Actually, it was the least I could do. Watts had done her due diligence by trying to contact me directly. Relentlessly. Even so, I considered adding the condition that she ditch the nickname, but decided there’s a difference between playful ribbing and malice. Besides, some small part of me was just relieved I’d finally shed Spook Squad.
I headed over to headquarters and got a text from Laura asking me to stop by her office first thing. At least, I was fairly sure it was from Laura. The thought of Jennifer Chance forcing her way back through the veil did have me rounding the corners with extra caution.
Laura greeted me with, “I’m thinking I should move Agent Davis to the Chicago office.”
“But Darla would, uh…. You really don’t need to. I’ve got this covered.”
“It has nothing to do with my confidence in your ability. This proposal the two of you sent me last night shows serious forward thinking.”
I didn’t really think our plan was all that inspired, just an idea born out of a desire to stop watching the world’s most boring TV show. We took the origin stories of all the mediums and sketched out a questionnaire that would screen for similar early supernatural experiences. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure who’d suggested it. Given what we knew, it seemed like common sense.
But Laura was terrified of ghosts—even more so, now that Jennifer Chance had reprised her role. I’d been as clinical as possible in our report, left out the crazy eyes and the chilling cat-and-mouse smile, but even as dull as I could make it sound, it still had Laura itching to circle the wagons.
She said, “The two of you are strongest as a team. Once we’ve got a better handle on identifying the potential mediums, I’d consider letting her go back—”
“Wait. Hold on. If you order Darla to leave her home and her family—”
“Obviously, I’d make provisions for them to join her.”
“You’re not hearing me. If you force Darla, you’ll only make her miserable. Sure, she kicks ass. But she’s got a life, and so does her husband, and she’s been counting down the minutes until she can head back. It’s not as if we lose her expertise. We’ve got phones and video. And if we really need her, she’s not all that far away.”
Laura frowned in thought. “I suppose it wouldn’t be any more trouble to install a helipad on the roof than to relocate a family. Plus it would come in handy.”
I kept my mouth shut while she convinced herself, so as not to jinx my future chances of scoring a helicopter ride.
“Fine,” Laura decided, “we’ll shelve the relocation discussion, for the moment. Anything else?”
“Actually…it pains me to admit this, but after the unanticipated spirit activity this weekend, the building needs a good sweep, and I’d rather not do it alone. Darla’s talents fall more in the receptive category, but there’s a medium down in Florida who’s got a knack for exorcisms and protections.”
“Say no more. Send me his details and I’ll take care of it.”
When she said that with such decisiveness and confidence, she sounded just like the old Laura. Which, unfortunately, wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run. “There’s only so many hours in a day,” I told her. “And being Regional Director of the Midwest is more than a full-time job in itself. You can’t be your own assistant.”
She stiffened, and I thought for a moment that I might’ve overstepped the bounds of our supposed rapport. But then she gave her head a rueful shake and said, “No kidding. Getting burned by someone so close, it sucks. Now it’s hard to know who to trust.”
I opted not to mention it was her workplace that put fake cops like Officer “Andy” on my tail. “I really can vouch for Bob Zigler.”
“He had a glowing recommendation from Constantine too, but when I offered him a field agent position, he turned it down. Maybe Operations Coordinator would be a better fit.”
No clue if Zig would even want a desk job in the Program, but hey, it never hurt to have options. When she turned back to her computer, I figured I’d been dismissed, and turned to leave—on a fairly high note, too, for all that I’d admitted culpability in conjuring up Jennifer Chance after she should have been dead and gone.
I’d nearly made my escape when Laura called out, “And, Vic?” I turned back, figuring I wouldn’t get away without being chastised about my ghostly exploits after all. But the only thing she added was, “Thanks.”
I headed back toward the office I’d shortly have to myself again, mostly, if you didn’t count Carl and several dozen houseplants, but found myself so turned around, I realized I was practically on Jacob’s Internal Affairs doorstep. I detoured for a quick pitstop, figuring he’d want to know the vocabulary he’d helped me finesse to make my report sound as non-horrifying as possible seemed to have done its job, and was surprised to find him chatting with Agent Garcia.
Today the surveillance specialist had on the standard black suit and boring tie the rest of us were wearing. Guess he was working from HQ today. That, or he was going undercover as a bouncer at a high-priced strip club. He turned to me and said, “I heard you didn’t give up the safe houses, even at gunpoint.”
“Kind of a no-brainer. Jacob didn’t tell me where you guys were.”
Garcia looked at the two of us with admiration. “I always figured it would be hard to separate work from home life, and couples had to tell each other everything.”
Simultaneously, Jacob and I warded each other off…probably more theatrically than we needed to. I said, “I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying about his problems on top of my own.” Maybe I was exaggerating a little. But I figured it couldn’t hurt our reputation to play it up.
Garcia gestured for me to join them at Jacob’s desk. “I was just going over some policies and specs with your guy here that you’ll probably want to know about.” He pointed at a report that meant nothing to me. “Your house is clean. No cameras, no bugs.”
“Sure,” I replied.
“I’m telling you, private residences are off-limits without the consent of whoever lives there. Only exception would be if they were a danger to someone.”
Of course there were exceptions. And it would be no problem to pay some crooked professional to sign off on them. My expression must’ve said as much, because Garcia got more insistent. “I combed through all the records, twice. The FPMP is not monitoring your building now, and they never have.”
My eyes flicked up to meet Jacob’s. I could tell by the mulish set of his jaw, he wasn’t buying it either. He said, “And our vehicles? What about them?”
“Company cars have a tracker in the dash.” Okay. That jibed with what we knew of Andy’s Lexus. “Same as your company-issued firearm.”
I’d never bothered with an off-duty weapon. Now I knew what Jacob could get me for my birthday. Not that I trusted him to remember the actual date, but since the big 4-0 was coming, maybe it was on his mind.
“Our phones?” I asked. “How private are they?”
“The calls themselves aren’t recorded or monitored, but definitely be smart about what you do on your phone. GPS, emails, photos, browsing history. All of that’s fair game. Not just the FPMP’s phone, but any smartphone. You were a cop—you should know all about the kind of evidence you can pull from the history.”
I gestured at my head. “My expertise was in a different kind of data.” Back at the Fifth Precinct, I never would have made such a bold statement. But at the FPMP, folks were used to dealing with extrasensory abilities, and they knew I wasn’t bragging. My talent was a simple matter of fact. I scowled the lockscreen open and handed it to him. “Since my phone is fair game, maybe you can take a look and see why Laura can’t get hold of me.”
In all of two seconds, Garcia figured out my problem. “Her number’s blocked. Cell, landline, even her home number. And they’re set up to forward to Patrick if you call them.”
I answered with a long-suffering sigh. He set about undoing the damage. “You’ll want to look through all your settings and get
a basic idea of what each of them does. Not just the menus, but the submenus, too. Look them up online if you don’t know what they are, you’ll find plenty of explanation. In terms of navigation, I’d recommend turning off your location and using a dedicated GPS if you want to minimize your electronic trail….”
Was it too late to get back my flip phone? Probably. The litany of things I shouldn’t do on my new smartphone stretched on, but I’d glazed over the moment he got all technical about settings and apps. He paused, and the pause extended long enough that I figured he was through. Except, it didn’t really seem like he was. There was a weird energy hanging there, like maybe he’d stopped mid-sentence.
“You were saying?” Jacob prompted.
He ignored Jacob, cocked his head, and approached the window—the one with the haggard trees outside—reached into the blinds, and plucked a small piece of plastic off the inner frame of the windowsill. He turned the device around a few more times, then held it up to the light and squinted at it. A couple of tiny wires protruded from the bottom. Before either of us could verify that the mysterious object was exactly what we dreaded, Garcia looked up at us and said, “This isn’t one of ours.”
Chapter 43
When life hands you lemons, they say, make lemonade. Or margaritas, as the case may be. While our latest high-powered blender churned a cupful of ice into a pale, green-tinted slush, I smoothed out some papers on the countertop and considered the information about Miss Maxwell that Patrick had left me.
Recommendation to reassign [redacted name] to the Cleveland Sisters of Faith inpatient facility for further observation and counseling. [Redacted] continues to request the rite of exorcism despite the refusal of the Bishop Mann. Initial diagnosis by [redacted] of paranoid schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations and perceptual disturbances has been challenged by [also redacted] as an acute, stress-related episode.
“I blew it,” I told Jacob. “Maybe, on paper, I was technically an adult, but I was so immature it wasn’t even funny. Here was this woman whose history was a lot like mine, but she’d come through it intact. She could’ve helped me in so many ways, but I saw myself as an ‘anarchist’ and her as an authority figure. I did everything I could to evade and ignore her, and look where it got me.”
Jacob scanned the papers fanned out, with their creases and water stains and thick black marks. “I don’t see a death certificate,” he said.
Maybe not. And even if he did, there’d still be a way to get in touch. Although given her animosity toward our old teacher, I couldn’t imagine Darla would be too keen on playing interdimensional intercom.
Jacob eased himself up against my back, slid his arms around my waist, and pressed a cold kiss to the back of my neck. Not deadfrost…just margarita. I shivered and tried not to smile, since I was doing my best to feel guilty and inadequate. But I couldn’t quite manage. Not with Jacob squeezing up against me like that.
“You’re okay with me seeing this?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’ve seen a hell of a lot worse…like that freaky ingrown hair on my back.”
“It’s hard to tell whether you’re trying to shield me from something, or you honestly don’t know.”
“You know I trust you,” I told him. “With my life.” I craned my neck to kiss him…and for all that I thought tequila smelled like an old rubber inner tube, combined with the margarita mix and his tantalizingly cool tongue, suddenly I found it a lot more enticing. I explored that taste in more depth, and the kissing started to feel more like foreplay…until we were interrupted by a whiff of burnt electronics. Jacob stopped tonguing me and turned off the blender.
I pressed my mouth to his ear. “I might have been a little leery at first,” I told him. “But I think the two of us make a pretty good team.”
He grabbed the blender, handed me his half-full glass and an empty one for me, and headed up toward the bedroom, where he filled them both. Drinking ensued. Not much—I’m a cheap date—followed by a pounding that was deliberately loud enough to give anyone listening in something to blush about.
We’d presumed Patrick was the one who’d bugged Jacob’s office, and he’d never been to the cannery…as far as we knew. But why take chances? We were so accustomed to treating our home like it was bugged, it was easier to keep up our noise camouflage than to accept anyone’s reassurance that the place was clean.
Frankly, I found myself wishing the FPMP’s reach went deeper than it did. If we’d caught Patrick on-camera chipping Andy, Agent Frank would still be alive. Too bad the chances of me exploiting high tech surveillance were pretty slim. Hell, I could barely operate my phone.
Not only did I have a lot to learn, but a lot to remember. How I could’ve possibly forgotten Harold and Mama Brill was beyond me. I planned to hang on to those new memories tenaciously, and hopefully, uncover more. There was bound to be someone at the FPMP who could help me. ’Cos the less I had to deal with Stefan, the better.
All in all, I felt pretty okay about my decision to jump ship at the Chicago PD and throw in with F-pimp. I might never fit very comfortably anywhere.
But like my closetful of new black suits, the fit was close enough.
-end-
About this Story
Usually when I write, I think I know what the theme of a given story is going to be when I sit down to write it. And usually, I’m dead wrong.
I knew Vic’s early days at the FPMP would have to entail the job being a lot more convoluted than he ever realized. Although I miss Con Dreyfuss terribly, it’s useful to have him gone and Laura in his place, because she doesn’t have to honor any of his promises, and she needs Vic a lot more than Dreyfuss ever did.
Working with Jacob is something that’s only gone semi-smoothly for Vic in the past. They do complement each other, but Jacob can be a bull in a china shop when it comes to getting what he wants. One thing about Vic, though, is that he’s always seen this aspect of Jacob clearly and, although there are some disadvantages to being with someone so single-minded, Vic prefers him that way.
So if I didn’t want the driving conflict to happen between Vic and Jacob, then what could it be? As I spooled out the story, I realized how rough it was for Vic to be out of his element, and to have to admit that he actually fit in the role of homicide investigator he’d been balking at all these years.
A lot of writing communities and podcasts have been talking about impostor syndrome lately. It’s the feeling that you don’t deserve your success and that everything’s going to come crashing down when people see you for what you actually are. Although I have a pretty stern internal task-master, it’s not overly critical, so I thankfully don’t grapple with impostor syndrome myself. Vic, though? I hadn’t realized how much he struggled. And, really, this issue went all the way back to Among the Living, when he couldn’t hear the murder victims because their souls had been consumed.
Darla had no such worries. She’s completely confident in her own abilities, but she’s accustomed to being overlooked and having all her achievements minimized…and frankly, she’s pretty pissed off about it.
I very nearly brought in Darla as the murder victim, but because I loved the way Gomez Pugh voiced her in the audios, I decided I wanted to keep her character in play, and I killed “Andy” instead. I couldn’t be happier with that choice! Darla was an absolute joy to write and I love the way she and Vic play off one another. Vic usually censors what he says aloud, but he and Darla talk to each other with the frankness that comes with knowing someone really, really well. The hardest part was keeping her angry with him. They had to be at odds for the majority of the book for their team-up at the end to really resonate. So I kept having to remind myself that she wasn’t ready to forgive the old hurts just yet.
I’ll be eager to see more of Darla in the future. Good thing Indianapolis is just an hour away from Chicago by helicopter!
About The Author
Jordan Castillo Price has never taken a polygraph test, though if she ever
did, she’d surely overthink it. Thankfully, she is a much better cook than Vic, especially now that she’s figured out how to use a broiler. She tries her best not to feed her cat people-food.
Connect with Jordan at the following places:
Facebook
Twitter
Jordan’s blog
Witness Sample
FROM PSYCOP BRIEFS: VOL 1
Have you read PsyCop Briefs, Volume 1? The novel-length collection contains 20 PsyCop shorts—most rare or exclusive, and four brand new. Here’s a sample from the novelette Witness, which takes place between PsyCop 9 and 10.
I
I’ll say one thing for the Fifth Precinct: at least I knew where everything was in relationship to everything else. No matter how many times I tried to get the lay of the land at my new job, I always managed to take an unscheduled detour and show up five minutes late. Laura Kim looked up from her desk and greeted me with, “Oh good, you’re here.” She’d ensconced herself in an office as far away from the FPMP’s resident repeaters as she could possibly get, and I wondered if she’d also had some kind of aversion whammy placed on the door. Because I always found myself checking out the records room or the cafeteria in response to one of her summonings.
Apparently that Friday afternoon I wasn’t the only one at the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program who’d been summoned. Super-buff empath agent Jack Bly stood at the window, hands in pockets, daylight gleaming over his severe buzz cut as he gazed out over the railyard. And the Super Stiff who’d shamelessly bribed me into eating quinoa for dinner last night by shoving his hand down my pants? He was ever so casually checking out Laura’s bookshelf, doing his best not to look smug, and failing miserably.
Laura stood, planted her hands on her desk, and said, “Since Agent Bly has wrapped up his current investigation and Agent Marks has completed his verbal de-escalation course, you’re all available to take part in a technical workshop this weekend.”
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 28
