Sense of Deception

by Victoria Laurie

  “We could,” I said, looking at Oscar and nodding at him in our well-rehearsed scenario.

  “But we won’t,” Oscar said, right on cue. And then we both smiled at Jeffrey and headed out to the front of the office to wait on Matt. (Who was actually down the hall using another public restroom.)

  About five minutes later, Matt came in, and became all smiles and confidence when he heard whom Gallagher had hired. “Let’s move this along,” he said. Oscar and I followed him around the corner.

  As we rounded into the hallway again, I saw Candice duck into the conference room. We’d set up a camera system from there to monitor and record the conversation, and I knew that Dutch and Brice would head in as well now that Matt was here and we could begin the negotiations.

  Matt knocked once and held the door for us as we filed in. Dennis was hunched forward, as if he was extremely uncomfortable, and judging by the slight shadow at the bottom of his slush cup, indicating he’d drained most of it, I could only imagine.

  I took my seat across from him and flipped on the old radar. Matt sat next to me, and Oscar was on the other side. “You guys can’t keep me here like this without letting me go to the bathroom!” Dennis yelled. “This is freaking torture! It’s cruel and unusual punishment!”

  Matt set his hands on the table and laced his fingers together. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gallagher, but the facilities are out of order at the moment. I’m sure we can locate a working restroom for you just as soon as we have a short discussion about the charges you’re currently facing.”

  Dennis’s face turned crimson. “I told you I didn’t do anything!” Pointing to Oscar, he screamed, “He’s freaking lying!”

  Oscar rolled his eyes convincingly. Matt said, “And yet, this is a federal agent with a sterling reputation. And he has a witness to back him up.” Motioning to me, he said, “Miss Cooper? You were there, correct?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I saw the whole thing.”

  Dennis kicked at the floor in frustration. “They’re lying!” he yelled again. “I got a kid now, man! A kid! I’m clean! I don’t make trouble no more! I keep my nose clean and I go to my parole officer every freaking week!”

  My radar pinged with an odd thought. So odd that I tilted my head as I tried to sort it out. Meanwhile, Jeffrey said, “Do you have video of this supposed attack on your agent, Mr. Hayes?”

  Matt smiled. “We don’t need video, Mr. Bachman. I’ve got the testimony of an agent with thirteen years of experience and a sterling reputation along with the eyewitness testimony of one of the FBI’s most trusted consultants. You, on the other hand, have the word of a convicted felon. A man with a rap sheet as long as my arm, and a man who had recently forged a certificate of license for welding by the Texas Department of Transportation. An offense that, even without the assault charge, could clearly land him back in jail.”

  “Not by your office,” Bachman snapped. “What’s your angle here, Hayes? Seriously, why is the FBI rooting around in a state welding-license forgery?”

  Matt sat back and crossed his arms. Jeffrey had just played right into his hands. “We’re actually not interested in the forgery,” he said, staring intently at Dennis. “We’re interested in a miscarriage of justice. And you know exactly what I’m talking about, Mr. Gallagher.”

  Bachman’s brow furrowed and he looked to his client, whose face had once again gone crimson. A tense silence filled the room and the only sound was the squeak of Dennis’s chair as he squirmed in it. At last Bachman, who’d read every subtle sign, said, “Even if my client knew what you were hinting at, I don’t. So how about we cut through the bullshit and you tell us what you want to know.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Matt moved his chin toward me. “We want to know about Skylar Miller,” I said directly to Dennis. “We want to know why you told Wayne Babson that you’d gotten even with her. That you’d made sure she’d gotten what she deserved.”

  Dennis squirmed again. “I wish I’d never said that,” he said quietly, his face going crimson yet again, but this time . . . this time the blush was different. If I was a bettin’ woman (which I am), I’d say it was rooted in shame.

  And that gave me a little encouragement. I leaned forward and said, “Isn’t it time, Dennis? Isn’t it time to tell the truth and get this burden off your chest?”

  He glared at me, but his eyes glazed with mist. I pressed on.

  “She doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her. She’s going to die on Tuesday for a crime you and I both know she didn’t commit. Come on, man. You can’t let that happen, can you?”

  Dennis’s lower lip began to quiver, and indecision wavered in his gaze. And then, his asshole attorney put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t say a word, Dennis. Not one word.”

  I wanted to murder that son of a bitch attorney, but I settled for giving him a look that could freeze molten lava. “I’d like to confer with my client,” Bachman said, pointedly turning his head away from me.

  Clenching my hands into frustrated fists, I started to get up, but then Matt began speaking. “Of course, counselor,” he said. “But before we leave, I’d like to say the following to your client. Dennis, either way you’re going to spend the rest of your life in jail. I will convict you on the assaulting-a-federal-officer charge, and I will get the state to prosecute you on the forgery charge. You’ll serve twenty years for the federal charge, and if I can make it stick, given your record, I’ll push for another ten on the other. But it’ll be spent in federal prison as far away as I can ship you. Lewisburg, PA, for instance, where the average guy like you doesn’t tend to see the end of his sentence if he’s got no homies to protect him. I’ll make sure you’re nice and cozy there. Additionally, you’ll never see your kid again. Unless your baby mama is willing to drive all the way up to Pennsylvania every weekend, your kid’s gonna grow up not knowing you. And I mean that.”

  Matt paused for a dramatic moment while Gallagher absorbed what he’d said. And then Matt continued. “All we want is information. We want to know what happened the night Noah Miller died, Dennis. And in exchange for that information, we’re willing to talk to the DA and convince her to take the death penalty off the table and keep your worthless ass local. You’ll still spend the rest of your miserable life in jail, but at least you’ll get to see your kid grow up. So think about it. Hard.”

  With that, Matt got up and Oscar and I followed. The door banged behind us, and I couldn’t help but feel that it’d been the final thing to bring the message home to Gallagher that he’d spend the rest of his life in a small cramped room, waiting for permission to use the bathroom.

  Fifteen minutes later, the lot of us, including Candice, Dutch, Brice, Oscar, myself, and Matt, were standing around, shuffling our feet, waiting to see if Dennis would take the bait.

  Bachman walked right up to Matt and began laying out the terms. “First,” he said, “you’ll let my client relieve himself. Second, he’ll tell you what he saw in exchange for immunity. Third—”

  “No,” Matt cut him off. “No way would I ever promise immunity on the murder of a little kid.”

  “My client didn’t do it, Hayes,” Jeffrey said.

  “Your client is a liar, Bachman,” Matt replied. “No deal.”

  Bachman played with his tie casually. “Fine. Then Skylar Miller dies.”

  “We have enough evidence to implicate him to the appellate court,” Matt argued. “And enough evidence to take the case to the DA.”

  Bachman made a phhht sound. “On the highly improbable assumption that you have enough evidence to overturn the first verdict for Skylar Miller, and on the even more highly improbable case that she’ll get a new trial and be acquitted, do you really think the DA is going to want to charge my client and try this case again when I’ll argue—convincingly—that my client had nothing to do with the murder and even the state was certain that his own mother did it? I believ
e it would be the very definition of reasonable doubt.”

  “Okay,” Matt said coolly. “Then your client spends twenty years in a federal prison in upstate PA. You wanna call my bluff, counselor? Call it.”

  Bachman’s lips pressed together and he turned on his heel and walked back to the interrogation room. Meanwhile my heart was threatening to pound its way right out of my chest. I almost couldn’t handle all this back-and-forth. What if Gallagher decided to take his chances in court on the assault charge? I’d have to lie. I’d have to perjure myself. And while I was totally willing to do that when we’d first arrested Gallagher, something was niggling at me in the ether. Something I didn’t really want to look at.

  Five minutes later, Bachman came back out and over to us again. “I will insist on the following,” he said. “One, you allow my client to relieve himself. Two, you take the federal assault charge off the table. Three, you give him immunity on the forgery charge. Four, you and the DA agree not to prosecute him for obstruction. In exchange for that, he will tell you exactly what he knows.”

  My brow furrowed. “Obstruction? Why is he worried about an obstruction charge?”

  Bachman turned his mud brown eyes to me. “To learn about that, you guys and the DA are going to have to agree to the terms.”

  “No,” said Matt. “I’m not gonna tell the DA what she can and can’t prosecute.”

  “Then we have no deal,” Bachman said. “The DA has to agree not to prosecute my client or we’ll take our chances in court.” I could tell by the fire in his eyes that he wasn’t going to back down on that point.

  Matt was leaning against a desk, his arms folded over his chest as was his usual posture, but something about him had changed subtly, and it made me think that he was a tiny bit less sure of things now that Bachman had laid out the terms. His gaze flicked to me in silent question, and I scanned the ether, searching it for an answer. Again a tiny thought came to my mind, but it was so odd, and so weird, that it sort of stumped me. Still, Matt was waiting on me, and I gave him a nod. We had nothing left to either play or lose.

  “Okay, counselor, you can tell your client we have a deal.” I let go of the breath I’d been holding and Matt motioned to Oscar and added, “Agent Rodriguez, would you please escort Gallagher to the men’s room?”

  “Yes, sir,” Oscar said, and moved off with Bachman.

  The minute they were out of earshot, Matt motioned me over to one of the corner cubicles and pointed to a chair. I took it and looked at him expectantly. “I think we just hit an impasse,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  Matt lifted his chin in the direction of the interrogation room. “Bachman wants the DA to sign off on immunity for Gallagher, and I don’t think she’ll agree to help us, especially since we’re after information about what happened the night Noah Miller was murdered.”

  And then it fully dawned on me. He was absolutely right. No way would the DA agree to help us on a case her office had pursued all the way to the state’s supreme court. She’d fight tooth and nail to uphold the conviction against Skylar Miller, and there was no way to get her cooperation without looping her in as to why we needed her help. It was a classic Catch-22.

  “Do you have any leverage, Matt?” I asked. I knew that oftentimes the U.S. attorney and the district attorney coordinated efforts and helped each other out.

  “Some,” he said. “But, Abby, I gotta be honest with you. I know Rosemary. She’s smart, she’s tough, she’s fair, but she’s also protective as hell of her office. She’s not going to agree to this, mostly out of principle and precedent.”

  I felt all my hopes begin to swirl around the drain. We were so close. So close to finding out the truth, and yet the Tuesday deadline was looming ever closer. We had to work fast in order to get any testimony out of Gallagher that might help us, and that meant that if the DA stalled or didn’t agree to the terms, we were as good as dead in the water.

  And so was Skylar.

  “Please try, Matt,” I begged. “Give it everything you can, okay?”

  “I will, Abby. But I just want to caution you about the outcome. We may not be able to interrogate Gallagher in time.”

  I felt my lower lip tremble, but I swallowed hard and managed to say, “Okay. Then that’ll have to be good enough. Thanks, Matt.”

  He squeezed my shoulder and headed away, probably to try to get ahold of the district attorney. I sat by myself for a while, staring out the window, until I felt someone sit down next to me. “Hey,” I said to Candice.

  “There’s still time,” she told me. Obviously she’d been made aware of the deal and its obstacles.

  I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. In my heart of hearts I knew we didn’t have enough to do what we needed to do. A tear slid down my cheek and I brushed it away, annoyed by its presence. “How did we come so close and not be able to help?” I said out loud.

  “Abby,” Candice said. “We’re not out of time yet. Matt might be able to bring the DA around.”

  I turned in my chair to face her. “No, he won’t. It’s over, Candice. We lost.”

  She frowned at me. “So you’re giving up? Just like that?”

  I lowered my chin. Ashamed and angry, but also defeated. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  Candice stood. I could feel her own anger wafting out at me. “Why don’t you call Skylar and let her know you’ve given up and she should get her affairs in order?” With that, she left me.

  I knew that Candice wasn’t mad at me—it was more that she was trying to make a point: She didn’t want me to give up. She wanted me to use my intuition to find another way to help Skylar, but for the life of me I couldn’t. Except for the one tiny question that kept bobbing around in my mind.

  I swiveled the chair around and faced the room, which was now mostly empty except for Candice, Dutch, Brice, Oscar, and Matt, who appeared to be just wrapping up a call. By the look on his face, we could all guess how it’d gone. Still, his gaze found me first, and he shook his head. The DA wasn’t going to help us.

  I got up to walk over to him and the others and as I neared, I heard him tell them what the DA had said. “She wouldn’t budge,” he said. “The second I told her that Dennis Gallagher might have information about what happened to Noah Miller on the night he was murdered, she shut the door on any assistance she’d be willing to offer.”

  “Even though she wasn’t in office when the conviction came down?” Dutch asked.

  “Yep,” Matt said. “And I’d expect nothing less of her. As a DA, you’ve gotta back your predecessor or spend your time as a prosecutor retrying cases. No way is she willing to step into that hornet’s nest.”

  “So we’re dead in the water,” Dutch said, using the exact verbiage I’d thought of earlier.

  “Effectively,” Matt told him.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do, Matt?” Candice asked. “Maybe talk to Bachman about renegotiating the terms?”

  Matt sighed. He looked tired, and no wonder, it was going on nine o’clock on Friday night and I knew he’d had a long week with the Corzo case. “I can try,” he said. “But I doubt it’ll amount to much.”

  “Can I go with you?” I asked.

  Everyone looked at me in surprise. “Uh, sure, Abby,” Matt said after a bit.

  He led the way toward the interrogation room, where Bachman and Gallagher were waiting to see if we had a deal. We entered the room and found the pair eating carryout that Oscar had gotten for them, mostly as a show of goodwill for coming to some agreement on terms.

  After we’d both taken a seat, Bachman wiped his hands on his napkin and said, “So? What’s the word?”

  “The DA won’t go for it,” Matt said.

  Bachman didn’t seem surprised. In fact, I almost thought he looked pleased, but Gallagher’s reaction was puzzling. He looked downright disappointed. �
��Well, then,” Bachman said, wrapping up what was left of his burger. “I’ll be off, then. Dennis, I’ll be back at your bond hearing Monday morning. If you—”

  “Dennis,” I said, interrupting the counselor. “Can I ask you a question that has nothing to do with any of this?”

  Gallagher’s eyes widened, and he blinked at me, then looked to his attorney. Bachman was staring at me as if he couldn’t believe how rude I’d been to interrupt him. I ignored him and kept my focus on Gallagher. “Please, Dennis? Just one simple question, and if you don’t want to answer it, then I’ll totally respect it.”

  “What’s the question?” he asked.

  “You mentioned that you had a kid,” I said, my radar humming. “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”

  Dennis paled ever so slightly, but he nodded his head.

  “I’m guessing he’s about two years old,” I said, careful to make that sound like a statement and not a question.

  Dennis nodded again. “He’s twenty-two months.”

  “Can I please ask, what’s his name?”

  Dennis’s complexion drained of all color, which was the oddest of reactions, and it made Matt lean forward a little, and even Bachman cocked his head quizzically. “Why you want to know?” Gallagher asked me, his voice hitching a little with nerves.

  I made sure not to blink as I answered him. “Because everything else rests on it.”

  In my peripheral vision I saw Matt’s brow furrow and Bachman seemed impatient to be on his way, annoyed with us for engaging in idle chitchat, but Dennis held my gaze and his posture suggested that he understood exactly what I meant. “Noah,” he said in a croaky whisper. “His name is Noah.”

  And there it was. I sat back in my chair and stared at him. Nothing he could’ve said would’ve stunned me more except for the fact that my own intuition had practically begged me to ask the question, which had been a huge hint in and of itself. But the answer still uprooted everything I thought I knew about Dennis Gallagher and what’d happened the night Noah Miller had been murdered.