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

Chapter 5

"Who was on duty last night?" Zandra says to the guard the next morning. She pokes at the oatmeal on the tray by her bed with a spoon. It's taken on the consistency of gelatin and the spoon-sucking abilities of a teething infant.

"Hell if I know. Why?" the guard says, having survived Zandra's predictions of an early death. For now.

Because he looked a lot like David.

"Can you check for me?" Zandra says.

The guard, pacing back and forth in front of the cell while reading a newspaper, stops and raises an eyebrow. "Is this really that important?"

"Maybe I want to lodge a complaint," Zandra says.

"Then lodge it with me, and I'll make sure it gets to the right people," the guard says.

Yeah, right.

"I recognized him. I wonder if he recognized me," Zandra says.

He looked right through me.

"That's your complaint?" the guard says.

"No. I just want to know his name."

"Can't help you there. That's not a complaint."

"Can I complain about the oatmeal?"

"No."

"Then go back to your newspaper," Zandra says.

The guard huffs some dig about psychics, but it's too garbled to make out. Zandra notices a headline in the Stevens Point Journal with her name on it, so she asks to see it. The guard shrugs and peels the section away for her.

It's an opinion piece by one of the staff columnists, titled, The Zandra Question: A Wolf in Wolf's Clothing. One passage jumps out at her:

Some say a fair trial in Portage County, much less in the county seat of Stevens Point, is out of the question. The chances of finding jurors who haven't been tainted by public opinion, which is overwhelmingly against the "psychic," or been "outed" in some way by her revelations, are about zero.

But that's exactly why this trial needs to take place here. This isn't a pedestrian criminal with too many parking tickets or an OWI. This is someone who, allegedly, spent the better part of 25 years finding ways to defame, blackmail, extort, exploit and swindle the residents of Stevens Point under guise of Sneak Peek, a business that exists (or existed, since the electrical fire) for the sole purpose of masking this criminal behavior.

As such, Stevens Point, not some other city in Wisconsin, must deliver justice. It's what this community deserves. Zandra may be well known, but her infamy does not guarantee her special treatment. Justice is supposed to be blind. It doesn't make exceptions for celebrities. To say otherwise is to place in doubt the entire legal system, and to question the integrity of our courts.

Simply put, in city where everyone knows everyone, relocating this one trial opens the door to relocating every trial.

Zandra hands the newspaper back to the guard, mulling over her prospects while hovering over the oatmeal. The talk of the fair trial doesn't bother her. It's something else.

An electrical fire? Is that what they're calling arson now? No surprise coming from a newspaper Gene owns.

"Vince Penn," the guard says, breaking Zandra's concentration.

"Was that the guard's name from last night?" she says.

"No. That's the guy here to see you," the guard says. "He's waiting out front. Do you know him?"

"Never heard of him," Zandra says and gives up on the oatmeal. It's since gone cold.

"He says it's urgent. Do you want to talk with him? You don't have to if you don't want to," the guard says.

"Beats sitting in here," Zandra says.

Now who could that be?