Psychic City

by Page Turner

  “You?” Karen asked.

  “Yeah, believe it or not. I had to learn the brave face later. When I was a little girl, I was an absolute mess. Messy, believe it or not. A total klutz, too. I was always skinning my knees,” Penny said.

  “Wow. Little Penny Dreadful with both knees skinned and tears streaming down her face. Must have been a sight,” Karen said.

  Penny shrugged.

  “Well, take that choked up feeling, where you’re so overwhelmed with emotions, and make it last for years,” Karen said.

  Penny furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure I can imagine that actually. Well, I can… but just imagining it makes me want it to end. And that’s just as a thought experiment.”

  “There’s something about psychic empathy that steals your words,” Karen explained. “The act requires you to be passive, open, receptive. It comes from a part of me where there aren’t words. A part of me that actively blocks out words. A part of me that words would interfere with. And when I go back into those experiences and try to explain them in hindsight, I find the words resisting me again. Even the vague memories of the emotions are so intense, I get overwhelmed. Choked up.”

  “It’s like you’re explaining a dream you only half remember?” Penny offered.

  “Exactly like that,” Karen replied.

  “Maybe you’re not as bad at explaining things as you think you are,” Penny said.

  Karen smiled.

  “Probably for the best anyway, that you’re not terrible at explaining, after all. Wouldn’t want to encroach on Amarynth’s territory. Poor thing needs something to be the queen of,” Penny joked.

  Penny’s nerves fell away in that moment, with an empathic crash like a beaded curtain hitting the floor of Karen’s mind. Percussively resolute.

  Penny picked up the receiver and dialed the number to the Lee Residence.

  Penny had been prepared to tangle with Tender, but the servant who answered the call put Viv’s sister Love on the line instead. “What do you want?” Love said curtly.

  “Hi Love, it’s Penny. I’d like to speak with Tender, if I could,” Penny said.

  “And why exactly would you want to do that?” Love asked.

  “Do I need a reason?” Penny challenged her.

  “This is the first time you’ve ever called our house. I’d say you need a reason,” Love countered.

  “I need to ask Tender some questions about her schedule,” Penny replied.

  “Well, you can ask me if that’s the case,” Love replied. “Her day planner’s right here on the desk. No need to bother Mom.”

  “I’d rather talk to her though,” Penny said.

  “You can’t,” Love said.

  “Why’s that?” said Penny.

  “She’s out,” Love replied.

  “Where?” Penny asked.

  “With a friend,” Love replied.

  “A gentleman?” Penny asked.

  “What does it matter?” Love asked. “Mom’s popular. She’s not here… so if you’ll excuse me..”

  “Know when she’ll be back?” Penny asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, I believe. She prepped like she wasn’t going to sleep here. Packed a bag,” Love replied. She intoned this information sounding half-bored. It was clear to Penny that she’d had a lifetime of practice watching her mother disappear to spend the evening with a “friend.” Explaining it to others who wondered about her mother’s sudden exits.

  It squared well with stories Viv had told Penny, especially on nights Viv had a little too much wine and her usual armor surrounding her mom fell off with a clang.

  “Alright, well could you do me a favor?” Penny asked.

  “Another? I’ve done at least… three for you already on this call,” Love said.

  Penny wasn’t confident in Love’s math but let it slide. “If you could grab that planner and let me know what your mom was doing two Thursdays ago in the afternoon, that would be great.”

  “Fine,” Love conceded.

  Penny heard her place the receiver down on a hard surface. Or at least that’s what she hoped were happening. She wasn’t sure at first whether Love had hung up on her. But then, she heard Love pick the receiver back up and sigh copiously, communicating just how put-out she was being asked to do something so arduous.

  Love asked a few confirming questions about which Thursday precisely Penny was asking about. And a few more about what constituted “afternoon” in Penny’s estimation.

  Finally, when she had clarity, Love exclaimed, “Oh, that’s an easy one. Mom was at the hairdresser then. She spent three hours there. Getting her hair dyed and styled.”

  “What was the name of the salon?” Penny asked.

  “Atria,” Love replied. “She sees Evelyn there. A total wizard with color.” A beat. “Oh no,” Love said.

  “What?” Penny said.

  “Forget that I told you she dyes her hair. Mother would hate that,” Love replied.

  “Well, of course she does. At her age, it would be unnatural to not have any grey or white hairs,” Penny said.

  “At her age?” Love said. She snorted. “I’m glad I spoke with you and not her. What a disaster you are. So callous. Uncouth.”

  “Well, Love, I know how old Viv is, and I can do basic math,” Penny replied.

  “Oh, shut up,” Love replied. “You’re so nasty. Viv deserves you.”

  A slamming noise and then a dial tone.

  Love had clearly had enough of Penny’s call.

  “Well, it would seem Tender has an alibi,” Penny replied. “She was getting her hairs did,” she said, mimicking Tender and Love’s syrupy accent.

  Karen giggled.

  If it hadn’t been for Penny, the team might have never thought to check back in on Regina Withers and the true crime broadcast of their case to date.

  But Penny had marked the show time in giant fluorescent letters on their calendar. So giant that Karen almost missed her PsyOps physical that morning, obscured as it was by “REGINA WITHERS SHOW.” Thankfully, Martin had made a note, too, and so her Green Star status was safe on medical grounds. For another year anyway.

  Penny served a suspiciously nice dinner that evening. “Do I want to know how many dumpsters this one took?” Viv asked.

  “Enough of that. It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Penny said. “Just eat. It’s a special occasion.”

  And eat they did. They feasted as Viv could not remember feasting… ever? For years anyway.

  At five to seven, Penny quickly cleared the table and swept all the plates into the sink. She ushered both of her partners to their couch and turned on their old television, already tuned to the appropriate channel.

  Viv marveled at this. “Wait a second,” she said. “We don’t get cable.”

  “Shush,” Penny said. “There are ways. Especially if you only need it for one night. I bartered well for this.”

  The program fired up.

  “Doesn’t she look incredible?” Penny exclaimed, as Regina Withers came onscreen.

  “Ssssh,” Karen said. “If you wanted to talk, you should have put on close captioning.”

  Viv thought idly that she knew how to do that but decided quickly that it was probably better if she left things the way they were. Penny’s fangirling was enough to deal with in short bursts during commercial breaks. It might be unbearable if left unabated, aided by close captioning.

  So the three women sat mostly in silence during the program, although Penny’s silence still managed to be quite excited and enthusiastic. Karen had to avoid looking at Penny directly or risk laughing. Viv also had to avoid eye contact so that she wouldn’t audibly scoff.

  The cases Withers commented on at the beginning of the program were older cold cases, ones that they were all quite familiar with. At this point, they were practi
cally historical.

  Still, Withers managed to breathe new life into them as she interviewed witnesses that had not before been on the record.

  “And you’re sure that it was a navy blue Ford pickup,” Withers pressed an older gentleman who looked disconcertingly pale, to a degree that stretched credulity. He looked as though all the color had been adjusted out of him by moving tinting knobs at least a few clicks too far. If Withers hadn’t also been on the screen, Viv would have thought there was something wrong with the television.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not sure of anything,” the old man replied.

  “Then why did you tell the detectives that?” asked Withers.

  “You ever had a team of detectives backing you into a corner? Screaming into your face? I would have told them I was the Queen of England.”

  “A mistake that no one would make,” Withers commented.

  The old man on the screen winced. Viv stifled a laugh.

  Damn, she thought, irritated that she was enjoying the program. She’s so good I can’t help myself.

  Withers shuffled through a number of other cases. They seemed to get progressively more obscure and more recent as the program went on.

  “I bet she’ll do ours next,” Penny said.

  But the last featured case wasn’t theirs. It was instead an unsolved child abduction case.

  As the credits rolled, Penny frowned.

  “They didn’t get to us,” Karen said, stating the obvious.

  Penny’s eyes began to well with tears.

  “Penny, I bet she just forgot,” Viv said, hating to see Penny upset.

  “You don’t believe that,” Penny said. “You never liked her.”

  Viv didn’t have a good answer for that.

  “I bet Viv’s right,” Karen offered.

  “Thanks, Karen. Tell you what, Penny… tomorrow we’ll call Regina Withers, we’ll find out what happened. It was probably just a stupid mistake,” Viv said.

  Penny brightened. “Really?” she said.

  “Really,” Viv and Karen said in unison.

  “Jinx,” Karen said.

  “Oh stop, nobody does that anymore,” Viv replied.

  “I do. You’re jinxed. You’re not supposed to talk!” Karen protested.

  Penny smiled. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I see,” Viv said the next morning, as she listened to the explanation offered by Regina Withers’s secretary. “I figured it was something like that.”

  Penny studied Viv’s face carefully. The words coming out of Viv’s mouth sounded okay and should have been comforting, but Viv’s facial expression didn’t quite match.

  “Coming from where?” Viv said.

  A pause.

  “Well, surely you can tell me generalities at least. Does it involve a sponsor? A business partner? A relative?”

  Another much longer pause.

  “Sure,” Viv replied. “I understand. Thank you for your honesty.”

  “Well?” Karen said, as soon as Viv had hung up the phone.

  “So I spoke with her secretary. She told me that they couldn’t run the story,” Viv said. “Had to pull it last minute.”

  Penny frowned. “Did she give you any reason why?”

  “Yes,” Viv said. “She said there was a conflict of interest with her and the case. That she realized once she did a followup background check that she couldn’t ethically run it.”

  “Did she say what the conflict was?” Karen asked.

  Viv shook her head no. “Not even in general terms.”

  “Damn it,” Penny said.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” Viv said.

  Penny frowned. “How do you figure that?”

  “It’s risky opening a case up to the public. Sure, you get a lot of leads, but most of them turn out to be garbage. Is it possible we would have gotten some valuable intel? Sure. But would we have been able to sort through all the garbage to find it? Who knows,” Viv said.

  Penny agreed with Viv about this but couldn’t bring herself to agree aloud. She was bent in knots, feeling quite disappointed in her hero but didn’t want to say that aloud either.

  It sounded so unprofessional. Weak, even. That she could be so swayed by a virtual stranger. So disappointed in her actions.

  But it was the truth.

  “And besides,” Viv continued. “This conflict of interest gives us information. It tells us that Regina Withers is close to this. The question is: How? And why?”

  Penny scowled. “The Queen of True Crime is not prancing around town murdering psychics.”

  “Well, no,” Viv said. “But someone she’s connected to is involved somehow.”

  “I guess,” Karen said. “But we don’t have a lot to go on. We don’t even know where the conflict is.”

  That would be remedied the following morning when Viv brought in the mail.

  In with the normal smattering of advertising and coupon circulars was a very official-looking envelope.

  From the law offices of Shane & Wiley.

  Viv opened it quickly and laughed.

  “What?” Penny asked.

  “It’s a cease and desist letter from the Eck Family,” Viv said. “Specifically cites the unaired television segment.”

  “Woah,” Karen said.

  “If they don’t have anything to do with these murders, then why the heck do they care?” Penny asked.

  “Exactly,” Viv said.

  Move-In Ready

  It doesn’t rain often in Skinner, but the storms have a violent temper. When it comes to storms, the Psychic City is very much like anywhere else in the Psychic State. It doesn’t rain without torrential downpour and flash flooding. Baseball-sized hail is common.

  As is the occasional tornado.

  And yet people still live here, Penny thought, staring at a rain-soaked window in what seemed to be a rather low-budget realty office, given the franchise’s purported stellar sales record.

  Outside the office, thunder boomed and crashed unpredictably, requiring parts of the conversation to be repeated.

  I’m glad Viv found some covered parking, Penny thought, as she heard pellet-sized hail beginning to hit the ground and anything else between the sky and the ground outside.

  The first time she’d heard hail, when she’d first moved to the area for college, Penny thought it sounded like a giant dropping a bag of marbles. And then another. And then another.

  Viv had laughed at her when Penny told her about this later, during the first hailstorm after they’d met. “No one has that many marbles,” she’d replied. “Not even a giant emporium.”

  It was well known that the first precogs were exclusively situated up and down Tornado Alley with the highest concentration, the epicenter of psychic activity, clearly centered around one of the most tornado-prone areas in the world.

  Including the area that would eventually become the Psychic State.

  Some had wondered aloud if the energy from the storms was somehow involved. Perhaps they had charged people up with psychic powers, so to speak.

  This explanation was dismissed and people who entertained it aloud were labeled conspiracy theorists and laughed at. But during particularly violent storms, Penny found herself wondering if there weren’t some truth to it. Perhaps turbulent weather churned out turbulent people. People who were just as unpredictable.

  People like her.

  “Wonder if we’ll have another tornado on our hands this time around,” the realtor said.

  This storm brought the second tornado watch in a fortnight. The first advisory had been the day of the murder. The citizens of Skinner were used to tornado watches, with most of them developing into nothing more than a few violent gusts of wind in a nasty downpour. Like the Boy who Cried Wolf, the weather reports we
re normally overly dramatic.

  But not this past storm. In this case, the wolf showed up. A tornado emerged just in time for the next murder to take place. The building where the body had been found was right in its path and had been torn to shreds. It was now structurally unsound, a haphazard pile of building materials that bore little resemblance to the large home that had stood just moments before the tornado smashed into it. No one was going to live there. Not much to look at even anymore. The structure caved upon itself miserably, splinters of beams sticking out at unnatural angles.

  It looked like a bomb had gone off.

  “EF3, I hear. Big fella with 140 mph winds,” the realtor said. “Thankfully, there were no other casualties, at least not that the news is reporting.”

  “Well, and Ms. Harris wasn’t even a casualty,” Viv corrected him.

  “Hard to tell that, isn’t it?”

  Viv shook her head no. “Going by stomach contents, it’s clear that time of death was well before the storm. And her pattern of injuries isn’t at all consistent with being killed in the storm.”

  “Ah,” the realtor said.

  “I imagine you get close to the agents who work with you,” Viv said.

  The realtor nodded. “We’re a work family. Some of it’s tied to business. We give each other referrals, match buyers with sellers. Recommend contractors. That kind of thing. But it’s more than that. I went to Ms. Harris’s son’s wedding just last month. You spend enough time with people, they really do become like family. It’s not an expression after a while. I’m sure you three must understand that, working so closely together.”

  Penny stifled a giggle. He clearly didn’t know they were an actual family, not a work one. A common misconception, one she attributed to a combination of the professional distance they affected with one another while working as well as certain people’s tendencies not to see romantic love between women unless it were thrust in their faces in the most explicit terms. That good old “gals being pals” illusion again.

  This often came in handy. It at least prevented their unconventional relationship structure from being a distraction to witnesses.