Sense of Deception

by Victoria Laurie

  My brow furrowed. “Hear? I was calling to update you.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You go first, then.”

  My radar pinged. “Well, mine’s kind of long, and it feels like you’ve got news, so why don’t you go first?”

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s official. Skylar fired her attorney and hired me.”

  I sat forward. “She did? Really?”

  “Yeah. I had my first meeting with her today at county. She seems freakishly calm about firing her attorney of six years nine days before her final appeal. Her demeanor wasn’t anything like I thought it’d be.”

  That made me sad. “She doesn’t think she’ll win the appeal,” I said. “I think she’s afraid to hope, but it also shows me that she was willing to trust me, which suggests that she hasn’t completely given up yet.”

  Cal sighed. “I gotta tell you, Abby, this is one uphill battle we’re facing. After reviewing the case a little more since Friday, I was tempted to call you and tell you that I wasn’t going to offer to represent her.”

  “What?” I said, shocked and a little angry at the admission. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to put Skylar in an even worse position facing that appellate court than she’s already in. Switching attorneys this late in the game is a real gamble. It could easily backfire on us.”

  I felt out the ether and shook my head. “No, Cal, this was the right move. You’ve just got to trust me on this. We are Skylar’s only hope, and even though I’ll agree with you that the odds are against us, we’re all the fighting chance she’s got.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he relented. “I’ll trust you. So what is it you’ve got for me?”

  I spent the next hour laying out everything that we’d discovered in just two days of investigating. When I was done, Cal said, “Damn. Abby, if all of us had been on Skylar’s team eight or nine years ago, no way would she have been found guilty. In fact, I doubt this would’ve gone to trial. Unfortunately, even though you’re currently digging up some really compelling evidence to create reasonable doubt, unless you get something closer to a confession, it’s not going to be enough.”

  “But, Cal,” I complained, “I mean, come on! How could even an appellate court ignore the inconsistencies in the evidence and the fact that we have a witness that’ll state that he overheard another guy practically confess to the crime?”

  “Easy,” Cal said. “The defense had a chance to drill down on that evidence at the first trial, and even at the first appeal, and they didn’t do it. I’m going to argue like crazy that Skylar’s representation committed gross negligence for not arguing the points you brought up, but I can tell you with certainty that the appellate court has been there, and heard that, a thousand times or more. It’s the standard argument, and they don’t tend to fall for it. So I need more, Abby. A lot more. And soon.”

  “Okay,” I relented. “We’ll keep working it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find this guy Slip.”

  “Even if you do find him, you’re going to have to get him to confess,” Cal warned. “Skylar would need nothing short of that to sway the appellate court.”

  I bit my lip. “And if we don’t get a confession but continue to find good evidence that it was someone else? Then what, Cal?”

  “Then we’ll lose the appeal,” he said bluntly. “But we’ll have something to take to the Board of Pardons.”

  “Board of what, now?”

  “The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. It decides clemency cases.”

  “What about the governor?”

  “He got taken out of the equation years ago,” Cal said. “It’s part of the reason why Texas executes such a high percentage of its death row inmates. There’re no politics with the board. No pressure from the public. They just make the decision and go home.”

  I gulped. “How often do they grant pardons?”

  Cal was silent for a beat. “There’s always a first time.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, feeling the wind go right out of my sails.

  “Hey,” he said. “There is always a first time, Abby. And just because they have an abysmal record for granting pardons doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

  I nodded, but there was now a knot the size of a grapefruit in the pit of my stomach. Cal continued to try to reassure me by saying, “This race isn’t over. Not by a long shot. You keep working your investigative end, and bring me any new evidence, no matter how minor, okay? I’ll keep working on amending the brief that was submitted to the court on behalf of Skylar’s former attorney. He left a lot of holes in it that I’m going to need to fill, and the more I pack in there for them to look at, the better. So don’t give up. Not yet.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, feeling suddenly weary. “Thanks, Cal.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh, and one more thing, I registered your name as part of Skylar’s legal defense team with the prison, so if you need to talk to Skylar, you should be able to set up a time on the visitors’ video system as early as tomorrow.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “That’ll be a big help. Thanks.”

  After hanging up with Cal, I spent the better part of the late afternoon writing out notes about Skylar’s case on three-by-five cards. Doing this sometimes helped me draw certain random clues together. Of every clue we’d uncovered so far, the one about Slip felt the most urgent. We needed to find this guy, and fast. And then, if we could prove that he’d been the one to crawl into Noah’s window and murder him, we needed to get him to confess to that, and I doubted he’d be swayed by the argument that a woman’s life was held in the balance. If he’d truly murdered Noah as revenge for some slight—which I couldn’t really wrap my head around—then seeing Skylar take the fall for his crime was the ultimate revenge.

  Putting the cards down on the desk, I began to arrange them in random patterns, hoping something would trigger another valuable connection or clue. I kept feeling like we didn’t have the whole story. My eye fell on Detective Ray Dioli’s card, and that burning anger welled up into my chest again. I hate bullies. Truly detest them, and the more I learned about Dioli and all the evidence he’d overlooked in Skylar’s case, the bigger a bully he became. Somewhat blinded by the fumes of that anger, I picked up my office phone and called his cell. He answered with a gruff, “Dioli.”

  “Detective? This is Abby Cooper.”

  “You can’t get enough of old Ray today, can you, Abby?”

  I smirked. He thought he was so charming. Asshat. Still, it wouldn’t pay me to come out all guns-a-blazing right off the bat. “Sorry to bug you yet again on your weekend, but I’m wondering if you could close the loop on something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, we had an interesting conversation with a guy named Wayne Babson today. Do you by any chance remember him?”

  Dioli was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “No. Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  My lie detector didn’t exactly go off, but it suggested that Dioli thought the name might be familiar, even though he couldn’t quite place it.

  I thought I’d help jog his memory. “He used to date Skylar,” I told him. “But they stopped seeing each other shortly before she won back custody of Noah. Anyway, in a somewhat strange coincidence, Babson says that he got popped for something back in ’oh-five, and while he was in holding at county, another inmate there seemed to have intimate knowledge of Noah’s murder. Babson claims that it so alarmed him that he talked to his parole officer, who then put him in touch with a detective on the case, and I was wondering if maybe it was you that he’d spoken to?”

  Another pause and then Dioli said, “Nope. Wasn’t me.”

  My lie detector went off. Which meant that Dioli had suppressed evidence that Babson had been in contact with him. Unless Wayne’s old parole officer had made a special note of it, we’d be hard-pressed to introduce it to the appellate court as
evidence that the APD had purposely hidden some evidence, which I was beginning to think it absolutely had.

  I was careful to keep my voice light. “Okay, thanks, Ray. I don’t think I’ll include the incident in the book, but I just wanted to make sure I’m covering the whole story.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. I doubted he believed me, and I got the distinct impression he was pretty much done helping me with Skylar’s case.

  “I’ll call you if I get any other hits on Pham’s case,” I said, still trying to remain in his good graces, although why I wasn’t sure.

  “You don’t need to worry about that anymore,” he said cryptically. “We’re all set on that.”

  And then he hung up. Abruptly. Not even a good-bye kiss. How would I ever get over it?

  With an eye roll, I got back to work sorting through the three-by-five cards. Candice poked her head into my office around six o’clock, looking tired and frustrated. “No luck?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not really. I got a few hits on some names that’re close, but no one who was in holding at county at the same time as Wayne. Still, I’m gonna track down those leads just to make sure.”

  I motioned to the door with my chin. Oscar had been working on his laptop in Candice’s office when I came into mine. “I take it Oscar didn’t have any luck either?”

  Candice stretched and yawned. “Not yet, but he promised to work it tomorrow. He left about ten minutes ago and said he’d be in touch tomorrow morning.”

  I gathered up the three-by-five cards into a neat stack and stood up. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll hit it again tomorrow. Let’s call it a night.”

  Chapter Ten

  Monday morning I was back at the office. There was a sense of urgency that went beyond simply knowing that Skylar’s life depended on us figuring out who murdered Noah in the next few days. I felt so strongly that there was something more going on, a bigger picture to put it all into context, and I knew that I’d continue to flounder around until I had a chance to talk to Skylar. To that end, I filled out the required online application for a video visitation and impatiently sat back and waited for it to be approved.

  About an hour after sending the form, I received notification that the visit had been approved and that I would be able to speak with Skylar at ten a.m. I spent the hour waiting for the visit by going about the painstaking business of creating a list of the e-mail addresses of all my clients whose sessions I’d previously recorded. Matt had instructed me that if I ever wanted to contribute to another federal case again, I’d better get my clients in a row by sending them an amended terms of agreement, which flatly stated that the e-mail copy of the recording of our session together counted as approval for the actual recording of said session, and that they merely needed to check the little box marked “Agree” at the bottom of the e-mail and send it back to me to make it all legal-like.

  This was no small task. I had almost four thousand clients. And while Matt had assured me that I probably didn’t need all of them to reply to the amended agreement, I quite likely needed about seventy percent to get on board.

  I figured it was going to take me at least a solid month to reach out to them all and beg them to simply click the little check box at the bottom of the e-mail. “Stupid Stephanie Snitch,” I muttered as I squinted at my computer screen. I would never understand why some women could be so aggressively catty to other women. The small child in me was hurt that she’d betrayed my trust when all I’d wanted to do was give her an experience that made her feel good and took away her worries. I’d wanted the best for her, and she’d made an effort to sully my name, and of course get a serial killer off on a technicality. She’d done that just to get some attention. That part alone was unforgivable.

  And that gave me an uncomfortable reminder that I had to call Director Gaston at some point and let him know that I’d hit a dead end with the other girls that Corzo had murdered. After poring over the files of the other two victims the night before, it was clear to me, intuitively speaking, that there was nothing new to be gleaned. I couldn’t even offer him a new angle to pursue.

  I stared into space for a minute as that weight settled firmly onto my shoulders. So much about the week ahead held the potential to absolutely cripple me emotionally, because these weren’t just cases to me. When I used my radar to help solve a case, a little piece of me went into it. A piece I never got back. The fact that I could contribute helped offset the loss of that energy. But if I wasn’t going to bring home a win on any of the three cases I was currently working, then what was the freaking point?

  I closed my eyes and sat back in my chair, trying to remember that it mattered that I was fighting the good fight. That there were plenty of times when I’d helped to put someone seriously dangerous behind bars. That the judgment of others didn’t matter; only that of the people who loved me and fought alongside me counted.

  Still, I couldn’t quite convince myself.

  Opening my eyes, I looked at the clock. I had fifteen minutes to go. Sitting up, I reached for the phone and made the call. “Gaston,” he answered before the third ring.

  “Director,” I said. “It’s Abby Cooper.”

  “Good morning, Abigail,” he said, his voice crisp and clipped. He was all business this morning. “Did you manage to find something for us?”

  I bit my lip. “Sir, I’m very sorry. Truly. But I went over the files several times and nothing there indicates that there’s anything left to discover. At least not that I can pull out of the ether.”

  Gaston seemed to take that in before he said, “Very well, Abigail. I’m sure you tried your best. We’ll just have to continue to press on with the investigation on our own.”

  I felt a pang. His words were right, but I could practically hear the disappointment in his voice. I’d failed him. “Maybe we’ll have some luck with the fourth victim,” I said. And then realized that I’d spoken without even thinking about it. In fact, what I’d just said had sprung from my mouth as if someone else had said it.

  “What did you say?” Gaston asked, leaping on the statement.

  I shook my head a little. Where the hell had that come from? But I already knew. Sometimes my radar acts a bit like a case of Tourette’s. Stuff sort of falls out of my mouth without any forethought, and it’s those times when what comes out tends to be the most truthful and predictive. “The fourth victim,” I said, almost whispering it. “There’s a fourth victim out there, but either we haven’t found her or her case hasn’t been connected to Corzo yet.”

  “We’ve done extensive searches within our shared databases, Abigail. No other cases were similar enough to suspect Corzo was responsible.”

  “He changed his method,” I said, knowing that was true. “He’s altered the way he disposes of his victims. I don’t think he leaves them in plain sight, or poses them anymore. He’s hiding them now.”

  “So you believe there’s another woman’s body still out there?”

  I focused on that question, but my radar was a little iffy on the answer. “I can’t say for sure, Director, but there is a sense that we will connect these dots, and that as clever as Corzo thinks he is to change things up on us, he’s actually messed up royally. He’s left us a giant clue, and we only need to look out for this fourth victim to figure it out.”

  And then Gaston asked me something that sent a slight chill up my spine. “You believe that Corzo has already killed this fourth victim, correct? This isn’t a woman he intends to kill or has targeted?”

  I tapped my finger on the desk. “No. No, it feels like she’s already dead. However, Corzo definitely plans to kill again. I hate to say this, but I think he murdered this woman while we were trying to put a case together against him for the murder of the other three. I think it was done within the past year.”

  I heard Gaston sigh. “We turned our focus away from him a few times in the past twelve months,�
�� he admitted. “Other, more pressing cases needed our attention.”

  Gaston didn’t have to say it, but I knew of two cases in particular that’d taken our attention away from Corzo, one involving Candice, and another involving a different serial killer who liked to blow things up. Literally.

  Still, I had a sneaking suspicion that Corzo’s fourth victim had been murdered during the time of the bomber, when we’d all been seriously distracted. (And some of us more than others.)

  “We should look at missing persons reports from mid-October of last year through early November,” I said to Gaston. “Sometime during that stretch I think Corzo struck.”

  “I’ll get everybody on it,” Gaston promised. “Thanks for the call.”

  I set the receiver down in the cradle of my desk phone with a satisfied sigh. Sometimes, it felt really great to have a little extra advantage over the bad guys, and my radar had often proved to be the thing that they couldn’t quite circumvent.

  My smug satisfaction lasted all of two seconds, because Candice came into my office carrying a newspaper and slapped it down on my desk. “Dioli’s an asshole,” she proclaimed.

  I glanced at the clock before looking at the paper. I had three minutes before Skylar’s video visit. Enough time to get good and bothered. Eyeing the paper, I read the headline, UT Research Student Arrested for Lab Partner’s Murder.

  “Son of a bitch!” I yelled, taking up the paper to glare at it murderously. “I told that son of a bitch Dioli that Cheng didn’t do it!”

  “He’s choosing to ignore you,” Candice deadpanned.

  “How can he even do this?” I demanded, still staring hard at the paper. “I mean, he’s got nothing! Nothing on this kid!”

  “Read the article,” Candice said. “He’s got a threatening e-mail from Cheng to Pham that was written on a friend’s computer, almost as if Cheng didn’t want it traced back to him.”