Sense of Deception

Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye

Better Read Than Dead

A Vision of Murder

Killer Insight

Crime Seen

Death Perception

Doom with a View

A Glimpse of Evil

Vision Impossible

Lethal Outlook

Deadly Forecast

Fatal Fortune

THE GHOST HUNTER MYSTERY SERIES

What's a Ghoul to Do?

Demons Are a Ghoul's Best Friend

Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun

Ghouls Gone Wild

Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls

Ghoul Interrupted

What a Ghoul Wants

The Ghoul Next Door

No Ghouls
Allowed

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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

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Copyright © Victoria Laurie, 2015

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN
-PUBLICATION DATA:

Laurie, Victoria.

Sense of deception: a psychic eye mystery / Victoria Laurie.

pages cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-18659-0

I. Title.

PS3612.A94423S46 2015

813'.6—dc23 2015003214

P
UBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

You'll notice a little more of Abby's dachshund, Tuttle, in this story. Tuttle is based on my own dachsy, Lilly, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May 2014 and, after an amazingly valiant effort to stay with me as long as she could, finally lost her battle and crossed that rainbow bridge in November. Honestly, I'm still a bit gutted and destroyed by her passing. In her final months all I did was love on her. I nurtured and took care of and exercised patience I never knew I had with her, and they were perhaps the best six months of my life. But also the worst.

I wrote much of this story with Lilly nestled on my lap, cuddled there quietly, while I escaped the heartbreak of slowly losing her by writing about my favorite character, the Abster, inserting Tuttle a little more into the fabric of the story as I went. There is a scene late in the book that I wrote on Lilly's last day, and, although it's a very special scene to me, with Abby cuddling with Tuttle while gazing up at the stars, it's been very difficult for me to reread and edit that passage because I remember so clearly finishing the scene, then shutting down the computer for one last car ride with my baby girl, who was so brave right up to the very end.
This book is absolutely a tribute to her, but it's also about love and its many forms. Personally, I don't think there's anything that makes us more human than loving and nurturing another species. I was definitely made more human by Lilly, and I'm left a little less so in her passing. She'll live on as Tuttle, and Abby will have the benefit of loving her sweet pup for many years to come. Honoring her that way is the only thing I have left to give my baby girl, which is a blessing I'm so grateful for. Still, I would consider it a tremendous gift if, while you read this book, you'd do it cuddled around your favorite furbaby. I can think of no greater tribute to the sweetest, most adorable, amazing, loyal, enthusiastic, comedic, happy, nurturing, intuitive pup I've ever known. Also, I'm quite sure that Lillers would love it too.

Very special thanks go to: Sandy Harding, Jim McCarthy, Michele Alpern, Diana Kirkland, Danielle Dill, Claire Zion, and Sharon Gamboa.

Additional thanks go to: Sandy Upham; Brian Gorzynski; Katie Coppedge; Leanne Tierney; Karen Ditmars; Steve McGrory; Mike and Matt Morrill; Nicole Gray; Jennifer Melkonian; Catherine Ong Kane; Drue Rowean; Nora, Bob, and Mike Brosseau; Sally Woods; John Kwaitkowski; Matt McDougal; Dean James; Anne Kimbol; McKenna Jordan; Hilary Laurie; Shannon Anderson; Thomas Robinson; Juliet Blackwell; Sophie Littlefield; Nicole Peeler; Gigi Pandian; Rachel Herron; Maryelizabeth Hart; Terry Gilman; Martha Bushko; and Suzanne
Parsons.

T
here was chaos in the courtroom as I was dragged kicking and screaming from it by two beefy bailiffs. After I landed a pretty good kick to someone's kneecap, the number of bailiffs “escorting” me out of the courthouse increased by two. It would've been humiliating if I'd paused long enough in my struggles to consider it. Mostly I yelled my head off and wrenched my limbs back and forth until one of the big and beefies put a can of Mace right next to my nose and threatened to let loose. I piped down quickly after that and settled for glaring hard at my captors before being handed off to a couple of deputies. The deputies made quick work of handcuffing me and placing me into a van for a short road trip to a large loading dock, where I was unloaded and moved inside a big ugly building. After that I was put through the process of getting my butt thrown in jail.

On the plus side, there wasn't a strip search (thank the baby Jesus!), but I did have a panicky moment during which I seriously regretted my decision to go commando that morning. Some days it just pays to wear underwear.

Still, I had to give up my dress slacks and blouse for an orange
jumpsuit, and I don't care what anyone says: Orange is
so
not
the new black.

After demanding my right to make one phone call for the eleventh time, I was handcuffed and led down a dark, narrow, claustrophobia-inducing hallway to a bank of phones attached to a wall. The husky woman in uniform who'd led me there growled, “You have ten minutes,” before moving a little way down the hall to eye her watch and then glower at me.

Charming.

After squinting meanly at her retreating form, I turned to the phones and called my hubby. “Rivers,” he said when he picked up the line.

“Hi, honey, it's me.”

“Edgar,” he said with honeyed tones, using his favorite nickname for me. I love the sound of my husband's voice. So rich and seductive. It soothes me like a morning cup of coffee, heavy on the cream and sugar. “How was court?”

“Oh, you know. Not quite what I was expecting.”

“Was it tough on the stand?”

“A bit.”

“Yeah, this defense counsel of Corzo's . . . he's a slick bastard. Did you get beat up a little?”

I swallowed hard. “Um, yes, actually. You could say that it went exactly like that.”

“Aw, dollface,” Dutch said. “Don't let 'em get you down. You did great on this case. Gaston even pulled me aside yesterday to say how happy he is with the work we did to nail Corzo. And, between us, I think he's especially proud of you.”

I winced. Dutch's boss's boss was Bill Gaston. Regional director for the Central Texas FBI office. Former CIA. Totally great guy, until you got on his bad side. Once on said bad side, you
might as well pack a bag and leave town. Quickly. “Speaking of Gaston,” I said, trying to keep the waver out of my voice, “could you maybe get him to come down to the county jail for me?”

There was a lengthy pause; then (after adopting a slight Cuban accent) my hubby said, “Edgar? What did you do?”

I took a deep breath. “I sorta outed the judge to a packed courtroom and then he attacked me and then I was thrown in jail for contempt of court.”

Another (longer) pause. “Please tell me you're kidding.”

“I'm kidding.”

“Really?”

“No.”

There was a muffled sound, which I suspected was my husband trying to quiet a laugh. “Tell me
exactly
what happened.”

I opened my mouth to give him the 411, but at that moment the guard tapped her watch and gave me a stern(er) look. “Actually, honey, maybe you should just call Matt Hayes. He can give you the play-by-play. But please also call Gaston. I have a feeling we're going to need his clout to get me out of here.”

I thought I heard my hubby stifle another laugh with a cough. After clearing his throat, he said, “I'll call Gaston and Matt. We'll have you home for dinner, sweethot.”

Dutch had slipped into his best Bogie impression for that last bit, and it actually made me feel a little better, even though he thought my getting tossed in the clink was high-larious.

After hanging up with Dutch, I shuffled down the hallway to the waiting guard, and she led me by the arm back down the corridor, to a window with a redheaded, freckle-faced inmate standing ready behind a counter in a little enclosed room with lots of neatly packed supplies behind her. I was pushed up to the window and a pillow, sheets, a thin blanket, and some toiletries were
shoved into my chest. “We're out of toothpaste,” she said, as if I'd already noticed and had copped an attitude.

“Okay,” I replied.

“Are you on your period?” she asked.

I felt heat in my cheeks. I'm a bit modest when it comes to discussing bodily functions. “Not presently.”

“Good. We're out of tampons, too.”

“Got any aspirin?”

“Yeah. You got a headache?” she said, reaching behind her for a small packet of one-dose Tylenol.

“Yep.”

“Here, but that's all you get,” she said firmly before jotting down the added item on a clipboard in front of her.

“Thank you very much.”

She rolled her eyes and turned away. I wondered if we'd end up braiding each other's hair later.

Stern Eyes then led me to a set of doors, which required us to get buzzed through. Once we were through the doors, the conversations and shouts and jeers on either side of the hallway from the inmates currently jailed there echoed and bounced off the concrete walls like a mad game of Pong.

I tried not to tremble as Stern Eyes pulled me along, but I might have let out a whimper or two.

I'd been in jail before. Trust me on this: It's not a place you
ever
want to be. It's loud, it's jarring, and it smells like a mix of Pine-Sol, BO, and perhaps a soupçon of desperation.

Plus, it's dangerous. I mean, it's
literally
wall-to-wall criminals. Think about that the next time you want to jaywalk. (Or out a federal judge to a packed courtroom . . . ahem.)

Stern Eyes walked me down the length of the open section of the jail, and I ignored the catcalls and whistles from cells to my
right and left. I suspected that new prisoners got paraded in front of the other inmates like this on a regular basis. It was meant to scare the newbies—and make them easy for the guards to handle initially—and I can tell you for a fact that it's effective.

About midway down the length of the open section, Stern Eyes tugged my arm and directed me to the right. “You're here,” she said, coming to a stop in front of a closed cell door with only one inmate inside. Using the radio mic at her shoulder, she ordered the cell door to be opened, and after a rather obnoxious buzzing sound, it slid to the right. She didn't even wait for it to get all the way open—she merely gave my back a hard shove and I stumbled forward, barely able to stop myself before my head hit the top bunk on the right side. “You have a new roommate,” Stern Eyes said. It took me a minute to realize she wasn't talking to me.

I turned cautiously to look across the cell at the other inmate and did a double take. She wasn't at all what I was expecting.

Tall and willowy, she had very long, very curly blond hair, big blue eyes, and the kind of heart-shaped face that would break a man's heart. (Or a woman's, depending on which team you're playing for.)

She considered me without a hint of expression, and I wondered how I measured up in her mind. I tried to square my shoulders to show her that I was cool, yo. All she did was blink.

The guard then turned to me, and with a thumb over her shoulder to the inmate across the cell, she said, “That's Miller. Play nice with her or we'll send you to solitary. You missed lunch, so dinner's at six. When the doors open, move out into the corridor and stand to the left of the opening to wait to be counted by one of the COs. Then move single file to the cafeteria. It'll be your only chance to eat for the rest of the day, so make it count. Lights out at nine p.m. Sharp.”

With that, she motioned for me to raise my arms, and after dumping my assigned goodies on the metal frame of the top bunk, I held my hands out so she could undo my cuffs.

After pocketing the keys, Stern Eyes got up in my face and glared hard at me, as if she alone could scare me straight (good luck with that), and then she simply turned on her heel and walked out.

A moment later the door buzzed and slid mechanically closed.

I looked meaningfully at my new bunkmate and said, “Well, she's not getting a holiday card from
me
this year.”

The corner of Roomie's mouth quirked, but there was no real humor in her eyes. Instead, I noticed for the first time a rather profound sadness there. Like all the mirth had been sucked right out of her, and what remained was something hollow. Broken. “So you're one of those, huh?” she asked me.

I stiffened. “One of whats?”

“One of those people who makes a joke out of everything as a coping mechanism.”

I laughed and waved my hand. “No. I definitely have a serious side.”

“What'd you do to get in here?” she asked.

“Used my charm and quick wit when I should've used diplomacy.”

That quirk came back to her mouth. “Well, whoever you pissed off, they must've been high up the food chain. I'm on death row and I'm not supposed to have roommates.”

I stiffened again. “Death row? I'm on death row?”

“Relax,” she told me. “I'm down here from Mountain View, for my appeal. Normally they'd put me in solitary, but that's full up from the last fight in the cafeteria, so they moved some people around and I got the luxe digs here.”

I gulped. The urge to ask her what she'd done was heavy on my
tongue, but I wasn't sure that was (a) polite or (b) a question that could get me shivved in my sleep, so I simply nodded and said, “Well, I shouldn't be here long. My husband's gonna get me out, hopefully before dinner.”

Her brow rose skeptically, but then she went back to a rather blank expression. “So, what do you do when you're not expelling lots of charm and quick wit?”

I struggled with her question for a moment; no way was I gonna reveal that I worked with the Feds, especially not in here. But I also wondered if it was a bad idea to let her know that I was a psychic. I mean, maybe I was bunking with the only serial psychic killer in all of Texas. “I'm an accountant.”

She squinted at me. I had a feeling she could smell the smoke from my liar, liar, pants on fire. “Ah,” she said. And then she sat back on her bunk and picked up a paperback. In jail only ten minutes and I'd already failed my first test.

“Actually,” I said, taking a seat on the lower bunk, “I'm not an accountant.”

“Quelle surprise,”
she said flatly. She didn't even look up from the book.

“Okay, I deserved that. The truth is, I'm a professional psychic.”

Her gaze slid over to me, as if she were waiting for my orange jumpsuit to actually explode in a ball of flames. I made sure to hold her gaze. “For real?”

“For real.”

“You make a living at that?”

“Yep.”

“So . . . what? You just look into a crystal ball or something?”

I grinned. “No. Crystal balls, head scarves, and lots of bangles are for amateurs. My technique is to focus on a person's energy—
their electromagnetic output, if you will. We carry bits of our future in the energy we expel, and someone like me can focus on that energy and tell a person about what's likely to happen in the future.”

I waited for her to ask me what I was picking up about her, but she surprised me with her next question. “Can you look back at something?”

I cocked my head. “Back? You mean, can I look back in time?”

She sat up and put her feet on the ground, resting her elbows on her knees after setting the paperback aside. “Yeah. If I told you about something like a break-in, could you see who did it?”

“That's actually a more complicated question than you'd think,” I told her. “If you're asking me if I could see how a crime unfolded, and give a description of the offender, yeah. I could do that.”

Tears welled in her eyes and I couldn't imagine what I'd just said to upset her. “Have you ever worked on a crime before?”

I thought about lying again, but her sudden display of emotion and those sad eyes got the best of me. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“Several dozen.”

“You work with the police?” she asked, a hint of suspicion in her eyes.

I was quick to shake my head. “My business partner is a private investigator. We work quite a few cases together.” And that was not a lie, albeit not exactly the whole truth either.

My roommate took a deep breath and looked away from me to stare out the bars of the cell. It was a long moment before she was able to compose herself. Putting a hand on her chest, she said, “My name is Miller. Skylar Miller.”

I got up and extended my hand. “I'm Abby. Abby Cooper. Rivers. Cooper. Cooper-Rivers.”

She took my hand and that small quirk at the corner of her mouth returned. “You sure?”

“I still can't decide if I want to take my husband's last name or not.”

“How long you two been married?”

I returned to my side of the cell. “It'll be a year in November.”

She nodded. “Keep your own name,” she said. “Don't give up your identity.”

“Word,” I said, and put my fist out for a bump, but she didn't raise her hand or acknowledge the banter. My hand dropped limply back to my lap. “You okay?” I asked her after an awkward moment. She still looked so sad, and she hadn't asked me about this break-in she'd mentioned earlier. I'll admit that she'd more than piqued my interest.

“Yeah,” she lied. Then she reached under her pillow and pulled out a Twix. Opening the wrapper, she shook out one bar and offered it to me.