Page 81 of The Guilty Trial

Jason pulled out a chair and sat down across from Reeves. Allie took the seat beside him.

“We appreciate you both coming in,” Jason said. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “I'll be direct. We have Arthur Pym's recorded confession. On that recording, Pym describes in detail how he was coerced into facilitating the fabrication of evidence during the Torrino trial. He specifically names your client, Deputy U.S. Marshal Reeves, as participating in witness intimidation and evidence tampering.”

Reeves didn't flinch, but his knuckles whitened.

Jason continued. “The evidence is overwhelming. But if Deputy U.S. Marshal Reeves is willing to cooperate and provide testimony against Elias Thorne, we can potentially work out a deal for reduced charges and possible recommendation for leniency.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Reeves stared at the table, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Jason's.

“I'll consider it,” Reeves said. His voice was hoarse.

His attorney set her pen down. “My client and I need time to discuss the specifics of any proposed agreement. We'll want to see what you're offering in writing before we commit to anything.” She pushed her chair back. “I think that ends this meeting for now.”

Jason nodded. “We'll have something drafted for your review by the end of the day.”

The attorney gathered her things, and Reeves stood slowly, reaching for his jacket. He didn't look at Allie or Jason again as she guided him out.

Jason sat back in his chair and exhaled. “He'll flip.”

“He knows what's coming if he doesn't,” Allie said. She stood up. “Let's give it a day.”

The bullpen was louder than usual when they returned. Agents and support staff moved between desks with a restless energy that hadn't been there a week ago. The case had shifted the entire atmosphere in the office.

Brandy was perched on the edge of Eastman’s desk, her red moto jacket draped over one arm as she gestured toward the lobby. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. There were three satellite trucks out there. Three.”

Mia shook her head. “This case is going to be studied in law schools for years. The prosecutorial misconduct alone would fill a semester.”

“Not to mention the daughter angle,” Brandy said. “A mob boss's kid manipulates a mentally ill man into killing the people who framed her father? That's more like a movie than a case study.”

“A bad one,” Mia quipped.

Marze appeared at the edge of the bullpen. He walked over to where she and Jason were standing with the two analysts, and for a moment, he just looked at them both.

“Good work,” he said. “Both of you.”

Jason shook his head. “I never thought I’d see something like this.”

“I know what you mean. They were supposed to be some of the best. And look what they did. Ignored everything we believe in and our whole reason for doing this.”

Allie stared at him, appreciating his visible frustration. She remembered her first impressions of her boss when she’d started working in the Tacoma office. Over the last couple of years, she’d seen more than his Marine veteran exterior.

He straightened. “Cases like this are the ones that remind us all what's at stake. When the people who are supposed to uphold the law decide to use their positions for their own purposes, it doesn't just damage the system. It destroys it.” He paused, his eyes steady on them. “Four prosecutors and a judge fabricated evidence because they convinced themselves the ends justified the means. They put a guilty man in prison, sure. But they did it by committing crimes of their own, and they broke a man's mind in the process. Now five people are dead and a conviction that took years to build will almost certainly be overturned.”

“You think so?” Jason asked, though they all knew the answer.

“I don’t see how it couldn’t be,” Marze replied. “The whole thing makes me angry. Justice requires integrity. Without it, the whole thing collapses. Every case we build, every conviction we secure, all of it depends on the belief that the people inside the system are playing it straight. The moment that trust is gone, none of it means anything.”

Allie nodded. She believed that, had believed it since she first walked through the doors of the Academy. It was the reason she did this job, the reason she got up every morning and drove to this office and sat in rooms across from people who had done terrible things. Because the system worked when the people inside it were honest. And when they weren't, people got hurt.

“If anyone ever pressures you to bend the rules, for any reason, you refer them to me.” Marze gave a single nod then walked back toward his office.

The bullpen noise resumed around her, but Allie remained still for a long moment.

She thought about Sarah Park sitting across from her in that interview, guarded and careful, volunteering nothing she didn't have to. Park's son Lucas would grow up knowing what his mother had been part of, would have to live with that shame–something Allie knew intimately.

Her thoughts shifted to Pym in his sterile apartment with his protein bars, and how Donatella had used that need for order against him to get what she wanted. Allie pictured the woman sitting in that interview room, calm and unapologetic, with her only regret that she hadn’t committed murder.

There were no clean endings here. Just consequences, spreading outward like cracks in glass.