Lethal Outlook: A Psychic Eye Mystery (36 page)

Gaston was silent for so long, I almost thought he’d hung up. “This is a difficult case, Abigail, one I asked you to help us resolve, but I was told you wanted nothing to do with it.”

And there it was. The unspoken ultimatum. Gaston wanted my help, and if he didn’t get it, he’d work Brice and Dutch down to two tired nubs. But I could be tricky too, if I wanted. “Sir, there’s a reason I was adamant about opting out of the investigation.”

“And what reason is that?”

“Because I could see that my involvement was going to somehow cause the case to become muddled. I looked into the ether and I saw you and your team resolving this case successfully, and that you were going to do that without me at your side. It’s important for me in times like that to honor what I can see in the ether, and not risk leading you in the wrong direction.”

Again the silence stretched out between us while Gaston
considered his next move. “You won’t help us even identify if this bombing was an isolated incident or the beginnings of something far more sinister?”

Dammit. (Okay, so swearing probably counted here. Put me down for a quarter.) Gaston was feeling around for my input, and I had no idea how much I could give him without mucking it up. But I knew I needed to give him something or he’d continue to push Dutch and Brice to the breaking point. “There will be more,” I said, closing my eyes against the vision of that horrible scene at the mall in College Station from the video he’d shown me. “I know you’re thinking that this could have been a homegrown terrorist cell at work, but, sir, it doesn’t feel like that’s the case, and you’ll need to keep digging. Stop getting distracted by the theory that this was the work of a terrorist, and start focusing on the fact that someone is trying to make a very large statement here.”

“Where do we look?” he asked me, and I seriously wanted to yell at him. The more I looked into this, the more dangerous it became that I’d say something that would delay or throw off the investigation in some way.

“I can’t answer that, sir,” I told him. “And please don’t ask me anything more about it. I promise you that you and your team will be the ones to resolve the case, but I can’t be a part of it, and unless you give Brice and Dutch a little time off, you’re going to miss something big too.”

“Can you just tell me how long before we resolve it?” he asked.

I sighed. Gaston was always pushing. “A few weeks, sir. Two, maybe three at the most.”

Gaston was quiet again, and I crossed my fingers, hoping he’d give me what I wanted. “All right, Abigail,” he said at last.

“All right what, sir?”

“All right, you’ve won your fiancé and Agent Harrison some time off. Please let them know that they may take the weekend—but if something important comes up I reserve the right to call them in.”

“Got it. And thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”

I didn’t know if Gaston was going to call Brice and tell him not to come in, but while I was cleaning up the dishes trying to decide whether to risk a call to tell him, my own phone pinged with an incoming text from Brice. It read:

Gaston just called. Thanks. I owe you one.

“Phew!” I said before going to wake up Dutch, tell him the good news, then get him upstairs to bed. That night he slept like a rock, and I sat up long into the wee hours wishing I could resolve at least one of the cases we were working on.

T
he next morning I had an early physical therapy appointment. I left the house without waking Dutch but called him on my way back home. He was just getting up after sleeping nearly fourteen straight hours. “How’d it go?” he asked when I told him where I’d been.

“It went great!” I said, feeling excited about the session for the first time in ages. “I actually took two whole steps without the cane!”

“That’s great, dollface!” he said. “You on your way home now?”

“I am, and I’m ready to spend the
whole
day with you! So tell me, what would you like to do today?”

When Dutch didn’t immediately reply, I tried to encourage him by suggesting we do something fun. “We should totally go out,” I said. “I mean, when was the last time you and I went on an actual date?”

“It has been a while…”

“It really has. So how about you pick something you really want to do with me today, and I get to pick something tomorrow?” Again Dutch seemed to hesitate, so I added, “Come on, cowboy! I’ll do anything you want, no questions or complaints. You pick and I’ll go along with it.” I had visions of a sports bar with a big plate of hot wings and ice-cold beer, or an action flick with a plate of hot wings and an ice-cold beer, or a bowling alley with a plate of hot wings and an ice-cold beer.

“You really up for
anything
I want to do?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said loudly, really getting into the idea of a plate of hot wings and an ice-cold beer.

“Well, if it’s anything, I want to take you to the shooting range so you can try out your new gun.”

Feck. I’d walked right into that one.

“Hello?” he said when I didn’t reply.

“I’m here,” I said, trying to find a way out of the giant hole I’d just dug for myself. Finally, though, I figured that an hour at the shooting range with my sweetheart on his day off really wasn’t
so
terrible. Especially if we could do the wings and beer afterward. “Okay, cowboy, I’m in.”

“Wait…,” he said. “You
are
?”

That made me laugh. “Yes, you big goober. I should be home in about fifteen minutes, and I’ll change and we’ll go to the range.” But just then my phone’s appointment reminder went off and I turned the display toward me. “Aw, crap!” I said loudly.

“What?”

“Cat had my phone and she answered it when the vet called with a reminder that Eggy and Tuttle are due for their shots. My oh-so-helpful sister scheduled them both for today, and I totally forgot!”

“When’s the appointment?”

“In twenty minutes.” I’d never make it home in time to grab them and get them to the vet.

“Good thing I’m off today,” Dutch said, already whistling for the pooches.

“You don’t mind taking them?”

“Not at all,” he said. “But when we get back, we’re going to that range, Edgar. You’re learning to shoot that gun today.”

“I promise,” I vowed.

Before he hung up, Dutch informed me that he’d had a call from his buddy the detective downtown. “They found King’s body late last night.”

I knew she was dead, but to hear Dutch confirm it made me catch my breath. “That bastard,” I said.

“Looks like you were right on the Taser too, Edgar. They found small burn marks all over King’s body, and the preliminary report from the coroner is that she was hog-tied and buried facedown alive.”

“Smothered,” I whispered into the phone. “That’s how Kendra was killed too.”

“You’re probably right, although with Kendra the moist ground did a number on her remains.”

I scrunched up my face in distaste. How were guys able to talk so freely about the graphic details?

“There was one interesting fact that the coroner was able to get from Kendra’s body, though.”

“What was that?”

“She was pregnant.”

I nearly drove my car onto the shoulder. “No way!”

“Way.”

“Whose kid is it?” If Kendra was having an affair and she got pregnant, then it likely wasn’t Tristan’s because he’d admitted they hadn’t been intimate for months.

“We won’t know that answer for several weeks, if not months, Abs. You know how slow the labs are.”

“It’s the killer’s baby,” I said, knowing it with absolute certainty. “And it’s why he was so angry at her. He murdered her because he found out she was pregnant.”

“You’re assuming quite a bit, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Dutch. Ever the voice of reason. Even when it was crazy wrong. “Trust me on this, cowboy. I’m right.” Then I switched topics. “Were they able to recover any forensic details at the burial sites?”

“Not much,” he said. “The best they have so far is a man’s footprint—size eleven.”

“So he’s tall.”

“Most likely around six feet,” Dutch said.

That fit Tristan, and from what I remembered of Dr. Snyder, him too—but not Russ, who was by my recollection only about five-nine. Then another person entered my mind, and I considered Chase Colquitt, who was also at least five-eleven. But what motive would he have to kill Kendra? And did he have any connection to Donna King?

“You there?” Dutch asked, and I realized I’d been quiet for a few moments.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to make you and the pups late. I’ll head home and change and you can pick me up as soon as you’re done.”

“It’s a date,” he replied in that oh-so-sexy baritone he has. I smiled as I hung up the phone. God, I loved that man.

I thought about what Dutch had learned from his detective buddy the whole rest of the way home, and coming into a house that was still and quiet seemed to cement the melancholy mood of the morning. It unsettled me to walk into a familiar place with no other heartbeat than mine. After I’d changed out of my sweats into jeans and a light cotton shirt, I came downstairs and saw the box with my gun in it on the coffee table. “Subtle,” I said, heading to the kitchen for a Coke.

While I was waiting for Dutch to get back, I called Candice to see how she was feeling and was surprised when she answered sounding so much like her old self. “Hey,” she said. “I hear you’ve been playing nursemaid and labor advocate.”

I grinned. “Guilty as charged. How’re you doing?”

“Much better, but Brice hasn’t done anything but sleep since he got home last night. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“My pleasure,” I then filled her in on the latest development in the Kendra Moreno case, telling her about Donna King and how they’d found Taser marks all over her body. “I’m sure that’s what I felt when I was at the Morenos’ on the steps by the front door. I think he used the stun gun to take her down and incapacitate her.”

“That’d be the way to do it,” Candice said. “A stun gun to the lower back sends an electrical impulse right into your spinal cord. It’ll drop you and leave you paralyzed for a while.”

“Yeah, well, hopefully the police will be able to work their way through King’s list of recent clients and see who didn’t have an alibi for last night.” I then told her about Kendra’s pregnancy.

“You know what, Abs?” Candice suddenly said.

“What?”

“Do you remember how you said that you suspected this killer had done this type of thing before?”

“Yeah, but we already looked into that and came up empty.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “Maybe we didn’t plug in the right variables. We didn’t know at the time that a Taser was used. I wonder if we look into crimes where someone used a Taser to rape or murder women if we’ll come up with anything.”

“That’d take waking up your fiancé,” I said.

Candice exhaled loudly. “Poor Brice,” she said. “Well, he’s had fifteen hours of sleep. He needs to wake up for some breakfast sometime.”

“Are you in any shape to cook?”

“Toast,” she said. “Toast and coffee.”

I laughed. “Okay, Cassidy, good luck with that, and call me if you get anything or if you need us to bring you guys some sustenance other than toast and coffee. Dutch and I are headed to the gun range in a few, so if I don’t answer it’s because I’m dodging bullets.”

It was Candice’s turn to laugh, and she wished me—and Dutch—luck before hanging up.

While I waited for my fiancé to get home, I leafed through all the notes I’d made while listening to the interviews we’d already conducted. What bugged me was that either my lie detector was off or everyone we’d talked to was telling the truth, because except for a few lies that we’d already exposed, no one’s interview triggered my
liar, liar, pants on fire…

While I was pondering all that, my radar gave a ping of warning. “Uh-oh,” I said, picking up my head and looking toward the door. “Cat,” I muttered. My sister was on her way over, and I couldn’t leave because Dutch would kill me if I stuck him with her on his first day off in ages.

I texted Dutch and asked how much longer he was going to be, just as my radar gave another warning ping. He replied that he’d just wrapped it up with the vet and he was on his way back home with the pooches. I knew it’d take him fifteen minutes or so, and I became anxious because I didn’t know if he’d make it in time to beat my sister to the door. I didn’t tell him that she was on her way; I just told him to hurry.

While I waited, I tried to concentrate on the Moreno case, but I was too jittery. “Focus!” I said to myself, picking up my notes again. There wasn’t anything I could do about my sister; if she beat Dutch here, I’d just have to deal with her. My radar gave another urgent ping, and I snapped, “Yes, yes! I know, okay?!”

With irritation, I shuffled through the notes, trying to get back on track. What had I been focusing on before the warning bell had gone off about Cat? Oh, yeah, the fact that everybody
we interviewed seemed to be telling the truth. That could be because we hadn’t spoken to the killer yet, but something told me that we had interviewed him. “But who’s lying?” I asked aloud, looking back through my notes one last time…And then I had it. “Holy shit!” I gasped. (Swearing doesn’t count when you’ve just cracked the case.) I wondered how on earth I’d missed it before. With shaking hands, I grabbed my cell and called Candice. “Come on, come on!” I urged as her cell rang and rang. But finally, she answered just as my doorbell rang.