Later that night around nine I got an odd text from Candice. It read simply that she was off our case until further notice, and that she’d catch me up on the details the next morning.
I sent her back a note asking if she wanted to talk because I had a strong sense that something upsetting had happened to my friend. She waited nearly an hour to reply and it was only two words: “Not now.”
To add to the confusion, around ten o’clock just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard the front door open and thought it must be Dutch, but another voice told me he had company.
I waited for him to come upstairs and he confirmed that he’d brought someone home with him. “Are you okay with Harrison crashing at our place tonight?”
I sat up and stared at him. “You brought Brice home?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He and Candice had a major fight and the poor guy was ready to camp out on his couch at the office.”
I blinked several times, trying to catch up with this sudden turn of events. “Uh, sure,” I said. “Of course it’s okay with me. And put him in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall. I just washed the sheets in there, actually, and there are fresh towels in the closet.”
“He’s good on the couch,” Dutch replied, and I gave him a stern look.
“Oh, for cripe’s sake, Dutch! He’s not sleeping on that lumpy couch.” When Dutch blinked dumbly back at me, I rolled my eyes and got up to grab my robe.
After heading downstairs, I found my boss sitting like a dejected little kid on the edge of the sofa. “Hey, Abby,” he said when he saw me.
“How you doin’?”
“Been better.”
I turned to Dutch, who’d followed me down the stairs, and scowled. “What?” he asked defensively.
“Can’t you see the poor man needs a beer?” Again I got nothing but a few blinks from him, and impatiently I hurried into the kitchen to retrieve a brewski. After handing it to Brice, I said, “There’s a room upstairs that’s all made up, sir. Why don’t you go on up and you can stay as long as you like?”
He smiled gratefully. “I don’t want you to go to any trouble. Really, I can crash on your couch and be out of your hair in the morning.”
It was then that I noticed the duffel bag next to him on the floor. I stepped forward, grabbed it, and turned to the stairs. “Don’t be silly,” I insisted. “You’ll be much more comfortable upstairs. And I mean it when I say you can stay here until you figure things out.”
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the way Dutch and Brice were exchanging dumb blinks back and forth. “I’m not taking no for an answer, sir,” I said firmly.
Brice gave me a half smile. Standing up, he saluted and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s more like it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dutch joined me back in our bedroom after Brice had been given the tour of the spare bedroom and the adjoining bath. “That was nice of you,” he said once he’d closed the door.
I shrugged out of my robe and got back under the covers. “Candice would have done the same for you.”
“I’ll remember that the next time you kick me out of the house.”
“Do you know what their fight was about?”
Dutch sighed. “Candice received a formal complaint from the Texas state PI licensing board. They’re accusing her of conducting investigations before her license has been issued.”
“What?” I gasped. “Who complained?”
“According to Candice, it must have been Brice.”
“Why would she think that?”
Dutch put a finger to his lips. “Abs,” he warned, “can you keep it down? I don’t want Harrison to know we’re discussing this.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, like it’s not obvious that we’d be talking about him. Seriously, why does Candice think it was Brice who complained?”
“Because of what he said when you were in the hospital after you two nearly drowned.”
I thought back to that afternoon, and I did remember him warning her that it would only take one complaint to the state licensing board for her application to get bounced. “Did Brice actually send in the complaint?”
Dutch climbed in bed next to me. Pulling me close to spoon with him, he kissed the back of my neck. “He swears it didn’t come from him, but Candice doesn’t believe it, and in the course of their shouting match, I guess it came out that she’s been investigating one of our cold cases and then he blew up.”
I gulped. “Am I in trouble?”
Dutch laughed. “No. Harrison thinks Candice talked you into letting her investigate the girls.”
I sighed. “Which is actually the truth.”
“He also wants you to brief him on any new leads you’ve uncovered in the morning.”
“Uh-oh.”
“And I think he wants you to go to bat for him with Candice again.”
I squirmed around to look at Dutch. “He wants me to what?”
“He wants you to convince Candice that he had nothing to do with the letter from the licensing board.”
“How’d I get stuck in the middle of this?”
Dutch chuckled. “By putting yourself there, sweethot.”
“Crap on a cracker,” I grumbled, turning back around. “Have I mentioned lately that I hate it when you’re right?”
“No,” he said, nuzzling my neck playfully. “And frankly I think you’re overdue.”
The next morning can best be described in one word: awkward.
I still couldn’t bring myself to call Brice by his first name when we were in a casual setting, so seeing him the next morning coming out of the bathroom in his boxer shorts made for one flush-cheeked moment. I had no idea how I was going to get through a debrief with him without thinking about my boss in his boxers.
Harrison left before either one of us, and I rode in with Dutch, somewhat excited to get back to work again, but wishing I looked better. “I cannot wait until Friday,” I said.
“Staple-removal day?” he asked.
“Yes, and a nice hot shower. I may stay in there all day.”
“You’ve still gotta work, you know. Now that you’re off the hook with IA, you’ll need to put in those eight hours.”
I spent the rest of the ride thinking about what Dutch had said, and I started to realize that, grateful as I was for the steady paycheck, working in a cubicle five days a week wasn’t very satisfying.
What I had enjoyed was palling around with Candice—like old times. We had the freedom to call our own shots and not worry about punching a clock every morning. Somewhere deep inside I knew that if I worked at the CCS for too long, I’d eventually burn out.
After getting settled at my desk again, I was invited into Harrison’s office with Dutch to debrief him on the missing girls from Dallas. I gave Harrison the details, working to make it seem like it was more my idea than Candice’s, and finished by letting him know that we’d discovered a possible fourth victim and hit a dead end unless Genevieve came up with a name for us to investigate.
The whole time I was speaking, Harrison didn’t comment or interrupt. He listened, took a few notes, thanked me for the debrief, then excused me from his office.
I was so stunned at the fact that he didn’t say one thing about my flagrant breaking of the rules that I sat there for a minute, looking at him blankly. “Something you wanted to add, Ms. Cooper?” he asked when I didn’t get up and leave.
“Uh . . . ,” I said. “Well, actually, I’m kinda surprised you’re not mad.”
He and Dutch exchanged a humorous look. “I would have preferred you’d asked if you and Ms. Fusco could tackle this on your own,” he admitted. “But knowing her as I do, I’ve learned that attempting to stop Candice is like trying to stand in front of a steamroller; if you don’t get out of the way, you’re likely to get flattened.”
I laughed. “Yeah, she’s pretty determined when she wants to be.” I then thought of somethi
ng. “Sir, would you mind if I asked you if you really had nothing to do with that complaint to the licensing board?”
“I had nothing to do with it, Abby,” he said firmly. “Nothing.”
I nodded. “Okay. I believe you. And I’ll make sure to mention that to Candice.”
Harrison fidgeted with the alignment of his name-plate. “Thank you,” he said. “And now if you’ll excuse us, I have some reports and cases to go over with Agent Rivers.”
I stood up to go. “Yes, sir.”
Dutch got up too and opened the door for me. As I passed him, he said, “Remember, I need your input on those three cases we talked about.”
“Absolutely. Come find me when you’re done here.”
“Ms. Cooper?” Brice called, stopping me in the doorway.
“Yes?”
“Would you be up for another of your classes today for the agents?”
I smiled ruefully at him. “You mean, because the last one was so packed with interested pupils?”
Brice twirled a pen between his fingers and motioned toward the whiteboard where the tally for our month was proudly displayed. “Oh, I think you’ll have a few agents more than willing to sit in this time. Can you prepare something for us by ten?”
I still had all the notes and ideas from the first class in my desk drawer. “Of course.”
“Excellent. See you then.”
I spent much of the rest of the morning going over and refining my notes for the class. Brice sent an e-mail letting the squad know that I’d be in the conference room at ten and hinting that he strongly encouraged them to attend. So I wasn’t surprised when at five to ten they all began moseying toward the conference room.
On his way in, Rodriguez made sure to whisper a note of encouragement in my ear. “I’m glad you’re doing this,” he told me.
I took a sip of water and tried not to look nervous. But then I considered that trying not to look nervous probably made me look nervous, so I busied myself by handing out my supportive material to the group as they entered.
Dutch and Brice were the last ones in, and even Katie had come in to see what I had to say.
“Good morning,” I said to the agents. My voice cracked a little and I felt my cheeks heat up. Public speaking isn’t really my forte. “Today I’m going to go over the very basics of developing your own intuition. I’m not going to spend any time on the theory behind PSI or the promising scientific studies showing definitive proof of its existence being done in Europe right now, but if you’re interested in any of that, please don’t hesitate to see me later and I’ll point you to some Internet links and such.”
I looked around the room at the blank stares of the attendees and thought I should get to the good parts and quick. “What I’m going to attempt to do in the course of these classes is to have you listen a little more carefully to your own gut instincts. I would imagine that if you’ve made it to the level of investigative agent, you’re already well schooled in relying on your own intuition when it comes to solving a case. I just want to hone those inherent skills and take you one level further.”
I paused here and looked around again to see if they were following. The most any of the men did was blink or nibble on a snack they’d brought in with them. “Okay!” I said, clapping my hands. “Let’s get busy. What most people don’t realize is that, at its heart, your intuition isn’t just a sixth sense; it’s a personal language and it’s made up of symbols and images that string together to form ideas that plant themselves either at the far corners of your thoughts, or in the forefront of your mind. So what you as individuals need to do to utilize your already keen ability to tap into your intuition is begin to build your own language so that these insights can guide you more successfully through these cold cases.”
I paused to see if the group was still with me here, and I was encouraged to see that the blinking and nibbling had turned to something like interest. Encouraged, I continued. “To build that language, we’re going to be using the same techniques your mother utilized when you were a child and she taught you the basics of English. We’re going to associate some simple and common images with their word counterparts to form the building blocks of your new language.
“To make sure this ends up being a useful tool to you, we’ll begin with some basic crime- fighting words and images, and as time goes on, we’ll be able to build on that initial vocabulary to include some of the more subtle associations. I don’t know that you’ll all be predicting the future by the end of these lectures, but you should be able to glean some solid information out of the past by using your new skills.”
I then began to hand out sets of flash cards that I’d had Katie print up for me. On the front of each card was a word associated with crime. There were cards for the basics like “suspect,” “weapon,” and “victim,” along with more complicated words like “homicide,” “fraud,” “bank robbery,” “terrorism,” “illegal gambling,” “cyber crime,” “kidnapping,” “organized crime,” etc.
After all the cards had been handed out, I said, “The thing to remember is that most of this exercise will be done with your eyes closed. On the front of each card is a word associated with crimes the FBI investigates. The other side is blank. What I want you to do is to close your eyes, think about that word, and see what image comes to mind. Once you have that image, write the description down on the blank side of the card.
“Those of you who have good imaginations will find this exercise easy, but those of you who are perhaps more analytical might have some difficulty. If you do encounter some issues creating an image for the word on the card, open your eyes and draw a picture. It doesn’t have to be detailed, and it’s okay if it’s completely abstract, but you will need an image to associate with that word, so don’t give up until you have it.”
All the agents in the room seemed eager to get on with the exercise and I was anxious to see what they would come up with, so I eyed the clock and said, “I’ll give you until ten forty-five, and your time starts now.”
The agents went to work and I felt a wave of relief that they were all following my directions. I could tell the men with the most natural intuitive abilities; they kept their eyes closed for almost the entire period, opening them only to jot down a few notes per card.
Others stuck to doodling images on the backs of the cards. Only one person seemed to really struggle, and that was Harrison. The poor guy spent a lot of time tapping the side of his temple with his pen and staring blankly at the wall.
And I believe I finally understood why it’d been so hard to convince him in the beginning that I was really psychic; he had precious little natural intuition of his own, so of course he couldn’t understand it in someone else.
Finally, at ten forty- five I told the agents to put their pencils and cards down. I felt it might be important to get some feedback from them to gauge their progress. I decided to start with a friendly face first. “Agent Rodriguez,” I said, “can I ask what image you wrote down for the word ‘homicide’?”
Rodriguez eyed his paper. “I drew a chalk outline.”
I beamed at him. “Excellent!” I said, relieved that he’d captured the exercise so well. “That’s a fantastic image to use. Now, what did you write down for ‘suspect’?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I drew a wanted poster,” he said.
I wanted to hug him. “Perfect!” I exclaimed. “You’re really good at this, Agent Rodriguez. Are you sure you haven’t had any other training?”
Rodriguez blushed. “I swear this is my first time.”
“Well, you’re a natural,” I said, then turned to another agent. “And what about you, Agent Cox? What did you get for ‘kidnapping’?”
Poor Agent Cox looked like a deer caught in headlights. “It’s weird,” he said to me, obviously embarrassed about what he’d written.
“Weird is actually good,” I encouraged. “The stranger the image, the more it will stand out when you’re focusing on a case and your intui
tion suggests it.”
“Well, I immediately thought of Patty Hearst. You know, she was kidnapped before she was brainwashed into robbing that bank.”
I could feel my shoulders really relax. These guys were naturals. “Agent Cox, I think that’s a perfect image to use. But let me ask you, what image came up for ‘robbery’?”
“Chris Douglas.”
“Who?”
“He was the first guy I ever busted for robbery back when I was with the Philly PD. I haven’t thought of that kid in years, but when I saw the word ‘robbery,’ that’s what came to my mind.”
“If it makes sense to you, then that’s all that matters,” I told him.
After picking on a few more agents, I decided to show them how they could begin to use their new language practically. I dug into my folder of notes searching for an old case that I’d helped Candice solve a few years ago. Pulling out copies of a photograph along with several blank sheets of paper, I handed these to the first agent and told him to take one of each, then pass them around to the group. “That is the photo of a building where a crime took place. What I’d like you to do is simply consider the photo, then close your eyes and write down whatever images spring to mind using your new vocabulary. But also note, gentlemen, that if a new image comes into your head, don’t hesitate to write that down as well.”
I waited for several minutes while the agents did as I asked. When the last pen went down, I gave the next set of instructions. “Now I want you to take those images and jot down the story of the crime. What do you think happened in that building?”
The agents went back to their paper and began to write out their thoughts. It took no longer than three minutes for them all to complete it. I decided to start with Agent Rodriguez again. “Tell me what you think happened.”
“It was a robbery,” he said, lifting up his flash card where there was a cartoon image of a man wearing a mask with a bag of money in his hand. “I get two suspects,” he added, holding up another card with the image of a wanted poster. “One male and one female.” I couldn’t help it. My jaw dropped and I just stared at him. “What?” he asked nervously when he saw my reaction.