Sense of Deception (7 page)

I flashed him a smile. “Not yet, honey. But soon.”

“How soon?”

I held up my hand and began to count off on my fingers, “House, furniture, wardrobe, dog, girlfriend.”

“In that order?”

“In exactly that order, buddy.”

He nodded. “I can live with that.”

I
drove to Calvin Douglas's office, which was on the south side of downtown, not far from my office, just off Fourth Street. On the way I called to ask if he was (a) in and (b) available to see me on short notice. I was told by his very kind secretary that he was both in and available to meet with me.

My lucky day.

After parking in the lot, I hoofed it into Cal's building, a swanky place full of marble and brass in the lobby. Cal's office was up on the second floor, decorated in serious tones of darkest eggplant and forest green. Not my taste but still impressive.

His secretary greeted me warmly and showed me right into Cal's office, which wasn't quite what I was expecting, as I'd never pegged the attorney for a minimalist.

He sat in a fairly small room, behind a desk that seemed severe in both its form and function. The chairs in front of him were simple, made not so much for long visits but for short bursts of billable hours. After I sat down, I knew that most of his clients would start to feel uncomfortable about a half hour in, and be antsy to leave within an hour. I figured that was one way to keep everyone on schedule.

On Cal's desk were a large monitor and an equally impressive mountain of paperwork and manila folders. Behind him were shelves stuffed with law books that looked a bit too pristine to be real—I mean, who even uses law books anymore when everything is online these days? To the left of the room was a large steel filing cabinet, and one picture hung on the wall of a seagull soaring above the waves of a turbulent ocean. A poetically inspiring caption was written underneath.

And that was pretty much it for decor. “So!” Cal said as he sat down after getting up to greet me. “This is a surprise. What brings you by?”

I flashed him my best winning smile. “I need your help.”

“With?”

“Well, actually, it's not me who needs your help. See, there's a woman on death row who—”

Cal held up his hand to interrupt me. “Hold it,” he said. “Hold it. Are you here about Skylar Miller?”

I blinked. “Uh, yeah. How'd you know?”

Cal pointed to himself. “Dutch called me yesterday to represent you if Schilling didn't let you out of the contempt charge. He then called me a little later and asked if I could pull any strings because they'd locked you up with a death row inmate.”

I felt a thread of anger set into my shoulders, remembering the abrupt removal of Skylar from our shared jail. “And did you?”

Cal said, “I made a call to Schilling's clerk. He used to work for me before he took the job with Schilling, and he was willing to extend you a slight favor last night.” Cal paused to give me a meaningful look that told me that outing the judge had been a bit of a blessing to the clerk, who was in love with him. I wondered if he truly believed, now that things were out in the open, so to speak, that Schilling would leave his wife for the poor clerk, and I hoped he didn't get his heart broken and lose his job at the same
time, because that's what was probably going to happen, and I felt for him.

“Anyway,” Cal continued, “he made a few calls and they found a way to keep you isolated from the other prisoners.”

I took a moment to breathe deeply. My hubby and Cal had simply made an effort to keep me as safe as possible, but it still irked me that Skylar had been sent away to spend the night at county in isolation when I was fairly certain at Mountain View they kept her in isolation too. She'd had a chance for a bit of respite from that lonely and possibly maddening experience, and the men in my life had taken it away from her unnecessarily. “She wasn't a threat to me,” I told him levelly.

Cal sighed. “You talked to her.” He said it more as a statement than as a question.

I squinted at him. There was something about the way he was speaking that suggested that he had at least some familiarity with Skylar and her case. “I did,” I said. “Have you ever talked to her, Cal?”

He sighed. There was guilt in that sigh. “Twenty years ago I represented her on a vandalism charge and then on her third DWI charge.”

My eyes widened. “The one where she served a year in jail?”

He nodded. “She was actually sentenced to four years, but got out after only fourteen months for good behavior and because of overcrowding.”

“Still, four years seems kind of harsh for a woman who so obviously needed to be sent to rehab, doesn't it? I mean, I realize it was her third offense, but she didn't crash her car or hurt anybody, did she?”

“No, but back in 'ninety-eight the state wasn't very sympathetic when it came to addicts. The rule back then was punish the
offenders and punish them hard. Four years was honestly the best deal I could get her, Abby. The state minimum both then and now is two years for a third offense, and Skylar was smashed when the officer pulled her over—she blew a point one eight. That's a full tenth over the legal limit. She's just damn lucky she didn't get caught with her kid in the car.”

“So you know her.”

He shrugged. “I
knew
her twenty years ago. I haven't spoken to her since she fired me back in nineteen ninety-eight, right after the judge threw her a four-year sentence.”

I tapped the arm of the chair for a moment, letting my intuition flow over Cal's energy. “Do you remember a few months back when I told you that you and I would be working on a case together? A case involving a woman?”

An oblique smile crept onto Cal's lips. “When you did that reading for me at the bureau offices,” he said. “I remember almost every single word of it. Including that part. And it'll probably please you to know that all that you predicted did come true—except for that one small part. Last night after your husband called and I started making inquiries, and discovered that Skylar Miller was your cellmate, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end.” I said nothing. I wanted to see what Cal was going to conclude from that. “I figured that had to be more than a coincidence, and maybe the powers that be are trying to get a message to me.”

“She didn't do it, Cal,” I said firmly.

He nodded. “I never thought she did.”

We sat in silence for a few beats with that between us. “If we do nothing, she'll lose the appeal,” I said softly.

Cal sighed and his shoulders sagged a little as he glanced briefly at the mountain of manila folders to his left. I knew I was asking
him to take a holiday from the work that paid his bills to essentially take over Skylar's case and prepare an appeal in just ten days. “I've seen her attorney in court,” he said. “He's barely competent.”

The ether around Cal shifted and I sat forward, reaching for my purse. “I'm pretty sure I can convince her to fire him and hire you,” I said, getting up and turning to leave.

Cal's quiet laughter followed me to the door of his office. “How'd you know I'd be so easily convinced?”

I paused with my hand on the doorknob to look over my shoulder at him. “She's part of your future, Cal. The same way she's part of mine.”

His brow furrowed. “Coming in at this late hour is gonna be a nightmare, Abby. Both legally and procedurally.”

“I'm aware.”

“But you think we can save her?”

I looked past Cal for a moment, staring into space as I felt out the future. “Truthfully? It could go either way. But if we don't join forces and help her, she's got no chance. None at all.”

Cal regarded me solemnly. “Sounds like we don't have much of a choice, then.”

“Nope.”

“Call me after you talk to her.”

“Thanks, Cal. Really.”

He nodded and I headed out of his office, glancing at my watch as I exited the suite. It was nearly four o'clock, and time was running short both for the day and for Skylar. My next step involved talking to her, which I hoped to do before the end of the day, if I could make it back to my office and my laptop fast enough.

I was already somewhat familiar with the new visitation system Travis County had put in place for its inmates and members of the
public. No longer could you actually go to the jail and wait behind Plexiglas to lift a phone and talk to an inmate. Travis County had gone high-tech, implementing a videoconference system that was a whole lot like FaceTime.

I hadn't used the system, but I'd seen it firsthand because all law enforcement personnel had been given a tutorial just a few weeks earlier when it was first coming on line.

Access to video chat with a prisoner came from registering with the county, then filling out a simple online form that asked the name of the prisoner, your relationship to them, etc., etc.

I was already registered as a consultant with the FBI, and that gave me a few extra privileges to boot. I was hoping the special code I'd been given denoting my status would make access to Skylar less of a problem. I doubted that she'd been let out of solitary, which meant that someone (Stern Eyes?) would have to go get her and physically bring her to the videoconference room. Sometimes the COs could give the prisoners in solitary a hard time, and I hoped that Stern Eyes wasn't going to drag her feet bringing Skylar up.

I got back to my office about fifteen minutes after I'd left Cal's, and hopped right online, typing quickly and noting that time wasn't on my side. It'd take a little while to process my request and have it go through the channels, not to mention getting Skylar to the videoconference room in time to talk to her before the system would be shut down at five thirty. She would actually initiate the call on her end, and I waited in my office from four all the way to five nineteen, pacing and eyeing my computer anxiously.

Finally, at five twenty, there was a faint tinny ring from my computer and I rushed to sit down and click to accept the call. The black screen pixelated a bit until it settled onto Skylar's face. She was hovering close to the computer and I could see the dark circles
under her eyes the same as the day before; however, today her expression was a bit more curious. “Abby?” she said.

I waved. “Hi, Skylar!” I said. “Thanks for accepting the visit.”

She nodded. “I don't get much in the way of visits.”

I glanced at the clock again. We had nine minutes. “Listen, I'm gonna make this really fast because we're pressed for time, but I want you to do me a huge favor.”

Skylar studied me. Her expression was wary, but also perhaps slightly amused. “What huge favor can I do for you?”

“I want you to trust me.”

Her reaction was surprising. She actually laughed. “Trust you?”

“Yes. And I realize you don't know me, Skylar, or have
any
reason to actually trust me, but I am totally sincere here when I tell you that if you don't trust me, I don't think you're going to make it to the day after your appeal.”

The humor faded from Skylar's features. “Even if I do trust you, Abby, I'm probably not going to live beyond the nineteenth.”

“Skylar,” I said, “do you remember what one of your first questions to me was after I told you that I was psychic?”

She seemed to think on that for a second. “I asked you if you could see who broke into my house the night Noah died. I wanted to know who it was that killed my son.”

I closed my eyes and nodded. “Exactly.” Opening them again, I added, “A guilty woman would've asked me if she'd win her appeal, or how she could win her appeal. Only an innocent woman asks who the real murderer was.”

Skylar took that in. “I just want to know before they stick the needle in me, Abby. I want to know who did it, and why.”

“I know,” I told her, glancing again at the clock. Seven minutes. “Listen, this is the part where trusting me is going to require a pretty big leap of faith, but the way I see it, you don't have a ton
of options left, so I'm just gonna say it. I want you to fire your attorney, and then I want you to hire Calvin Douglas.”

Skylar blinked and I could see recognition in her eyes. “Calvin Douglas?”

“Yep. And, before you ask, yes, he's the same guy who represented you on the DWI charge.”

She rolled her eyes and snorted derisively. “The last time he represented me he got me a four-year sentence.”

I stared at her image in the computer without blinking. “I know. And yet, I still want you to hire him.”

“Why?”

“Because he's the only chance you've got. Skylar, I've taken a glimpse into your future. It's as bleak as it comes. And your attorney isn't helping you in any way.”

Skylar looked away, thinking, and I glanced again at the clock. We had two minutes. I felt a bit desperate, so I added, “I know you think that might be a rash decision, and I know you probably carry a grudge against Cal, but what I think he might be able to buy you is a little time, Skylar. And I need that time to investigate Noah's murder.”

Her head turned sharply and she stared hard at me. “
You're
going to investigate?”

I nodded, holding up the official badge the FBI had given me as their consultant. “On occasion, I work for the Feds,” I confessed. “And my business partner is a PI. I'm very good, and so is she. And we've also got an agent currently on vacation who's willing to help out.”

Her brow furrowed at the rush of words. “Why are you doing this?”

I took a deep breath. What reason could I give that she'd believe? Skylar didn't look like someone who'd been given a whole
lot of kindness in her life. I figured the truth was the only thing I had to offer her. “Because I don't believe you did it. And if you didn't do it, then I look at you as any other innocent woman who's about to be murdered. You deserve my very best effort to save your life. It's just what I do, Skylar. And that's the truth.”

She studied me for a moment, as if she could read me the way I could read her. And then, she opened her mouth to speak, but at that exact moment my screen flashed with an error message. It was five thirty and the videoconference had been cut off. “Dammit!” I yelled, standing up and glaring hard at my computer screen. For emphasis I pounded my desk a little with my fist. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” (Ah well, I didn't need that dollar anyway.)