Bull's Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #3

Chapter 7

The words nearly blur in Zandra's vision. She hides her excitement within a frothy hack into her sleeve.

Guess I don't need that stool any more.

"Then let's drop the James Bond stuff and air it out," Zandra says, remembering the cameras recording their chat. Perched in the ceiling corners, they could easily read the words on the screen.

They're probably zooming in right now.

"I'd really rather...," Vince starts to say.

"You picked the worst place for secrecy if you want to talk about that person. You're practically a stenographer for him at this point," Zandra says and rises from her chair. "You aren't from Stevens Point, are you?"

"I've been briefed," Vince says. "Where are you going?"

"You probably drank a Point Beer at the hotel to blend in with the locals. Lame. You got Packers underwear on, too?" Zandra says as she limps to the door. Her knuckles give it three quick knocks.

The guard opens the door from the other side and pokes his head in with a raised eyebrow. "Ready to go back to the cell?"

"Not on your life, asshole," Zandra says. Talk of blackmail gets her blood pumping, as well as her vocabulary. "How about you shitheels finally give us the privacy you've been pretending to offer all along?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the guard says, his gaze slipping to the laptop.

Did I say five years? I meant five minutes.

"I'll let you know when we're finished," Zandra says and slams the door, shaving the tip of the guard's nose hair off in the process. She turns to Vince. "Out with it."

Vince dabs the shine from his face with a red handkerchief before turning his attention back to the laptop as Zandra returns to her seat. He watches her for a moment while the ring of the door slamming dissipates in their ears.

He's not 80 years old. Why does he carry a handkerchief?

"Let's just suppose we're trying to connect a few dots," Vince says and types away on the computer. "Some of those dots were easy to connect. Others weren't. Where we hit absolute dead ends, we brought in a professional specializing in, shall we say, unusual methodology. You might be familiar with what I mean."

Quite.

"You hired a psychic," Zandra says.

"It was a last resort."

I'm flattered. Truly. You've got this condescending thing down to an art.

"I suppose I'm not the only psychic detective out there," Zandra says.

"You're not, but you're the only one with your reputation. Most of these psychics are frauds, especially the ones who want to crack cases. They want the celebrity. That's where I'm hoping you can help," Vince says. He turns the computer screen toward Zandra. It shows a paused video of a woman she doesn't recognize standing in an auditorium full of people. The woman is holding court like it's a college classroom.

Yeah, about that bail money...

"I can already tell you she's a fraud. Any time someone gets in front of that many people and claims to be channeling spirits, there is a 100 percent chance that person is a fraud. Cold reading is too easy," Zandra says, referring to the technique of gaming the odds of a hit in the "psychic's" favor by packing as many people into a reading as possible. She studies the frozen frame of video a little longer. "But you wouldn't go to all this trouble over something as simple as that, would you? Houdini was talking about this stuff a century ago."