“And check out the productivity app on your home screen,” Patrick said. “It’ll really help you focus.”
A small laugh escaped me. I poked the icon to give it an obligatory glance, and a setup routine popped up. I gave it a few more jabs to try to close it, but it was fixated on importing my nonexistent calendar. I groaned and shoved the phone into Patrick’s hand again, and seriously considered asking him to switch everything back to my flip phone. “I don’t have time for this. One of our agents is dead.”
“See, that’s the thing. You’re in reactive mode. And that’s when critical stuff slips through the cracks.” He turned the phone toward me and showed me a simple grid. “Think about tasks as four quadrants. Urgent, not urgent. Important, not important. It’s easy enough to disregard tasks that have no urgency, and clearly don’t matter. Urgent stuff that isn’t really important can be delegated, or skipped entirely. Urgent, important things are impossible to ignore. But it’s the important, ongoing stuff that tends to fall by the wayside, and they’re the tasks that make the biggest impact.” He tapped the intersection between important and not urgent. “Have undiscovered mediums been roaming the halls of the FPMP for years? Apparently so. But even though there’s no obvious urgency attached to screening for them, you’d better believe that solving this issue would be the best way to impress Director Kim.”
* * *
My relationship with Laura Kim was unusual, to say the least. I’d befriended her when she was a glorified secretary. Now she was my boss. She didn’t intimidate me, not like Warwick had, but boy oh boy, was I eager to please her. This desire to prove myself was disturbing. I’d spent my life balking at authority. Now I was filled with the urge to win her over.
It made me profoundly uncomfortable.
If I had any hope of uncovering the FPMP’s mediums, I’d need to be a team player, and that meant making nice with Darla. I’d invite her input, be professional, and let any nasty digs roll off my back. I was prepared to bring my friendliest self to the office when I opened the door and discovered the botanical fairy had visited since the last time I’d seen the place. And she’d been busy.
Big plants in pots lurked in each corner. Dangly plants hung in front of the windows. And random smaller plants were tucked into the bookshelves and cluttering up the filing cabinets.
To say I’m not a fan of plants is putting it mildly. They’re living creatures, they move and change and grow. Bad enough. And then you forget to water them, and they crap down leaves, turn brown, wither, and die. I fought down the urge to exclaim, what the hell? and instead, cautiously said, “So…plants.”
Darla shot me a look from her fancy standing desk. “Numerous studies have shown that the presence of live plants improves air quality, which in turn augments problem-solving and productivity.”
Great. She had Science behind her. “Okay, but don’t they take up a lot of room? I mean, there’s something to be said for minimalism and focus.”
“What do you care?” she said scornfully. “You’re never here.”
I looked to Carl for help. “You spend more time in this office than anyone. What do you think?”
Carl seemed surprised anyone had bothered to ask his opinion. I doubted Richie ever did. He took a look around, considered the lush foliage, then said, “Well, I suppose they do spruce up the place.”
Said the guy who had nothing on his desk but a framed copy of the Serenity Prayer. Then again, if I had worked any amount of time with Richie, I’d need just as much moral support to deal with the things I couldn’t change…without strangling them.
So, I was outnumbered. Fine. Once it was just the two of us again, he could be in charge of watering the damn things.
“How’s the mediumship testing coming along?” I asked Darla.
Somehow, I managed to choose the wrong words, or timing, or inflection, because the question pissed her off. “So that’s how it works around here? You take off and leave me to do all the work, then traipse back in and demand a progress report?”
“Who’s traipsing? I just asked.”
She rolled her eyes, turned to the big touchscreen, and called up a video shot of the haunted office. An agent stood in the corner, walked to the far wall, turned, and walked back. “If we have the subject wear a sensor—that’s the dot taped to her shoulder, right there—then the computer can create a map of her motions.” She tapped a few links, and the picture faded to a wireframe map with a red line trailing through it. “These are a lot easier to watch—especially since we can speed them up, overlay them, and graph their common points. But, to be honest, I’m not sure this will tell us much. I walked the course myself and my pattern looks a lot like Agent Malcolm’s.”
“Hold on, you walked back and forth through the room? Knowing it was full of repeaters?”
“That’s what you call those things, repeaters?” She frowned. “I’ve always thought of them as echoes. Like skipping CDs.”
I nodded. It felt weird to talk about it. Even with someone who hated me. “Or an endless film loop.”
“Why should they stop me from doing my job? Sure, they’re distracting—and the loud ones can get annoying. But it’s not as if they pose any sort of threat.”
I rolled my shoulders to try to calm the gooseflesh prickling across my back. “You sure about that? What if they tried to…?” I waited for her to finish my thought for me. She didn’t. “Y’know,” I said. “Mess you up.”
“They can’t. There’s no consciousness to an echo—it’s nothing more than trapped energy bouncing around.” As she thought the idea through, she grew more and more intense. “Would an untrained medium be spooked into avoiding them? Maybe. But someone like me? I can tell the difference. Mistaking an echo for one of the dead is like thinking you can stop someone from running away by stepping on their shadow.”
By the time the knock interrupted her, she was practically ranting. She turned to glare at the door. Carl, unfazed, got up and answered it. He turned to me and said, “Agent Bly for you.”
“Send him in,” I sighed.
Back in his previous life as John Wembly, Jack Bly was a big, soft guy with an unruly mop of hair and a paper PsyCop card tucked behind his detective’s badge. Now, he was a shaven-headed wall of solid FPMP muscle. He didn’t enjoy pumping iron, not like Jacob did. His workout routine was mandatory—either hit the gym, or be redacted for real when his mysterious past caught up with him.
Generally, I’m not into gym rats, so Bly is nothing like my type. But his fitness regimen was definitely earning him some appreciation from Darla. When he walked in, her mood did such a pronounced 180 that I practically got whiplash.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked. But before I could try, she strode over, thrust out her hand, and said, “I’m Agent Daniels from the Indianapolis office. But you can call me Darla.”
In movies, when a car crash is ready to erupt in a giant orange ball of flame, the action slows down so you can see the explosion in all its glorious detail. When their hands met, I could swear that cinematic slow-mo was happening to me. If Bly didn’t duck out of the way, he’d end up scorched and crispy. Were I a braver man, I’d dive between them, wailing, “Nooo….” But I was paralyzed. Mute. And all I could do was brace for the shock of the blast.
“Jack Bly,” he said easily. “I should mention, I’m a high-level empath.”
Darla fluttered her eyelashes. “And I should mention I’m married. But I appreciate the candor.”
I experienced the sort of lurch you get when you mis-count going down the stairs and hit the floor one step earlier than you expect…but there was no explosion. Hell, not even a hint of smoke. “You’re married?” I blurted out.
“If I thought you had any interest in my actual life,” she replied, “I would have told you.”
Bly said, “I was hoping you could spare Agent Bayne. We need his input on our current investigation.”
“Makes no difference to me,” Darla said, with a pronoun
ced undertone of he’s useless here anyway…and entirely overrated.
Chapter 12
It’s a sorry state of affairs when Jacob’s office is less cluttered than mine. I took a seat with Bly and admired the plant-free expanse of the credenza. Jacob said, “Normally, we’d be investigating Andy Parsons’ family, but he’s single and his parents are vacationing in Costa Rica. I’m looking at the co-workers—the ones with access to the same printer. What if one of them was responsible for the wild accusations and Andy was about to report them? Or what if they were in it together and it went sour? My thought is that we need to get to these agents as soon as possible and interview them. Between the three of us, we could feel them out, see how much they actually know.”
A decent plan. If one of them stuffed that woodchipper, either Bly would catch them feeling guilty, or, if we were really lucky, “Andy” would tag along to the questioning and helpfully point the finger.
Bly agreed. “We can’t let them know they’re being interrogated. Interrogations make everyone defensive, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. If they have something to hide and we make as if we don’t suspect them, they’ll either feel nervous or relieved. Either way, that’ll be easy to spot among the normal things you’d feel if you got the news that someone died. And we should tell them all at the same time. Make sure no one’s got a chance to collude.”
Jacob considered the idea. “You can read that many people at once?”
Bly smiled, mostly with his eyes. “Not a problem.”
“We can assume they’re not stupid,” Jacob said. “Having the three of us in the room to break the news will raise suspicions. A one-way mirror would do the same.”
“I’ll act as if you and Vic don’t know,” Bly suggested, “and I’m telling everyone at the same time. We can pull it off. They’re two NPs and a low-level precog.”
“It’s still a little weird,” I said. “The setup is too random. Why gather us all in a group to break the news? Unless….” I flashed back to the last officer down at the Fifth. I hadn’t really known her. It was awkward. “We frame it as a grief counseling type situation.”
“That can work,” Jacob said.
Bly added, “There’s some therapist they call when they lose an agent. Bring them in and no one will be any the wiser.”
It was a solid plan. And while I knew I was supposed to be scoping out potential mediums, it seemed pretty damn important to me to check out Andy’s co-workers. Or maybe I just wanted to get away from Darla.
We made all the arrangements, and while Bly went off to escort the grief counselor, Jacob and I headed to the meeting room. Lucky I had him, since it was unlikely I’d be able to pin down the location without an app. It was one tastefully decorated conference room among many, though this one had softer furniture and lower lights. Shortly after we found the place, Andy’s colleagues arrived in a bunch, two Caucasian women—one older, one younger—and a Latino guy with his necktie loosened. The first thing I noticed about them was that they were smiling, like we caught them mid-conversation and whatever they were chatting about had nothing to do with a shredded body.
Jacob leaned over to me and whispered, “We look suspicious. Smile like I just said something nice.”
Jacob might be plenty of things, but “nice” isn’t one of them. I forced my face into the expression, though given how stiff it felt, no doubt it was an epic fail. Jacob smiled back. Not with his eyes.
The older woman turned to us and asked, “Do you two know what this is about? I’m supposed to be prepping for the field.”
“Sorry,” Jacob said. Which, technically, wasn’t “no.”
“I hope it’s a long assignment. Those are always more interesting, you can really sink your teeth into them. Once I was a middle school teacher for an entire term, September to June. You’d be amazed, all the things I learned—or, I suppose, how much I’d managed to forget. I’m unstoppable at Trivial Pursuit now. But good thing I got out of learning that new math.”
Beneath the fake teacher prattling on to Jacob, I was aware of another pair of voices out in the hallway, both male, drawing closer. Hard to mistake Jack Bly for anyone else. But with dawning horror, I realized I knew the other voice, too—a deep, booming voice I’d heard run the gamut from scathing insults, to big, shameless belly laughs, to phenomenally intimate descriptions of exactly how hard he wanted to make me come. The memory was so visceral, when he walked through the door, I did a double-take. I expected him in teased hair and eyeliner, not a flared overcoat and pocket watch.
I felt entirely unprepared.
Then again, would I ever really be ready to face Stefan?
It was as jarring as ever to see how he’d aged. Not because he’d aged badly. Even heavier and graying, he was still handsome to me. It was the sparkle in his eye and the wry twist to the corner of his mouth that had drawn me to him, and the excitement of discovering a kindred spirit among all the institutional washouts I’d known. The longing I felt when I saw him now wasn’t exactly a longing for him, or even what might have been…but the deep and worthless realization that if I’d been a better human being, things wouldn’t have ended quite so horribly wrong.
Bly paused briefly—surprisingly enough, my dismay didn’t knock him right off his feet—but he rolled with the punches, and introduced Stefan as if he’d encountered nothing more than mild curiosity. “Agents Marks, Garcia, Frank, Lipton, and Bayne. This is Steven Russeau.”
Stefan stared at me for just a fraction of a beat, but in that tiny glimpse of vulnerability, it was as if he’d seen a ghost. Our eyes met. My guilt-ridden longing hung there for a moment between us, then curdled into anger over his betrayal. Stefan recovered quickly—more quickly than me—and carried on as if he didn’t know me from Adam. He turned toward the others and shook hands.
“Have we met?” the fake teacher asked as they shook.
“It’s possible. I’ve been consulting for the FPMP for a few years now.”
Before she could pursue the matter, Bly cut in to stop the pleasantries from getting out of hand. “You’ll want to sit down, Veronica, because he’s got some sad news.”
“There is no easy way to put this,” Stefan said with a very convincing display of sympathy. “I’m sorry to tell you that your friend and colleague, Andy Parsons, has passed away.”
There was a sharp intake of breath, which Jacob managed to mimic with little enough lag that he actually seemed surprised. I’m no great actor. I just pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head. Even though the gesture was all about Stefan, it must’ve looked entirely apropos.
Once the big shock sank in, the guy, Agent Garcia, demanded, “What happened?”
“I’m told it’s part of an ongoing investigation.” Stefan held up a hand in benediction. An elegant gesture. One that seemed to encompass all the world’s suffering and offer a gentle, if somewhat generic, bit of comfort. “Obviously, if you have any information that might be helpful, you’ll want to report it to your superiors. But here, now, take advantage of the opportunity to process the information in a private, supportive atmosphere.”
“I can’t believe it,” the fake teacher said. “I just can’t believe it. He was so young. His whole life ahead of him.”
Then the other woman spoke up, the younger one. She had a downstate twang to her voice that must’ve been accentuated by her shock and grief. “Well, why don’t we all just say what everyone’s thinking? I should have known.”
“Come on, sweetie,” the fake teacher said. “No one is thinking that.”
“How could you not? I had like five dreams before my sister’s freaking parrot died. And I don’t see it coming when the guy on the other side of the cubicle—?” a sob choked off the end of her sentence. She buried her face in her hands, and wept.
Stefan strode over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. To comfort her, or to push her harder in hopes of making her crack? No idea. It would depend on what Bly had told him to do. But the thought of hi
m tinkering around inside that poor girl’s head made my skin crawl. I stood up and edged to the opposite side of the room to put more distance between him and me, even though I knew that if he wanted to poke a few holes in my emotions, a few feet of air would hardly be an effective buffer.
“It’s frustrating enough to lose someone you’re close to,” Stefan said, “and even worse when there are so many questions. But I’m sure there’s nothing any of you could have done.”
What a performance. If I were a normal person, I’d take it as token words of condolence. But if I’d killed Andy, I’d be squirming in my seat. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Stefan was a master of double-talk.
Fake Teacher was hung up on the “how” of it all. “Was he sick? Was there an accident?”
“I have no details at all,” Stefan said. “I’m so sorry.”
Garcia said, “If this has to do with our job, they’ve got to give us the details. Ongoing investigation or not.”
The three coworkers hadn’t even seen “Andy” half-shredded in the chipper, and even still, emotions ran high. The precog cried harder, while the fake teacher tutted over her and encouraged her to “let it all out,” and the guy snapped, “It’s not your fault, Colleen—what could you have done?”
Jacob had his head down, though in reality, he was watching them carefully for any physical or verbal cues. I gave up all pretense of acting bereaved and simply paced back and forth, back and forth, ticking down the time until I could put Stefan out of my line of sight, and more importantly, out of my mind. Funny thing was, just as soon as I tore my eyes away from Stefan, I found myself staring at him all over again as if I had no control whatsoever where I planted my eyes. And he wasn’t compelling me—not that I would put it past him. But it took a certain amount of focus for him to manage his big come-hither, and he was too occupied trying to look like a compassionate person to have enough spare attention left over to do his thing.
Thankfully, it didn’t take Bly long to get what he needed from the three agents. He stood, buttoned his jacket, and said, “I’ll be sure to keep you all informed just as soon as I have anything substantial. And if any of you need some one-on-one time with Mr. Russeau, I’ll let you have your privacy.”
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 8
