Doom with a View (5 page)

I looked at the agent across from me, but he wasn’t meeting my gaze. He was staring directly at the top of the table.

I looked back up at Harrison, still eyeing his watch. “I’m not a mind reader, Agent Harrison. I’m an intuitive.”

“Twenty-one seconds remaining.”

I shook my head and felt Candice’s hand squeeze my arm. “Try it anyway,” she suggested.

“Eighteen seconds,” Harrison announced.

I looked again at the agent in front of me, closed my eyes, and called out to my crew for help.

“Ten seconds.”

I snapped my eyes open, completely unsure of myself, and said, “A circle, yellow, and an amusement park.”

“Incorrect,” Harrison said, lowering his watch, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the agent across from me glance up at Harrison.

Candice caught it too because she said to the agent, “Tell us what the answers were.”

The agent looked from Candice to Harrison, who scowled but gave a small nod. “A circle is correct,” he said, “but the color was orange and the place was Dis ney World.”

“Two out of three, then,” Candice said happily.

“One out of three,” said Harrison. “I’m not going to count her guessing an amusement park.”

“Of course
you
wouldn’t,” Candice snapped. “And stop saying ‘guess.’ ”

“Let’s move on to the next test. Thank you, Agent Millstone. Please send in the other subjects.”

A few minutes later two women came in and sat down. Both held carefully blank expressions and worked hard to avoid eye contact with me. “These two women have a unique relationship. Please tell me about how they are connected to each other. You have one minute.”

I was taken aback by this one. There was something about the first subject—an older woman with beautiful porcelain skin but marred by dark circles under her eyes—that I kept going back to. I tried to focus on what the relationship between these two was, but the older woman’s energy kept tugging at me and I couldn’t let it go. I made up my mind right then to allow myself to fail this test and let the chips fall where they would. “I’m so sorry,” I began softly, and I reached out to the older lady and touched the top of her hand. “I know you know you don’t have much time, but I can tell that you’ve taken care of everything you’ve needed to and you may have a month or two longer than you realize. I also want to tell you that it won’t be nearly as painful as you think it’ll be. And the very end will feel a bit fuzzy, but that will be a good thing, I promise you.”

A rather stunned expression appeared on the woman’s face even as tears welled in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks. I held her hand, and squeezed it gently. “There’s nothing more you need to worry about,” I continued softly. “You can rest assured that you’ve taken care of all the small details, and whom-ever you’re leaving behind will be well cared for and looked after.” And in that moment I knew what the answer was and I swiveled my eyes to the other woman at the table. “You’re taking care of her—”

“Time!” Harrison called out.

“—dog,” I finished.

“We’ve passed the minute mark, Ms. Cooper. And I’m afraid you did not arrive at the answer in time.”

I ignored Harrison and focused on the other woman. “You’ll be a great caretaker,” I said to her before turning back to the first woman. “What kind of cancer is it?”

“Pancreatic,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ve asked Joan to take care of my pets when I die. She’s agreed.”

“A dog and a cat, right?” I asked.

She nodded.

“It’s the right choice,” I told her. “They’ll be great. They’ll miss you, of course, but I can tell they’re going to a good home.”

“Thank you, ladies. You may return to your desks,” Harrison said to the two women, and the room suddenly got even more uncomfortable.

Candice shook her head and glared at him. I knew by her posture she was having a hard time keeping her cool, but by now it was obvious that no matter how good a performance I put on, Harrison wasn’t going to accept me or my abilities.

Harrison showed the women out and called to someone else in the hallway. Another male agent entered and took his seat in front of us. He was a beefy-looking man, with a bald head, beady eyes, and a small, nearly lipless mouth.

I definitely wasn’t picking up the warm and fuzzy vibe from him. “This is Agent Turrell. You have sixty seconds to list ten facts about him that would be relevant to a profiler, excluding of course the obvious physical description. Your time starts now.”

I eyed Agent Turrell, who was eyeing me back, and I swear, his expression said, “I double-dog-dare you to read me.”

Gulp.

I closed my eyes and focused, trying to feel out his energy, but immediately I met with what I can describe only as an energetic brick wall. This happens to me sometimes during a session when I get a client who doesn’t really want to be read or has completely closed his mind off to me, and it’s pretty impossible to get through.

Still, I scrunched my eyes and focused, but after a few more seconds and Harrison announcing, “Forty-five seconds remaining,” I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off.

I sighed, opened my eyes, and turned to Candice, shrugging my shoulders. “What?” she whispered.

“His mind is closed,” I said.

Understanding lit up her face and she turned to Agent Turrell and nodded. But then she did something that surprised me. She squinted at him, then made a face that suggested she was grossed out and reached for her purse. Pulling out a tissue, she handed it to him and whispered, “For your nose.”

Turrell looked at the tissue in her hand in surprise and flushed a nice shade of crimson, quickly taking it and swiping at his nose. For the record, there was no evidence of anything snotty—it was just Candice’s way of throwing Turrell off-balance to help relax the mental wall.

I immediately focused again on Turrell while he was looking at Candice, who shook her head, made another face, and whispered, “Try again.”

Turrell’s color turned from crimson to flame red as he then took a moment to blow his nose loudly into the tissue. Meanwhile Harrison called out, “Thirty seconds!” from the side of the table.

And in an instant I had my first threads of information and I began to quickly rattle them off. “I’m sensing a military background—something with boats, so the navy. I’m also sensing something like a special-ops connection, like the SEALs, but there was an injury, I believe to your left knee. I know it was operated on—twice. There’s also a connection to California, the southern portion, like L.A., but I don’t think you’ve been there in a long time. However, Colorado is really calling your name—something about a log cabin, I want to place it just outside of Denver, near a lake at the base of a river that I believe flows into that lake. Also, there is some sort of test that you’re studying for, but I don’t believe you’ll pass it this time. But then, you’re not supposed to pass it on your first try. It’s a hard test, and you need more time under your belt for practice or study or something before you can pass.”

“Time!” Harrison yelled out.

I jumped. I’d been so focused and concentrating so hard that I’d nearly forgotten I was being timed. On the opposite side of the table, Turrell just stared at me open-mouthed, holding the wadded-up tissue in his hand. “You got it,” Candice said to him, rubbing her nose nonchalantly before turning to smile and wink at me.

“Fail,” Harrison said as he nodded to Turrell to go.

“Hold on there,” Candice said, reaching across the table to grab Turrell’s arm. “What part of that did she get wrong?”

Turrell looked from Harrison to me and back to Candice, uncertainty on his face. “Er,” he said, “none of it really.”

“Ha!” Candice said, smacking the tabletop. “She passes.”

“No,” said Harrison, his face hard and determined. “She fails. I asked for ten pieces of information. She only gave me five.” And then he listed them, ticking off on his fingers, “Navy SEALs, a knee injury, L.A., Colorado, and a proficiency test.”

Now it was Candice’s turn to be shocked. “She gave you
way
more than that!”

“She actually gave me nothing useful, Ms. Fusco. The five I’m allowing her are a gift.”

Candice opened her mouth and I knew a whole litany of insults was about to pour out of her, so I jumped to my feet and said, “Can we take a break? I have to go to the restroom. Candice, won’t you come with me?”

It took a moment or two for my partner to realize I was tugging on her arm and trying to pull her out of the room, especially since Harrison was still eyeing us with that stupid smug look on his face. “The ladies’ room is down the hall and to the left,” he said.

I got Candice out into the hallway and coaxed her toward the restroom as she listed off ten things that she hated about Harrison. “That arrogant, narrow-minded, pugnacious, tyrannical, misogynistic, sexist, self-centered, smug, sycophantic son of a
bitch
!”

I smiled, impressed that she’d listed off all ten in rapid succession. “So, you’re still crushing on him, right?”

As we reached the restroom, Candice was actually speechless. She merely let out a long, “Arrrrgh!” and we went in.

When we were washing our hands, she regarded me in the mirror. “How is it that you’re not furious?” she asked.

“There’s just no way to win with this guy,” I said. “I could lead him to the Holy Grail and he’d still tell me I was full of shit.”

“Then what are we still doing here?” she asked, handing me a paper towel.

“Hell if I know,” I said. “But I think that there’s something I might need to prove to myself. I think that if I can come through this little obstacle course of Harrison’s with some amount of success, I might get that bastard to doubt a teeny bit that we’re all scam artists.”

“It’s just so clear to everyone he’s put in front of you today that you’re the real deal, Abs. It’s hard to believe how blind he is.”

“They’re out there, Candice. The world is full of skeptics with completely closed minds. And there isn’t anything I can do to disprove their beliefs because they’re so ingrained.”

“So what are we still doing here?” she asked again, more gently this time as we made our way back down the hallway.

I sighed heavily. “Let’s just do one more test and call it a day, okay?”

“Good,” she said. “And afterward I’m taking you out for a fabulous lunch. I’m really proud of you for going through with this and you have flat-out astounded me today, Sundance.”

Her boost of confidence did wonders for my ego. “Thanks, gal pal,” I said, bumping her with my shoulder.

Outside the room we’d been in, Harrison was waiting for us in the hallway, wearing his usual pose of arms crossed and steely gaze narrowed and focused on us. “What’s the verdict?” he asked as we approached. “Are you in for more or out?”

I tried to keep my cool, but it was hard in the face of such arrogance. “We’re in,” I said lightly. “But as there appears to be such disparity between what you think is pass or fail, we will only participate in one more test. And that outcome will determine whether or not
I
decide to stick around long enough to help
you
with the investigation.”
Take that, you bastard
, I thought.

Harrison’s eyebrow arched, but no sign of humor cracked his granite features. “Get your coats,” he ordered. “We’re going off-site for this one.”

We drove in a company-issued black sedan through the streets of Washington, making our way slowly out of the Capitol district and into more dicey-looking territory before finally stopping in front of an older home in need of some major attention.

Harrison parked at the curb and pointed to the house. “Inside you will find a crime scene,” he said. “To pass this test you’ll have five whole minutes to tell me anything you can about the crime.” Just then, Harrison’s cell phone rang and while he answered it, Candice and I got out of the car and stared at the house. “Wonder when our time starts,” I said to her.

Candice glanced at Harrison, still on the phone as he too got out of the car. “It probably already started,” she said, and urged me toward the front door.

I entered the grungy-looking house with Candice close on my heels. Our FBI escort came along a few moments later, after he’d wrapped up the phone call out on the porch.

The interior was a surprise given the house’s rough exterior. The wallpaper was from an earlier era, but it was a sunny print that still held some glow. The carpets were worn but well cleaned, and pictures and paintings on the walls had been hung with care.

We entered through the breezeway into the living room. The sofa was upholstered with faded roses, and pink throw pillows trimmed in gold were neatly placed at each end. A crucifix hung on the wall above the sofa and a long-outdated copy of
House and Garden
lay on one side table; the other held a cute yellow lamp and a porcelain angel. Near a window was a light green upholstered wing chair, and next to that a small table adorned with knitting needles and yarn.

I moved into the kitchen and surveyed that too. It was small, with outdated appliances, but spotless and clean. “Are you getting anything?” Candice whispered.

The volume on my radar was dialed up to high—but nothing about this space had as yet signaled an alarm, which made me frown in frustration. Surely if something violent had happened here, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? “Not yet,” I answered, and drifted out into the dining room.

Six chairs sat demurely around an oval dining room table covered in a crisp white tablecloth. I ran my hand over the fabric—it was soft cotton. I glanced at the walls, which were also covered in wallpaper, but this was a more formal print than in the living room. I glanced around some more, not sure what I was really looking for.

“I’m guessing the bedrooms are down that hallway,” Candice said, motioning to a doorway on the opposite side of the dining room that led to the back of the house.