Sense of Deception (2 page)

As someone who never turns down free chocolate, I was quick to get up and retrieve it. “Thank you.”

“Can I ask you something?” she said, looking thoughtfully down at the remaining candy bar.

“Sure.”

“How much would you charge me if I wanted to ask you about something that happened a while ago?”

“That break-in you mentioned?”

Her gaze lifted to mine again. Her expression was still so sad, but for the first time since meeting her, I swore I saw the smallest glimmer of hope. “Yeah.”

I took a good bite of the Twix and held what remained up. “You're in luck today. I'm running a special. All glimpses into the past are priced at one Twix bar.”

“I'm serious,” she said.

“So am I.”

She nodded, but she didn't rush to ask me her next question, and I thought maybe a demo of what I could do was in order. “You've been in jail for . . . ten years, right?”

She squinted at me and nodded slightly.

I assessed her for a bit before continuing. “This is your last appeal.”

Again she nodded.

“You don't think it'll go well.”

“No.”

“You're right. Your lawyer is shit.”

“He came cheap.”

“When's the appeal?”

Skylar sighed. “It was supposed to be today, but it got postponed to the nineteenth.”

I nodded. That wasn't even two weeks away, and in Texas, when your last appeal doesn't go well, you'll have an IV filled with lethal toxins in your arm by midnight.

As I sat there, I took in all of Skylar's energy, which was extremely complex. She carried a whole lotta baggage and it was tough to riffle through it all. “You've had a pretty tough life,” I told her. “But a lot of it you brought on yourself.”

She squinted skeptically before waving a hand to indicate the cell we were in.

I ignored that and kept going. “You struggled with addiction. It got the best of you for a lot of years, but then I feel like you worked really hard and overcame it.”

Her expression softened. I'd just struck a chord.

“You're divorced,” I said next. “And your ex is still
really
angry at you.”

She gave me one short nod.

I closed my eyes to better concentrate, feeling my way along her energy, looking for bits of information that I could talk about. “You lost someone,” I said. I didn't know why I hadn't touched on it sooner. It was the loudest thing in her energy. “Someone very close to you was murdered.” And then I gave a small gasp and opened my eyes. “Your son?”

Her eyes had misted again, but she didn't look away from me. Instead she asked, “Can you see who murdered him? Can you tell who it was?”

My brow furrowed and I stood up. The energy from my roommate had shifted dramatically; it was as if the floodgates had been opened and there were now waves of guilt rolling off Skylar—an ocean of regret filled the space between us and it was so intense that I had to withdraw my intuitive feelers. “Skylar,” I said, because I needed to get her to close those floodgates. “What are you in here for? Why are you on death row?”

“Cooper!” someone yelled at the door to our cell, and I jumped a whole foot. Stern Eyes was back, handcuffs dangling off her index finger. “Step forward with your arms in front of you and put them through here.” Stern Eyes was indicating a small square open section of the bars next to the lock, where she wanted me to stick my hands.

“What? Why?”

“Someone's here to see you,” she said. “Someone with big brass balls and a whole lotta pull, so hurry it up.”

Gaston. It had to be him. I gulped. God, I hoped Dutch was with him. Especially after what I'd pulled in court. I shuffled over to the door and put my wrists through the small window so she could slap the cuffs on me.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Skylar was staring at us,
and I tried to offer her an apologetic look. “Let me go meet with this guy and when I get back, we'll talk,” I said.

“What if you don't come back?” she asked, and that small glimmer of hope that I'd seen in her eyes vanished.

“I will,” I promised.

“All right, Cooper, step back and I'll have them open the door,” Stern Eyes said.

“I will,” I repeated to Skylar as I moved two steps back and waited for the buzz.

It came, and as the door began to slide open, Skylar said, “That question you asked me about why I'm here?”

I nodded.

“You know why, don't you?”

I nodded again—reluctantly, though. She was here for her son's murder, and those waves of guilt still sloshed around the cell. I didn't quite know what to think about that.

Skylar studied my face for a moment before she turned her gaze to the wall. As the door clanged to a stop, I turned, still feeling the sticky residue from the Twix bar heavy on my fingers.

I
was partially right about who'd come to visit me at the county jailhouse. In a small room with a table and two chairs, Gaston was waiting for me, along with two other men: my husband and U.S. assistant prosecutor Matt Hayes.

Matt looked bad, like maybe he himself had gone a few rounds with Judge Schilling, the man I'd outed to a packed courtroom a few hours earlier, who'd then leaped across his bench and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking what little sense I had left right out of me. To make matters worse, I'd been found in contempt and thrown in jail.

Seeing Matt, however, I started to feel really bad about what I'd done, but we'd been about to lose the case anyway, and my (infamous) temper had gotten the best of me. When I'd been up on the stand, Judge Schilling had flat out called me a charlatan, a faker, a fraud. Where I come from, them's fightin' words, and I'd unleashed the kraken, pinging Judge Schilling with all his secrets, including his biggest—the affair he was having with his cute male clerk. Judge Schilling was a happily married pillar of Christian values in the community. At least, he had been that before I'd gotten through with him.

I hadn't really wondered what'd happened in the aftermath, but here in the little room I could clearly see more stuff had gone down, because Matt was as furious and worked up as I'd ever seen him, his tie askew, his shirt wrinkled, and I bet he'd been pacing a small section of the room right before I came in. Meanwhile my husband was leaning against the right wall, one arm crossed over his beautifully broad chest while he rested the other elbow on it so he could hover his index finger over his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes at him because I knew that stance. He was doing his best to appear serious while trying to tamp down a chuckle.

Hayes expended no such effort. Visibly seething, the second I came fully into the room, he let go. “What the hell were you
thinking
, Abby?!”

“Can I at least get my cuffs off before you start in on me, Matt?” I asked more calmly than I felt. I then turned slightly so the guard could undo the cuffs, but she simply offered me a mocking grin and started to leave. At that moment Gaston cleared his throat and with a one-finger wave toward me, he said, “Hey, CO. Her cuffs. Now.”

Stern Eyes turned slowly toward Gaston, as if she couldn't believe he'd just given her a direct order. He casually opened his blazer to expose his badge and said, “Warden Hoffman is an old friend. I was godfather to his son, Quinn. If you'd like to have me call him and order you directly, I can do that.”

Stern Eyes paled and her face slacked into a decidedly less stern expression. I had to work to hide a smirk. She stepped forward and undid my cuffs, then left us alone, closing the door behind her.

For a minute nobody spoke. I think we were all waiting for Gaston to say something else, but he merely eyed me coolly, so Matt took it upon himself to get back to yelling at me. “Do you realize what you've
done
?”

I pulled the seat out from the table and sat down across from Gaston. “It looks like I blew your case to kingdom come.” I don't think Matt was prepared for that answer, because all he did was bob his head up and down with his mouth hanging open like, “Yeah you did!”

Swiveling in my seat, I turned to Dutch and said, “How bad is it?”

He lowered his hand, all hidden mirth vanishing. “Schilling called a mistrial.”

“He did?” I said. “That's awesome!”

“
How
is that awesome?!” Matt shouted.

“He was going to rule against us,” I said calmly.

Matt glared at me. “You don't know that!”

I tapped my temple. “Yep. Yep I do.”

Gaston said, “Abigail, I haven't heard the full story yet. Tell me what happened in court. And please, start at the beginning.”

For the next thirty minutes I told Gaston all about what'd gone on in court. The whole thing had been so ridiculous, so slanted against me, as if I were the one on trial and not Don Corzo, a serial killer who'd murdered at least three women in two states that we knew of.

I'd been brought on to the case late in the game. The trail had long since gone cold after the March night two years earlier when Misty Hartnet's body had been found in a small park. She'd been raped and strangled, but forensics had been unable to pull DNA off her from the rape, for reasons that were a bit too graphic to get into.

Anyway, we knew that her murder was linked to two other murdered girls by the way she'd been posed holding a white carnation over her heart.

I'd looked through the other girls' files first and hadn't gotten
a lot from their cases, but when I opened Misty's case, I felt strongly that something at the crime scene had been overlooked. And yet, in the file was a stack of photographs that documented the scene in infinite detail.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something about or at the crime scene had gone unnoticed, so I, along with Dutch and two other investigators, headed out to the park to check it out.

That's when I'd had the strong sensation that we were looking in the wrong spot, and I'd then spied a gazebo next to a running path about four hundred yards away. I'd been drawn to it and I'd called the boys with me as I went to check it out.

As we poked around the area near the gazebo, Oscar Rodriguez—one of the other FBI investigators—discovered, after digging through some leaves, three items perfectly preserved, as if they'd just been waiting for us to find them. A license, a bank card, and a charm with Misty Hartnet's DNA on it, which also perfectly matched the one her sister had given her for Christmas. The license and the bank card belonged to one Don Corzo, an air-conditioning repair guy who'd worked in Oklahoma—where one of the other girls, Wendy McLain, had been murdered—and in Texarkana, where Donna Andrews had been murdered. We knew we'd hit pay dirt with the circumstantial evidence, especially when the DNA results came back confirming the charm's owner.

The problem was, somewhere along the line when we'd all been preparing for trial, the defense got wind that I'd been the one to alert the FBI to the second crime scene, and he'd come up with the rather convenient argument that I was a big fat faker. He submitted a motion to suppress all evidence collected at the second crime scene under the premise that I'd actually stolen Corzo's wallet, planted it at the scene, and pointed the FBI boys right to it.

To prove that I was a fraud, he called in a former client of mine,
Stephanie Snitch. (Swear to God, that's her real name.) Stephie wasn't a fan of mine. Of course, she wasn't a fan of anyone, except perhaps herself.

On the stand, Stephie had lied her ass off. (I'll gladly pay that quarter to the swear jar.) At the end of her testimony she'd even gotten in a little jab: “You don't have to be
psychic
to know Abby Cooper
isn't
psychic.”

The defense attorney, Jack Reiner, had laughed.

Corzo had laughed.

The courtroom had chuckled.

Even Judge Schilling had grinned.

Me and Matt? Not so much. It was a cheap shot, and I wondered how long it'd taken Stephanie Stoopid to come up with it. (Okay, so that's just me being petty, but seriously? How many eye-roll-worthy bad psychic jokes can a person bear in her life?)

Anyway, we had a whole ton of clients willing to testify that I was, in fact, the real deal. And I even had a recording of the actual reading I'd done for Little Miss Snitch to show how accurately I'd predicted what would happen to her in the following months. The problem was, I'd never gotten written or verbal consent on the tape to record the session. That the session was going to be recorded wasn't in my disclaimer form. And I'd only said to Stephanie at the start of our time together that I'd record it and e-mail her a copy. She'd said, “Okay,” and
then
I'd hit play.

All of that forced us into the rather awkward position of having to ask Stephanie if we could play the recording of her session in court. She'd said no faster than you can type the word.

So the judge ruled that the tape was inadmissible; he'd rely on testimony alone. Stephanie had given hers (liar, liar, pants on fire), and in rebuttal, I'd been called to the stand. The judge had actually interrupted Matt's initial questioning to insert several
questions of his own. After he flat out told me that the Bible itself condemned the false prophet, it was abundantly clear to me exactly where the judge stood on psychics in general.

It'd gone downhill from there as he goaded me with a few more truly insulting inquiries into my sanity, and . . . well, I'd lost my cool. And then he'd lost his. It'd been a mess.

After I'd finished telling Gaston all that had happened, for which he'd remained patiently quiet, he said, “Did you really get dragged from the courtroom shouting, ‘You can't
handle
the truth!' at Judge Schilling?”

I gulped. “Uh . . . yes, sir. I might've said something to that effect.”

Dutch made a barely stifled snorting sound. I turned steely eyes to him and he swiveled to the wall, his shoulders shaking with mirth.

“It's not funny, Rivers,” Matt said.

He and I were fighting a losing battle, because Director Gaston also chuckled. “Oh, counselor, I think it is a little,” he said.

Of course, that made me crack a smile, but Matt wasn't in a mood to think lightly about any of what'd happened today. Honestly, I couldn't really blame him.

Dutch cleared his throat, got hold of himself, and turned back to face us with only a slight quirk to his lips. “Matt, how soon can you refile the charges?”

The federal prosecutor shook his head. “You guys don't seem to get it,” he said. “The defense knows how to beat us. We can't go marching back into court with any of the evidence that Abby led us to. If Corzo's attorney found one former client of Abby's willing to testify she's a fraud, the next time we go to court, he'll have a parade of witnesses claiming she's the biggest scam to hit Texas since Enron.”

“Hey!” I snapped. “My clients are awesome. There's no way he'd find a parade of them to come out against me.”

“Yeah?” Matt said, putting his hands on the table and hanging his head a little to look angrily at me. “Well, Corzo's team doesn't really need a parade, Abby. Today, in fact, they only needed
one
.”

“We'll get you more evidence, Matt,” Dutch said, back to being serious again, and sounding so sure, but Corzo was a pretty slick guy, and we'd gotten very, very lucky with the second crime-scene evidence found in Misty Hartnet's case.

Matt considered Dutch skeptically. “The first team worked these files for years with no hard evidence against Corzo, Rivers. Your team worked it for another three months before the ID and bank card were found. What makes you think there's any evidence left to discover or that we have time to let you look for it?”

“In point of fact, Hayes,” Dutch countered, his tone frosty, “it was three months before I assigned the case to Abby and asked for her impressions. We had the ID and the bank card within a
day
after I asked her to look into it.”

Matt shook his head. “But that's the problem. She can't touch this case from here on out. All evidence brought in by her psychic abilities is out. If I'm gonna file new charges against Corzo, then I need brand-new evidence without the fruit from her poisoned tree.”

Dutch opened his mouth to protest, but Gaston held up his hand and said, “Mr. Hayes is correct, Agent Rivers. Corzo's attorney will have the jury convinced that Abigail is a fraud and that we planted any additional evidence discovered simply to avoid embarrassment for having hired her in the first place. They might not all believe we did that, of course, but all he needs to create here is reasonable doubt. And as long as she's officially on the case, she's a reason to doubt its credibility.”

I squirmed in my chair. Coming from Gaston, that stung. “Sir—,” Dutch said, but Gaston cut him off by holding up his hand.

“That's my final word on the issue,” he said. “Abigail may not formally comment on this case moving forward. All future evidence must be the direct result of your team's strong investigative skills. Look through the files. See if you missed something. I have confidence in your keen eyes in particular, Agent Rivers, to find something we can use.”

Both Matt and Dutch appeared a little stunned, Dutch to have lost the argument and Matt to have won it so easily. I settled for pouting in my chair, feeling deeply ashamed that I'd disappointed the director. I really liked Gaston, and it felt bad to let him down.

“Now,” Gaston said, as if the matter were settled and there was nothing left to do but shake on it, “if you'll excuse us, Mr. Hayes, I'd like a moment alone with Abigail and Agent Rivers.”

Matt nodded and offered me a rather resigned look before heading out. Gaston waited a moment after the door was closed and then he focused on me. “I'm working to get you out of here, but it might be tomorrow morning before I can arrange it.”

“What?!” I gasped. “Tomorrow? Are you serious? Director, I was
attacked
in a packed courtroom!”

“Yes, and you also severely embarrassed a federally appointed judge to that same packed courtroom. That's a blow he won't soon recover from.”

My shoulders sagged and I dropped my chin. As much as I wanted to say that Schilling had it coming, and that lying to his lover and to his wife and to himself about who he really was had been a crummy way to conduct himself, I could now see how my actions and outing him were nothing but petty, unwarranted, underhanded moves. “Yes, sir.”

“It upsets me too that you'll have to stay in here overnight,” Gaston said, squeezing my arm good-naturedly.

I lifted my chin. “Yeah. It's not so bad. My cellmate is nice at least.”