years ago, my life had been fucked up since.
The transfer finished and I started going through the rest of the files with shaking hands.
Bank statements first. The judge had accounts I didn't even know existed. There were regular transfers to an escort service in Houston. Not just one or two. Dozens. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past five years. They had discreet names, but I was able to uncover them. The transactions were coded as "consulting fees" but the destinations were all the same - Elite Companions LLC.
There were also transfers to a woman's name - Jessica Moore - with the notation "personal loan." Fifty grand here, thirty grand there. Over a million dollars total going to this one woman over three years.
I dug deeper. Found property records. The judge had bought a condo in his girlfriend's name. Was paying for her car, her clothes, her entire life while his wife was at home.
But that wasn't the real dirt.
The real dirt was in the deleted files.
I had to use recovery software to get them back, but they were there. Audio files labeled by date. Most of them were just recordings the judge had made for himself - case notes, reminders, nothing crazy. But there was one from three monthsago. Thirty-two minutes long. The label said: "Call with DA re: Zaire Carter case."
I clicked play and listened.
The judge's voice came through first, clear as day.
"We need to talk about the Carter case. This is getting out of hand."
The DA's voice - I recognized it from the courthouse, he responded: "What do you mean? We've got him on murder."
"Based on what?" the judge said. "We don't have a body. We don't have physical evidence. We have one witness and that witness is unreliable as hell. You know this."
There was a pause.
"Demontae Sullivan has been cooperative," the DA said. "He's been feeding us information to keep the heat off the Brick Boyz while we're focused on the Carters. But he's not going to testify. Says if he gets on the stand, it puts a target on his back."
My blood went cold hearing his name. Demontae. Working with the DA. Cooperating. The boy I'd loved was a rat. And how the fuck did he know Zaire? Was he connected with the body that was dumped here? That was the work of the Brick Boyz. What was I hearing right now?
"How do you even know he's credible?" the judge asked.
"It's one criminal turning on another criminal," the DA said. "He's trying to save himself."
"You can't be sure of that," the judge said, and I could hear frustration in his voice. "You're basing a murder case on an informant who won't even testify, and another one who’svanished off the face of the earth. That's not enough. That's not probable cause. That's speculation."
"What do you want me to do?" the DA asked.
"You're fucked up," the judge said bluntly. "You've really fucked this up. We need hard evidence or we need to speed the trial up and or this kid go. Those are your two options. Because right now, you've got nothing. And if this goes to trial, a defense attorney is going to tear you apart."
"Give me two weeks," the DA said. "Let me see if I can find something else."
"You've got seven days.” the judge said. "That's it. After that, I'm ruling in favor of a bail review and you're going to have to either produce evidence or let him walk."
The call ended.
I sat there in complete silence, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might break through my ribs. This happened before the judge ever knew that Kaseem wanted to sit down with him. He’s been knowing that what they were doing with Zaire’s case was wrong.
