NoBODY by Susan Wittig Albert

Author:Susan Wittig Albert [Albert, Susan Wittig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Persevero Press
Published: 2019-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

In Pecan Springs, it’s past three and Detective Ethan Connors is heading back to the police station after a quick Rueben bagel (pastrami, sauerkraut, and melted Swiss cheese) at the Bagel Connection on West Cedar. Lunch was late because he’s spent the past several hours coordinating the Montgomery investigation. Now, as he drives, he is mentally reviewing what needs to be done next—but without his usual enthusiasm. He’s too strung out.

After he found the pink earbuds lying beside a concrete curb on Harper Lane, Connors knew he had to pursue this no-body investigation, whether or not he liked it, whether or not he believed it. As a matter of fact, he does not believe any of this psychic crap Ruby Wilcox is handing out, not for one minute, not for even a fraction of a second—although he has to admit that whatever happened with her out there on the trail seemed pretty convincing at the time.

And it’s not just that he feels personally uncomfortable with all that psychic woo-woo, although he certainly has a right. Over the years he’s been in law enforcement, he has seen far too many screwballs who come forward to “help” the police, each one spouting a favorite brand of psychic mumbo-jumbo—clairvoyance, divination, channeling, ESP, astral projection, precognition, telepathy. For some mysterious reason, psychics are especially drawn to no-body cases, which seem to attract them the way road-kill attracts hungry vultures.

But in Connors’ experience (and he’s had plenty), these weirdos have two things in common.

One, they waste the time of hard-working, already stressed-out detectives, diverting resources that could be directed to more credible leads. There’s only so much time and money available for an investigation, and chasing down psychic leads is a waste of both.

Two, without exception, they have been friggin’ flat-out, full-bore, one-hundred-percent frauds. Not one psychic has ever come up with anything even remotely helpful in the cases they claimed to “assist.” What they are really after is attention—from the cops but even more from the media. Which makes things worse, of course, because the public can never get enough of this crackpot stuff. They gobble up any kind of ridiculous psychic nonsense like it’s candy, so newspapers and the television just keep on dishing it out, the more the better. Bottom line, psychics are money in the bank.

This is the mindset Connors has brought with him into this particular no-body case, which wouldn’t be a case at all, at least for another seventy-two hours, if it weren’t for Ruby Wilcox. The trouble is (and it’s big trouble, the kind you would stay away from if you could) that Wilcox is not only a close friend of the chief, but an unusually attractive, intelligent, and sympathetic woman who gives every appearance of telling the truth. If he’d had less experience with psychic nutcases, he might be tempted to give her the benefit of the doubt. If they had met in different circumstances, they might even have become friends—or more, maybe, although the odds against that happening with any woman seem pretty damned high these days.

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