Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery (21 page)

I squinted at Harrison, reading his energy; I already saw his game plan. “Does Gaston
know you’re going to keep me on the case?”

He grinned. “He’s the one who told me to do it,” he said. “But you’re gonna have to
be subtle, Cooper. And I do mean subtle. You get a tip, keep it on the down-low and
proceed cautiously until you have something solid.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I noticed that he cast a nervous look at the window overlooking
Dutch’s glass-enclosed office.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what to do about Rivers,” he said.

Sensing an opportunity, I leaned forward and said, “Reassign him. Put him on desk
duty until the wedding.”

Brice eyed me skeptically. “I would, Cooper, if I thought he’d follow that order.”

I sighed, glancing toward Dutch typing away on his computer. “He is a stubborn son
of a beast, isn’t he?”

“I think there might be a compromise I can work out with him,” Brice said. “He put
in a vacation request right before the salon bombing. He asked for next week off.
I think when your sister moved the date of the wedding, Rivers got the dates confused
and he meant to ask for the week after next off. I’m going to grant the vacation request,
although I know Gaston’s not gonna like it.”

“Wait,” I said. “Does that then mean you aren’t going to give him the week of our
honeymoon off?”

Brice waved his hand dismissively. “No, he’ll have that off too. Don’t worry. He’s
got the vacation time available, so it isn’t an issue. The point is that once the
paperwork goes through, Rivers won’t have a choice in the matter. He’ll officially
be on vacation, and I can order him out of the office if I want to. That means you’ll
only have a few days left in the week to worry about him, and after that, he’s not
allowed to butt in on the case. I’ll assign the two of you to work together the rest
of this week, so that you can keep an eye on each other.”

I was confused. “But does that mean you want me off the case next week too?”

“As a freelancer, that’s entirely up to you, but I’d prefer if you’d stay on as long
as you can.”

“I’ll stay on, sir, but the tricky part is going to be keeping Dutch from babysitting
me while he’s on vacation. His family is coming in for the wedding early next week,
so hopefully they’ll be able to distract him. And he’s on wedding detail with my sister,
so I think she might have enough to keep him out of our hair next week too.”

“Great. For now, just go on as if you don’t know anything. I’ll give Rivers the heads-up
about granting his vacation time at the end of the day on Friday.”

Brice fell silent then, and I could tell he had more to say. “There’s something else,
isn’t there?” I asked.

He offered me a half grin and pulled a file out of the stack he had on the corner
of his desk. “Homeland is going to be focused mainly on Michelle Padilla and her connection
to this terrorist cell in Yemen, because she’s the hottest lead they have. While they’re
working on her and all her associations, I’d like you guys to revisit Taylor Greene.
You say there’s a connection
between the two women, and I believe you. Find it and start with Greene.”

I felt myself stiffen. Taylor Greene had walked into a shopping mall in College Station—a
city to the northeast of Austin—and she’d blown herself and two other people up. There
was footage of the incident captured on a security camera with an amazingly good lens.
I’d seen the footage, and I’d tossed my cookies as a result. The last thing in the
world I ever wanted to do again was look at that footage, and Brice knew that, but
still, he had to ask me, and I knew it wasn’t his fault. Reaching forward, I took
the file without a word. I then got up and turned toward the door, but eyed him over
my shoulder before leaving. “Candice?”

The grin came back. “She’s with you guys, but try to keep her out of trouble, Cooper,
would you? I’ve got a crush on that lady.”

I smiled back at him and saluted. I then poked my head into Dutch’s office and told
him that Brice wanted to see him. Then I went to my desk to call Candice.

When she picked up the call, I learned that she was just a few minutes away; she’d
stopped to get the office some coffee from our favorite café. I told her to meet us
in the conference room and after leaving Dutch a note on his desk about where I was,
I headed in with my laptop and the file on Taylor Greene.

Taking out the DVD of the security footage from the pocket of the blue folder, I took
a deep breath before inserting it into the drive.

The footage was in black and white, but very clear. The mall was new and it’d no doubt
been outfitted with some of the better security cameras available. The footage contained
a digital display of the time in the corner—11:55 was when it began, just before noon.
The shot looked down on the people in the mall, which was sparsely crowded that day,
thank God. Within the shot was an elderly couple, holding hands as they walked the
perimeter of the mall, a mother and her toddler son, and a salesclerk organizing a
rack of dresses just inside of a clothing store.

And then from the bottom of the screen a woman appeared wearing what looked like a
backpack strapped to the front of her chest. She moved jerkily, her frame bent and
arms crossed over her chest. I knew this woman to be Taylor Greene.

The nearest person to her was the mother of the toddler, who took one look at Taylor
before grabbing the little tot and swinging him up on her hip. She then took off like
a rocket, dropping her parcels as she made a mad dash toward the mall door. But the
older couple moved directly toward Taylor, and I bit my lip and felt my eyes glisten.
I knew what was coming.

I paused the footage, wiping my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, and then I hit
play again. Just as the elderly woman reached Taylor, there was a flash and then…well…you
simply don’t want to know.

I closed the lid of the laptop, folded my arms onto the table, and laid my head on
top. For a long time I just sat there, hating what I’d seen, hating the sick son of
a bitch who’d orchestrated it, hating that there was this sweet, trusting elderly
couple just out for a stroll at their local mall who would never see their grandchildren
again.

I hated that there’d been a shop clerk who’d also been lost in the explosion, and
that a mother and her young son had been rushed to the hospital with severe burns
that would scar them for life. And I hated that Taylor Greene had been forced to wear
that bomb and walk into that mall, all the while knowing that her life hung by a thread.

Taylor’s face had been obscured from the angle of the camera, but I’d seen the elder
woman’s reaction to the young girl—she’d stepped forward out of concern, the way you
would attempt to comfort someone who’s very upset.

The mother with the toddler had been a different story. She’d seen Taylor at a different
angle, and I had no doubt that she’d gotten a good look at the bomb strapped to Taylor’s
chest. Or maybe, just maybe Taylor had warned her. There was no audio with the footage,
so it was hard to tell. That prompted me to lift my head and jot down a note to myself.
I’d want to interview that mother.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the lid of the laptop and replayed the footage again,
stopping just before the flash. Had anyone else noticed Taylor and the bomb? I squinted
at the store clerk. Just before the bomb went off, she’d looked up, a long dress in
her hands, her mouth falling open. She’d seen it too.

The door to the conference room opened and I jerked. “Hey, Sundance,” Candice said
with a grin. “Little jumpy this morning?”

I swiveled the laptop around so that she could see. “This is the footage of the first
explosion at the mall,” I told her while she unloaded coffees from a cardboard tray.

“That the same footage that got you so upset a few weeks ago?”

“Yep.”

Candice pulled the laptop to her side of the table and sat down to watch it. “Sweet
Jesus,” she whispered, and I knew she’d gotten to the end.

She put a hand to her mouth and shut the lid of the computer, staring at me with wide
eyes.

I held the large coffee cup close, thankful for its warmth. “I know,” I told her.
“It’s bad.”

The door opened again and in came Dutch, and he took one look at us and said, “What’s
happened?”

“We watched the footage from the mall,” I told him.

He sighed heavily and came around to sit next to me. “You okay?” he asked, taking
up my hand.

I leaned my head onto his shoulder. “For the most part.”

“Candice?” he asked next. “You okay?”

She looked at him almost blankly. “I’m a hell of a lot better than that poor old couple.”

“It’s rough, I know,” he told her, then turned back to me. “Did you pick up anything?”

“I want to talk to that mother,” I said. “The one with the toddler who made it out
alive.”

“She was in rough shape,” Dutch said, and I knew he’d already had an interview with
her.

“What’d she say happened?” I asked.

He reached out for the third coffee on the table and took a careful sip. “She didn’t
remember much. Cox and I met with her while she was still in the hospital, and mostly
she was out of it from the pain meds. She was also too worried about her son to really
focus on our questions.”

“I think we should go back and talk to her,” I said. Then I asked, “Did anyone else
in the store survive?”

Dutch nodded. “The owner, Carly Threadgill, was the woman you saw in the footage.
She died in the blast, but one of her employees in the back survived and made it out
of the store.”

I reached for the laptop again and pulled it close. I rewound the footage to the clerk
right before the blast, my radar buzzing. Something was familiar, but I couldn’t figure
out what.

“What is it?” Candice asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But there’s something about that store. There’s a clue there.”

“We can go to the mall if you want,” Dutch offered.

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s a good idea. Maybe there’s something in the ether that’ll
point me to this nagging feeling that there’s something that connects Taylor and Michelle.”

“Rodriguez is trying to find that connection right now,” Dutch
said. “He’s going through all the girls’ contacts again, trying to see if they know
any of the same people. Taylor Greene was originally from Austin, and the girls were
a few years apart in age, so it’s possible.”

I rubbed my eyes and looked again at the frozen image of the store; what the heck
was it that kept
bing
ing my energy?

“But you guys never found a connection between any subversive group and Taylor, right?”
Candice asked.

“Not a one,” Dutch said. “By all accounts, Taylor was a wallflower. She was a B/C
student at Texas A&M, and if she had any close friends, we couldn’t find them.”

That surprised me. “No friends?”

He shook his head. “She lived with another girl—her name’s in the file—and I don’t
think they got along. When we asked about Greene’s personal contacts, the roommate
told us she didn’t have any. We interviewed several classmates and they pretty much
confirmed what the roommate said—Taylor kept to herself.”

“What about any social media accounts?” Candice asked.

Dutch scratched his cheek. “We couldn’t find any accounts registered to her. Her computer
came up missing when we searched her apartment, so it’s possible that she had an account
registered in a different name, but there’s no real way to track it without her hard
drive.”

“Her computer came up missing?” I asked.

“She took it with her to class,” Dutch said. “She could have dumped it, lost it, or
it could’ve been stolen. Hell, her roommate could’ve hocked it for Taylor’s portion
of the rent money once she realized her roommate was dead. All we know for sure is
that it’s not among her possessions.”

“This roommate sounds like a stone-cold bitch,” Candice remarked.

Dutch shrugged. “She didn’t like Taylor—that much was clear. But I’m not sure it was
entirely one-sided. Everyone we interviewed who knew Taylor said she wasn’t very outgoing.
Most people we talked to thought she was aloof and stuck-up.”

“When was the last time Taylor was seen before entering the mall?” I asked, curious
about the timeline the day of the bombing.

Dutch pointed to the file. “Her roommate remembers seeing Taylor the night before
when she came back from an evening class, but she doesn’t know if Taylor was out of
the apartment when the roommate left for class the following morning. She says she
only remembers that Taylor’s bedroom door was shut—but I guess it was usually shut,
so we have no timeline for the abduction other than the first time any security camera
captures her is at the mall right before noon.”

“And it’s where she was in between that we really need to know,” Candice said.

“What about her car?” I asked.

“Found in the mall’s parking lot. We dusted for prints, and the odd thing was that
it came back completely clean. Not a print on it either inside or out.”

“Any cameras in the parking lot that would give you a view of the car?” Candice asked.

“It was parked in the very back of the lot out of range of the exterior cameras, which
are all set over the entrances of the mall. We canvassed the area, but no one remembers
seeing Taylor wandering through the parking lot with a bomb strapped to her chest.
She could have easily driven herself to the mall, parked at the back, rubbed down
the car, and avoided pedestrians as she made her way to the mall’s entrance. Traffic
there was pretty light that day, so it’s possible that she could have gotten away
with it undetected.”

I turned my attention away from the file I was thumbing through and focused on Candice
and Dutch. “Can I ask you two a favor?”

They looked at me curiously and nodded.

“From here on out can we operate under the assumption that both Taylor and Michelle
were as innocent as the other victims in the explosions? I’m telling you that no one
coerced or brainwashed these two girls into strapping on a bomb and targeting a public
place in an act of terrorism. My radar says they were abducted and forced to wear
the explosives.”