Sense of Deception

by Victoria Laurie

  Corzo took another slow step toward me.

  I stared at him.

  He inched forward.

  I blinked. And blinked again.

  He bared his teeth. He knew I knew. And then he dropped his toolbox, raised his hands, and lunged.

  I threw all of Dutch’s shirts in his face. Corzo’s outstretched arms blocked the laundry, but some of the shirts landed over his head. Instead of running, I took a page out of the self-defense course Candice had been teaching me and reached forward to grab Corzo’s collar, simultaneously sticking my leg out and pulling him forcefully forward while twisting my upper body to the side.

  His legs tripped over mine and he and the laundry went sprawling to the ground. I then let out a war cry and pounced on his back, jamming my hand into the back of his head and driving his face onto the concrete. The expletive he’d been in the middle of uttering was cut short by a pretty sickening crunch. And still I didn’t let up. Driving my knee into his left shoulder, I yanked at his right arm, twisted it behind his back, then switched knees and pulled his left arm back.

  It was over in about five seconds.

  Also, that’s about how long it took to have Agent Cox come to my rescue. “Jesus!” he shouted as he got close enough to help me secure Corzo’s hands. “I saw the whole thing!”

  The folks inside the dry cleaner’s also came pouring out to see what was happening. “We saw it!” one of the women said to Cox. “We saw him try to attack her! And she took that sucker down!”

  Cox grinned at me. “At least we’ll get him on assault,” he said to me.

  I winked at him. “Nope, Agent Cox, you’ll book him on at least one count of murder!”

  Cox’s brow arched. “You know something I don’t?”

  “He murdered Tuyen Pham. APD has been investigating her case for about eight months. I’ve got a copy of the murder file in my car, and if you look into it, you’ll find some evidence linking Corzo to her murder, but I’m not sure what, and I can’t direct you any more than that.”

  Cox’s grin widened as he yanked a dizzy and bloody Corzo to his feet. “That’s okay, Cooper. I trust you.”

  Coming from Cox, that was kind of a big deal.

  As it turned out, however, I was absolutely right. Cox and the rest of the Austin bureau descended on the evidence collected by APD in Pham’s murder like a group of ninjas. By ten o’clock they had the ultimate prize. The medical examiner had discovered a bit of duct tape on Pham’s wrists. As it happened, under a microscope, the slightly frayed ends of the duct tape from Tuyen’s wrist had exactly matched the slightly frayed ends of a roll discovered in Corzo’s trunk. It was found stuffed under the spare tire, in a plastic bag containing a black ski mask, black leather gloves, rope, and directions to Stephanie Snitch’s apartment.

  I just knew he’d taken a shine to her during the trial.

  And, according to a receipt produced by the dry cleaning store’s owner, two days before Tuyen had disappeared, Corzo had come to repair the overworked air conditioner.

  After giving my statement, I’d gotten the heck out of there; I didn’t want to taint the case for trial. As it stood, Corzo’s attorney was going to have a hard time explaining why his client had attacked me completely unprovoked.

  “How’d it go?” I asked when Dutch came through the door around midnight.

  He shuffled over to me, looking exhausted but also a bit elated. “We’ve got him solid for Tuyen Pham. The duct tape alone could nail him, but we also had our crime lab sift through the trash bags collected from where Pham’s body was found, and you’ll never guess what they found.”

  A white flower blossomed in my mind’s eye. “The white carnation?” I asked. It was a trademark of Corzo’s, and I was surprised that he’d been dumb enough to leave it near Pham’s body. But then, he was an arrogant son of a bitch.

  Dutch pointed a finger gun at me. “Bingo,” he said. “I’m not surprised APD missed it,” he added. “By the time they found the body, the flower had dried up and wasn’t recognizable amid the other flora.”

  “That’ll connect him to the other three girls,” I said, with a satisfied smile.

  “It will, but we also have a link that’s even stronger in the Misty Hartnet case. As you know, she was found with duct tape residue on both wrists, and Oscar says he swears one of the trash bags we collected from the scene had a bit of tape in it. He’s having the crime guys request it from storage and go back to look for the duct tape in the morning.”

  “I thought Oscar was on vacation.”

  “He heard we nabbed Corzo for attacking you and came down to help us process the evidence we yanked from APD on Pham.”

  Dutch then laid out the rest of the incriminating evidence found on Corzo, including the stuff found in his trunk, the map to Stephanie Snitch’s house, and a photo of Tuyen coming out of the dry cleaner’s, which was taped under the liner in the back of his trunk along with a photo of my friend Stephanie. “I don’t know where he hid all that stuff when we checked his vehicle six months ago, but he’s pretty stupid to be carrying it around, knowing we were on to him,” Dutch said.

  “He got cocky,” I said, feeling it in my gut. “After the mistrial, he figured he was untouchable. Add to that the news story that Len Chen Cheng was arrested by APD for Pham’s murder, and he probably would’ve been on his way to Stephanie Snitch’s house within the week.”

  Dutch rubbed his eyes. “We called her, you know.”

  “You did?”

  My hubby yawned. “Yeah. Wanted her to know just in case Corzo has a sidekick we haven’t heard about.”

  “He doesn’t,” I said. I’d felt out Corzo’s energy so many times that I was certain he worked alone.

  “Yeah, well, maybe we also wanted to rub it in a little. She cost us our first case, and we wanted her to know she’d been marked as a target by the very serial killer she’d helped to walk.”

  “Ah. How’d she take it?”

  “Not well.”

  “Shocker.”

  “We’re all still reeling down at the bureau.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “The bitch.”

  “That’ll cost you a quarter,” Dutch kidded, wrapping an arm around me.

  “Worth it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, leaning over to nuzzle my neck. “Which is why I’ll sponsor it. In fact, if you search my pocket, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a roll of quarters. Or I’m just happy to see you.”

  As it turned out, Dutch was very, very happy to see me. We spent the night cuddled together, enjoying the high of putting another bad guy behind bars.

  The next day Oscar called me before I’d even finished my coffee to say, “The buyers’ financing on that house fell through!”

  “Quelle surprise,” I said flatly.

  “We’re going to submit my offer this morning.”

  “Drop your price by five grand, Oscar,” I said to him. “No, wait. Drop it by ten.”

  “But Bonnie told me in this market, it might be smarter to offer close to asking.”

  “See, now, that’s why I sent you to Bonnie, because she’s smart and she knows her stuff. But as I’m currently sitting here, feeling out the ether, I can see that your offer is a smidge high and you can safely drop it by five grand and still have it snatched up. Trust me, honey. You’ll get it.”

  “Thanks, Cooper,” Oscar said, excitement in his voice. “I’ll call you back!”

  “Of that I’m sure,” I said, stifling a yawn as I hung up with him. A sound rumbled out from the bathroom. Dutch was in the shower. Singing. Which he often did after showing me his roll of quarters. It’d be sweet if my adorable husband could carry a tune. Ah well. He had other “attributes.”

  While I was wistfully thinking on those very attributes, there came a knock at our front door. I cinched up my robe and padded
out through the living room to answer it. Candice stood there looking so put together it made you want to hate her. “Why do you always have to look so gorgeous?” I said, blocking her way into my home.

  She arched an eyebrow. “It’s a gift?”

  I grunted and stepped aside. “It’s not fair, ya know.”

  “Life never is, honey.” Candice gave my arm a gentle squeeze as she crossed the threshold.

  I poured her a cup of coffee and told her all about my encounter with Corzo. She’d no doubt heard it from Brice, but she still wanted to hear it from me too.

  “Brice was the one on the call to Snitch,” Candice confided when I was done. “He flat out told her she should apologize to you, because you’d pretty much saved her life.”

  “Really?” I said. “Brice actually said that?”

  “He did.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “That she’d think about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. Hell would freeze before I ever got an apology from Stephanie Snitch. Which was fine, because if she apologized, then I’d have to accept it, and I sorta liked being mad at her.

  Changing the subject, I said, “Did you come over here to tell me that? Or is there something else you can update me on? Like maybe the video footage from Home Depot came in?”

  Candice lifted her mug in a silent toast. “That radar of yours never quits, does it?”

  “Not on a case like this. How many hours of footage is there to go over?”

  “Three cameras from three different angles covering paint and tools for roughly a five-hour period from eight a.m. to one p.m. for six days brings it to roughly ninety hours of footage.”

  “Wait, I thought Allen said it was between nine and noon?”

  “He did. I added an hour on each end to be thorough, and I requested the footage from June fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth of two thousand four, and the week before, just to cover our bases. I figure we can start with the week of the fifteenth, and if we have to go back a week, at least we’ll have the footage.”

  I groaned. “That’s still gonna take us forever.”

  “You can fast-forward through a lot of it,” she said.

  “Wait, I can fast-forward through it? What about you?”

  “I’m still working on figuring out what Faith Wagner is hiding.”

  “Turn up anything interesting?”

  “Mostly I’m turning up nothing, which is the most interesting thing of all.”

  “Why is turning up nothing interesting?” I asked, refilling Candice’s cup from the carafe on the table.

  “Because she’s living pretty high on the hog for someone whose tax returns suggest she couldn’t afford more than a cheap one-room studio.”

  “So how is she paying the rent?” I said, getting where Candice was headed. “Benefactor?”

  “That’s my thinking.”

  “Landlord?” I asked next, remembering the great big house next door to Faith Wagner’s cottage.

  “Alicia Hudson,” Candice said. I assumed she’d had time the day before to at least figure that much out. “She’s worth big bucks. Big. But what her connection to Faith is, I can’t figure out. Skylar’s dad passed away in early two thousand. He’d divorced Faith years before, and didn’t leave her any money as far as I could tell. She married three more times, and was most recently divorced in two thousand six. What’s interesting about the timing is that she filed for divorce from husband number four the day after her daughter was convicted of murdering Noah.”

  “Interesting,” I agreed. “But what does it mean?”

  “Don’t know. Yet. Anyway, from what I can tell, she’s never worked. She just keeps marrying these guys and they keep divorcing her, which is no surprise, because, well, we’ve met her and found her company to be as delightful as they likely did.”

  “Word,” I said, holding out my fist. Candice bumped it with hers.

  “I have a theory, but I can’t prove it,” she said next.

  “What’s the theory?”

  “I think that Chris is giving her money.”

  “Didn’t she live with him at some point?” I asked.

  “She did,” Candice said. “She lived with her ex-son-in-law on and off in between husbands from ’ninety-eight through two thousand three. When Chris lost physical custody of Noah, he sure didn’t need her hanging around, so she moved in with the next guy she married and got divorced from in ’oh-six.”

  “Did she maybe get some money from any of her divorces?” I asked, trying to piece together the threads.

  Candice made a puffing sound. “Not enough to live on. In my check through public records, she was awarded a total of a hundred grand.”

  “That’s not chump change,” I argued.

  “Over the past twenty-five years?” Candice countered.

  “Oh,” I said. “I stand corrected.”

  “Yeah. So, other than a monthly five-hundred-dollar stipend from Skylar’s father’s pension, she’s earning no income that I can find.”

  “So what’s she living off of?”

  “I think Chris is keeping her afloat.”

  “For what reason, though?”

  Candice shrugged a shoulder. “He’s got big money and she did him a favor.”

  “What favor?”

  “She sent her daughter to the needle for murdering his son.”

  “You think he put her up to her testimony against Skylar?”

  Candice tapped the table. “I do. I mean, if you think your ex had killed your kid after taking him away, wouldn’t you want a little revenge?”

  I thought on that. “Didn’t Allen say that Chris had been going off about Skylar at Noah’s funeral?”

  “He did,” Candice said.

  “Okay, so how does knowing any of this help Skylar’s appeal?”

  “It shows prejudice and perjury,” Candice said. “And it might help to show the appellate court, at the very least, that the death sentence imposed by the presiding judge was a little harsh, given that Skylar’s mother was enticed to lie on the witness stand as an act of revenge on the part of Noah’s father. It might not be enough to get Skylar a new trial, but if it saves her life, it’ll also buy us time.”

  I frowned. “That sounds like a long shot.”

  “All we’ve got left are long shots, Sundance.”

  “Okay, so what do we do? Go see Chris?”

  Candice smiled in that way that said she was way ahead of me. “I already called Oscar. He’s heading there after he stops off at his Realtor’s to sign his papers.”

  “We’re not going?”

  “If you were Chris Miller, an angry white man who’s had his whole world taken down by a woman, who would you rather talk to? Us? Or Oscar?”

  “That sounds like a rhetorical question.”

  Candice pointed her finger at me and made a clicking sound with her tongue.

  At that moment Dutch came out, wearing only a towel around his waist and a glistening sheen from the shower. Candice pretended to avert her eyes while subtly sneaking peeks at my hubby’s exquisite physique.

  “Morning!” he said, grabbing a cup from the cupboard.

  “Uh . . . good morning,” Candice said, dipping her chin.

  “Hey, honey,” I said, enjoying his appearance very much.

  Dutch poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe, winked at me, and headed back to the bathroom to finish his morning ablutions.

  There was a moment of silence before Candice let out a low whistle. “Abigail Cooper, you are one lucky bitch.”

  That made me laugh and laugh.

  * * *

  Several hours later she and I were at the office. I had been fast-forwarding video from one of the cameras pointed to the tool section for what felt like hours. So far I’d fast-forwarded through
June 15 and June 16, and I was well on my way to finishing up with June 17 when the time stamp was approaching ten thirty a.m. and suddenly, two individuals, one tall, one short, waddled forward into view. I sat up and smacked the Pause button, freezing the screen. “Holy shit!” I shouted. (Swearing during moments of crime-solving exuberance shouldn’t cost me a quarter.)

  The inner office intercom on my phone beeped. “You find something?”

  “I’ve got them!” I called, rewinding the tape a little and hitting Play. Candice clicked off and a moment later I heard her heels in the hallway. “Look,” I said, pivoting my laptop slightly so she could see.

  The image on the screen was a bit fuzzy, but even so, it was clear enough to see a man with white hair and a blond boy walking alongside the tools lining the wall, while he pushed a cart a little ahead of him. The man paused at each tool, pointed to it, and said something to the boy. At one point, the boy spoke and the man reacted as if he was having a hearty laugh. He leaned back and held his sides, and then he put his arm on one of the young man’s shoulders. At that moment Skylar Miller appeared in the video. She came charging up the aisle like a mama bear, grabbed Noah’s arm, tugged him from the man’s grasp, and put her son behind her protectively. She then appeared to be yelling at the man, wagging her finger, until she must’ve had her say, because she then turned, picked up her son, and hurried away.

  I almost stopped the tape at that point, but Candice, who must’ve read my mind, said, “Let it keep going.” We watched the next few seconds and they revealed the man walking down the aisle in the same direction Skylar had gone and peering around the corner. At that moment another figure came into view. Allen. He tapped the guy on the shoulder, got up close and personal to him, and then pointed toward the exit.

  The man walked away with his shoulders hunched and his stride angry.

  “Bingo,” Candice said. Reaching for my sticky-note pad and a pen, she wrote down the time stamp on the video and said, “Come with me and bring the laptop.”

  I followed behind her and we went back to her office, where she picked up her desk phone and, after checking something on her cell, dialed from the landline. Just a moment later she said, “Hi Gary, it’s Candice Fusco from Austin. Listen, that tape you sent us showed us exactly what we were looking for. Thank you so much, but I’m wondering if I could ask you for some additional footage?” There was a pause, then, “Awesome. The footage we need would be from the parking area facing the northwest corner of the lot closest to the exit. And the time stamp would be Thursday, June seventeenth, two thousand four, at approximately ten twenty-eight a.m. Fifteen minutes of footage around that time should be perfect.”