Sense of Deception

  The rest of that sentence cost me a buck fifty, but I didn’t really care because if we couldn’t bring this Slip guy in for questioning, then he didn’t have to talk to us. We had no jurisdiction, no cause, and no case. I set down the bowl of pasta and leaned forward to put my face in my hands. I thought the worst thing that could happen was that we wouldn’t be able to find Slip before the appellate hearing. But it wasn’t. The worst thing that could happen was that we would find Slip and he’d refuse to say boo to us, and we’d have to let him go without so much as a “We know you did it.”

  “What’re we gonna do?” I moaned.

  Dutch put a hand on my back. “Listen,” he said. “This guy from the Home Depot store has a criminal record, right?”

  “We think so, yeah.”

  “Then I’m pretty sure that if you’re diligent, you can find some kind of parole violation. Assuming he’s on parole.”

  I felt a tingle of lightness in my abdomen and my head snapped up. Grabbing Dutch by the face, I pulled him forward and kissed him passionately. “You are the best husband ever!”

  He grinned. “Just remember that the next time you get mad at me.”

  I stroked his cheek. “If I forget, I’m pretty sure you’ll remind me.”

  “What are good husbands for?”

  * * *

  The next morning I was at the office promptly at eight forty-five and Oscar showed up a few minutes late. My radar pinged the moment he walked through my office door wearing his new duds. I felt good news surrounded him. “Look at you,” I said, giving him an appreciative up-down.

  Oscar puffed his chest out a little. “This is where I remind you that you’re a married woman, Cooper.”

  My smile widened. And then I noticed something on his new shirt. Leaning forward, I saw that it was hair. Dog hair. “Dude,” I said, swiping my hand across his shirt to help clean it off. “What’s with all the hair?”

  Oscar offered me a big ol’ cheesy grin. “I went by the new house last night, just to look at it before heading home. The sellers don’t live there anymore—they’ve already moved—so it’s not as creepy as you might think. Anyway, I parked at the curb and was sort of just taking in my new place when this woman walks by carrying this white, matted mutt. We got to talking and she said that she was house-sitting for a couple two doors down, and the dog she tells me was a stray from the neighborhood that she’s been setting out food for and trying to coax it to trust her so that she could rescue him. She said he finally let her get close enough to grab him, and that she was thinking about taking him to a rescue shelter in the morning.

  “Anyway, she starts to ask me if I like dogs, like she might want me to take him, and swear to God, Cooper, what you said to me about getting a dog pops into my head, so before you know it, the little guy’s in my car and I’m taking him home, giving him a bath and a big cut of my steak dinner. He cleans up really good, see?” he said, showing me a picture of an adorable little white and tan pup with big brown eyes and perky little terrier ears.

  I started to laugh. “Oh, Oscar,” I said. “He’s adorable!”

  “Yeah. He’s really sweet. I named him Amigo.”

  “I love it. But you should take him to a vet as soon as you can. Get him checked for heartworm and see if he has a chip.”

  “I dropped him off about ten minutes ago,” Oscar said. “That’s why I’m late. They’re gonna call me after the vet sees him. I hope he doesn’t belong to anybody. I really want to keep him.”

  And then my radar pinged again. “Did you get her number?” I asked.

  Oscar actually blushed. “Whose?”

  “The house sitter.”

  “Uh . . . ,” Oscar said. “Not yet. She’s there for another week, she told me. She was really cute, though. Think I should ask her out?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know you should ask her out.” Grabbing my purse, I motioned for us to go.

  As we were headed out, Oscar said, “You know, Cooper, I’ve been around you for a couple of years, and your radar is always really cool to watch in action, but when you point that thing at me, I gotta tell you, it freaks me out how you can just lay out my life like that.”

  “Yeah?” I said, taking that as a compliment.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, house, furniture, wardrobe, dog, and maybe a girlfriend. That’s the order you told me it would happen, and bam, bam, bam. It’s all coming true.”

  I gave him a heavy-lidded look and took a partial quote out of Candice’s book. “You ain’t my first rodeo, pardner.”

  Oscar chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let’s go see an old geezer about a truck.”

  The drive to the address on the driver’s license of Doug Gallagher was a bit long. It took us south, well out of Austin proper and into a more rural section of town. We finally pulled up in front of a run-down old house on a fairly sizable plot of land. I let Oscar take the lead as we headed cautiously up to the house. I noticed that my colleague had slipped his badge to his belt, despite what he’d told Candice about not presenting himself as FBI during our investigation. I figured he’d gotten it out because he finally realized what a desperate situation we were in.

  Oscar knocked on the door and I stood off to one side. We waited for a bit, and heard some rustling sounds from inside. At last the door was opened by a squat, fat old man wearing nothing more than his tighty-whities.

  I averted my eyes. Immediately.

  “What?” the old man demanded.

  Oscar put a hand on his badge, a subtle yet perfectly clear move to indicate to the old man that he was acting in an official capacity. “Good morning, sir,” Oscar said. “Sorry to bother you at an early hour, but I’m looking for Mr. Doug Gallagher.”

  “Who wants to know?” the old man rasped. His voice was high and reedy. It grated on the nerves as badly as Edith Bunker’s. I figured I’d be able to stand it for about ten minutes. Tops.

  Oscar introduced us and said that we were looking into a cold case involving a truck matching the description of one registered to him back in 2004.

  “My truck?” the old man said, giving himself away. Not that we had any doubts, of course. He matched the photo on his driver’s license very well, except for the no-clothes thing. “What kind of trouble that old truck got itself into?”

  I had the distinct impression the old man was fishing for information that had less to do with the truck and more with a certain someone he knew who attracted trouble and had maybe borrowed the truck.

  Oscar didn’t miss a beat. “A series of B and Es, sir. I mean, a series of breaking and enterings.”

  “I know what B and E stands for, sonny,” the old man snapped, working his jaw like he had a bad tooth. Or five. “I don’t have that truck anymore, though,” he said. “It finally broke down five years ago. We junked it.”

  “We?” I asked. The old man had given himself away again.

  “I,” he corrected.

  Oscar said, “We don’t believe you had anything to do with the series of B and Es, sir. We have surveillance footage of someone else using your truck as a getaway car. But if you know this individual, and won’t tell us who it is, then you could be arrested for obstruction.”

  The old man scowled at Oscar. “You gonna arrest me, then arrest me. I got nothin’ to say to you.”

  I decided to step in. “Sir, I know that coming here and asking you these questions must be upsetting to you, and I’m so sorry.” Gallagher turned his watery blue eyes to me and looked me up and down, settling his gaze about midchest. “I also think you might want to protect the young man you lent the truck to, but, sir, the case we’re investigating involves the murder of a young boy.”

  At the mention of this, the old man’s gaze snapped up from my chest and he stared at me in shock. “What did you say?”

  “A young boy was murdered,” I repeated. “And your truck wa
s involved.”

  Gallagher swore under his breath and twisted his body away from us so that we couldn’t see him curse some more. “That son of a bitch,” he said. “No-account, lazy, no-good son of a bitch!”

  While Gallagher wasn’t looking, I bounced my eyebrows at Oscar. I had a feeling we were about to get lucky. “I wasn’t in on it,” he said when he turned back to me. “I only loaned him the truck.”

  “Who, sir?” Oscar said.

  I held my breath. Please, oh please, oh please! I prayed.

  “My nephew,” he said at last. “Dennis Gallagher. But everybody calls him Denny.”

  I exhaled. Yes!

  Oscar wrote down the name in his notebook. “Do you know where Dennis is right now, sir?”

  “Probably at work, if he hasn’t gotten fired again.”

  “Where does he work?” I asked.

  “He’s on a construction crew for Mason Builders. They got a subdivision going up in Buda. You can probably find him there.”

  “Excellent, sir,” Oscar said, extending his hand to shake the old man’s.

  I shook it too, but in that moment I seriously could have hugged him, tighty-whities and all. It was the first big break we’d had.

  “If you wouldn’t mind keeping this conversation to yourself,” Oscar said to Doug. “We’d appreciate that too.” His meaning was clear; he was hoping the old man wouldn’t tip off Dennis.

  Gallagher waved a hand dismissively. “I want nothin’ more to do with that sorry piece of ass,” he said. “Kid owes me three grand from five years ago when he skipped his hearing and I lost the bond. He ain’t never gonna pay up.”

  I tried not to let my mounting excitement show. If Gallagher had indeed skipped a hearing five years earlier, it was highly likely he was still on parole, especially given the fact that he’d been in county almost a decade ago for additional crimes. I wanted to thank him for being a repeat offender and making our work of confronting him legitimately so much easier.

  Oscar nodded at the old man like he understood exactly how no-account nephews could be. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “And sorry to disturb you.”

  As we turned to leave, Gallagher took one small step forward, as if he had additional information for us. “He told me he never hurt that little kid,” he said. “I swear I believed him.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming. If only this guy had come forward ten years ago when Skylar was living through the nightmare of the murder of her son and the subsequent arrest and trial, an ordeal so horrible it was a wonder she survived it, he could have spared her and many others so much pain.

  Oscar’s features became flat. I knew the statement made him angry as well. “Okay, sir,” he said.

  Gallagher stuck out his chin as if emphasizing that he’d said something true, then turned to head back into the house.

  We didn’t even wait for the door to close before we were hurrying for the car. We had no time to lose, as we both knew that, at the moment, Doug Gallagher might be willing to cooperate with us by not calling his nephew to warn him about our impending visit, but blood was always thicker than water, and it was best not to let too much time go by before the old man could have second thoughts about keeping his trap shut.

  After looking up the location of the construction on Mason Builders’ Web site, Oscar drove fast, but not Candice fast, which meant that at the end of the ride I didn’t want to leap from the car and kiss the ground, but was still mildly carsick.

  We got out of the car and I hung up the phone with Candice. She’d looked into Dennis Gallagher’s record, and he had one as long as your arm. Three B and Es, one arrest for possession, and a DWI—the guy was a poster child for bad news getting badder.

  His last time in the clink had been five years earlier, and he’d gotten out three years ago. He was currently still on parole. Good news just kept getting gooder.

  Oscar and I met at the front of the car and looked around at the dusty terrain dotted by pickup trucks and men wearing construction hats putting up dozens of homes, each in different stages of completion.

  We stood side by side for a minute, surveying the scene. “What’s the game plan?” I asked.

  “We confront him, provoke him, and get him on a parole violation,” Oscar replied. Simple. Easy. If only it would go that way.

  I nodded in agreement and Oscar motioned for me to follow him. I took it that he also wanted to take the lead when we confronted Dennis. We walked with purpose toward a large trailer set at the front of the group of houses that looked to be the most complete, and Oscar didn’t even hesitate to open the door and step inside.

  As he and I walked into the trailer, two men, bent over blueprints, looked up in surprise. “Can I help you?” the first guy asked. He was a round man with sagging pants and the red face of someone who’s spent too much time in the sun.

  Oscar introduced himself as Agent Rodriguez of the Austin FBI, and asked after Dennis Gallagher.

  The two men looked startled. “He in some kind of trouble?” the round man asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, sir. However, I can inform you that if Dennis is doing any welding work on your site, he doesn’t currently have a certificate from TxDOT to operate as a welder.”

  The two men exchanged a look, and the other guy—taller and leaner than the first—said, “I told you I wanted that guy off my crew.”

  The round man appeared to smolder at both the rebuke and the information. “Let me call him over here,” he said, lifting out his cell.

  Oscar took a step forward, not to threaten him, but simply to get his attention, and said, “If you would do us a favor and not mention that we’re here asking about him, I would appreciate it, sir.”

  “Will do,” the round man said. We waited quietly while the call was made. It was short and to the point, and we all stood around for a few minutes until the door opened and in walked the spitting image of the guy who Skylar had described to us.

  Dennis Gallagher was about five-nine, with white blond hair, and piercing blue eyes. His skin wasn’t very tan for someone who worked all day in the sun, and I suspected he used liberal amounts of sunscreen to keep from frying up like a raisin.

  He also wore a long-sleeved shirt, which was customary with construction crews in the summer in Texas, as it actually kept them cooler. He looked nervous and fidgety when he entered, which was good, because it said he was a guy with things to hide, even from his employers.

  “Hey, boss,” he said as he entered. “What’s up?”

  Instead of answering him, the round guy looked at us and said, “We’ll leave you to it.” He and the other guy then walked to the door, but on their way out, the round guy added, “And, Dennis, after they get done talkin’ to you, you can collect your last paycheck. You’re fired.”

  Dennis’s head was swiveling back and forth between us and his bosses and he seemed to be trying to take in all the bad news at once. He muttered some faint half-word protests, but nothing coherent came out as the two men exited, leaving us alone with a child killer.

  “Hey, there, Dennis,” Oscar said, as if they were old buds.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. But it was a weak demand, filled with quivering tones and shaking vocal cords.

  “Justice,” Oscar told him, and I saw his hands clench into fists.

  Uh-oh.

  Dennis seemed to have the same thought because he pivoted quickly and laid a palm on the door handle, but Oscar was much faster, and he sprang forward and threw the weight of his body against the door, while he shouted, “Look out, Cooper! He’s got a weapon!”

  I dove to the floor, even though I hadn’t seen a gun, and covered my head with my hands. Nearby I heard the sounds of a struggle, and perhaps a fist or two connecting with flesh, followed by grunts of pain. And then Dennis’s face was level with mine, but squished i
nto the thin carpet.

  I uncovered my head and sat up. Oscar had Dennis’s hands drawn up behind his back and was snapping them into handcuffs. He then fished through Dennis’s pockets, and pulled up a pocketknife, which he tossed to the floor at my feet. “Threatening an FBI agent with a weapon is a federal offense, Dennis,” Oscar said loudly.

  He then hauled the man up to his feet and pushed him toward the door. He paused in front of it and gave me a meaningful look, then eyed the knife on the floor. I somehow managed to recover from the shock of what’d just gone down, and picked up the knife by the ends, depositing it into my purse before ambling forward to open the door so that Oscar could shove Dennis out and down the steps. Standing very close to the door were the same guys from inside the trailer. They watched us with open mouths and hustled to get out of the way while Oscar forced Dennis to walk in front of him. “Gentlemen,” my companion said with a nod as he passed by.

  “Thank you for your help,” I added as I followed Oscar. They sort of half nodded to us as we left.

  Hustling ahead, I got the passenger door of the car open for Dennis, and Oscar did that whole move of pivoting Dennis to stand with his back against the opening, then put a hand on top of his head to basically jackknife him into the car.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Dennis yelled as Oscar closed the door in his face.

  Oscar held out his hand and I dug around in my purse to lay the knife in his palm. “Beg to differ with you, buddy,” he said, wiggling the closed pocketknife at him through the window.

  It was hard, but I managed to quell any protests about what was going down right in front of me. Oscar played by the rules. He never broke them. So to see him doing this, to see him basically setting Dennis up, was big, and the fact that somewhere along the way a switch had been thrown that allowed him to compromise his principles like this bothered me.

  And to clarify, I wasn’t at all upset by the fact that we’d be able to prosecute Gallagher under the false pretense, and hopefully get him to confess to Noah’s murder. Hell, I’d place my hand on that Bible and swear before God and man that Dennis Gallagher had produced a knife and had threatened us the second we’d introduced ourselves, and I’d do it without hesitation because the guy had murdered a sweet, innocent little boy, and he was about to play a part in the murder of that boy’s mother. If lying about what’d gone down in the trailer was what it took to save her, then I’d do it.