Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue (6 page)

“Not exactly. True, some police departments still do call in psychics—to help locate missing persons or describe murderers by handling their victims' belongings or some such jiggery-pokery. This Shelby Kent doesn't do anything like that. She, ah, reads an aura that people supposedly give off when they lie. Start with Dr. Bernard Wedner at Rutgers University—he's been running tests on her. Then check the police she's worked with.”

Gilbert still looked skeptical. “She reads an aura and knows when people are lying?”

“That's the word.”

“Excuse me, Sir John, but that's hard to believe. Why have I never heard of her? Why hasn't she been in the news, why haven't books been written about her? That's really incredible—a human lie detector!”

“Yes, it is a bit hard to believe,” Sir John admitted. “That's why I want you to investigate personally. If her talent is indeed foolproof—and I've been assured that it is—we're going to need the lady's services. As to why you've never heard of her, she simply prefers it that way. If she'd wanted to capitalize on her talent for personal fame and fortune, she certainly had the means to do so—she's married to a PR man. But only Dr. Wedner and his team and the police have known about her officially. But policemen talk, just like everybody else. Her ‘secret' isn't really a secret any more.”

“And you're thinking of using her … to question Aguirrez?”

“Possibly. I'm also thinking the Security Council's commission of inquiry might like to know about her. If it comes to that.”

For the first time the thought came to Kevin Gilbert that the old man was getting senile. To get taken in by something so patently phony as a
human lie detector
—what kind of con job was this Kent woman working? What was she after? She had to be good … how else could she have fooled the police? So no séances or obvious show biz tricks like that. He'd find out what she did and how she did it. By God yes, he'd find out.

“Do you object to the assignment?” Sir John asked wryly.

“No sir, I welcome it,” Gilbert answered grimly.

CHAPTER 13

MACHO DO ABOUT NOTHING

Eric Kent looked around the bar with distaste. Theater people. Half of them neurotic and the rest flaming homosexuals. All using their profession as an excuse for any self-indulgent gesture that appealed to them.

“Hello, sweetheart,” said the carefully made-up creature standing beside him at the bar. “I haven't seen you in here before.” The carefully made-up creature was male.

“Looking for someone,” Eric said rudely and turned his back.

“Now, now, mustn't be uppity. Maybe I can help. Whom seek ye?”

Eric looked back at the rouged and mascaraed face and thought
what the hell
. “Max Bradley. Know him?”

“Oh, you're a friend of Max's. He'll be along in a bit. My name's Vincent. What's yours?”

“Eric Kent,” said Eric, being careful to separate the hard
c
in Eric from the
K
in Kent. “Are you sure he'll be coming here?”

“Sweetheart, I just
left
him at the theater and I can
assure
you he needs a drink. He'll be here. You're not in the profession, are you? No, I thought not. How do you know Max?”

“His wife and mine are sisters.”
Why am I explaining myself to this freak?

“Oh,
family,
” Vincent twinkled. “How nice. You here for a little male bonding?”

“None of your damned business what I'm here for,” said Eric, exasperated.

Vincent giggled. “My, you really are a breath of stale air, aren't you? You really should learn to relax, sweetheart.”

“Don't call me sweetheart.” Eric was relieved to see Max come into the bar; he raised an arm and waved.

Max was surprised to see him, and even more surprised to find him with Vincent. “Hello Eric?” Making it a question.

“I thought I could catch you here. Can we talk? Privately?”

Vincent pretended to be hurt. “I was just keeping your brother-in-marriage amused until you got here,” he told Max. “Now I am to be discarded like a used Kleenex. Egad.” He drifted away.

“How can you work with people like that?” Eric didn't even try to hide his revulsion.

Max found Eric's reaction to Vincent depressing. “Vincent is one of the best choreographers I know,” he said mildly. “The dancers love to work with him. He never gets mad, he never shouts. And he gets results.”

Eric heard the note of reprimand in Max's voice and dropped the subject. “Can we get a booth?”

Max asked the bartender for a martini and led Eric to an empty booth. “Now. What's on your mind?”

Eric plunged right in. “I'm going to be offered a job with the Chargers. I had a long meeting today with some people from San Diego, and it looks good. It'll be a step up for me, and I want to take it.”

“That's great, Eric,” Max said, sincerely pleased for him. “Congratulations.”

“But there's a problem. Shelby.”

Max frowned. “I know Shelby doesn't like California, but once she gets started with the police out there—”

“
That's
the problem. She mustn't ‘get started' with the police out there. It's a chance for her to break away from all that nonsense and live a normal life.”

Doubledoubletoilandtrouble
. “I doubt that Shelby will ever live a ‘normal' life,” Max said slowly. “She's unique, you know—nobody else is like her. It'd be a mistake to try to force her into a normal mode of living.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Eric snapped. “But I have to be the judge of what's best. Shelby's not known on the west coast. We'd have a chance out there. Max, you've got to take my word for it—it would be best if Shelby dropped her police work altogether.”

Best for which one of you?
Max wondered, but said nothing.

“I need your help,” Eric went on. “I want you to ask Tee to talk to Shelby. Persuade her to try it my way.”

“Wait a minute. You want me to ask Tee to ask Shelby to give up her police work? Why not just ask her yourself?”
Either “her.
” “Why this roundabout approach?”

“Tee will listen to you, and Shelby will listen to Tee. Shelby doesn't always hear
me
,” Eric said bitterly. “Look, Max, I'm trying to save my marriage. It's Shelby's aura reading that's driving us apart.”

“You knew about it when you married her.”

“I didn't know it would make me a laughingstock with the men I work with.”

Uh-huh, that was it
. “I can see how it'd be rough,” Max conceded. “But surely Shelby's more important to you than they are? Couldn't you just, well, be proud of her?”

Eric's eyes were slits. “Try putting yourself in my place. How would the men you work with treat
you
if they knew you could never lie to your wife? Or are they all like Vincent?”

Max laughed, refusing to take offense. “Vincent would be fascinated. But I know what you mean. I'd be in for some ribbing.”

“It's more than just ribbing. There's nothing good-natured about it.” Eric paused to collect his thoughts. “You're married to a gifted woman too, but there's nothing special about her gift. No, that didn't come out right. What I mean is that as talented as Tee is, her talent is one that's shared by other people. There's no oddity connected with it. Even if she does go back to the concert stage and become the most famous pianist in the world—well, you'd be the husband of a celebrity, that's all. You wouldn't be laughed at because of it.”

So Eric looked upon his wife as something of a freak. Max tried to turn the conversation. “That may happen yet. I thought I had Tee talked into accepting an engagement with the New Orleans Symphony, but she balked at the last minute. But I think she's coming round—”

“Will you ask her? To talk to Shelby?”

Max shook his head. “I can't do that, Eric. That's asking her to conspire against her own sister. You know how close they are.”

“Then just tell her that I asked for her help. Let her make up her own mind.”

Max thought it over. “All right, I guess I can do that. I'll tell Tee what
you
want her to do.”

“That's all I ask,” said Eric.

Once that was settled, the two men found they didn't have anything more to talk about. They left the bar separately, each slightly disappointed in the other.

CHAPTER 14

ECCE FEMINA

“We'd put her on retainer if we could get funding,” Sergeant Luis Delgado was explaining. “As it is, we just call her in as often as the budget lets us. On a consultant basis, you understand? It's not good—too hit-and-miss. One of these days we're gonna need her real bad and she'll be out in the boonies working with some other police department.”

“How come she's never mentioned in the papers?” Kevin Gilbert wanted to know.

“Her choice. It's part of our agreement that we never release her name to the news media.”

“Can you put a percentage figure on her accuracy?”

“Easy,” grinned Delgado. “One hundred.”

“A hundred per cent accurate?”

“That's right. The way she explained it to me, it's all pretty automatic. Either that red glow is there or it isn't. She doesn't have to evaluate anything, make judgments. Just yes or no.”

“But how do you know she's right all the time?” Gilbert persisted. “If she says somebody is lying, and he says he isn't—isn't that just a matter of deciding which one to believe?”

A flicker of irritation crossed the Sergeant's face. “We don't take anybody's word for anything. Shelby Kent's say-so isn't evidence. But when she tells us a suspect is lying, then we know where to
look
for evidence. She's saved us a helluva lot of work by steering us away from one line of investigation and toward another. She takes the guesswork out of it, you understand?”

“So all she does is save you a little time and effort.”

“Hey, don't sneer at that, man! And no, that isn't all she does. Lotsa times we'd have missed out altogether if it wasn't for some lie she uncovered. And every time—
every
time—we got the evidence we needed. I'm telling you, she never misses.”

“Never misses.”
I'll take vanilla
.

“All right, believe it, don't believe it, what do I care? What do you want to do, read all the case records?”

“Yes,” said Kevin Gilbert stubbornly.

“Eric,” said Shelby, “I'll go with you to California, I'll live in California, I'll even pretend to like California. But don't ask me to give up my police work.”

“Come on, Shelby, I'm not asking you to give up some career you've spent years preparing yourself for. This whole lie-detecting business—it's a fluke, and you know it. Is it worth breaking up our marriage for?”

“Would you ask me to stop singing if I happened to be born with a great voice? That's a fluke too.”

“Not a valid analogy. Won't you even try it?”

“Try pretending I can't do something I can?”

“Maybe we can find some other way to use your gift, something that won't put you in the public eye.”

“Like what?”

“Like I don't know what. But we can look for something. Or don't you think the marriage is worth the effort?”

Shelby was silent a moment. Then: “Yes, I think it's worth the effort. Oh hell, Eric—maybe you're right. I don't know, let me think about it some more. I don't want to give up the police work, but I don't want to give you up either. Why should I have to choose? It's not reasonable, what you're asking me to do.”

“I know,” he said gently. “But I'm still asking.”

“Yes, Shelby was down last week,” Dr. Wedner said. “We were running some new neurological tests. What is it exactly you want to know?”

“I want to know how reliable her ability is,” Kevin Gilbert said.

“One hundred per cent,” said Dr. Wedner. “You cannot tell her a lie without her knowing it, and she never mistakes the truth for a falsehood. She's foolproof. I've never tested another aura reader who even approaches Shelby in accuracy.”

“You mean there are others like her?”

“There are other aura readers in the world, but none of them can read the same aura Shelby reads. She's the only one who can detect lies. But there are others who can spot physical illness by seeing auras the rest of us can't see. We've tested about a hundred of these people, and the mean for the group is sixty-four per cent accuracy. Still a long way from Shelby's perfect score.”

“A policeman in New York told me that it was automatic,” said Gilbert. “That she either saw a red glow or she didn't. How can that be? Truth and lies are usually mixed up together. How can it be a yes-or-no proposition?”

“Well, it's not exactly like that. Shelby sees gradations in the auras, different shades of red, depending on how much of what is being said is false. What you and I call white lies Shelby sees as pink. That's how it all started—when she entered adolescence she noticed her father glowing pink every once in a while. But the very nature of police investigation is such that the lies told the police are either bright red or dark red. That's what we're working on now—trying to figure out the difference between ‘bright' and ‘dark'.”

“I suppose you have evidence to document all this.”

“Tons of it,” the scientist said unscientifically.

“Then I'd like to send in some people who are qualified to evaluate your testing program and its results. Do you have any objection?”

“None whatsoever,” Dr. Wedner agreed cheerfully.

“Eric wants me to do
what?
” said Tee, appalled.