A Glimpse of Evil (6 page)

My mouth felt dry and I had to clear my throat before answering. “Yes, sir.”

“Let me see,” he said.

I glanced at Dutch and he nodded, so I got up and walked quickly back to his office, collected all the files, and brought them back to Harrison’s office, where I grouped them into my three piles again. Only, as I set down the stack of solvable cases, I moved the three we’d already resolved to a fourth pile. “These are the cases Dutch and I were able to resolve.”

Harrison grabbed one of the files in the “Dead” pile. He opened it up and saw the big yellow sheet of legal paper with my handwritten note across it that read simply, “Dead.”

“What the hell is this?” he demanded, holding up the sheet. “Where’s the audit?”

It was Dutch’s turn to clear his throat. “Abby’s been doing her own special kind of audit, sir.”

Harrison’s eyes came up to stare at us, his look incredulous. “Her own
special
kind of audit?”

I sat forward to explain. “I’ve been using my radar, sir. By concentrating intuitively on each individual file, I’ve been able to isolate which cases will eventually be solved, and which ones have no further energy.”

Harrison blinked. “Come again, Ms. Cooper?”

I sighed. I hated all this “sir” and “Agent Rivers” and “Ms. Cooper” crap, but it’s what the office environment seemed to demand, so I reined myself in and tried again. “For me, thoughts contain energy. And if I ask a question in my head, something like,
Can the case that I’m focusing on be solved?
then that thought will either travel outward and feel like it has energy to it, or it will hit a proverbial big brick wall, and I know it’s a dead end.”

Harrison held up his hand in a stopping motion. “Hold on,” he said. “Are you telling me that if you
think
a case can be solved, it can?”

I glanced at Dutch for help and he took the lead. “Consider it like this, sir,” he said. “When Abby focuses on a case, she’s looking into the future to see if there is a positive resolution to it. If she sees one, she knows that by working backward she might be able to hit on the clues that were missed in the initial investigation, and we can work off those to solve the case. But if she looks into the future and doesn’t see it being resolved, she knows that it will remain a cold case.”

Harrison sat back in his chair utterly dumbfounded. “You’re shitting me,” he said.

Dutch and I exchanged a look. “No, sir,” I said meekly. “I’m afraid that’s what we’ve been doing.”

“And,” Dutch said, his tone a little more firm, “that’s what you hired her for, isn’t it, sir?”

Harrison let out a laugh that caught me completely off guard. And he kept laughing until his face turned red and tears were leaking down his cheeks. In all the time I’d known him, I’d never seen him lose his composure like this, and I didn’t know if I should go ahead and laugh with him or get ready to pack up my things and update my résumé.

And I could only imagine what the other agents in the office were thinking. Although my back was to them, I was fairly certain they were taking in everything that was happening in the boss’s office.

When Harrison had finally sobered enough to speak, he looked surprised to see that Dutch and I hadn’t joined him in the merriment. Wiping his eyes, he said, “I’m finding this all a little hard to take in.”

I squirmed in my seat. “I know it’s a little unconventional, sir.”

Harrison chuckled again. “A
little
unconventional, Abby?”

The moment he said my first name, I relaxed and smiled. “Listen, if you really want us to waste time with these paper audits and number crunching and percentages, then fine, I’ll cooperate and go along with that. But I gotta tell you, we’ll get a whole lot further doing it my way.”

Harrison’s eyes moved back to the whiteboard and he shook his head ruefully. “Oh, of that I’m certain, Abby. It’s the end of day one for this squad and you’ve already managed to get us halfway to our goal for the entire month.”

“So,” Dutch said, “should we carry on?”

Harrison picked up a stack of blank audit forms and dumped them into the recycling bin next to his waste-basket. “By all means,” he said. “Beginning tomorrow, Abby, you will be the only person on audit duty, and you’ll weigh in on which of our investigators should take the cases that require follow-up. I want to make sure that we give them to the right agent. Can you come in early tomorrow to get a jump start on another box so that we have enough cases for the entire squad?”

“I can.”

“Excellent,” he said with a broad smile as he reached out to shake my hand. It still threw me when Harrison was happy. I’d seen only glimpses of his lighter side and I almost didn’t know how to react when he was anything but cool and reserved.

Dutch and I stood to go then and I was almost out the door when Harrison added, “Oh, and one more thing.”

I turned back to him. “Yes?”

“I’d like you to start training the other agents to use their own intuitive abilities. Eventually I’d like them to audit these files using your techniques.”

I opened my mouth to tell him there was no way I could turn his squad into a bunch of psychics like me, but I thought better of it. Why put limits when I wasn’t sure how naturally intuitive these guys were? Maybe one or two of them would prove to be every bit as good as me.

Then again, maybe not.

I arrived at the office at six fifteen a.m. It would have been closer to six if I hadn’t gotten lost. Twice.

And no sooner had I made it to my desk than my cell phone rang. “Where are you?” Candice asked.

“At the office,” I told her, trying to unload my purse, keys, sweater, and coffee without spilling the last all over my desk.

“It’s six fifteen.”

“Thank you, Madam Time,” I said. “Are you going to give me the weather report next or are you all about the clock this morning?”

Candice chuckled. “Didn’t we have a date at the gym in my building this morning?”

I did a mental head slap. “Crap on a cracker!”

That won me another chuckle. “Look’it who’s gotten creative now that she can’t use expletives.”

“I’m really sorry, Candice. I forgot.”

“It’s okay,” she assured me. “But what the heck are you doing at the office so early on your second day?”

“Brice piled a ton of work on my shoulders last night and I needed to come in early and get a jump start.”

Candice was quiet for a moment before she said, “That man has tunnel vision when it comes to work. Do you need me to talk to him?”

I took a sip of my Starbucks, which was still delightfully hot. “No. Thanks, though. I don’t really mind. And if I start minding, I’ll come to you and you can beat him up for me, ’kay?”

Candice laughed. “Wouldn’t be the first time I had to use a little muscle against him on your behalf.”

I smiled as the memory of Candice forcefully pinning Brice against the side of a house to protect me floated to my mind. “Yeah, well,
hopefully
we can avoid revisiting those fun times.”

Candice cleared her throat then and said, “I really did want to talk to you, Abs. Can I pull you away for lunch?”

Her voice sounded serious and I wondered what was up. My radar was hinting that I’d better say yes, so I did and we made plans to meet outside the building at noon. “But do me a favor,” she said before signing off. “Don’t tell Brice you’re having lunch with me, okay?”

I thought that was curious, but I didn’t probe because I was already pressed for time.

The minute I was off the phone with Candice, I turned in my chair and regarded the boxes behind me. They were stacked about three tall all along the filing cabinets arranged by date. One of the things that I noticed now that I hadn’t before was that a vast majority of the boxes were dated 2005.

I also looked around to those boxes still remaining on the other agents’ desks. I got up from my chair and wandered over to take a look at their progress. I had to smile when I realized most of these guys had gotten through only about six audits apiece.

I figured they’d warm up to me once they saw how much time I’d save them. Still, I wondered how Harrison was going to break the news to them that they’d be focusing their efforts only on those files I had a good gut feeling about.

With a sigh I headed back over to the boxes against the cabinets and stood there for a moment with my hands on my hips. My task seemed incredibly daunting. But standing around staring at a bunch of boxes wasn’t going to get the job done, so with another sigh I reached for one of the 2005 boxes and trudged with it to my desk.

When I opened it, I was surprised at how many files it held. Most had precious little paperwork in them, and as I focused my radar on file after file that I eventually marked, “Dead,” I knew why. The box was filled with reports that ran from late November 2005 to the end of January 2006. I noticed that in several of the cases either the suspects or victims had come from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Even though Katrina hadn’t directly hit Texas, Houston, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio had all taken in a large number of former New Orleans residents and with the increase in population had come an uptick in crime.

It seemed that the FBI was handling a lot of the local-police overflow and the bureau itself had quickly become overwhelmed too.

So little follow-up was done on so many of the files that it was impossible for me to get anything from them.

By seven a.m. I’d gone through two more boxes from ’05 and was seriously frustrated. Nearly all the files I’d focused my intuition at felt like dead ends.

I decided that it might be best to do what I’d done the day before, and point my radar at the boxes to feel which ones might contain the most bang for my buck. Immediately a set of three boxes from 2008 and 2009 caught my attention. With a bit of chagrin I saw that they had been sent over by the Dallas bureau, so whatever cases were in there were probably more thoroughly investigated.

I got up and began to cart these over to my desk and was just lifting the last one when the agent who had the desk next to mine entered. “Morning,” he said.

“Hey,” I said casually. These guys hadn’t rolled out the welcome wagon for me, so I didn’t think I was going to work too hard to win them over with my own sunny disposition.

The agent took his seat and set down his coffee. Something rang my radar and while I struggled with my box, I said, “Watch that cup. You don’t want your coffee to spill.”

The man eyed the cup, which was in the center of his desk and well away from the edge, then barely hid his disdain before shrugging out of his suit coat. As he moved to wrap it over the top of his chair, however, the sleeve caught his coffee cup, tipping it over, and black liquid spilled all over his desk.

I pressed my lips together firmly, working to conceal a smile, while he just stood there, dumbfounded at the mess on his desk.

I set the box down and hurried over to the credenza at the back of the room where Katie had arranged a coffeepot and various condiments and paper supplies.

Grabbing a handful of napkins, I rushed back and began to mop at the mess on the desk. “Thanks,” said the agent as he took a few of the napkins I offered him and scooped the coffee into his wastepaper basket.

I left him with the napkins and retrieved a whole roll of paper towels from the ladies’ room. After about five minutes we had the mess cleaned up and I handed him what remained of the paper towels. “Might want to keep these nearby,” I told him. “Just in case.”

He smiled sheepishly and surprised me by sticking out his hand. “Oscar,” he said. “Rodriguez.”

I took his hand and pumped it a few times. “Abby Cooper. Nice to meet you, Agent Rodriguez.”

I moved to take my seat after our introduction, but he stopped me by asking, “How’d you know I was gonna spill the coffee?”

I laughed. “Haven’t you heard? I’m psychic.”

He cocked his head curiously at me, and I could tell he was trying to sum me up. “I heard,” he said. “But no one believes it.”

I shrugged and took my seat. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Still, there is the coffee”—I then motioned with my head over to the whiteboard—“and Agent Rivers and I did solve three cases yesterday. Er . . . using my sixth sense of course.”

Rodriguez took his seat too and stared at me thoughtfully. “So, you’re for real?”

“I’m for real.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes challenging me, “then tell me something about me that no one else knows.”

“What am I, a circus act?” I snapped, shaking my head. I’ve had my fair share of people demanding that I prove myself with a little demonstration, and it always pisses me off that they think I should jump through hoops at the first snap of their skeptical fingers. “I don’t do party tricks, Agent Rodriguez.” And I focused on the box at my feet.

“Sorry,”
he said, in a way that suggested he clearly wasn’t.

“Whatever,” I muttered. “Who cares what you think?”

“You got a problem, lady?”

Our conversation was quickly heating up. I looked up, and glared at him. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

He attempted to laugh. It was a hollow sound. “Why? ’Cause I’m not falling all over myself just because you told me my coffee might spill? Where I come from, we call that a coincidence.”

My eyes narrowed a little more. “Of course it was. Just like it’s a
coincidence
that I know you have a trip to South America coming up at the end of the month to visit with family. And it’s a
coincidence
that I know that you own a silver car that you drive way too fast and that you recently got a ticket that you’re using your badge to get out of.

“You’ll get out of it all right, but the judge is going to let you know it’s your last freebie. It’s also a
coincidence
that you’re going to need to see a doctor about that sore shoulder of yours very soon. And it’s also a
coincidence
that I know your girlfriend recently broke up with you, but within the next week you guys’ll get back together because she’ll call and you’ll tell her what a jerk you’ve been. What a jerk you
are
.”