“So what you’re telling me is that we monitor what everyone has for breakfast, but we give out ammo like it’s candy.”
“If you had a casing for me, I might have more to go on. But a bullet? I’d have to shoot some test rounds from the weapon it came from and compare the rifling.”
The casing is the part that flies out when you fire and hopefully doesn’t hit you in the eye—it holds in all the explosive stuff that propels the shot. If this piece of evidence was anywhere, it would be at the crime scene…if the killer didn’t pick it up and put it in his pocket.
I’d really been hoping to give Jacob something more substantial.
I made my way to my car, dispirited and lost in an allergic fog. I was so distracted it took me a few seconds to register that someone had called my name, more than once. This morning, Jack Bly wore a black knit hat against the brutal January cold, but I knew him well enough by now to spot him even without the shaved head. “You’re here early,” he said.
“Yeah. I’m hoping the nickname Fifth Precinct doesn’t stick.”
He shook his head in commiseration. “PsyCops aren’t recruited for their marksmanship, that’s for sure.” He gazed out over the sea of Lexuses in the range’s parking lot. “I get that we’re training our muscle memory here, but there’s something about shooting at a target that just isn’t the same. Not that I want to fire at another human being. But it makes a big difference when I feel it in the target—” he thumped his sternum. “That cold, ugly spike of hatred. When I know someone would snuff me out without a single regret….”
“You shot a guy?”
“Didn’t have to, thank God. My Stiff subdued him. I think about it, though. A split second later and the perp would’ve had three rounds to the chest. Even though he was a scumbag, how would I sleep at night if I ended up pulling that trigger?”
I could only imagine. Between my Seconal embargo and my newfound cat allergies, I had enough trouble making it through dawn. No comfort for me between the sheets, and none in my new office, for that matter. With a building full of people who weren’t creeped out by psychic ability, fitting in at the FPMP had seemed like it would be easy. How wrong I was.
“Say,” I asked him, “when you met Darla, did you tweak something in her head?”
Bly narrowed his eyes. “Ethical considerations aside—people I deal with on a regular basis, any influence I exert on them will only come back and bite me in the ass. Learned that the hard way. Why do you ask?”
“She was just so nice to you.”
He shrugged. “Lots of women are nice to me nowadays.”
“That’s not what I meant. She’s one of the most intense, vindictive people I’ve ever met. But you shrugged off her interest and she didn’t even bat an eyelash.”
“Ah,” he said knowingly. I might’ve felt myself blush. “Now it makes more sense.”
“What does?”
“The discomfort between the two of you.”
“So she’s pissed off I wasn’t into her, there’s no reason for her to take it so personally. Wrong gender. End of story.”
“Can’t say whether or not that was at the root of the issue, but that’s definitely not what I’m getting now. She’s hurting. Humiliated. People feel like that—they get defensive. If I were you, I’d figure out how to make it up to her. All that damage isn’t gonna go away by itself.”
Was it easier to handle relationships, I wondered, empathically sensing exactly how the people around you felt? Or was it more like hitting those damn targets? You know how to fire a gun, and you know where you want the bullet to go…but thanks to that pesky detail known as “aim,” regardless of all your good intentions, you end up wounding the people you care about most?
When all was said and done, I guess it didn’t really matter, since Jacob was empath kryptonite, and that was the relationship I really cared about screwing up. “All the insight you get from your talent—is it a help or a hindrance? Are you better at knowing what makes people tick, or when you run across a real Stiff, does it throw you for a loop?”
“I guess it levels the playing field. But I suppose it only makes sense.”
I waited for him to elaborate. And when he didn’t, I said, “What does?”
“Laura hiring a Stiff as her point of contact. What better way to make sure she’s impartial with all her agents?”
“Patrick? Huh.” His promotion from The Clinic made a lot more sense now. And while I had no intention of letting down my guard with him to the point where I really bared my soul, it was encouraging to know that if I ever did, the secrets that might slip out wouldn’t be fair game for one of the numerous FPMP mind-readers.
* * *
Keeping Patrick on my good side was only part of my plan. If I was going to be successful at the FPMP, I needed Darla’s help. No two ways about it. Not only was she a legit medium, she was smart, focused, and a hell of a hard worker. And if she over-accessorized the room, so what? I could ditch all that stuff once she went back home.
I was supposed to be tracking down information on shamans. Hopefully they would either be mediums themselves, or if not, they might’ve worked with some potential mediums in their tribe. However, it was phenomenally difficult to stay on task. If anyone understands what it’s like to feel humiliated, it should be me. But how had I humiliated Darla? Especially since that was the last thing I’d been trying to do. In fact, it was the opposite. I’d been trying to spare her feelings.
I should probably just apologize and get it over with. And yet, I worried about making it worse. Because all I needed was for her to say, what are you sorry for? to totally derail my efforts.
I sat back, rubbed my eyes—dammit—and said, “I really need to give Laura something concrete.”
“First name basis with the director?” Darla sneered.
Yeah, vague apologies would definitely not fly. “I’m trying, here.”
“Well, try harder. I had a weekend getaway booked that I’ll have to cancel because of this wild goose chase.”
“You’ve got a life, I get it. We all do. But the director is right, if a segment of our agents is susceptible to possession, we need to figure out how to get ahead of it.”
“We have five first-person case studies to start with,” she said. “At least, we would, if you’d stop being so weird about telling us what you know.”
“I’m not being weird. Carl? Back me up here.”
He gave us a brief look, and said nothing.
“Well, what about Jacob?” Darla asked me.
“What about him?”
“I didn’t get a chance to look at his ID….”
Because she was busy checking out his other assets. “Yeah, he has that effect on people.”
“Better put a ring on him before he comes to his senses.” She thought for a moment. “So, what’s his talent?”
“NP,” I lied. Only because Jacob’s abilities were off the books. Not because I was being weird about what I knew.
“So let’s say you really can’t remember. If NPs are potential targets, particularly the ones who work here, you’ve got good reason to figure this out, for his sake. There are ways to dredge up things you’ve forgotten, y’know. Go back to the neighborhood where you grew up. Check out your schools, playgrounds, arcades. See if any of your old friends are still around.”
I knuckled my eye again. Damn it. Did I need to handcuff myself to the freaking desk? “Y’know, just because you had two parents and a normal childhood full of normal memories doesn’t mean everybody else did too.”
She whipped around to face me. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
“Oh my God, you’re…. Since when are you so hypersensitive?”
“I have allergies.”
With thinly disguised impatience, Carl interjected, “And while you two are busy arguing, agents are getting themselves killed. Figure this out so Director Kim can put her focus where it matters.”
“Whatever,” Darla said. �
�So far we’ve got three solid origin stories: the Skype shaman seeing a dead relative, Faun Windsong getting a little too good with the Ouija board, and me learning Cantonese. Since Richie is Richie and he’ll say anything to get attention, I’m not sure I buy the haunted TV set, but I’ll chalk that up as a ‘maybe.’ Even so, that’s hardly enough to form a cohesive picture. We need more than just three reliable mediums.”
We pondered that for a moment, then Carl said, “What about the person who trained you both at Heliotrope Station?”
Darla and I both looked at each other. “I didn’t even think of talking to Miss Maxwell,” she said.
“Me neither. So it’s just a matter of tracking her down.”
* * *
I found Patrick at his desk, reading something in a three-ring binder. Without even seeing the words, I could tell it was bone dry and phenomenally tedious. “So I was wondering if you could help me locate a Psych,” I said.
“Sure. And not that I mind the company, but you could’ve saved yourself a trip and sent an email.”
“I forgot my password.” That sounded less incompetent than I have no idea how to use my computer.
“Your email login? Or…?”
“All of them.”
“Let’s see if I’ve got the clearance to look them up.”
“You can do that? I thought email was encrypted.”
He flipped back a few pages in his reading material. “Generally speaking, but with the right clearance…just don’t forward any off-color jokes and you’ll be fine.” He moused and clicked and keyed stuff in, and finally pulled up some sort of record. “I’m in. And…it looks like you never set it up. Here.” My phone chirped. “I sent you a temporary login code for your email.”
“Cool. Thanks.” I had no great love of email. Mainly I was thanking him for not calling my bluff.
He jotted down something else on a slip of paper. “And here’s the weekly login for your station. It’s emailed every Friday afternoon. Memorize it for the following week.”
Given my memory, fat chance of that happening. “So can you get me some contact info from old Heliotrope Station? Not that new place that assumed the name, but the old training facility on the southwest side.”
“I can try. Who’re you looking for?”
“Maxwell.” And…damn. Pretty safe to say, her first name wasn’t Miss. “Female. Caucasian. She was there about fifteen years ago. Approximate age? Try fifty to sixty. And if it helps, she was a medium.”
“You think she’s connected to the leak?”
“No, the mediumship project.”
“I’ll bet Laura will be really excited if you can make headway with that. It makes more sense to play to your strengths anyway. But Agent Lipton, Agent Garcia…what’s next for them?”
“They’re fine, they’re safe. Agent Marks has it handled.”
“Great! So, listen, I was thinking, if you can make the time, maybe we can hit the range before work tomorrow morning, together. I’d kinda like having the emotional support. I know it’s paranoid, but I feel like every time someone hands me a box of ammunition, they want to roll their eyes and tell me to aim at the target, not the wall.”
I dunno, that’s what I always figured they were thinking about me. “Sure, yeah. I’ll meet you there by seven.”
I went back to my office and logged in to my desktop, then found my FPMP email and opened it. When I saw 186 unread emails in the inbox—about half of them from Jodie Watts, trying to get me to come in and aim at said targets, but nothing from Laura—I closed it again, realized I’d been rubbing my eyes, and pointedly sat on my hands. Allergies…or an incorporeal blob tethered to my eyeball, forcing my hand? Goddammit, why’d I have to go and think of Dreyfuss and his fingernail demons? Now I wanted to rub even harder.
“So have you ever seen anything that was like a ghost,” I asked tentatively, “that wasn’t really ever…human. But kind of, uh, ghost-like?”
Darla considered answering me for a long while. I was worried she was just trying to come up with the most scathing retort she could think of when she finally said, “Some things don’t sound right to me.”
“Or people?”
She nodded slowly, not meeting my eyes. “Yeah. Sometimes it’s a person with that certain frequency, that strange hum around them. The non-people ones, how do they look to you?”
“Blobs.” I shrugged. “Shapes. Masses. Energy, I guess.”
I hated trying to explain those things. None of the words I put to them ever felt quite right. But Darla, she understood. We shared the moment, but before I could ask if she heard any sound-blobs vibrating around my eyeballs, she ruined it all by saying, “See? You do remember things. Maybe you’re not so useless after all.”
Chapter 27
I was halfway to Sticks and Stones when I realized it was no longer there. While I’m no fan of texting and driving, just try pulling off to the side in Wicker Park and see if you’ll ever manage to merge back into the stream of traffic again. Instead, I clutched my phone in frustration, aggravated that there was no raised keypad to press and could no longer rely on my pre-programmed memory-dials. “I just want to call Crash,” I complained to the world at large.
“Calling Crash,” my phone said.
Whoa. Be careful what you wish for.
Crash greeted me with, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Where are you?”
“No foreplay,” he sighed, “straight into the action. How typically you. If you must know, we’re at Still Goods straightening up after our lunchtime meditation. You should stop by and try it sometime. Might help you to deal with that pesky abruptness of yours.”
The whole “we” and “our” business was still jarring. I course-corrected and headed toward Irving. Since it was officially business hours, the other parts of the store were open, not just Curious Curios. There was a woman at the cash register chatting with a customer, neither of them making any pretense of any type of financial transaction. A teenage girl who probably should’ve been in school was scoping out vintage jewelry. And judging by the old-school punk playing somewhere deep within the building, Crash and Red had settled in happily to their new digs. I followed the sound of a slightly out-of-tune guitar track and found the two of them staple-gunning a hunk of colorful brocade to the far wall. “Just in time,” Crash said. “Hold up that end of the fabric, wouldja? We’ve only got so many hands.”
Well, at least I was good for something. I held up my end of the material while Red crowded up to the wall near me and used the staple gun to show it who was boss. Snap-snap-snap. Close enough to me that I could smell him…and he smelled really good, like fresh incense, before it burns and goes all sooty. Hard to say why I found him so profoundly intimidating. Hot, sure. Confident, definitely. But it was the self-contained gravity to his expression that really made me squirm.
“If I had to look at that awful seventies paneling one more minute…” he murmured, and it was some relief, then, to know that even right up against him, I was hardly even a blip on the guy’s radar. Of course, just as I thought that, he turned the full brunt of his dark gaze to me and said, “Something’s wrong. What is it?”
I swallowed hard. “You’re an empath too?”
He non-answered with the shadow of a smile.
“There’s always something wrong with Vic,” Crash chimed in. Except he was watching me hard now too, assessing my level of anxiety and teasing me only for form’s sake. “Why else would he grace me with his presence?”
“Curtis,” Red chided gently. “Be nice.”
Crash gave me a sizzling look and scraped his tongue stud along the ridge of his lower teeth.
Red looped his arm through mine and settled me in a squeaky wooden chair. The lumpy seat was stuffed with springs and horsehair, or maybe old auto parts. He pulled up an ottoman and folded himself onto it, cross-legged, and lavished the discomfort of his full and utter attention on me. “Tell us about it. Talking about your problems c
an help clarify how you really feel.”
I hesitated, and Crash turned up the mix tape. A repetitive three-chord anthem blared. “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe here.”
“Fine.” I looked up at the ceiling and said, “So I’m at the FPMP and it should be easy, or at least doable, but the job’s not what I was told and turns out I suck, people are getting killed. Agents. Half my permanent record’s blacked out but I’m in no position to ask my boss why, and now someone I trained with is back and she hates me, and maybe if I could fucking remember something that no normal person would ever forget, I could tell her and set everything right.”
I paused, gulped some air, and Crash said, “Does that about cover it?”
“I guess.”
He asked Red, “You ever work with recovered memories?”
“Some. Although it’s worth considering whether it’s best to leave the past in the past.”
“Normally,” Crash said thoughtfully, “I’d concur. But the ex-PsyCop here has seen so much wrongness, it begs the question: what if his imagination is worse than what actually went down?”
“It’s up to you, Victor,” Red told me.
“Recovering memories. What would it…entail?”
“Just talk to me. That’s all.”
“There’s nothing to say. I don’t remember.”
Red shrugged easily. “No pressure. Just start with something you do know.”
I don’t know squat, I thought, but then the song changed to one of those ubiquitous punk songs that every bratty punk band covers, badly, and if I closed my eyes, I could picture a basement rec room with paneling exactly like the one we were just covering up, and a similar boombox too, with the same song cranking in the background. Three other kids were there. Friends, I guess, kids to swap albums with or share homework. All boys. Straight, and that was fine. I knew where to go to scratch that itch outside our normal stomping grounds, so I wouldn’t end up getting the snot kicked out of me at school.
“I was fifteen.” Which would’ve made my friends thirteen, given the two grades I’d repeated. I conveniently omitted that detail. And the fact that I was still in middle school. “We came up with the great idea to pool our money to buy a pack of cigarettes. Not sure if I was tall enough to actually pass for eighteen or the convenience store clerk just didn’t care enough to check.”
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 17
