Now You See Her Read Free Page A

convictions?”
    He shakes his head. “Charges were dropped.”
    “For lack of evidence?”
    He looks me in the eye, and the moment hangs. “Reggie, how many homicides do you think I worked so far in my career, twenty
     years a cop? Give me a number.”
    “One hundred fifty.”
    “Nowhere close.”
    “Two hundred?”
    “Over five.”
    “Five hundred murders.” I am stunned.
    “In the crack years, assault cases turned into homicides. I didn’t even see my wife, my boys. I missed their Little League,
     birthdays, our anniversary. Day and night we all worked, and we still got behind.”
    “You think Henry Faiser did not kill Peter Wald?”
    He sucks one cheek. “Does the name Jordan Wald ring a bell?”
    “Wald? The candidate Wald?”
    “State Senator Jordan S. Wald. He’s running for lieutenant governor.”
    “Carney and Wald?” I recall the names on the yard sign at the “haunted” house. A memory kicks in. My late Aunt Jo talked about
     a State Senator Wald who pushed legislation for tough environmental standards. It was one of her many causes. “Is Wald the
     environmentalist?” He says yes. “Was Peter Wald related to the senator?”
    “Peter Wald was his son. And into environmental causes too. An activist.”
    “What was he doing there?”
    “It was a drug scene, Reggie, a dealer on every corner.”
    “Peter Wald was there to buy drugs?”
    “We never knew for sure.” Devaney’s face says otherwise. He blinks and lowers his gaze. A moment passes.
    “But there was pressure to find the killer,” I say. “And now, years later—how many years?”
    “Thirteen.”
    “Thirteen years later, you’re not sure.”
    He pulls the knot of his tie, opens his collar but does not meet my eyes. “Let’s say as a veteran in Homicide, I know how
     easy it is to convict innocent people. Plus, there’s hepatitis in the prison system. Hepatitis B and C. It’s almost an epidemic.
     Prison health care isn’t exactly the Mayo Clinic.”
    The nub of it: Henry Faiser is in prison for a murder he maybe did not commit, and he’s seriously sick. Years after the fact,
     Devaney is bedeviled by guilt. “So you’ve opened old files and”— I swallow hard, the challenge before me on the table—“and
     an old notebook.”
    Here’s what’s next. Frank Devaney will put the notebook into my hands, ask me to hold it and to receive a psychic message.
     A feeling, an image, something. Will I have to tell him that my intuition is temporarily out of order?
    My mouth is dry as he lifts the brown tooled-leather notebook, clasping it like a prayer book. “I’ll turn to the particular
     pages,” he says. “You can hold it. That’s what your Aunt Jo did. I always had to give her something to hold.”
    My Aunt Jo, psychic number one, and me, the sequel, though I didn’t understand in childhood that my so-called overactive imagination
     was really a sixth sense. All those tests they put me through from third grade on—results inconclusive. No one would listen
     to my aunt’s explanation, which became the secret we eventually shared, aunt to niece.
    “Frank, let me say something up front. I want to be honest. The fact is, I’m not sure I can help you today. In that fog last
     night… well, maybe my sixth sense fogged up.”
    “Reggie, when it came to psychic abilities, your aunt was also modest. She never bragged. She never promised more than she
     could deliver. I appreciated that.”
    “I’m not my aunt.”
    “In the police department, sniffer dogs have more credibility than a psychic. If Homicide saw this, I’d never live it down.”
    Perspiration dots his brow. My armpits prickle. The notebook is in my palms, clasped in my fingers. Eyes closed, I try to
     focus, reach deep inside, imagine that I am one with the notebook. I try not to hear Frank Devaney breathe.
    What happens? I think random thoughts—my son’s birthday later this month, I’m out of bananas.
    Reggie, prepare to admit the truth, I tell