A Grave Prediction (Psychic Eye Mystery) (23 page)

Kelsey typed something into her computer, then looked up at me. “Can you give me anything other than saying he’s got a creepy vibe that might help connect him to Trevor’s murder?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, I’m sorry. When I saw his picture in the La Cañada middle school yearbook, there was this look in his eyes—you know the look that some psychopaths give off? That Charles Manson sort of evil glint and that smirk?”

Kelsey nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Yeah, this kid’s photo perfectly captured that, which prompted me to focus on his energy to see what I could get off it, and it was clear to me then that he’d killed before and was anxious to do it again.”

“The photo she saw of Trace was taken by Trevor,” Candice said, lending a tiny ounce of credence to my theory.

“So, they were classmates?”

“Yes,” Candice said.

Then she pointed back to me. “Didn’t you say you followed him home a couple of nights ago?”

“I did. He was poking around the excavation site.”

“And did he give off a vibe then?”

I shrugged. “He might’ve, and I might’ve picked up on it if I hadn’t been so focused on keeping out of sight as he led me to his house. Honestly I was more concerned with the clue I’d come looking for, which was one for the bank robberies, so I flat-out missed the opportunity to point my radar at Trace and pick up on the psychopath vibe.”

“Okay,” she said, seemingly satisfied with my answer. “What else?”

“I think that Trace is the one who’ll be responsible for the three dead girls I saw in my vision when I first came up to that clearing where they planned to put that development. I think he’s taunting us by putting a few of Trevor’s bones in the pit
with the tribal remains, wondering if we’ll identify Trevor, and he’s gotta know we won’t be able to prove that it was him.”

“We won’t?” Kelsey said.

I shook my head. It made me mad as hell, but my gut said Trace would continue to get away with it. “I’ve looked and looked and looked into the ether on this, Kelsey. He’s never convicted of Trevor’s murder.”

“It makes sense,” Candice said. “According to your medical examiner, Trevor’s bones had been in the ground at least two years. Any physical evidence we could’ve had linking Trace to Trevor’s death is probably long gone by now, and if the kid truly is a sicko, there’s no way he’s going to confess to the crime.”

Kelsey frowned. “Any case that rests entirely on loose circumstantial evidence is a tough one to convince the prosecutor to bring to trial.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “There’s no smoking gun here. No clue I can pull out of the ether that I can lead you to that’ll be the nail in the coffin. He’s gotten away with it—at least, as far as I can see, he has.”

Kelsey seemed very troubled by my words. “I don’t know that I can simply give up on looking for more evidence just because you say we won’t find the smoking gun, Abby.”

“Oh, I don’t think we should give up,” I said, quick to clarify. “I can be wrong. Kelsey. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“Good,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he bragged about it to someone.”

I shrugged, but I knew that a kid like Trace had kept his mouth shut. He got more satisfaction out of knowing no one was onto him than he did out of bragging about it. “Anyway, along with keeping an eye on Trace, we’ll need to work the bank heists and target Trace’s father, Will Edwards.”

Kelsey sat back in her chair and considered me skeptically.
“Why not just turn our suspicions over to Perez and Robinson?” she said. “After all, they’re already working the case, and it would free us up to pursue Trace for Trevor’s murder, which, I should remind you, is the directive Rivera gave us anyway.”

I thought about that for a minute. I actually did want to hand it over to Perez and Robinson, but something was niggling at me and I couldn’t let it go. “No,” I said after a bit. “There’s still more that we can uncover that Perez and Robinson won’t. We’re wrapped up in the case for a bit longer yet.”

“Is that what you’re pulling out of the ether, as you like to say it?” she asked.

“Yes. We need to work both cases, side by side.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “My plate’s already full. What’s a little more?”

Candice grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

Kelsey then gestured to the whiteboard. “Talk to me about that sketch,” she said, indicating the drawing I’d made of the imagery of my dream.

I told her about the dream and meeting Mrs. Clawson and her daughter at the nail salon, then following them to the store where they bumped into Mrs. Edwards and, finally, home to a house in the same neighborhood as the Edwardses.

“What makes you think that Mrs. Clawson is involved with Edwards in the bank heists?” she asked, then added, “And don’t say that you have a hunch, Abby, because I need a little more to go on than that.”

I pointed to my sketch again of the dream. “See?” I said. “In my dream the vine had hundred-dollar bills for leaves and I’m in a bathtub of warm water, which I think is symbolic for mother. The vine is obviously Ivy, and the bath is her mom.”

Kelsey narrowed her eyes at the sketch. “Those are bills?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make the money a little clearer and managing only to really mess up the sketch on the whiteboard.

Candice reached into her bag and pulled out my sketch. “I had this saved just in case,” she said, and slid it over to Kelsey so she could see.

Kelsey took the sketch and her brow furrowed. “Why is the vine severed at the base?”

Candice and I traded a look. “We think it’s possible that Ivy may become one of the young girls that gets murdered by Trace and is buried at the excavation site.”

Kelsey’s eyes widened. “That’s a hell of a leap,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “But if Mrs. Clawson is involved with the robberies, it would explain how the bank robberies and the murders are linked together.”

Candice said, “I snooped around in Mrs. Clawson’s background. She’s had three speeding tickets in six years, but other than the lead foot, she looks clean. At least on paper. Same for Mr. Clawson, except he’s got a clean driving record. There’s no criminal history for either of them, and they’re both pretty active in the community.”

“Doesn’t mean one or both of them aren’t criminals,” I insisted, but even I was starting to doubt my own theory.

“I’ve only taken a preliminary look at Cindy Clawson,” Kelsey admitted. “I looked into both her and Will Edwards.”

That surprised me. “You did?” I asked.

She grinned. “Yes, Abby. I can be proactive too. And at the time, I figured if you two were so focused on Edwards, it must be for a reason. Nothing that I looked at came back as overly suspicious, but just to be sure I asked Rivera to sign off on a subpoena for Edwards while I was in his office convincing him to sign off on one for Cindy.”

“Did he?” Candice asked. “Sign off on both?”

“He did,” she said, “and without a lot of questions when I told him that both leads came from Abby.”

“Seems I’ve created another convert,” I said with a smug smile. “What happens once you get the subpoena?”

“I file it with Edwards’s Internet and cell phone provider, which I did this morning, and now I’m just waiting for them to grant me access to his accounts.”

It’s a little-publicized fact that the FBI can snoop around in all your electronic files simply by submitting a subpoena for them. Now, they don’t do this a lot, and it’s got a fair amount of oversight attached to it, so if there wasn’t anything in Edwards’s electronic files that was incriminating, it could lead to Kelsey being in hot water with the higher-ups. Risky to be sure, but I was certain we’d find something if we kept on digging.

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s usually pretty quick. I’d expect it sometime today or early tomorrow.”

All of a sudden I felt a sense of urgency I couldn’t quite explain. There was something shifting in the ether; some new action or direction had been taken to alter plans, and it was going to make things harder on us if we didn’t move fast. “Can you press them to hurry it along?” I asked.

“I can, but I hate to do that unless time is of the essence.”

“Time is of the essence,” I said.

Candice looked from me to Kelsey and said, “Get on them. She’s usually never wrong about that kind of thing.”

Kelsey nodded and began typing—I assumed she was sending someone somewhere an e-mail.

When she was done, Candice said, “We interviewed Phil, the security guard at the La Cañada branch, again.”

“Again?” Kelsey said with a note of alarm. She already knew through Rivera that we’d interviewed him the first time.

“Yes,” Candice said. “We kept wondering about the coincidence of him being indisposed at the time of the robbery. Turns out he had a severe case of the trots, which we think was brought on by his morning tea.”

“The robbery was at four o’clock in the afternoon,” Kelsey said.

“Yeah, but Phil was talked into trying a different herbal tea than he normally purchased from his favorite Starbucks. He told us that a new girl was working there that morning, and she coaxed him into trying a blend that tasted like peppermint. He also said it was very strong, and about seven and a half hours later he was locked inside the men’s room.”

“Smooth Move tea has a minty taste to it,” Candice continued. “I think this new girl slipped him a dose of two bags, which were sure to have an effect in about seven to seven and a half hours’ time.”

“Did you follow up with the Starbucks?” Kelsey asked.

Candice’s face went red again. “We did, but I blew it.”

“How?”

Candice explained what’d happened and Kelsey frowned. “You’re right, Candice. You did blow that one. They’ll circle the wagons and I’d have to get a warrant for their employee records and no way would Rivera allow me to pursue the lead. He’d want Robinson and Perez to follow up on it.”

“Tell them to reinterview Phil,” Candice suggested. I could tell she really felt bad for blowing our only solid lead. “Maybe when he tells them about the girl and the tea, they’ll want to follow up on it.”

Kelsey tapped her lip with her finger. “Couldn’t we simply go to that Starbucks tomorrow morning and look for her?”

“According to Phil, she quit right after the banks were robbed,” Candice said. “He hasn’t seen her since.”

“Hmmm, now that
is
suspicious,” Kelsey said. “Okay, I’ll pass along the advice to Perez and Robinson, but there’s no guarantee they’ll do it.”

But something about what she’d said gave me an idea, and I vowed to follow up on it later.

I got back to the whiteboard and stared at it for a long time. All these weird pieces that didn’t fit—but did somehow. We were missing the common link. I felt so strongly if we could just identify one or two more key pieces of information, we’d be able to put it all together. At least, I hoped we could.

“There’s something in his past,” I said, tapping the house marked
Edwardses
.

“Whose?” Candice asked. “Will’s or Trace’s?”

“Will’s,” I said, a bit distracted. “There’s something that connects him to the heists in his past, and it has to do with work.”

Kelsey looked up from her keyboard. “I did discover that he used to work for the company that made the video cameras for the banks.”

I turned and pointed to her. “Yes! We learned about that too. I almost forgot about it. We have to follow up on that.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m not sure how much more there is to follow up on. I confirmed through his tax filings that he worked there for a little over six years before being recruited to work for the drone company.”

I tapped the marker to the board. “How long has he been with the drone company again?”

“Two years,” she said.

I felt out the ether. It was murky and fuzzy at best, but I thought I had a pretty good thread leading from Edwards to his
previous employer. “There’s information at his former employer’s. Info relevant to this.”

Kelsey stared at me blankly, but Candice was all over it. She tapped a little on her keyboard, then picked up her cell and began to dial. After a moment she said, “Yes, hello, I’m calling for a reference for a Mr. Will Edwards, and he’s listed on his application that he used to work for your company. Could you connect me, please, to his former supervisor if he’s available?” There was a pause; then Candice lifted her gaze to wink at me. “Yes, I’ll hold for Mr. Scott. Thank you.”

I moved forward and took a seat at the table, my Spidey senses tingling.

“Hello, Mr. Scott? Yes, this is Cassidy Sundance. I work for Metcon Industrials, and I’m calling for a reference on a Mr. William Edwards. He listed you as a reference. Can you confirm that he worked with you from”—she turned her head to Kelsey, who quickly scribbled on a pad of paper next to Candice—“August of oh-seven to October of twenty thirteen?”

I gave Kelsey a thumbs-up and focused again on Candice. “You can confirm that? Excellent. And what was the scope of Mr. Edwards’s position?”

My foot tapped as Candice scribbled on the pad. “I see,” she said. “Right . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . excellent . . . uh-huh . . . my . . . all that? You certainly kept him busy!” Candice laughed lightly and I rolled my eyes. She was playing this up a bit. “Well, all of that sounds excellent, Mr. Scott. I can hear in your voice that you were very pleased with Mr. Edwards’s employment. You must have been sorry to see him go. Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . you don’t say? Oh, that’s so good to hear. We thought he seemed like a genuinely good person and, as you say, very loyal. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Scott. Please have a wonderful day.”

Candice hung up the phone and raised a fist victoriously. “Jackpot!”

“What?” I asked. “What?”

“We got lucky with Scott. He’s a Chatty Cathy when it comes to our buddy Will. According to him, Edwards was such a good guy that, a couple of months ago when the company discovered a problem with a system Edwards had been an integral part in creating, Scott contacted Will to see if he’d do some freelance work to help fix it, and Scott said Will was instrumental in getting it back up and running.’”

“The virus!” I exclaimed. “They looped him back in when they discovered the breach in security!”