Sense of Deception

  It galled me that such a seasoned detective could be so closed-minded, or so cold about sending a woman to the needle, given the very shaky holes in his circumstantial case. He’d flat out ignored huge inconsistencies in his theory, and done only a cursory job of investigating other suspects.

  “Goddamn him,” I muttered. (My purse was full of quarters. I could splurge.)

  “Yep,” Candice agreed. She seemed just as angry. “Still, we have some people to look into.”

  “But hardly any time to look into them,” I groused.

  Candice was quiet for a moment and then she said, “Well, we’ve been under the gun before, and we’ve always managed to work with what we have. So we can spend time getting good and mad, or we can get going on finding out who really murdered Noah.”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out nice and slow. “Who do we start with?”

  “I like Rico,” she said. “Mostly ’cause I know where he hangs out.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep. For a pretty sizable fee, he slipped me some info on one of my missing persons cases. Teenage runaway. Rico’s info led me right to her.”

  “I gotta admit that I’m surprised you know a guy like him.”

  Candice’s expression was wry. “Sometimes, Sundance, when you walk the mean streets, you gotta get your shoes a little dirty.” Taking an exit for Highway 360, we traveled south all the way past the west side of the city and continued on to Lamar Boulevard. Candice followed Lamar southbound, finally taking a turn into a pretty shoddy-looking apartment complex.

  I scowled. “Why do scuzzballs always live in the worst places?”

  “Makes them feel at home,” Candice said, taking her gun out of the glove box to remove the clip and replace it with another full one, also from the glove box. Sliding back the barrel to arm the gun, she tucked it into the back of her jeans, pulled her shirt out of her pants to cover it, and motioned for us to get out.

  We crossed the parking lot and I followed Candice up an outside staircase to the second floor. She paused in front of one door, then seemed to reconsider and moved down to one next to that. Knocking, she and I waited on the landing, me staring uncomfortably around, and Candice looking like she was about to visit with an old friend. The door opened a crack and a guy with black hair and lots of stubble peered blearily out. “Yeah?”

  “Rico!” Candice said, like they were best buds. “How you doin’, guy?”

  “Who the fuck’re you?”

  Ah. Rico was what we in the trade liked to call a “romantic.” Candice didn’t answer; instead she stood there appearing incredulous with her arms outstretched like she couldn’t wait to hug DeLaria.

  He considered her from head to toe before he finally edged the door all the way open. “Lady, I don’t know you,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe.

  Candice tapped her head. “Oh, right!” she said. Then she added a laugh and turned slightly to me to say, “Maybe this’ll refresh your memory.” And then, quick as a flash, Candice rounded back to face forward and punched DeLaria right in the nose, much like I’d wanted to do to Dioli.

  Rico’s head snapped back and his knees buckled, causing him to stagger back into the apartment. Candice shook her hand a little and followed him inside. Shocked down to my socks, I stood there mutely for a second before I shrugged and headed in too.

  “What the hell?!” DeLaria shouted, holding both hands over his nose as a little blood dribbled down between his fingers. “You fucking bitch!”

  Candice offered him a crocodile smile and kicked him in the nads. DeLaria emitted a squeak high-pitched enough to put little girls to shame and sank to the ground, doubling over and rolling onto his side, one hand holding his nose, the other covering his nethers.

  Candice stepped forward to push her heel at his shoulder and lay him flat on his back. There wasn’t even a hint of mercy in her eyes. “Candice,” I whispered, afraid she’d already pushed this too far.

  She ignored me. Reaching down, she hauled DeLaria up by the collar and got into his face. “I found the girl you ruined, you son of a bitch,” she said. “She was seventeen when you two met—her on the street, scared, hungry, cold, and naive, and you a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You wasted no time recruiting her into your little ring, and when she started to fall apart, you fed her drugs until she wasn’t even a shadow of her former self, you gutless, heartless piece of shit. Oh, yeah, for a price you tipped me off about where I could find her, but only because she wasn’t any good to you anymore.” Candice then shook DeLaria hard and his head bobbled on his neck and blood came out of his nose more earnestly.

  I’ll admit that I was sickened by the scene. Putting a hand on Candice’s shoulder, I tried to interject a little reason into the situation. “Candice,” I said. “Please.”

  But she refused to let go of Rico. With strength that belied her thin frame, she hauled him halfway off the floor by his shirt and spat, “She’s tried to kill herself three times since I got her home, Rico. Three times!”

  Rico’s trembling hands came up to grip Candice’s arms. He was starting to recover from the blows she’d dealt him, and he was maybe a good dose of adrenaline away from becoming a real problem.

  Well, maybe a problem for anyone who wasn’t my BFF. With a snarl she let go of him and he fell back to the floor with a thud. Before he could get up again, Candice drew her gun out from the back of her waistband and pointed it right at his head. “Something you should know, DeLaria. Stacey’s dad has a few bucks. The last time he called to tell me that they’d just barely gotten his little girl to the hospital in time to save her life, he asked me how much it’d cost him to put you down. I named my price, and he didn’t even flinch.”

  I was sweating buckets as Candice talked, and not just from the heat snaking its way into the apartment. What bothered me was that my lie detector hadn’t gone off as Candice spoke about the girl’s father offering her money to kill DeLaria. Nor when she told him she’d named the price. I knew Candice better than anyone else in the world, even her husband, which meant that I knew exactly what she was capable of. Hence I was shaking in my boots.

  Candice lowered the gun a little closer to DeLaria’s face. “So here’s how this is gonna play out, Rico,” she said softly. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and you’re gonna answer them honestly. If you fail to answer them honestly, my friend over there—who’s a human lie detector—is gonna let me know that you’re a big fat fibber, and I’m going leave this apartment a much wealthier woman.”

  I wasn’t the only one shaking now. DeLaria was visibly trembling and his face took on a shade of white so severe, if he stopped moving, he could’ve been mistaken for a corpse. I wanted to say something to defuse the tension in the room, but Candice seemed to be right on the edge, and I was afraid anything I said or did would tip her over. The best that I could hope for was that DeLaria cooperated fully, but then, even if he didn’t, I had no intention of ever admitting to Candice that he was lying.

  Still, when DeLaria’s desperate gaze traveled to me, I crossed my arms and cocked my head slightly, just to let him know that he’d better play along all nice-like. “Whad do you wanna knowd?” Rico asked, his speech hampered by the severe swelling to his nose.

  “Skylar Miller,” she said. “Remember her?”

  DeLaria’s eyes darted to me and I cocked an eyebrow. He looked back at Candice and nodded his head subtly.

  “Good, Rico,” Candice said, the gun in her hand never wavering from her deadly aim at his head. “Did you murder her son?”

  Rico blinked and he even pulled his chin back in surprise. “Wah? Naw! Naw! I swear! I dinnit!”

  Candice glared hard at Rico. “Sundance?”

  “He’s not lying,” I said, so relieved that he’d been honest, because I was fairly certain that if Rico had lied about that, Candice would’ve seen thr
ough him and I didn’t know if she’d be able to hold back from pulling the trigger. Hell, I would’ve been tempted to put him down if I knew he’d killed Noah in the manner the young boy was murdered.

  “Do you know who did?” she asked Rico next.

  He shook his head. “Naw! Naw, I swear!”

  Candice stood there without saying anything further, and into the silence I said, “Again, he’s telling the truth.”

  Candice then said, “Rico, you just admitted that you don’t think Skylar murdered her kid. What do you know that the cops don’t?”

  Rico gulped. “I don’t. I mean, not for sure,” he said. “But my girls, they’re in the know, you know?”

  “Start talking,” Candice said, the gun moving a fraction closer to Rico’s fast-swelling nose.

  “One a my girls said the judge on the case was on the take. Someone wanted her to hang, man.”

  “Who?” Candice demanded.

  “I don’t know, man!” Rico insisted, shaking in fear; it was pretty obvious he was telling the truth about that.

  Candice inhaled deeply, absorbing what he’d said. She knew, like I did, that the judge had imposed the death sentence above the jury’s recommendation that Skylar serve life in prison without parole.

  In other words, the jury had been convinced by the evidence that Skylar had murdered her son, but something about the case had bothered them enough not to go for the death penalty. Maybe there was something about the prosecution’s case that didn’t quite add up. Or maybe the jury had enough members on it that simply couldn’t believe a mother would murder her beautiful boy in that manner. And I understood that. It was too abhorrent to even imagine.

  Still, even knowing about a possible bribe didn’t get us closer to identifying the real killer. But then something in Rico’s energy got my attention and I said, “What aren’t you telling us, Rico?”

  His posture stiffened and his eyes darted once again to me. I glared hard at him, now even more convinced that he was hiding something. Candice leaned forward menacingly with the gun and his hand came off his privates to splay in front of his face. “Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”

  “Better start talking,” I advised him. “Candice looks like she’s getting tired holding back that trigger finger.”

  “It was just something I heard!”

  I made a “get on with it” motion with my hand. “Which was?”

  Rico took a steadying breath. “One o’ my homies who got popped around the same time that Sky’s sentence was handed down, he overheard another inmate say that Sky got what was comin’ to her. Said she’d disrespected him or somethin’, and she was payin’ for it. He said the guy said it like he’d had a hand in it or somethin’.”

  A chill went through me. “What was he in for, do you know?”

  Rico began to shake his head, but then he seemed to remember something and said, “B and E. Pretty sure that’s what Wayne said it was.”

  Another chill went through me. “What was his name?” I asked.

  Rico shook his head. “Don’t know.” Candice growled impatiently and Rico added, “I swear! I don’t know his name. He was just some guy in the holding cell with one of my bros.”

  “Where do we find this bro, yo?” Candice asked in a tone that wasn’t at all friendly.

  “He works at Rounders on Sixth.”

  “He working today?” Candice pressed.

  “Uh, yeah, I think so,” Rico said with more than a little enthusiasm. He wanted us to go, and bad.

  “What’s he look like?” I asked. We’d want to pick him out prior to asking for him.

  Rico put his hand a little above his head. “He’s an inch or two taller than me. Brown hair. Goatee. Looks a little like Ethan Hawke.”

  Candice shifted her gaze ever so slightly to me. “Sundance?”

  “He’s telling the truth.”

  Candice stepped back two paces and eased off pointing the gun at DeLaria’s face. “Okay. We’ll hit up Rounders. In the meantime, guess what you’re gonna do, Rico?”

  He audibly gulped. “What?” he asked meekly.

  “You’re gonna get out of the recruiting business and take up another profession. Something that doesn’t involve ruining young runaways.”

  Rico blinked at her. He was obviously still scared, but seemed reluctant to give up the life of being a scuzzball. Candice pointed the gun back at his face and took the two steps forward again. He held up both hands in surrender and yelled, “Okay! Okay! Don’t kill me, man! I’ll give up pimping!”

  But Candice wavered. She seemed to study him for a very long time before she said, “I don’t believe you, Rico.” And then she pulled the trigger.

  The gun made a loud pop and I jumped and Rico screamed. It took me a sec to realize that she hadn’t actually shot him, but I worried about where the bullet had gone. If there was anyone in the downstairs apartment, she could’ve killed them. Candice put the gun back into the waistband of her jeans and coolly said, “That’s your final warning, you son of a bitch. If I ever catch you running girls in this town again, I’m going to cash in that offer from Stacey’s father. You get me?”

  Rico was curled into a ball, quivering, sweating, and actually crying. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!” he said, weeping in earnest now. It was terrible to witness, but I had little sympathy for him. He’d brought it upon himself.

  Candice made a subtle motion with her chin and I eased backward away from DeLaria to the door, holding it open for her as she backed out of the room too. Once we were safely in the car again and Candice had started it up, I said, “What the hell was that about?”

  “What do you mean?” she said casually.

  “Candice, I love you,” I began, “but if you ever shoot at an unarmed man in my presence again, I may have to quit you.” Seeing her behave like that had seriously unsettled me. She’d turned into someone else up there, and I didn’t want any part of it.

  Candice chuckled warmly before reaching behind her to pull out her gun and hand it to me. “Check the clip, Sundance,” she said.

  Frowning at her, I took the gun and stared at the clip, which was filled with odd-looking bullets. Popping one out, I examined it. It felt lighter than normal and nothing like the hollow points Candice typically shot with. “What the hell are these?”

  “Blanks. I keep a clip of them when I really need to get info out of someone. They’re super effective without all the mess.”

  I sagged in my seat. “Oh, thank God! For a minute there I thought you’d done lost your mind.”

  Candice nodded absently. “It was a good thing I had the blank clip,” she said. “Stacey was this really sweet kid before Rico got hold of her. That fucker murdered who she could’ve been. And I’m sure there’re many more girls out there like her working for that asshole.”

  “You weren’t kidding about the offer from her dad, were you?”

  Candice fiddled with the radio and refused to answer the question, which I was actually thankful for. I knew enough disturbing things. I sure didn’t need to add another to the list.

  We got to Rounders and headed inside. As it happened, I was a little hungry, so Candice and I got a table and settled in to peruse the menu and subtly observe the employees. Midway through my perusal Candice cleared her throat to get my attention. Pulling my gaze away from a bacon/mango/chestnut pesto concoction, I looked up and saw her motioning with her chin toward the kitchen staff, visible behind a counter at the back of the narrow restaurant. A guy had just joined the crew, probably in his mid to late thirties, a little taller than Rico had been during the short time I’d seen him standing.

  Height. Check.

  Brown hair. Check.

  Goatee. Check.

  Looked a bit like Ethan Hawke. Check and check.

  “Wayne!” I called, waving to him, all friendly-like.


  His head turned and he eyed me with interest, and a few of the other guys nudged him and I could see them ask, “Who’s that?”

  Wayne kept his gaze on me and shrugged off the other guys, moseying out from around the counter and wiping his hands on his white apron. He approached with the practiced steps of a guy who’s used to convincing girls to go home with him. He had no interest in life beyond conquering his next piece of ass. I hated guys like Wayne. And I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’d dated more than my fair share of them before I’d met Dutch. Right before he got to our table, I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to the powers that be that I was lucky enough to share my bed with the real deal, and not some poser like Wayne.

  Still, I kept my smile wide and my eyes blinky and Wayne closed in with a dipped chin and a slight grin. “Hey, baby,” he said, like we were old friends. “Where you been?”

  I giggled. He had no idea who I was, but he was playing it like he recognized me from some tryst we’d had and was pleased I’d stopped by. “Oh, here, there, you know,” I said, patting the seat next to me.

  Wayne sat down and tipped an imaginary hat at Candice. “Who’s your friend?” he said, that interest sparking fresh volts as he took in Candice’s gorgeous face.

  She extended a hand. “Candy,” she said, with a hint of a Southern accent. Casting me a sideways glance, she added, “Sundance, you didn’t tell me Wayne was so hot.”

  Wayne chuckled and sat back in the chair, full of confidence. I knew he figured there was no way he wasn’t getting lucky tonight. “Oh, shush,” I said to her. “I told you he looked like Ethan Hawke!”

  Wayne nodded, as if he got that particular comparison a lot. “I get that a lot,” he said. (See?)

  Candice reached over and fiddled with her purse for a moment and I said, “So, Wayne, I was wondering if you could settle a bet Candy and I have going on.”

  “A bet?” he said, his eyes glinting with mild curiosity. Then he laughed as if he already knew what we’d bet on. “Commando, baby, don’t you remember?”

  I laughed wickedly and shoved at his shoulder. “No, not that! Something much juicier.”