Sense of Deception (14 page)

Candice pursed her lips and tapped the desk with her index finger. Her usual “I'm thinking” pose. “We'll need to cover multiple fronts on this,” she said, her eyes unfocused as I knew she'd be rolling through a list of bases to cover in her mind. “First, when was the last time you spoke to Skylar?”

“Friday. I tried to reach her again yesterday on my lunch break, but she'd used up her two video calls for the week. I was told the next time I could videoconference her is tomorrow.”

Candice cocked her head. “Besides you, who else did she talk to?”

“Don't know. Maybe her lawyer?”

Candice nodded. “To fire him?”

“Let's hope so.”

“So we're in a holding pattern on the legal front until Skylar retains Cal, is that right?”

I sighed. “We are.”

“Okay, well, that might not be a bad thing. The way I see it, we'll need a whole lot more proof than just this one photo and the other oddities in the circumstantial case that Dioli missed or flat out ignored.”

I squirmed in my chair. “You don't think what we've got so far is enough?”

Candice shook her head. “It might've been enough at the very first appeal, Abby, and it definitely would've been enough if Skylar's defense counsel had done his job initially, but at this stage, I gotta tell you, it's a long shot. This isn't
new
evidence—it's a spin on
old
evidence. Evidence already presented and argued upon at trial. I doubt the appeals court is going to buy the argument that just because the old evidence could be interpreted a different way, they should grant Skylar a new trial.

“In other words, once you reach the Texas Supreme Court stage, you're at the Hail Mary point, and you gotta have some
very
compelling evidence in hand, new evidence, or they're gonna let you fry.”

I gulped. “We've only got nine days left, Candice. What can we possibly dig up that wasn't already presented at her first trial in time to save her?”

“Don't know,” she admitted. “That's why we're going to treat this case like it's a brand-new investigation. We're gonna look into Skylar's life and find out who else could've done it. And I also think we need to accept here and now that Skylar had some sort
of connection to the killer. An acquaintance, someone posing as her friend, an old enemy . . . someone who had a score to settle against her. No way was the crime committed by a random stranger. Noah's murder was far too personal.”

I pointed to the thick file on my desk. “In her initial statement to Dioli she swore for fourteen straight hours that she had no idea who could've invaded her home and killed Noah.”

“And maybe that's all true,” Candice said. “Or maybe she's had ten years to think about it, and maybe all that time sparked a suspicion.”

I frowned, thinking back to the brief time I'd spent with her in the cell. “I'm not so sure—and by that, I will totally agree with you that it was someone familiar with Skylar, because there was a hint of that in the ether around her when I was first pointing my radar at Noah's killer—but when we spoke that first time in our cell, Candice, Skylar asked me if I could tell her who killed Noah. That's not something you ask if you've formed any kind of opinion. If she'd asked me if so-and-so had done it, then I'd agree with you, over the years she would've formed a suspicion about who it could've been, but when I as much as said to her that she knew the killer, she stared at me in genuine confusion. I really don't think she knows who did it.”

“Well, then we're gonna look at who was close to Skylar and maybe had something against her or her son.”

I laid my head back against my chair. The world was a darker place than I liked to imagine it. “Who could've had anything against a nine-year-old bad enough to murder him in cold blood?”

“I don't know, Sundance. But in order to find out who the real murderer is, we need suspects. Someone knew how to get into that house and where that knife was. And if you're right, and the knife
was taken before Skylar vacuumed that hallway, that means he had access to the kitchen, either when Skylar and Noah weren't home or when they were.”

“You think it could've had something to do with her history?” I asked.

“You mean the fact that she was an alcoholic?” Candice said. I nodded. “Possibly. Addicts like company, and if Skylar had overcome her addictions, maybe someone wasn't too happy about that. Hell, maybe she even owed somebody money and they were pissed that she wasn't paying up. We won't really be able to isolate a motive until we look at a few people in her life that had means and opportunity.”

“How do we start if we can't talk to Skylar until tomorrow?”

“We start with this,” Candice said, opening up the file to the statement Skylar had given to the police. “And we ask Dioli about who else he might've considered for the murder besides Skylar. While we're at it, we also ask him about that window.”

“When you say ‘we,' do you mean ‘we' as in ‘you and me,' or ‘we' as in ‘just me'?”

“You and me,” she said. “I'm not gonna let that asshole intimidate me again. Plus, we already have the murder file. If he gets defensive, then so be it.”

I sat back and chewed on my lip for a minute. “He wanted me to look into a case for him. That's how I got the file.”

“What case?”

“Murdered girl here on a student visa. Found in Zilker Park about eight months ago. Dioli's got no leads and due to the amount of decomp at the time the girl was found, the medical examiner isn't even one hundred percent positive of a cause of death, so they're labeling it suspicious, but Dioli seems pretty convinced it was murder.”

“What're your thoughts?” she asked me as I fell silent, thinking.

“I think Dioli is likely to be more cooperative with us if I can give him a lead on the girl found in the park.”

“Do you have the file?”

I reached down for my bag and pulled it up. I'd stuck the file in there absently, and thank God I had. Opening it, I sorted through the notes and pictures. Candice leaned forward to peer at the file and I saw her make a face as one of the close-ups of the body slipped out. “Sweet Jesus,” she hissed, looking away.

“I know,” I said, trying hard to ignore the photo. Finally I located Dioli's notes, which were just a summation of the crime scene and all the leads they'd followed up on. I scanned the pages and as I did so, I clicked on my radar, allowing my sixth sense to travel over the file and seek out a clue, like a dog hunting for a scent. I closed my eyes to concentrate for a moment, and then I opened them again and reread Dioli's notes.

One sentence stood out. I took up a pen from the side of my desk and circled it. Then I lifted my phone and dialed the number that Dioli had left me on the front cover of the file. “Hey,” I said when he answered. “It's Abby Cooper. I have a lead for you to follow up on for the murder of Tuyen Pham. When can we meet?”

“We have to meet?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, without explanation. There was no way I was going to give up any information over the phone and lose my advantage.

Dioli didn't answer me right away. Maybe he smelled a trap, but at last he gave me an address and told me to meet him there at eleven. I hung up with him and pointed to Candice. “Let's roll.”

“He's meeting us now?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“Nope. In an hour. I figure that'll give us just enough time for coffee and a pastry.”

“I love how your stomach dictates our schedule,” she said with some mirth.

“Hey, if I'm distracted by hunger pangs, my radar isn't as effective.”

“Oh, well, then,” she said dramatically, “by all means, let's make haste to the pastry counter!”

*   *   *

A
n hour later we arrived at a bar that had definitely peaked sometime about three decades ago and since then had been gathering serious speed on its downhill decline. “Charming,” I said, popping the last of my Danish into my mouth before getting out of Candice's car.

Candice smirked and led the way to the wooden door. She had to pull pretty hard to get it to open, and we walked into the dim interior, alive with the sound of pool balls smacking against one another, country music wafting from a pretty crappy sound system, and the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke, which assaulted my nose. “And the charm continues,” I whispered while we scanned the faces of the patrons for Dioli.

A whistle cut through the din of pool balls and background music and Candice and I turned to see Dioli waving at us from a barstool. Candice's shoulders stiffened slightly, but she walked purposefully forward, and I was right at her side. We got to Dioli and he eyed her without a hint of malice or suspicion. “Miss Fusco,” he said curtly.

“It's Mrs.,” she corrected. “As in Mrs. Harrison, Detective. You remember my husband, don't you? Special Agent in Charge Harrison.”

Dioli didn't even blink. He simply flashed her a toothy smile and said, “Hell of a guy. Met him when he came to rescue you
from my clutches.” And then he laughed like he thought that was really funny.

Candice stared him down and for a second I wondered if she was going to clock him. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with us,” I said to Dioli, hoping to remind everybody why we were there.

He continued to smile at Candice like he was enjoying rattling her cage, and God bless my bestie, because she seemed to realize it, and with two deep breaths I saw her rein in her temper and pull out a stool to sit down on. Waving at the barkeep, she ordered us a round of beers. Once everybody had a cold one in front of them, I pulled out the file on Tuyen and opened it to the notes I'd scribbled under his notes at the bottom of the page. “She was definitely murdered,” I said. Closing my eyes, I put my hand to my throat and added, “I think she was strangled. And I'm sure you've already guessed that she was sexually assaulted too.”

“That's what we assumed,” Dioli said, a skeptical glint in his eye. “The ME said the hyoid was intact, though.”

Dioli was referring to the small bone in the throat that often snapped as a result of strangulation. “I figured as much, but sometimes it doesn't break,” I said, stating something that the three of us most certainly well knew.

Dioli continued to look skeptically at me, and I could tell he was disappointed by what I was offering. Little did he know that I was just getting started. “Your suspect is a male, of course, and I'm definitely leaning toward light skin. I think he's Caucasian, not Asian. I also believe he's connected to Tuyen's work and not the school. From your notes I see that you looked deeply into her peers at UT and even into her professors, but I feel strongly that her killer wasn't connected to the school. Again, I feel there was a definite connection between them through her work.”

Dioli scratched absently at his shoulder. “She worked part time at a dry cleaner's,” he said. “We checked the owner and the two other staff members, who're also all Asian, by the way. Not a parking ticket between them.”

I pushed the file back at him. “Don't know what to tell you, Ray. The killer is connected to her work. Go back and interview everyone again. Someone knows something. There's a clue there.” He continued to sort of look at me blankly, so I offered him a hint. “Did you check out the customers at the dry cleaner's?”

Dioli barked out a laugh. “Yeah, we checked out the customers. All three thousand six hundred of them. Took us six months.”

“And?” I asked when he paused.

“And we found the usual mix of mostly law-abiding citizens mixed with some guys with minor criminal offenses, and three with what I'd call questionable criminal credits, but all those guys alibied out for the night Pham disappeared.”

I frowned. My intuition was insisting that Dioli had missed something. “No other red flags?”

“Nope,” he said, clearly disappointed by my intuitive prowess as a crime fighter.

Then Dioli offered me a one-shoulder shrug and said, “I was hoping you were gonna get a hit off of Pham's lab partner.”

“Her lab partner?”

“Yeah. A research student named Len Chen Cheng. No, wait, maybe it was Len Cheng Chen. They mix their names up over there, so I don't remember which way is right, but he went by Len as a first name. Anyway, we heard through the vine that he and Pham shared a lab, and they didn't get along. Might've been a cultural thing, her being from Vietnam, and him being from China, but either way there were witness reports of arguments for lab time. Pham was the better student, and Cheng's alibi was paper-thin. Supposedly he
was home alone at the time of Pham's disappearance, and similar to Pham, he was kind of a loner. We like him for the crime, but we've been having a hard time coming up with any evidence to nail him.”

I sighed. “That's because there is none, Detective. He didn't do it.”

Dioli took a defensive posture. “How do you know?”

I pointed to my forehead. “My intuition says no way. There's something at the dry cleaner's. The murderer has a connection there.”

Dioli gave me a rather challenging look. “How about I get you the list of customers and you can pick a name out of that haystack?”

I crossed my arms. “No problem.”

Candice coughed into her hand. Clearly she didn't think the idea of me poring over a list of three thousand customers was an effective use of my time. But I also had to consider that while I was doing Dioli's job for him, maybe he'd be a little more open with the info we needed to clear Skylar.

“I'll get you the list Monday,” Dioli said, his demeanor somewhat dismissive.

“Awesome,” I said. Then, before he could tell us to buzz off until Monday, I pulled out my notes from Skylar's file. “Now that we've gotten that out of the way, mind if I ask you a few questions about Skylar Miller's file?”