Sense of Deception (20 page)

“Was there a chance this guy from Home Depot could've followed you home?” Candice asked Skylar.

She simply shrugged. “It never occurred to me that he would,” she said. “He'd been pushing a cart full of hardware supplies while he talked to Noah, so I never really thought about him following us out. I think I just figured he'd take his stuff to the register and check out and by the time he got out of the store, we'd be long gone.”

She paused for a moment and shook her head again, her eyes pinched with remorse and regret. “While I was yelling at him, he looked shocked, but also a bit ashamed, like he'd realized as I was yelling at him what he'd done wrong and was sorry, but he never spoke a word to me. It's why I never thought of him as the person who broke into my home. In the days afterward, I'd actually felt a little bad that I'd yelled at him like that, because maybe he'd just been being friendly to Noah, but at the time, I'd been so alarmed to see my son walking with a total stranger who had his hand on my Noah that I'd lost my cool. Like I said, we rushed out of the store, and once I turned away, I was so focused on Noah that I didn't really look behind me to see if he was nearby, so if he wanted to abandon his cart and follow us, he probably could have.”

Candice and I exchanged a look. I
knew
that's exactly what this guy had done. Candice turned back to Skylar and asked, “Did you by any chance report the incident on the way out? Or do you remember if anyone took note of what was going on and approached him?”

Skylar's shoulders sagged and she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I mean, I'm sure some heads turned, but no one asked us about it before we left the store.”

“What about your buddy behind the paint counter?” I asked. “Did he see anything?”

“I don't know,” Skylar said. “He knew I went looking for Noah, but he didn't mention anything to me about it a few days later when we went back for those same supplies. I doubt he was even aware that anything had happened.”

“Still, it might be a good thing to check out,” Candice said. “Can you give us his name?”

Skylar sighed. “I knew him through AA,” she said. “We're supposed to keep each other's identity secret.”

“Skylar,” Candice said firmly. “Your life is hanging in the balance. I think we can bend the rules just this one time.”

“Okay,” she said. “His name is Allen Lambrecht.”

“Do you know if he still works at Home Depot?” Candice asked next.

“I don't,” Skylar said. “It's the one on Fifty-first and I-Thirty-five.”

Candice jotted herself a note. Then she gazed at Skylar for another minute and said, “Being so overtly friendly to a total stranger's kid isn't something our culture allows anymore.” I could tell she was trying to get Skylar to see that she'd been absolutely right in calling out this guy at the hardware store. “He had to know that he was being inappropriate, Skylar, and you weren't wrong to suspect he might've had an ulterior motive in befriending your son. Your mom instincts kicked in, and nothing you did was wrong.”

Still, Skylar appeared anguished, as if the full weight of that past action as the catalyst for what'd happened to her son was coming home to rest firmly on her shoulders. She seemed to shrink before our very eyes, and she wouldn't look into the camera of the video screen. That worried me.

“Skylar,” Candice said softly.

“It was me,” she whispered. “I was the cause.”

Candice and I both stared hard at her. There was nothing more we could say. I had several more questions I wanted to ask her, but a warning light on the screen told us that we only had five minutes left and Skylar was now sinking into herself, drowning in a pool of guilt. I knew we were pressed for time, but she simply didn't look able to continue further questioning. At least not until we'd given her a little time to absorb this new possibility of the guy from Home Depot being the killer. “Okay,” I said. “Candice and I are gonna follow up on this new lead and give you some space. But do me a favor. Think back if you can to the days following that incident and see if Noah maybe dropped a hint about this guy from HD. A name or what he did for a living might actually help us track him down.”

“He was a welder,” Skylar said suddenly, her eyes finally lifting to us again.

Candice and I both leaned forward a little toward the screen. “A welder?”

“Yes. Yes, I'm sure that's what Noah told me when I asked him why he'd walked away from me with a stranger. He said that the guy wasn't a stranger, he was a welder, and he knew a lot about tools.”

Candice arched an eyebrow at me. “That's a great lead,” she said. “One we can follow.”

Skylar nodded absently. She was beyond our ability to reach and I hated that she was suffering her son's murder in a whole new and terrible way.

After signing off with Skylar, Candice and I called Oscar. He landed in our office twenty minutes later and we brought him up to speed. “Okay,” he said, writing himself a note in a small
notebook. “We have a description, an occupation, and if he was employed, he'd have to have a welding certificate issued by the Texas Department of Transportation.”

“TxDOT?” I asked, using the acronym, which sounded out like “Tex-dot.” “Really? They cover welders?”

“They cover a lot of things,” Oscar said, “including a welder's certification. Unless he's no longer licensed, or welding without one, which would make it hard to get a job, then I should be able to narrow it down to at least a list of possibles.”

“Would they issue an accompanying photo ID?” Candice asked him.

Oscar shook his head. “Doubtful. But they'll have a list of names of certified welders active in two thousand four. I'll do a search on any with criminal records, and cross-reference any of those hits with driver's license photos, and maybe we'll get lucky.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

Oscar shrugged a shoulder. “Don't know. Depends on how quickly TxDOT gives me the list.”

“Ugh,” I said. “We'll be waiting forever. Nothing in government moves with any efficiency.”

Oscar got up. “Let me make a few calls,” he said. “I might be able to get it expedited.”

“It'd be a whole lot faster if you could use your FBI credentials,” Candice observed. Oscar was a guy who didn't break the rules, and Candice knew he'd never even hint that we needed the list to assist with an FBI investigation.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But that's not an option for us. If Gaston caught wind that I was using my badge to get info for a private case, he'd hand me my ass and put me on desk duty for the next six months.”

I wanted to protest, but I knew Oscar was right. We wouldn't
get around the rules with this one. “Thanks, Oscar,” I said. “See what you can do.”

He got up, saluted us, and headed out.

Candice eyed her watch. “Feel like a road trip?”

“Home Depot?”

“Yep.”

“Let's roll.”

T
raffic was light, given that it was that freaky hour between rush hour and lunch, and we managed to make it to the Depot a bit before noon. As I got out of the car, I took a look around at our location. Pointing to the east, I said, “Skylar lived about four miles that way.”

“Which means this guy she confronted could've lived or worked close to here at the time,” Candice said.

“Easy access,” I agreed. “Might help Oscar narrow his scope even more.”

Candice produced her cell and typed rapidly on it. “Done,” she said, then motioned with her chin toward the entrance.

We could've gone directly to customer service to inquire about Allen, but Candice suggested we use a softer approach by meandering over to the paint section. I knew it was a long shot to find him still working there after ten years, but Lady Luck had been with us so far on this case; maybe she'd hang with us for one more swing at bat. “Hey there,” Candice said to the guy behind the paint counter. He wore his paint-speckled orange apron over a blue T-shirt and jeans. In black ink above his right breast was the name
Casey
. “Is Allen working today?” Candice asked him.

Casey nodded, adding a pleasant smile. “He's on break. I'm here, though. What can I do for you?”

Home Depot people. So friendly. Candice slid closer to the counter and offered Casey her most sweet-as-a-little-lamb smile. “Would it be possible to page him? He gave me some painting advice last week about this tricky glaze effect for my living room, and I think I goofed. It's not turning out like I thought it would.”

Casey suddenly seemed unsure. “We're not supposed to call employees off break,” he said, apologetically. “See, we only get about forty-five minutes in a ten-hour shift, and Allen likes to take his smoke breaks when he can.”

“Oh,” Candice said, sounding surprised. “I had no idea. I'll definitely wait. When did he go on break?”

Casey glanced at his watch. “You just missed him. He left about two minutes ago. He should be back in fifteen minutes or so.”

“Perfect,” Candice said, offering him another sweet smile. “We'll be over in electrical and come back in twenty. Thanks, Casey.”

With that, Candice took my arm and we walked toward the back of the store. “What are we getting in electrical?” I asked.

“Nothing. But I figure that section of the store faces the highway, and it's probably the part of the parking lot least likely to have customers park, and also likely to be the place where employees are allowed to take their smoke breaks.”

“Ah,” I said, marveling at my clever friend. “Your powers of deduction never cease to amaze me.”

Candice slid her gaze to me. “This ain't my first rodeo, Sundance.”

We found an exit out into the rear section of the parking lot, and sure enough there were two guys there wearing orange aprons and inhaling lots of cancer. I flipped my radar on as we approached,
and the older guy on the right was already showing the first hints of black disease in his lungs. My guess was he'd be dead in five years.

The pair watched us approach but said nothing until we were standing in front of them. I decided to take the lead, as I was still sorting through Allen's energy intuitively, and had a pretty good guess as to how to engage him. “Hey, there,” I said, pointing to the older man on the right. The name on his apron gave him away. “We're looking to talk to Allen Lambrecht. Are you by any chance him?”

Allen eyed me curiously. “You need help with something in paint?”

“No, sir,” I said, pulling out my FBI consulting badge. “And I'm sorry to bother you on your break, but we have a personal matter to discuss with you.”

Allen leaned forward and studied my ID; then he seemed to get a bit nervous. The man next to him cleared his throat and stubbed out his cigarette in the tall ashtray set up for the employees. I was glad to see that he didn't just throw the butt on the ground, as most of Texas was still in a drought and wildfires were a constant threat. “I should head in,” he said, before shuffling off.

Allen too stubbed out his cigarette. “What's this about?” he asked in a mild tone. I knew I'd caught him off guard, but there was no avoiding that.

“We need your help,” I said plainly. “My associate and I are working on Skylar Miller's final appeal. Do you remember Skylar?”

Allen's brow shot up and he looked both relieved and surprised. “Of course I remember her,” he said. “Hard to forget Sky. You're trying to clear her name?”

“We are,” Candice told him.

He shook his head. “I never was convinced she killed her boy.
She loved that little guy. Hell, she would've jumped in front of a train for him. I couldn't believe it when they arrested her. I mean, you never really know someone, but I'd been in the program with Sky for five years. She was my buddy, and I'd never once seen her lose her temper. Not even when everyone was against her as she was fighting for custody. She put in the time and the work and did everything the program called for and everything her social worker told her to. She was a good kid.”

“We've drawn much the same conclusion,” I told him. “In investigating the case, we've come to believe that there was someone else responsible. We've even narrowed it down to a possible suspect, which is why we wanted to come talk to you.”

Allen suddenly broke into a sweat again and he held his hands up in an “I'm innocent!” motion. “Hey,” he said defensively. “I had nothing to do with that.”

I cocked my head. “Of course you didn't. But we think you might have had a glimpse of the man who did.”

Allen lowered his palms and pointed to himself. “Me?”

Candice said, “Skylar told us this morning about an incident here at this store when she came with her son to pick up some paint supplies and visit with you. There was a point at which Noah wandered away from her. Do you remember that?”

Allen nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “She found him talking to that guy in tools.”

My eyes widened. “You saw that?”

He nodded again. “I did. And once she gave him a piece of her mind, I went over and told him to leave the store or I'd alert my manager. The guy was creepy, and the way he had his arm around Noah made me think he shouldn't be around kids.”

“Did you tell your manager about it?”

Allen's face flushed. “Uh, no. I just told the guy to leave, and
followed him to the exit. Then I watched the door for a little while to make sure he didn't come back.”

I held my emotions carefully in check. Inadvertently, Allen had sent this predator right after Skylar and her son. Whoever this Slip character was, he'd probably been seething with rage not only from being yelled at by Skylar, but also for being thrown out of the store. “And you never told Skylar that you'd confronted this man?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She seemed really upset by the whole thing, and she'd left her paint and all her brushes behind, so when she came back in, I didn't want to remind her about it. I just pretended nothing happened.”

Allen's face was creased with worry, and I knew his brain was starting to put two and two together. “You were a good friend to her,” I said.

Still, he asked me, “Do you think that guy followed her? I mean, do you think he was the one who killed Noah?”

“We're not sure at this point,” Candice told him. “We're only following a lead.”

Allen wiped his face with a shaky hand, and he reached inside his apron for his smokes. Lighting one up, he said, “I can describe him if you need me to.”

“About five-nine, very blond hair, light-colored eyes?” I asked.

Allen nodded. “That's him.”

“Anything else about him you can remember?” Candice asked.

Allen thought about that for a minute before he nodded. “Yeah, he had burns on his arms,” he added, tilting his forearm to indicate the inside portion of the man's arms.

“Any tattoos or other physical quirks?” Candice asked, writing in her notebook.

Allen thought for another second. “None that I remember.”

“The burns on his arms help,” Candice told him. The poor guy looked so sincere, like he really wanted to help us, even though both Candice and I knew the burns had probably come from his welding jobs. “Did you ever see him again in the store?” she asked next. “Or catch a glimpse of him in the area?”

Allen shook his head. “Naw. And I would've remembered. That guy was bad news. I kept an eye out for him for a while after that.”

“Do you remember what time of day this all took place?” Candice asked.

Allen rubbed at his chin. “Pretty sure it was morning, but not too early. Maybe between nine and noon? I remember taking a break from watching the door to go take my lunch, which has always been scheduled at one o'clock, so I'm pretty sure that nine-to-noon window was the time frame.”

“Did you ever connect the incident with what happened to Noah?” I asked. Some people have really good intuition, and I wondered if after he'd heard the news of Noah's murder, Allen's own radar had maybe kicked in.

He looked down at the ground. “I didn't,” he said. “I mean, I think I was kind of in shock. I just couldn't believe it, you know? I went to Noah's funeral, and they'd arrested Sky by then. I visited her in jail right after and told her how beautiful the ceremony was and how many people came. She was sorta destroyed by the whole thing. Catatonic even. I don't even know if she remembers me visiting her.”

My lips pressed together. The injustice that'd been done to this poor woman filled me with a deep and seething anger. “That was nice of you to visit her,” I told him.

“I was the only one who did,” he said bitterly. “Not even her mom showed up to support her. And her ex . . . man. I never told
Sky this, but at the funeral the guy was in a rage. He cursed her in front of the entire congregation. Swore he'd get even with her for murdering his son, and I guess he did, because the judge gave Sky the death penalty. I have a friend in the program—I guess you know that's how we met, right?”

Candice and I both nodded. “She told us,” I said. “But she didn't want to. She wanted to keep you anonymous.”

“No, it's okay,” he said. “I would've wanted her to send you guys to me. Anyway, I have another friend in the program who's high up in the court system, and he said there was a rumor that the presiding judge had been unduly influenced by the Millers' money.”

I scowled. “We heard that too.”

Allen was thoughtful for a moment before he said, “Do you think you can save her?”

I wanted to say yes. Man, did I want to say yes. But my intuition was still laying even odds on whether we'd be able to save Skylar from the needle. “We're going to do everything we can,” I promised.

Allen sighed. “I should go visit her,” he said. “I haven't seen her in eight years. Since they moved her to Mountain View.”

“She's back at county,” I told him. “You can sign up for a video visit through their Web site. They don't allow in-person visits anymore, but if you don't have Wi-Fi, you can go to the jail and they'll set you up in a room with a monitor.”

Allen's eyes widened. “Technology,” he said. “Stealing a little piece of your soul one megabyte at a time.”

“True that,” I told him. The new video system was very efficient, and probably terrific for those people who couldn't make the drive to county, but also ridiculously impersonal. Sometimes, inmates and their families needed that extra dose of physical
reassurance that a window of Plexiglas could provide and a computer monitor just couldn't.

Candice suddenly seemed to get an idea. “Speaking of video systems, Allen, do you think there's any way there might be a recording of the incident involving Skylar and this guy you threw out of the store from back then?”

Allen's brow lifted. “You know,” he said, “there might be. The store is packed with security cameras because the company gets a lot of accident claims and people walk out of here all the time with stuff they don't pay for. I know that the feed is sent to headquarters in Atlanta, and they hold it for ten years or so until the statute of limitations runs out. You might get lucky and get a copy, but you'd be right under the wire, 'cause it's been almost exactly a decade.”

“Do you remember the approximate date?” Candice asked, her voice excited.

Allen rubbed the stubble on his chin with his hand. “Well, let's see. It was about two weeks before Noah was murdered, which would've made it mid-June, and I think it was a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday shift, because back then they had me on that rotation, and I know we weren't busy that day, so it couldn't have been a Saturday—and it probably wasn't a Thursday either, 'cause the closer we get to the weekend, the busier we get, plus inventory comes in on Thursday and I don't remember being busy with that.”

Candice had her phone out and was scrolling through it. “Could it have been the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth of June two thousand four?”

Allen nodded. “Or the week before. I'm pretty sure it was two weeks before Noah was murdered, but I'm not positive.”

Candice pocketed her phone. “Thanks, Allen. We'll check it out. You've been a really big help.”

We left Allen and headed back inside the Depot. Candice then approached the customer service desk and inquired about a contact to their headquarters, flashing her badge and letting the girl behind the desk know this was a matter of some urgency.

Ten minutes later the manager had helped us navigate the complicated world of HD headquarters, and we had the name of the director of IT, who could assist us with obtaining a copy of the video, and confirmation that HD held on to store surveillance footage for exactly ten years. The director was out when we called, but Candice left him an urgent message, along with her credentials as a consultant to the FBI and a private investigator in Austin. I thought it very clever that she kept dropping the whole “consultant with the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . .” line. It opened doors, and at the moment I wasn't too worried about getting into trouble using the street cred.