Deceived Read online

  Deceived

  Also by James Scott Bell

  Fiction

  Deadlock

  Breach of Promise

  The Whole Truth

  No Legal Grounds

  Presumed Guilty

  Try Dying

  Try Darkness

  Sins of the Fathers

  The Darwin Conspiracy

  Circumstantial Evidence

  Final Witness

  Blind Justice

  The Nephilim Seed

  City of Angels*

  Angels Flight*

  Angel of Mercy*

  A Greater Glory

  A Higher Justice

  A Certain Truth

  Glimpses of Paradise

  Nonfiction

  Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure

  Write Great Fiction: Revision & Self-Editing

  *coauthor

  ZONDERVAN

  Deceived

  Copyright © 2009 by James Scott Bell

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition January 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56121-7

  This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks.

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, James Scott.

  Deceived / James Scott Bell.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-310-26904-5

  1. Deception — Fiction. 2. Canyons — California — Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.E5158D44 2008

  813’.54 — dc22

  2008033884

  * * *

  The author would like to thank the Alfred Publishing Co., Inc, for use of the song “Anything Goes,” words and music by Cole Porter, © 1934 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Deceived

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Saturday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Deceived

  Hey, Jon, thanks for the e-mail.

  You’re right, I’ve had TV people practically camped out in my front yard. There’s even a movie guy wanting me to cooperate on a screenplay. He’s the craziest. He actually followed me into the men’s room at Ruth’s Chris and wouldn’t let me close the stall door! Says he’s got two screenplays “in development” at the studios. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but you don’t corner a man when nature is calling. Know what I mean?

  Still, that’s all part of it. You and I know it’s a juicy story, and I know you must be getting the same kind of calls.

  Yes, I will do a paper on this. My specialty is cognitive psych, as you know, and that’s why you called me in the first place. And you also know what’s got me into so much trouble lately with my peers — introducing the concept of what I call “sin dissociation” to the academic discussion.

  But from the research I’ve done, and the interviews, I know we have a biblical case right here. That’s your department, of course, but remember — I was a year ahead of you in seminary. I get to pull rank, don’t I?

  Please, don’t think there is any way you should have suspected this. Not under the circumstances. Especially not with the killing happening the way it did.

  I’m attaching some notes. This is all just preliminary. I suspect the paper will take a good year. I’ve tried to put the events in chronological order and, every now and then, bring in the past to explain the present.

  Let me know what you think. Your input will be invaluable.

  It was good getting together with you. Hey, maybe you and I should do the screenplay. I mean, you live in LA. Isn’t it required that everyone in LA write a screenplay?

  Let’s talk soon.

  Ray

  If there is to be any hope of recovery, we must recognize the unalterable fact that this is a spiritual malady, and as such requires a spiritual answer.

  For too long, our profession has done real harm by failing to recognize the existence of soul and spirit, as well as the reality of sin and consequence.

  But if we can attune our patients to listen, listen to what we may call the voice of God, that is ground for real hope and healing.

  — From “Sin Dissociation” by Dr. Raymond C. Vickers

  Saturday

  11:43 a.m.

  The big, fat liar was dressed in yellow slacks, a yellow golf shirt, and a straw hat with a black band. He even had yellow socks to go with the black shoes. He looked like a ripe banana with feet.

  He also looked like dead meat, Rocky thought, as she watched him take a full practice swing.

  They were on the first tee at Woodley Lakes, a public course in Van Nuys. But Mr. Sawyer W. Pinskey was all decked out, like he was about to tee off at Augusta in front of a bank of television cameras.

  Roxanne “Rocky” Towne smiled at the thought. Because, in a way, he was about to do something very much like that.

  Pinskey took his stance again. Rocky kept her head steady as she observed from the golf cart.

  He took a mighty swipe at a dandelion, then posed after the swing. As if he’d just hit one three hundred fifty yards and was listening for the approval of the gallery.

  Rocky approved. Oh, did she ever.

  As Pinskey waited his turn on the tee, Rocky, who did not play golf but was dressed like she did, approached the middle-aged man. He was about to take another practice cut when he looked up and saw her.

  He nodded.

  “Hi,” Rocky said. She watched as Pinskey did what most people did the first time they saw her. He looked her in the eye — into her sunglasses, actually — then down slightly at her scar, then back up to her eyes.

  Rocky interrupted his gaze. “I just took up golf myself, and I saw you practicing, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  “I never seem to hit the ball very far
. You look like you hit it a mile.”

  “Well, it depends.” He chuckled. His big, fat lying face was ruddy and jowly. “If you don’t get it in the fairway, it doesn’t matter how far you hit it.”

  “Ah,” Rocky said.

  “But the secret to power is to take it back just a hair more than you think.” He took his stance again. “Now watch.”

  Rocky watched.

  In slow motion, Pinskey took his driver back, twisting around on his spine’s axis. When he got the club to the apex, he held his position, his upper torso coiled. “See that?” he said. “See how my club is parallel to the ground?”

  Rocky nodded.

  “Now I just crank it a little more” — he twisted himself a little further — “and then start the downswing with a hip nudge.” Pinskey gave it a full swing, the club whooshing through the air. He turned the other way on the follow-through and held the finish a moment.

  Then he came back to start position. “That’s all there is to it,” he said. “Or as John Daly puts it, ‘Grip it and rip it.’ Pretty simple game, huh?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.”

  A voice from the tee box said, “We’re up.”

  Mr. Sawyer W. Pinskey, a senior investment management analyst with Merrill Lynch, stuck out his hand. “My name’s Sawyer.”

  “Julie,” Rocky said.

  “Nice meeting you. Remember, keep it in the short grass.”

  Rocky nodded and watched as Pinskey joined his foursome — three other men about the same age, varying in their paunch factor. Pinskey led the belt-overhang competition, yet he moved with a certain confident elasticity.

  Which was odd for a man who had supposedly suffered a spinal injury in a car accident in May.

  Rocky trained her sunglasses on the tee box and watched the gentlemen take their various cuts. Pinskey was the last to play. He even gave her a wink as he teed the ball up. Then he stood back, surveyed the fairway, took a practice swing, and stepped up to the ball. He waggled the club once, then took it back and came through solid.

  The ball took off like a bullet and rose, curved a little to the left, then hit the grass and rolled.

  “Good ball,” one of his companions said.

  Pinskey, broad smile on his face, turned to Rocky. “And that’s how it’s done,” he said and waved at her.

  Rocky waved back.

  She waited until the foursome chugged their two golf carts to the first ball, then got back in her own cart. She made a U-turn on the cart path and scooted back toward the clubhouse. She wouldn’t be needing her cart anymore.

  Because what Mr. Sawyer W. Pinskey did not know was that she had absolutely no interest in golf. He did not know that she was working for the insurance company. And he especially did not know that in her sunglasses was a nanocam that took digital video, or that his golf acumen was now memorialized and would soon be in the hands of insurance company lawyers.

  Rocky Towne allowed herself a fleeting moment of satisfaction. She’d done a really good job this time. Working freelance, it was essential to do good work. You built a rep that way.

  She needed a good rep. She needed the income.

  And right now she especially needed to get back to the apartment. Back before Boyd got home.

  Because he was going to be stinking mad at what she was about to do.

  1:32 p.m.

  “Come on, honey, what is it?”

  “Just don’t talk.” Liz meant it, too. If he said another word, another soft-spoken, understanding word, she’d pick up a rock and throw it at his head.

  They were hiking well inside Pack Canyon, his favorite spot, not hers. She walked reluctantly, silently, baking in the afternoon sun. It was a clear Saturday, the winds blowing away the haze that usually blanketed the city.

  Arty bounded up a couple of boulders, a T-shirted mountain goat. “Come on up,” he said. “You can see to forever.”

  Liz said nothing. She sat and looked the other way. Not to forever. To the scrub brush about a hundred feet below.

  “Honey?”

  She didn’t answer. Let him sweat. Let him get it through his skull that he was being stupid.

  She heard the clomp of his hiking boots descending.

  If he tries to touch me now, she thought, it might get ugly.

  He came around in a little semicircle and sat, facing her, on a rock.

  “Sweetheart, please talk to me,” he said.

  She looked at him now and saw, for a brief moment, the man she wanted him to be. Tan face, thick brown hair that sprang from his head like Hugh Grant’s. Blue eyes to die for. A package like that was supposed to have ambition, success, wealth — the winning ticket.

  “What do you expect me to say?” Liz put on her cold stare.

  “You could start with ‘I love you,’ ” he said, “and tell me how charming I am.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Start with anything, then. Anything.”

  “You want me to say anything?”

  “Please.”

  “You’ve changed,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

  He was silent a long time. He passed his hand over the surface of the rock. He looked up. Finally, he said, “You’re right. I have changed. I thought you understood that.”

  “I don’t understand,” Liz said. She rubbed her hands on her shorts as if an ant was crawling on them. “I don’t understand how someone can go from being one way to ending up a completely different person.”

  “That’s the whole point,” he said. “He wouldn’t be much of a God if he didn’t change you.”

  “Not your personality. Not the thing that makes you who you are. Made you who you were.”

  “There’s a lot of the old me still here,” he said with a smile. “I just don’t think about the same things in the same way.”

  “Do you think about me?”

  “Of course I do. I’m committed to you.”

  “Committed. Sounds so enthusiastic.”

  “I mean it in the . . . best way.” He looked confused. Good.

  “Then why’re you making it so hard on me?” Liz said.

  “I’m not trying to make it hard on you. I just can’t go back to selling a product I don’t believe in. Just can’t do it.”

  Arty wiped his face with his right hand, then kept it over his eyes for a moment. Like he was trying to hide.

  Liz said, “Have you thought that having a lot of money enables you to do good? Like buy food for poor people or something? Or maybe buy a nice car for your wife once in a while? Isn’t that a good thing too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I just can’t earn money from something that’s wrong.”

  “What is wrong with a little entertainment?” Liz shouted entertainment, creating a small echo.

  Arty didn’t even blink. “Bikini Blackjack Babes is not entertainment,” he said. “It’s just this side of pornography.”

  “They don’t take their bikinis off, do they?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s the suggestion.”

  “This is really freaking me out, this whole thing, this whole change. I really, really can’t stand it.”

  She sighed to the sky. Arty had quit RumbleTV a week ago, even though he was pulling down six figures. And he had quit because of one little game they produced for cell phones. It was a game! People played this thing for fun!

  But no. His “faith” would not allow him to continue with a company that made such things. His “conscience” was bothered. It kept him up at night. Well, she kept him up that night he told her. She gave him one big earful, oh yes.

  You don’t know what it’s like to be poor! You do not have any idea. You don’t know what it’s like to eat Hamburger Helper five nights in a row, and maybe if you’re good, you get a Lemonhead for dessert. One Lemonhead! You don’t know, so you go and blow a good thing. I hate you for that!

  Arty was hurt now. She could see it in his body language. The way his should
ers sagged as he got up and started climbing again. Running away. The old Arty would have stayed and fought.

  Six figures! He threw that all away for what?

  “Honey, come up here,” he called. “It’s beautiful.”

  Oh please, please, please, shut up.

  She did not go up. She went down. Down the rocks toward the scrub wedged in the hillside. It was thick down there. Maybe she could get lost. Maybe get Arty to come crying after her.

  She almost fell. She cursed out loud. Loud enough so Arty could hear it. Loud and she took the stupid Lord’s name in vain — that’s what they used to say back home, anyway. If you said God except in prayer you were taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  What a stupid rule that was. Like what that skinny old man told her when she was a girl, about how there’s the saved and unsaved, redeemed and unredeemed, and you can’t change who’s who. Saints and ain’ts the preacher said, his mouth turned down in tight-lipped emphasis.

  Liz had known immediately which one she was in that old gasbag’s eyes.

  “Watch out down there,” Arty called, concern etched in his voice.

  Liz kept on. The rocks made a V a few yards away, a place where you could easily get stuck. Maybe if she went for it, Arty would follow her and get wedged in, and then she could slap him until he came to his senses.

  Thanks. I needed that.

  Yes, and then he’d wake up and think about her needs for a change. Wake up and get back to making money.

  Wake up and be a man again.

  Sure.

  “Honey, please wait!”

  She didn’t.

  Keep moving. That’s what Mama always said.

  Keep moving so they don’t get you.

  Keep moving or they’ll lay you out.

  She kept moving, got to the V and thought for a moment what it would look like if Arty was really and truly in there.

  And then she knew exactly what it would look like. Because she saw a body.

  “Honey, what are you doing?”

  “Shut up.” Liz said it without premeditation. Said it because she was going to control this situation. Arty would get all bothered and righteous about the body.

  She needed time to think.