by Page Turner
Even though she didn’t like black coffee, Karen always tried to drink it black because black was the cheapest way to drink it, and she didn’t want to be a bother.
Before her second sip, however, Penny would emerge with a flourish, holding a pitcher of cream, half and half, or milk in her hand – whatever they could afford that week – and pour in a generous amount before Karen could protest.
Karen would fake resignation. “Well, if you insist.”
They did this every time. Every single time. As though they hadn’t done it hundreds of times before.
And as Karen took a few more sips, she’d spring to life, like the Tin Man after he’d been properly oiled. And together they’d build their cheeky wall of words, their frenetic joking back and forth that Viv had come to expect.
Viv made a big deal sometimes out of complaining about it, but secretly she found it adorable. They were both adorable as individuals and particularly adorable together.
The grouch act was mostly an act – although part of her sometimes worried that she was the odd one out. That Karen and Penny would take their bantering besties show on the road and leave her stranded behind.
Viv would be on her own, the dour serious one. The one who was no fun. Who needed someone like that? Who needed her?
Viv felt her chest ache in that familiar way. It was an old wound, the part of her that worried she wasn’t good enough, that no one would ever want to be with her if given any other choice.
She heard their voices springing to life. The lilting banter. The Tin Man rises, she thought. And he’s all chatty Kathy with Dorothy.
She listened to them for several minutes, unable to hear exactly what they were saying, but warmed by their tone and the familiarity of it, before joining them.
Good old-fashioned privacy is hard to find in the modern world. Pretty much everyone these days is in their share of databases. Their personal information is catalogued and out there for anyone to stumble upon if someone is so inclined.
The days of being completely off the grid are over.
Instead, a new kind of privacy has emerged to take its place: Data overload.
There’s so much information available that as much as some worry about being exposed most people are lost in the clutter. There’s just too much there for any one person to be a complete focus… of anything, really.
Detective work often posed a similar challenge for Detectives Dreadful, Lee, and Cross. In many cases, there was an abundance of leads – and that was half the problem.
They often found themselves looking at a complicated street map of leads, with many avenues that they could explore, but without a clear idea of which way they should head.
The list of clients Gretchen Mills had given them was helpful information, and they were glad for it.
But they would be even more glad if it weren’t so damn long.
“Wow,” Penny said, reviewing the list, “Is there anyone Heather hasn’t given advice to?”
Some of the names were awfully familiar, too. For starters, there were a few Family members in the mix: A Macomber, an Eck, and even a Watson.
“No Skinners though,” Viv noted. “I wonder if Heather discriminated.”
“Not judging by the length of this list,” Karen replied.
“Well, I’ll be,” Penny said. “Euphemia Tender Lee?”
“What?” Viv said, snatching the list from Penny’s hands. Oh God. Yeah, her own mother was on this list. She handed the list back to Penny and held her head in her hands. “Does this mean we’re going to have to go interview Mom?”
“Well, we can follow some other leads first,” Karen said. “But possibly. Unless you want to call Martin and talk about moving the case to someone else.”
“No,” Viv said. “I’m not going to do that. I’ve never had to do that before. Not gonna start doing that now. Especially not because of her. If she wants to throw her money away on love readings, then that’s her business.” She paused. “Although it’s awfully hypocritical, given her general stance on psychics.”
“Is this the first time your mom has been hypocritical though?” Karen said. And then she quickly added, “Sorry, that was out of line.”
“No,” Viv replied. “That wasn’t out of line. And no, it’s not the first time she’s been hypocritical. I’m sure you saw it, too, when you roomed with her.”
Karen nodded but didn’t say more. Nirvana Heights was still difficult for her to talk about. While it had made where she was today possible, it was the end of a chapter of her life she didn’t really want to acknowledge.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one in PsyOps with a relative on the list,” Penny said.
“Oh?” Viv said.
“Martin’s sister. Darian Meek,” Penny said.
“You’re kidding me,” Viv said.
“Nope,” Penny replied. She pointed it out to both of them.
“That’s the one with the record, isn’t it?” Karen said.
Viv nodded. It had been a big stress on Martin, his older sister having so many run-ins with the law. Working for the State had given him a bit of wiggle room when he had to bail her out or advocate on her behalf, but it stressed him out to no end. He’d told them many times that if it weren’t for pressure from his parents, he wouldn’t bother. But Martin loved his elderly parents, even if they were unfamiliar with how the law actually operated and naïve about his sister’s intentions, always giving her the benefit of doubts she didn’t deserve.
He couldn’t exactly blame them. After all, they were biased towards him, too. Love made it impossible for them to see things clearly, as it so often does.
“We’ve really got our work cut out for us,” Viv said.
“Mm,” Penny replied. “It seems like Heather was a one-woman Psychic Friends Network.”
“Oh wow, that takes me back,” Viv said. “I had forgotten all about that.”
“Kind of funny how the first precogs showed up not long after that,” Penny said.
“Almost like foreshadowing,” Karen replied.
“Except foreshadowing doesn’t happen in the real world,” Viv said.
“Or does it?” Penny said. “Duh duh duh!”
“Sinister music isn’t foreshadowing,” Viv said.
“Or is it?” Penny said. “Duh duh duhhhh!”
“Duh duh duhhh!” Karen echoed.
They laughed as Viv rolled her eyes, but as she turned away from them, she smiled.
Poor as a Lizard-Eating Cat
Martin stood up from his desk, placed both palms on the surface, and let out an improbably long sigh.
He has more lung capacity than I’d expect from a short man who doesn’t seem to be all that fit, Penny thought. There was a lot about Martin she didn’t know, she realized. Especially since she’d known him for… four years? She did the math quickly in her head. They’d been a trio solving crimes for three years now, and she and Viv had been working as a duo for two years before Karen joined them with Martin having been on board for about half that time. Yup, four years.
How did you work for someone for four years and have so much you didn’t know about them? Especially as they did, with the long hours and the danger involved in their jobs.
Maybe that was the whole point, and that’s how you made it. You kept your most important secrets to yourself, away from the workplace and where they wouldn’t be exploited as a vulnerability.
And Penny had to admit they’d been pretty secretive with PsyOps and even with Martin, especially at first. It’s why it had taken six months for PsyOps to realize that she and Viv were even in a relationship. They’d hidden beneath the assumption that most people have when they see two women who are extremely emotionally close. The handy camouflage of “Oh, those two? They’re just gals being pals.”
Ah, gals bein
g pals. Yeah, right.
It was an illusion that came in handy, even now. Outside of the people who knew them well, most assumed when meeting Karen, Penny, and Viv that they were just friends.
We are friends, Penny thought. Their system of relationships was made possible by a web of strong friendships woven between them. We are spectacular friends. But not just. We are not just anything.
Unless the detectives mounted one another in the middle of the grocery store, however, most people assumed their relationship began and ended in friendship. Which was just fine with Penny. It bothered Viv, who felt offended that it was so easy for outsiders to diminish or outright dismiss her romantic relationships just because they didn’t look like the norm. But Penny appreciated her relationships being mostly invisible. She liked having the choice to either tell people or not.
It was hard enough dealing with the prejudice that came with being an intuitive. She didn’t need to simultaneously battle over her sexual orientation or the way she structured her romantic life.
Besides, it wasn’t like intuitives were legally allowed to marry anyway. Similarly, intuitives weren’t allowed to bear children without express permission from the State. This involved a lengthy application process that was usually unsuccessful. The official justification for both of these restrictions was thin.
The cover story was something about the tax code and protecting the public good – same purported basis of restrictions on intuitives as the rest. So long as you were over the age of six, you knew the truth: It was based in prejudice. Envy. A fear that if citizens with psychic powers were allowed a level playing field that they would quickly conquer and enslave the rest of the population.
And the State wasn’t about to allow that.
Instead, the State worked to keep intuitives in their place, installing systemic safeguards to quell public fears and also ensure they had a skilled workforce who would work for pennies, unless they wanted to surrender every last one of their civil liberties. If you could call them that, as watered down as the psychic version could be.
“Well,” Martin said finally, snapping Penny out of her thoughts. “The right thing to say to you right now is that I’m glad you three came here. But I’ve known you long enough to be uncomfortable lying to you. And anyway, Karen would know.”
Karen shrugged. “Well, not with Penny and Viv here. But I’m a pretty good judge of character even without my powers. And yeah, sooner or later I’d fully sense those complicated, conflicted feelings from you.”
“And you’d make an inference,” Martin replied.
Karen nodded.
“I’ll be honest though,” Martin said. “Might as well cut through the crap.” A beat. “I’m not glad you came here. I wish you’d never come. You’ve put me in a difficult position, telling me this. By showing me this list of clients.”
“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it?” Viv said. “To be put in the difficult positions.”
“Maybe,” Martin said. “Although if you surveyed all of the supervisors in this building anonymously, I’m sure you’d get a wide variety of answers, about what our job really is.”
“I suppose you’re right. I can think of quite a few that would answer differently,” Viv replied, thinking specifically of the carousel of supervisors she and Penny had spun through in the first year they’d been working at PsyOps, before they’d been assigned Martin.
Martin was the first supervisor who had stuck around for more than a few weeks. And the first who didn’t express open hostility to working with intuitives.
Before Martin was assigned their team, reporting to management had been a dizzying, confusing experience. They never worked with anyone long enough to be able to anticipate how they’d react to news, let alone figure out the best way to approach them.
It was a mercy, however, to have Martin on board and to have worked with him for a year when Viv had asked about Karen joining the team. She’d known exactly how to ask him, and he’d known exactly how to challenge her on the wisdom of it. How to voice responsible concern about possible conflict of interests and bias without looking petty and pissing her off.
“But you’re not those other supervisors,” Viv said. “And that’s why we came to you.”
“She’s right, you know,” Penny added. “You’re the guy who’s good when things get complicated. You can make the tough calls.”
“Don’t I know it,” Martin said, standing up, leaning back, and clutching his head. He stared at the painting on the wall. His office was windowless, as all rooms in PsyOps were. Not much to see when you were subterranean. Nothing that wouldn’t make you feel buried alive, anyway.
Martin had found the lack of a view depressing when he first moved into the building, so he’d hung a painting that simulated a window with a beautiful view of Skinner’s Business District in his office. The vantage point made it look like he was looking out of a window in a high rise building on the 14th floor.
“It’s why I was assigned you in the first place,” Martin said. “The problem children.”
“And look where we are now,” Viv replied.
“What? With the highest rate of unsolved crimes in PsyOps?” Martin replied.
“Maybe,” Viv countered. “But how many overturned convictions? How many exonerations after the fact?”
Martin sighed another interminable sigh. “Zero. Yeah. Okay, Viv. That’s a good point.”
“We do good work as a team, Martin,” Viv said. “Even you have to admit that.”
“You do,” he replied. “I just wish that work were in a form that was easier to explain to my supervisors. Sometimes I feel like we’re all Amarynth. Doing great work but not able to explain why or convince anyone of it.”
Viv reflexively rolled her eyes at the mention of Amarynth. Martin saw it but knew better than to comment on it. Viv’s ingratitude towards the Connection Agent’s skills had always grated on him, but you had to pick your battles with Viv, and her strange feud with Amarynth was at best a second order concern. If that. Normally, third or fourth.
Martin had learned in his long career of managing teams that once you got a certain size there were always going to be a few interpersonal conflicts that were resistant to change. You couldn’t eliminate every conflict. Trying to do so was often a waste of energy. If you couldn’t learn to manage through conflict, you were screwed.
The best manager knew how to manage an imperfect team.
Martin never would have admitted it aloud – primarily because he feared other people would laugh at him, especially his wife, who continually complained that he didn’t have a more prestigious job, one that impressed the neighbors – but Martin considered himself that kind of manager.
He kept his confidence in his own abilities to himself, clutched it close to his chest where he could enjoy it without anyone grabbing it out of his hands, throwing it on the ground, and stomping on it.
“The way I see it,” Martin said, “We have a few realistic options here. The first is that you hand this case over to another team. This would avoid the perception of conflict of interest – and keep you from risking actual conflict of interest – but there would be downsides. You’d have to brief the other team extensively on not only the facts of the case but the web of inferences that you’re working with. Ideally, Amarynth would also brief her counterpart, the Connections Agent consulting for this other investigative team. Theoretically, I suppose you could request that Amarynth work with this new team on the case, but…” He looked out his “window.”
“No one wants to work with her,” Penny said, completing the thought.
“You said it, not me,” Martin replied.
“Don’t hear you arguing though,” Viv observed.
“Option one risks the case never being solved. You know as well as anyone that transferring a case inevitably risks a lot being lost in translation, especially with Amar
ynth trying to explain,” Martin continued.
“You end up with a copy of a copy of the case at best,” Viv agreed.
He nodded. “It’s the safest option without a doubt, as far as not risking ethical impropriety. But you know as well as I do – and probably more immediately, based on what they’ve legally done to tueys in the last decade – that the State isn’t exactly concerned with risking ethical impropriety.”
“You can say that again,” Viv said.
“They’re concerned with what works, first and foremost,” Martin said.
“That’s a generous way of putting it,” Viv cracked.
“Detective Lee,” Martin said. “Do I need to remind you that you’re not only in front of your supervisor, who works for the State, but also in a State-owned and operated facility? A building that could be wired. Where our conversation could be monitored.”
Viv sighed, rolled her eyes. “You say that like I’m not a walking surveillance tool.”
“Well, pulling a security tape is a lot easier than auditing an eideticist. You know that. Anyway, I’d be careful how you phrase things. You never know what tomorrow will bring,” said Martin.
“We’re not precogs, no,” Viv said.
“Viv,” Penny said. “This is pointless. Stop arguing with the man. I wanna hear what he has to say.”
“Thank you, Detective Dreadful,” Martin said. “Let’s move to option two.”
Viv felt irritated with Penny but held her tongue.
“Option two,” Martin continued, “is continuing the investigation as a team but avoiding the encounters that could be conceived of as posing a conflict of interest. In our specific case, that would be the interviews of my sister and Viv’s mother. With this approach, we’d have an additional choice to make – whether to skip the interviews altogether or to have another team conduct them in our stead and report those findings to us.”
“This could be a good middle ground. Skipping them altogether is probably a bad idea, however. Not only would it look very biased and compromised – as though we are exempting relatives from the possibility of prosecution – we also risk missing valuable evidence.”
