Sense of Deception (11 page)

“Chris finally threw in the towel when he found her passed out on the couch, leaving Noah unsupervised, and a day later she got arrested for her third DWI.”

“You'd think he would've thrown in the towel long before then,” I said. I couldn't imagine being in that kind of toxic relationship, especially when I had a young son to think about.

“Chris had opened up his own business and he was working long hours, so he put dealing with her on the back burner until it became apparent that she couldn't be left alone with Noah. He convinced his mother-in-law to move in and provide child care after Skylar got arrested. Mrs. Wagner—Skylar's mother—had had enough of Skylar's shit too. She helped Chris get full custody.”

“Wow,” I said. Across from me Oscar grimaced. “Skylar must not have been happy.”

“Nope. We think that might have been some of the motivation for murdering Noah.”

“How would that be motivation?” I asked.

“If you interview Chris, you'll understand. That guy lived for his son. We had to do the notification the day after the murder, and I've never seen a man so gutted. He said that his phone had rung in the middle of the night, but he'd been too tired to answer it, and when we came by, he ran to get his phone and showed us that Noah had called him in the middle of the night. There was no message, but it fit with the time of the murder.”

“He called his dad?” I asked. That detail had been left out of the articles I'd read.

“He did,” Dioli said. “We think he woke up, saw his mom was about to attack him, grabbed the phone, and hit redial. The call was only two seconds in length, so she must've hung it up before the call could connect and Noah could cry out for help.

“Noah had a phone in his room?” I asked next. Not only was it a bit unusual for a nine-year-old to have a phone in his room, but the phone call itself felt important to my radar.

“Noah had talked to his dad right before bed,” Dioli said. “He probably never put it back before falling asleep.”

“Anyway, it was one of the most gut-wrenching notifications
I've ever done. You had to see it, I guess. Chris blamed himself for not answering the call, and for losing custody of Noah in the first place. At the time, I had a son only a little older than Noah, so it hit me pretty hard too.”

“No wonder you worked so hard on the case,” I said. It made sense then why Dioli had been so determined to nail someone for Noah's murder.

“Yeah. The case was too close to home,” he admitted. “Anyway, we think Skylar fell off the wagon soon after Noah moved back in with her, and we also think that Noah caught her in the act. Chris said that he got the first call from Noah the night of the murder at around nine p.m., and he recalled that his son told him he needed to talk to him in private. He said he tried to get Noah to tell him what was so important, but he says that Noah wouldn't talk about it with his mom in the house. At the time, Chris just thought Skylar was being a little strict with Noah or something. Later, he figured that Skylar might've been listening in on the call, and she knew that Noah was planning to tell Chris about the drinking. Skylar was getting a pretty good child-support check every month, and she knew she'd lose custody if she was caught drinking again, which was also a violation of her parole. Knowing her free ride was over, she killed Noah to get her revenge against Chris.”

“Against Chris for what?” I asked. “Divorcing her?”

Dioli shook his head. “No. For getting her thrown in jail in the first place. Chris was the one who called the cops on Skylar the day she was pulled over for her third DWI.”

“Wow. That's some tough love,” Oscar said.

Dioli snorted. “No love, just tough,” he said.

I shifted in my chair. Not only did the motive Dioli offered as Skylar's reason for killing Noah seem seriously flawed, if not
out-and-out ridiculous, the picture Dioli was painting of Skylar just didn't jibe with the woman I'd met in jail. I mean, the Skylar I'd seen had been beaten down by a terribly tragic life. She hadn't seemed defiant, or rebellious, or even feisty. She'd seemed exactly the opposite, in fact, someone who'd been pummeled by life, and there wasn't much left in her except for the tiny acts of kindness she could manage to scrounge out of her current existence to remind herself of her own humanity.

And yet, the more Dioli spoke of her past, the more I knew that if I'd known Skylar fifteen years ago, I'd likely look at her with a whole lot less sympathy, and that made me wonder if Dioli's version of who Skylar was wasn't somehow skewed and profoundly biased.

Based on the facts Dioli had presented, it was easy to see how he could've been so convinced that Skylar was guilty.

He continued to tell us about the case, and a bit about the trial, until I glanced at my watch and said, “Ray, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I have clients in twenty minutes and I've got to get to the office. Can I come back later today to pick up the file and the one you'd like me to look at for you?”

Dioli pulled his head back in surprise. “Oh, you gotta go?”

I nodded. “Sorry. I have clients today.”

“Uh, okay. Yeah. But I'm only gonna stay here long enough to copy the files.”

“I can wait,” Oscar said pleasantly. I smiled gratefully at him.

“I guess that could work,” Dioli said. “The file I'm giving you is a murder I worked on eight months ago. Girl found in Zilker Park. We eventually identified her as a recent UT graduate. She'd been here on a scholarship from Vietnam. Kept to herself and lived alone. Her parents didn't even know she'd been missing.”

I winced. Another dead girl. Sometimes I hated my consulting
job. “I promise to look at it later on today, Ray. I'll call you tomorrow if I can give you any info.”

“Great,” he said. “And if you give me any leads, I've got a few other cases I could use your thoughts on.”

Although the detective's acceptance of my particular talent was refreshing, I wondered if he realized I didn't work for free. Still, I decided to hold my tongue until after I got my hands on Noah's murder file.

“Let's make sure I can give you something on this first one,” I said, standing up to thrust my hand forward to shake Dioli's and thus control my exit. “It was truly a pleasure, Ray. Thank you again for taking time out of your weekend to talk to us.”

“Sure,” Ray said. I could tell he was a little thrown by my sudden departure.

“Until we meet again,” I said, pumping his hand one last time before winking at Oscar and hurrying away.

As I exited the building, all that Dioli had told us about Skylar settled firmly on my shoulders like the weight of a thousand pounds. There didn't seem to be any doubt in the detective's mind that Skylar had been lying through her teeth about the intruder. He was certain she was guilty.

Getting in my car, I mentally began to gather a list of things I'd need to get to the truth. “First things first,” I muttered as I looked behind me to pull out of the slot. “Skylar Miller, you and I are gonna have another little chat.”

I
read for five clients nearly back-to-back and by the time I was done, I felt numb with fatigue.

Most people don't realize how much effort it takes to give a reading. For the record, it's a buttload. I know it looks like we psychic types are just chatting away happily, merely having a conversation with our clients, but really we're expending lots of our own energy assessing your energy, filtering out distractions, searching for solutions, trying to home in on the most accurate interpretation of what we're sensing. It's work. A lot of work.

Anyway, after closing up shop, I headed home and found Oscar once again in my living room. “Hey, Cooper,” he said, looking about as peppy as I felt.

“Oscar,” I said, plopping down on the couch next to him right before Eggy and Tuttle assaulted me with kisses and wriggling bodies. “Where's my hubby?”

Oscar motioned toward the study. “In there working on his private security gig.”

Dutch and his best friend, Milo, ran a personal security business, which Milo managed on the people end and Dutch managed
on the numbers end. “Ugh. He'll be working on spreadsheets all weekend,” I said. One weekend a month my husband devoted all of his time to making sure D&M Security made a tidy profit. It always did, but mostly because Dutch ran a tight ship and knew his way around the tax code better than most accountants.

Setting Tuttle in my lap while Eggy curled himself up next to me, I glanced again at Oscar and said, “You look like you had a day. What happened?”

“Someone else bought the house,” he said.

I shook my head. “What? How can that be?”

“Dunno, Cooper. I met your Realtor, she took me through the house, I really liked it, like a lot, and I told her I wanted it. She made a call and the other Realtor said the sellers had just accepted another offer.”

Tired as I was, I sent out my radar to assess the situation. “Hang on,” I said, digging out my phone and calling Bonnie. She answered right away. “Abby! So great to hear from you. Oh, that Oscar Rodriguez is such a cutie! Thank you so much for referring him to me. I'm not going to stop until I find him the perfect house. I mean, I know he must be disappointed to lose out on the one today, but I told him there were plenty of other listings, and I'm working on a whole batch right now.”

Bonnie had said all of that in a single breath. It was exhausting just to listen to, but I liked Bonnie because she had such wonderfully high energy and she worked extremely hard for her clients. “Yeah, about that, Bonnie. What's the deal on the house from today?”

“Oh, you know how it is. Terrific listing in a great area for the right price, they go fast, Abby, especially when they're within a decent commute to downtown. I guess a couple from the listing agency went through it last night and they made their offer this morning right after we got to the house.”

“Can you call their Realtor back and let them know that you have a backup offer should their deal fall through?”

There was a pause, then, “I can. Absolutely. But maybe I should warn you that, according to the seller's agent, the other couple have excellent credit and they're going through a terrific lender.”

“Oscar's offer would be a cash deal, Bonnie.”

I heard her suck in a little breath. In real estate there's nothing better than a cash deal. Quick, painless, no appraisal, no mortgage insurance, no lender contingencies to deal with, just money for keys. “He didn't tell me that,” she said.

I slid a glance sideways to Oscar. Newbies. “Yeah, this will be his first purchase. You know how it goes. Anyway, I'm going to hand my phone to him and you two can discuss offer price. I have a very strong feeling the deal the sellers have on the table is gonna fall through. Maybe it won't appraise. Maybe their lender will find some other flaw, but this is going to be Oscar's house.”

She practically squeaked with excitement and I handed the phone over to Oscar; then I got up to give him some privacy. He'd of course heard my entire conversation, so he knew my thoughts, and while he worked out a deal, I headed in search of my husband. “Hey,” I said, looking into the study.

Dutch sat at the desk, squinting at the screen, with his fingers poking the keyboard like someone who nudges a bug to see if it's dead. He blinked and rubbed his eyes as I came into the room. “Hey, yourself. How was the day?”

“Long. Yours?”

“About the same. Oscar still here?”

“He is.”

“He's been waiting for you since three.”

“Sorry, honey.” I knew Dutch liked to have the house to himself sometimes.

“It's fine,” Dutch assured me, but I could tell it kinda wasn't. “He brought you those two files,” he added, motioning with his chin to the right side of the desk. One was a lot thicker than the other.

I sighed. “Skylar Miller and the case Dioli wants me to dig into.”

Dutch's mouth set in a frown. “I thought you were going to give your impressions to him at the meeting?”

“He took too long telling us about Noah Miller's murder, and I had a full list of clients to get to.”

Dutch's frown deepened. “You're working a lot, dollface. Think you might be taking on too much?”

“Yep.”

His frown split into a grin. “Well, as long as you're pacing yourself.”

I sighed. “When it rains, it pours.”

“What's Dioli's case?”

“A former UT student here on a student visa from Vietnam, found in Zilker Park a week after she went missing.”

Dutch nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that one on the news a while back. Tough case from what I heard.”

“All the cold ones are tough, honey.”

“Did Dioli give you the rundown on Skylar Miller?”

“He did, and from what he told me, I've got a straight uphill battle.”

“Without a lot of time,” Dutch reminded me.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. “Yes. Without much time, which means I need to work through being tired and soldier on. You gonna be okay for dinner on your own?” I asked, getting up.

“You're leaving?” Dutch asked.

“Yeah. There're a few things I need to check out. Something
about the crime scene is really bothering me, and I feel like I want to go there and feel it out.”

“You're not going alone, are you?”

I moved around the desk to kiss him on the cheek. “No, honey. I'll take Oscar.”

He squeezed my arm. “Okay,” he said. “Call me if you're gonna be out past ten.”

I promised I would and headed away to find Oscar and recruit him for some gumshoeing.

Forty minutes later we were each nibbling on some fast food and staring at a tiny house in an adorable secluded community just off Highway 183 on Austin's east side. “Nice neighborhood,” I said with a bit of surprise.

“Yeah, given the area, this is a pretty cool little sub,” Oscar said, craning his neck to look at the surrounding houses. “You think there're any for sale in this hood?”

I cut him a look. “Will you stop? I told you, you're getting that other house. Have a little faith, would ya?”

“Sorry, Cooper, but when the Realtor says the sellers have already accepted another offer, I'm sort of inclined to move on.”

“Trust,” I said, a bit distracted by the small house at the end of the cul-de-sac. “I wonder if anybody's home.”

“Only one way to find out,” Oscar said. Getting out of the car, he approached the house and I hustled out to follow behind him. After knocking, we waited and were rewarded with the sound of an elderly woman who asked, “Who is it?” through the door.

Oscar identified himself as an agent with the FBI and when she opened the door, he flashed her his badge and said immediately, “I'm very sorry to disturb you, ma'am, and I don't want you to be alarmed. My associate and I aren't here on official business, and if
you want us to leave, we will immediately. However, we're here investigating a cold case from a decade ago, and we were hoping that we might look around your property, simply to get a feel for what might have occurred here in two thousand and four.”

The woman blinked her eyes rapidly, as if she couldn't quite keep up with Oscar's speech. She was a cute old lady. I'd put her roughly in her seventies with short curly white hair; big, round, pink-framed glasses; and a mouth that fell perpetually open. “What happened here a decade ago?” she asked him.

I spoke up. “A young boy died, ma'am. We're simply trying to get a feel for how it might've happened.”

The old woman put a hand to her chest and said, “Oh, my. How old was he?”

“Nine, ma'am,” I answered.

She paled and turned slightly sideways to peer back into her home. Then she turned back to me and said, “He died in the back bedroom, didn't he?”

Wow. The old lady had just shocked me and, judging by the look on Oscar's face, she'd shocked him too. “Yes, ma'am,” I said. “How did you know?”

She shuddered. “I've lived here two years,” she said. “I love the house, but that back bedroom creeps me out. I won't go in there unless I have to, and I always keep the door closed. Ever since I moved in I've felt something awful happened in there, but I never knew it was the death of a little boy.”

“I'm sorry if we've upset you by telling you that,” I said, and I truly was. I wondered if she was a renter instead of the owner. Realtors in Texas were required to inform their clients of any deaths that occurred on the property, but landlords were excluded from needing to provide such info.

“It's fine,” she said with a wave of her hand. Then she looked
at us a bit expectantly. “What did you two want to do, just look around?”

“We would be very much obliged,” I told her, crossing my fingers that she'd say yes.

“Well, I wasn't expecting company, but I suppose it'll be all right.” She stepped back to allow us inside and, upon stepping over the threshold, I immediately felt the presence of the violence that had taken place in the house—even from a decade ago.

Some acts are so monstrously despicable that the atmosphere soaks them up like a dry sponge, and it stays like that for a very long time. The more horrible the act, the more the atmosphere is stained with the imprint. I felt it like a heavy weight on my chest and it was a bit difficult to breathe, but when I glanced at Oscar, he seemed to be totally unaware of any change. I figured the old lady who'd let us in fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of sensitivities. She was able to live in the house as long as she didn't venture down the hall to the back bedroom. I'd be lucky to make it an hour in the place without needing to leave.

While I did my best to buffer myself against the energetic assault, the woman introduced herself as Molly Cummins. “I'm sorry for the mess,” she said, her cheeks glowing pink as we followed her forward into the living room.

I looked around and thought she had no reason to be embarrassed. The place was neat as a pin except for a quilt on the sofa that was slightly askew—as if Molly had been cuddled under it before our knock on her door had disturbed her. The TV was on and blaring rather loudly, but I could still pick out the hum of an air-conditioning unit outside whirring to keep the house cool. I shivered both for the cool temp in the house and the atmosphere. “Can I offer you some iced tea?” she asked politely.

“None for me, thank you,” I said right away. I didn't want to take advantage of the sweet woman's hospitality.

“I'd love a glass,” Oscar said, and followed her into the kitchen. I was about to frown at him when he turned to wink at me over his shoulder and motion for me to go down the hall and check out the back bedroom. I suddenly realized that he was allowing me some undisturbed time to scope out the house psychically.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to him, and headed down a hallway on my immediate left, which obviously led to the bedrooms. On the way, I passed a bathroom, also on the left, and adjacent to the bathroom was a narrow door, which I opened and discovered led to a broom closet. Across from the bathroom on the right-hand side of the hallway was the open door to a bedroom. I paused for a moment and peered into the room, which was obviously Molly's master bedroom. It was maybe twelve by twelve, fairly small, especially for a home I guessed to be less than twenty years old. Pulling out my phone, I took several photos of the room, making a note of where Molly had her bed positioned against the far wall between two windows; then I turned back to the hallway and snapped another photo of the distance between the master bedroom and the guest room at the end of the hall. Looking down, I saw that the carpet seemed fairly new—it was a light shade of tan and not well-worn or stained. I stared at it, imagining Skylar running down the hallway in her bare and bloody feet, and I turned to look back behind me. The hallway was maybe fifteen feet if that. If she was running, she'd take, what? Five actual steps?

It bothered me greatly that Dioli and his partner hadn't come across other footprints in the hallway and I wondered how late in the day the hallway had actually been vacuumed the night Noah was murdered. Had Skylar vacuumed right before going to bed? That seemed an odd thing to do, even for a neat freak, but maybe not. When I thought about it, I'd vacuumed a rug or two after nine p.m.

From the kitchen I could hear Molly and Oscar chatting away.
Molly was telling him that she sold her home after she retired, and didn't know if she wanted to stay in Austin, so she decided to rent the house for a year, which had now turned into two.

There was a part of me that wished I could abandon my next task and go hang out with them in the kitchen, but I knew that I couldn't. We'd come this far, and Molly had been incredibly kind to allow us to enter and snoop around her home as it was. Most people wouldn't have allowed us past the welcome mat.

With a sigh I turned back and proceeded down the hallway, pausing at the closed door of the back bedroom. Another shudder went through me. I swear I could feel a sense of malice as a leftover by-product of the night Noah was killed.