Maybe sex was mainly a poor substitute for telepathy. Hell, maybe that was the Darwinian reason NPs made up the majority of the population. Connections are easy to take for granted, but knowing that someone within the FPMP had been working against us was a stark reminder of just how much I cherished the trust I shared with Jacob.
I settled against him and reveled in the heavy-limbed sensation of creeping slumber. So elusive lately without the Reds, without Valium, and without the Auracel that would blunt my psychic reflexes. But now, sleep was rolling toward me like a gentle mist, beckoning me into its sweet embrace.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Jacob murmured.
And…there it went. “Hm?”
“If it is Andy Parsons, he might not be working alone. Telepaths who grab detailed thoughts right out of your mind are rare—but they do exist. And a few of them work at the FPMP. That’s why I’m the logical person to keep an eye on internal issues. I only let them know what I want them to know.”
I rolled onto my back and groaned. “So, here’s where I regret working with you….”
“You keep to your investigation and I’ll keep to mine. Two totally separate projects.”
“And even so, now I’m putting your whole investigation at risk.”
“It’s fine. It’ll be okay. Just…try not to think about it.”
Uh huh. I happen to know someone at the FPMP is a turncoat, but I’ll just put that idea right out of my mind. Sure. Easy. No problem.
I focused on the ceiling tiles and began to count. Beside me, Jacob let out a gentle snore.
Chapter 8
I didn’t generally consider myself to have an active inner life…at least until I tried to not-think about something. And then suddenly my mind was Union Station at rush hour. The only good thing about the FPMP being full of telepaths was the fact that they were labeled, though the portly guy on the elevator did catch me eyeballing his security badge.
Empath two.
Weirdly enough, that was a relief. Thanks to Crash, I was totally accustomed to having all the knots inside me on full display. Since I was staring at this guy’s badge, he had no compunctions about checking out mine. “Hey, you’re the new medium!” he said, as I sucked down white light for all I was worth and high-tailed it toward my office. He called after me, “If you need anything….”
He’d better not hold his breath. If I needed anything, I’d go find myself a nice, safe NP.
As I slipped through the office door, I wondered why I’d been thinking about the space as a sanctuary. Yes, it was technically “mine,” and yes, I might be the team leader. But not only were Carl and Darla present at a new group work station in the corner looking at a book together, but a couple of tech guys in navy coveralls on a ladder were busy wiring up a speaker system. And now the only remaining free space was occupied by a gigantic copy machine.
“I thought most places were going toward digital,” I said.
“It’s not just a copier and a printer,” Darla answered loftily, “it’s a high-resolution flatbed scanner. Agent Hinds can scan in these older texts so they’re searchable and tag them with metadata. That is, if it’s okay with you, sir.”
“Fine. And you really don’t need to be so defensive. I’m willing to look at any angle you come up with.”
While Carl was pretending to not notice the tension between us—or perhaps simply not caring—she scowled down at the text for a long moment, then said, “I know what year it is, and I know we’re not kids anymore. You’ve obviously changed. It’s just hard to forget how you used to be.”
I caught a glimpse of her profile, the way the tepid winter daylight from a nearby window glinted off a sparkle in her mascara, and a long-forgotten memory unfurled.
I was a few months shy of twenty-four. Camp Hell still had its original director, Sanchez, at the helm—I knew this because we were on a field trip at the time, and once Sanchez was gone, we never left the building. Miss Maxwell gathered Faun and Richie, Darla and me, at the ponderous office building at the entrance to our most frequent field trip destination: Graceland. It hadn’t quite snowed yet, nothing that stuck around, anyway, and even though the grounds were meticulously maintained, dead leaves had gathered in random drifts, and the wind made a shushing sound as it rasped through the dry foliage.
Maxwell gestured toward the nearest plot and said, “Before you put yourself in a situation where many spirits could be present, it’s important to protect yourself. You all have the St. Anthony medal I gave you last week?”
We all said yes and rolled our eyes, except Richie, who was going through his pockets. Maxwell handed him a new one—one of at least a dozen, by the time they stopped letting us out of our cages.
“Mother Mary will intercede for us and ask St. Anthony for protection. Now, like we practiced, pray with me. Hail Mary, full of grace….”
We all said the words, but not one of us sounded sincere. Faun was into Native American beliefs, Darla and I were both atheists, and Richie couldn’t repeat anything without making it sound like a singsong mashup of random syllables. When we were done, Darla raised her hand and said, “So why do we beg Mary to intercede? Does St. Anthony need an interpreter—and if so, why does Mary speak English, but not him? Or is Mary a control freak who blocks all the messages so they can only go through her?”
Maxwell drew herself up to her full height, and towered over Darla with that flinty don’t fuck with my religion look in her eyes. “You won’t be so blasé when you cross paths with a dangerous spirit. You need to protect yourself. And whether or not you believe in her, Mother Mary still cares about you.”
Faun piped in, “I’ve always liked the way Catholicism acknowledges the female energy,” while Richie listened with his mouth open and no idea whatsoever what we were talking about.
“One more time, folks,” Maxwell said. “With feeling. Hail Mary, full of grace….”
I said the prayer again, slightly louder. Mainly because standing in the entrance was getting old, and I wanted to check out the headstones. Now, looking back, I saw what she was aiming for—to have us pull down the white light and shore up our defenses. But for someone as hardcore Catholic as her, that New-Agey terminology wouldn’t have rung true any more than her prayers rang true for me. I said the words, but they were only that: words. Lucky I didn’t walk out of that cemetery with some pissed off ghost wearing my skin.
Then again, maybe there was precious little spirit activity to worry about. To this day, I’ve simply presumed mediums who hung out in cemeteries were just asking for trouble. But now that I’d seen some dead folks hanging back to help people cross over, I wasn’t so sure graveyards were particularly hazardous. In fact, maybe they were worse for empaths and telepaths, folks who could pick up on the distress of the living. The lingering dead were more likely to haunt the spot where they died and not the plot where they were buried.
Which wasn’t to say the field trip to Graceland was entirely uneventful.
The Palmer monument peeked through the bare winter trees like a Greek temple that had accidentally sprung up on the wrong side of the globe. Faun Windsong was grumbling about conspicuous consumption while Richie wandered off to throw rocks at the ducks in the adjacent lagoon. I ignored both of them and strode around the twin sarcophagi where other, lesser family members had been interred below the marble tiles. At first, I was focused on stepping on the dead rich people’s names, simply because I could. But then I noticed the bolts in the corners of the slabs that looked like they’d been screwed down with giant screwdrivers. I was wondering exactly how difficult it would be to dig up a body, when a pile of dry leaves blown against the foot of the monument stirred, and I realized the movement had nothing to do with the wind.
My vision shifted, and I saw it was a man—not a fancy Chicago mercantile baron, but a homeless guy layered in filthy overcoats. He reached toward me. I flinched and backed away, but thankfully, no one else noticed. They were each absorbed in their own contemplation�
�even Richie, who’d found a glittery Wham-O Super Ball in the mud and was busy trying to clean it with his shirttail and his spit.
Darla was already edging away from the monument to signal that she was done there, to encourage the rest of us to move on to the next pile of marble. I wandered over to do the same. By then, she and I had forged a delicate truce in which we neither looked at nor spoke to one another, and that was how we both liked it. So she caught me off guard when she swung around and snapped, “Why should I?”
“Why…what?”
“Even if I did have a dollar, I sure as hell wouldn’t give it to you.”
I hadn’t thought anything about it then, just figured she was trying to pick a fight. And now? She was still angry, all these years later. I turned away before she caught me gaping.
My mediumship was off the charts, and yet I’d never noticed that Darla was damn near as accurate as I was? Maybe our antagonism was to blame. If we’d forged the type of bond that encouraged us to share secrets—the bond she’d actually tried to create, before our relationship went to shit—I would have realized that Darla had real ability. Different from mine, in that she heard things rather than seeing them. But potentially just as strong.
“So, listen,” I said, “the way I acted, back when we were….” Before I could fumble through an apology that might only piss her off more, my cellphone buzzed and I checked the number. Con Dreyfuss? No, just his phone number.
I took the call, and found Patrick on the other end. “Hi, Vic. How’s it going?”
“Fine…?”
“Director Kim wants to see you.”
“On my way. Er…which way is it?”
“One floor down, two rights.”
“Great, thanks.”
I could have finished what I’d been trying to express to Darla. After all, it wasn’t exactly a lengthy sentiment. I’m sorry. How hard would it have been? Because I was. During our very first conversation, I could’ve told her I was into guys, but because she was giving me all the inside scoop on Heliotrope Station, I erred too far on the side of caution and kept my mouth shut.
And look how that worked out for me.
I took the elevator down and made a couple of rights, but belatedly realized I’d skipped a hallway and was probably headed toward the opposite end of the building. But then I spotted that odd turn-off and realized I’d magically ended up right where I’d been headed all along.
As I made my approach, I wondered if maybe I should just lay it all on the line with Laura. I had absolutely no idea how to spot another medium unless they had a ghost tumbling out of their ass, and maybe I wasn’t much better than Richie after all. The FPMP could carry on with Darla at the mediumship helm. And me? With my new wardrobe, I’d find a career in the funeral industry.
That might be for the best. Because my attempts to not-think about Jacob’s investigation had been a no-go, too. The two of us just weren’t meant to work together. So, the more I thought about it, the more the whole undertaker gig was actually starting to look pretty good.
I rapped on Laura’s door and she called for me to come in. The electronic lock clicked, and I entered. When she stood up and planted her hands importantly on her desk, my mind forgot how to make niceties and I shifted into damage control mode. “We’ll need more time to work the kinks out of our medium testing—”
“Agent Davis can handle that,” Laura cut in. “Right now, we have a more pressing problem.”
Someone else knocked, Laura buzzed, and in walked Jacob. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him—which is to say, he cocked his head ever so slightly and very nearly broke stride.
“Agent Marks,” Laura said crisply. “I’m assigning Agent Bayne to assist in your investigation.”
Understanding dawned on Jacob’s face a moment before I caught on. He said, “Is it Parsons?”
Laura handed him an address. “It’s a yard waste facility—his body is stuck in the equipment. Agent Bly is on his way to calm everyone down and try and stop it from ending up on YouTube. But the two of you need to get down there immediately,” she looked directly at me, “and see if Andy has anything to say for himself.”
Chapter 9
As we walked to the car, Jacob’s fingertips brushed my forearm to signal me to keep quiet. I was glad enough to have a reprieve from talking. Because when I realized there was now a murder investigation on my plate, I found myself awash in relief. And eagerness. And…dare I say, happiness? Not just because I’d no longer be encountering Officer “Andy” in the john or by the coffee station, either.
Imagine that.
The sprawling site was outside city limits, on an ungainly scrap of land that was part industrial, and part weedy, unintentional forest. Jack Bly and his men hadn’t shut down the entire operation, just the good parts—the section where they’d found the body.
The sheer scale of the vast piles of brush and branches wasn’t apparent until we were walking among them. The machinery had stopped in its tracks when Andy showed up, and it hulked around the perimeter of the scene like a herd of metallic dinosaurs. We couldn’t have asked for better noise cover than Greenwood Disposal. Motors roared in the distance, and the employees lingering around the perimeter looking confused and horrified all had hardcore hearing protection hanging around their necks.
Jacob bent his head to mine and said in my ear, “I didn’t mean for you to get dragged into this. I know homicide was wearing you down.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I admitted. Because if I were to be totally honest, I’d choose walking through a crime scene in the bitter cold to sitting in an office any day.
“Normally I’d presume this meant Andy was the leak,” Jacob said. “But now I’m not so sure.” And really, after everything that went down with Laura and Roger Burke, how could anyone be sure of anything? “What if it was one of his coworkers who shut him up because he was about to expose them?”
“Sad to say, I could see him grabbing the wrong printout and blundering into a giant conspiracy.”
We wrapped up our conversation when Agent Bly came out to meet us, black overcoat flapping in the wind and cold winter sunlight glinting off his shaved scalp. He strode up with grim, broad-shouldered purpose and motioned us over to the big metal machine staked off with crime scene tape. Over the course of my career, I’d encountered corpses in all kinds of places. Vehicles and homes, parks and parking lots. But the ginormous wood chipper? That was a first.
The massive metal contraption consisted of a toothy conveyor belt that drew branches into a big metal housing, then shot them out a tall spout to add them to a pile of wood shavings three stories high.
Jacob jotted a few notes, then said to Bly, “This investigation is sensitive. You can’t discuss it with anyone at headquarters other than Director Kim.”
“Not my first rodeo. I know the drill.” He turned to me and asked, “You knew Agent Parsons?”
Bly was the most sensitive empath I knew…in my current circle of acquaintances, anyhow. Since he’d already be privy to my distinct lack of grief, I didn’t bother sugar-coating my response. “He wasn’t exactly my favorite babysitter.”
“Even so, a word of warning. It’s not pretty.” He walked us over to a set of access stairs and onto the conveyor belt itself. The belt led into a massive, round textured barrel, like a giant’s parmesan grater. And there at the base, where the wheel met the belt, was Andy Parsons. Or what was left of him.
He’d gone in feet first. His body was crushed up to the chest, but his face remained whole. His expression in death was slack. Mouth open, like we’d caught him mid-yawn. Or maybe snoring. Dead faces are disturbing enough. But the blood? Wow. So much blood.
Bly said, “It gets weirder. The chipper was easily strong enough to shred the body in five seconds flat—it can cut through a tree limb thicker than a man’s thigh. But when Parsons’ firearm was crushed, the ammo ignited. One of the workers caught a fragment to the face, damn near lost an eye. And the for
eman was quick on the kill switch.”
So, Officer “Andy” managed to shoot a civilian in the head even after he’d died. Talk about taking incompetence to new heights.
Jacob and Bly, however, were supremely competent, and they had scads more experience under their belts from all their years as actual PsyCops. Moving smoothly, they formed a muscular barricade to shield me from prying eyes. “Getting anything?” Jacob asked urgently.
If by anything, he meant the ghost of good ol’ “Andy” charging up and telling me how he’d ended up in a wood chipper, then no. But I hadn’t put any effort into finding the guy just yet. I looked up at the bleak, grayish sky, took a deep, cleansing breath, and opened myself to the white light. Weirdly, it was harder to visualize in the cold light of day, even with all the practice I’d had, but I was familiar enough with my own limits by now to know the intangible process was working. When a glance revealed nothing around the body moving but the dry foliage rattling in the wind, I pulled down some more. Looked again. Still nothing. And then I thought back to the dead homeless guy I’d blundered across at Graceland without even trying.
The ghost’s body hadn’t even been present, but I’d seen him plain as day. So, logically, that spot must’ve been where he’d died.
Carefully avoiding anything that looked like it might once have been a piece of anybody, I climbed onto the giant metal rig and peered down at the corpse. No less gruesome up close than it was from a distance. The chipping mechanism used both pressure and cutting to pulverize the branches into shreds, and the blood had been pushed up into Andy’s head before he bled out, which left his eyeballs scarlet in his rubbery, pale face. Since the top third of Andy Parsons was spattered with his own guts, I couldn’t tell for sure, but I was betting that forensics might still uncover some telltale lividity that indicated he’d died somewhere else and been brought here for disposal.
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 6
