A Glimpse of Evil by Victoria Laurie Read Free Book Online Page A

next to mine.
    Harrison’s eyes focused again on the whiteboard. “I see that. What are you two up to?” he asked, his tone flinty.
    “Solving cases, sir,” Dutch replied easily.
    “I thought I directed you to audit files, Agent Rivers.”
    Dutch’s easy countenance never wavered. “Yes. Abby’s already finished a complete audit of an entire box of files, sir, and from that, we’ve managed to solve three cases in the course of the afternoon.”
    Harrison’s steely gaze swiveled to me. “You’ve completed an entire box of audits?”
    My mouth felt dry and I had to clear my throat before answering. “Yes, sir.”
    “Let me see,” he said.
    I glanced at Dutch and he nodded, so I got up and walked quickly back to his office, collected all the files, and brought them back to Harrison’s office, where I grouped them into my three piles again. Only, as I set down the stack of solvable cases, I moved the three we’d already resolved to a fourth pile. “These are the cases Dutch and I were able to resolve.”
    Harrison grabbed one of the files in the “Dead” pile. He opened it up and saw the big yellow sheet of legal paper with my handwritten note across it that read simply, “Dead.”
    “What the hell is this?” he demanded, holding up the sheet. “Where’s the audit?”
    It was Dutch’s turn to clear his throat. “Abby’s been doing her own special kind of audit, sir.”
    Harrison’s eyes came up to stare at us, his look incredulous. “Her own special kind of audit?”
    I sat forward to explain. “I’ve been using my radar, sir. By concentrating intuitively on each individual file, I’ve been able to isolate which cases will eventually be solved, and which ones have no further energy.”
    Harrison blinked. “Come again, Ms. Cooper?”
    I sighed. I hated all this “sir” and “Agent Rivers” and “Ms. Cooper” crap, but it’s what the office environment seemed to demand, so I reined myself in and tried again. “For me, thoughts contain energy. And if I ask a question in my head, something like, Can the case that I’m focusing on be solved? then that thought will either travel outward and feel like it has energy to it, or it will hit a proverbial big brick wall, and I know it’s a dead end.”
    Harrison held up his hand in a stopping motion. “Hold on,” he said. “Are you telling me that if you think a case can be solved, it can?”
    I glanced at Dutch for help and he took the lead. “Consider it like this, sir,” he said. “When Abby focuses on a case, she’s looking into the future to see if there is a positive resolution to it. If she sees one, she knows that by working backward she might be able to hit on the clues that were missed in the initial investigation, and we can work off those to solve the case. But if she looks into the future and doesn’t see it being resolved, she knows that it will remain a cold case.”
    Harrison sat back in his chair utterly dumbfounded. “You’re shitting me,” he said.
    Dutch and I exchanged a look. “No, sir,” I said meekly. “I’m afraid that’s what we’ve been doing.”
    “And,” Dutch said, his tone a little more firm, “that’s what you hired her for, isn’t it, sir?”
    Harrison let out a laugh that caught me completely off guard. And he kept laughing until his face turned red and tears were leaking down his cheeks. In all the time I’d known him, I’d never seen him lose his composure like this, and I didn’t know if I should go ahead and laugh with him or get ready to pack up my things and update my résumé.
    And I could only imagine what the other agents in the office were thinking. Although my back was to them, I was fairly certain they were taking in everything that was happening in the boss’s office.
    When Harrison had finally sobered enough to speak, he looked surprised to see that Dutch and I hadn’t joined him in the merriment. Wiping his eyes, he said, “I’m finding this all a little hard to take