by Rob Thurman
Yeah, I could claim it all I wanted, but it would be bullshit. It was Tess. Long-dead Mary Bevins hadn’t been my sister, but she’d done a good job of stirring up memories out of a murky past I’d done my best to bury.
After my X-ray, read and approved, I went the way of Fujiwara and the soldiers and walked out the door. I was the third-to-last to go. Thackery was staying to have his nose set, and Hector stayed to tell Meleah what had happened; at least, that was my guess. He’d promised to keep her up to date on Charlie. A strong woman like her wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
“You all right, Jackson?”
I didn’t pause at Hector’s question as I passed him. “I’m always all right, Allgood. Haven’t you seen that yet?” I kept walking, and he was polite enough not to call me a liar. He did call me a liar later and one cursed son of a bitch when my room exploded. I didn’t blame him.
• • •
Since Hector had issued the order that I had the run of the lesser-classified areas of the base—housing, cafeteria, infirmary—I was able to go alone from one building and slog solo over the now-dried peaks and valleys of red mud to the housing unit that held my room. I wanted to shower the mineral smell of quarry water off of me and sleep for about twelve hours.
The quarry scent did stay with you, enough so that I almost missed the other smell as I pushed the door to my room open. This was a smell familiar to everyone, but in particular, it was a smell for which I had a hair trigger buried in my subconscious.
The door was already swinging open when I threw myself back and down the hall. The explosion didn’t completely blow the door off the hinges, but it drenched it and the floor and the walls outside it in flames and the reek of gasoline. The air was superheated. It felt as if it was searing my lungs as I pushed my way to crawl farther down the hall away from the fire. Alarms were blaring, help would be coming, but I’d always believed the universe helps those who help themselves, and I kept slithering along the dingy tile. I snatched a desperate look behind me as I moved faster. The fire crept after me, but not as quickly as I expected.
When I thought I was far enough away from the inferno, if not the heat, I rolled over and tried to stand. I made it, but I didn’t know I would have if a hand hadn’t helped me halfway up.
“Damn it, Jackson, you call this all right? I know you don’t believe in an afterlife, you cursed son of a bitch, but why are you in such a hurry to prove it to yourself?” Hector kept me upright while giving me hell.
“Someone tried to kill me. I know you’re not blaming me,” I accused. “Especially when I told you this could happen. Murderers don’t like psychics. If I’m cursed, you did the cursing when you brought me here.”
A crew was trying to put out the fire, but they weren’t having any luck with their extinguishers. Instead of being put out, it was spreading like the breath of a dragon. “It’s napalm!” one guy shouted. “Goddamn napalm! Get the Halon extinguishers!”
Their voices were muffled by the masks they wore, but Hector heard enough to push me into motion. “Move it. Napalm puts out enough carbon monoxide to gas an entire kennel.” As we ran, he asked, “Not that I don’t think it a good thing, but why aren’t you dead? Napalm isn’t a natural inhabitant of Georgia. It’s not like a black widow that creeps under your door. How are you not a barbecued corpse?”
“Joyce Ann Tingle, better known as Madame Maya Eilish.” I was panting as we turned a corner into fresher air. “One of the psychics you tested. She burns down rivals’ shops, and she doesn’t care if they’re in them when she does. Any psychic in Atlanta would turn and run at the whiff of gasoline at their door, same as me.” I leaned against the wall. “They said napalm. I know this used to be a military base, but there can’t be napalm just lying around.”
“Probably homemade. Gasoline, Styrofoam, and soap, and you’re done.” He fished a ring of several keys out of his pocket. “Here. Go straight down this hall, then take a left, and it’s the fifth room on the right. Lock yourself in until I knock on the door. I’m going back to see if they’ve got it under control yet and can tell when it was put in place. Probably hopeless, but …” He shrugged. It was more of a guilty twitch, actually. He was getting good at the guilt. Good enough that I controlled a smart-ass remark, took the keys, and went.
• • •
It was nearly an hour later when there was a tired pounding at the door and Hector’s voice. I unlocked and opened the door and immediately demanded, “What’s up with the Brady Bunch room?”
The room he’d sent me to had two sets of bunk beds in it. They took up enough of the small space that two people standing at the same time was tight quarters. Very tight, and we authentic psychics liked our personal space.
“Someone tried to kill you. I thought you’d want a friend to watch your back.” Hector sat down heavily on one of the lower beds.
“I already have friends. Two. That’s enough.” I still stood, arms folded, doing my damnedest not to look defensive. Two real friends was more than most people had. People had acquaintances—other people they had little in common with and even less emotion for—but since the majority of people didn’t want to be alone, they called these half-strangers friends. It was easier to cope with life if they had that one word. Fake it, because otherwise they couldn’t take it.
That was final proof that real ghosts didn’t exist: Charlie didn’t appear to call me on my bullshit.
“One of your friends is a dog,” Hector pointed out. Damn it, there was no better friend than a dog. “But if you don’t think you need friends,” he continued, “you certainly need a babysitter—one with a black belt and a gun.”
“And whose fault is that, me needing a bodyguard?” I paused. “You have a black belt, and all you did to Thackery was break his nose?”
“Unlike whoever blew up your room, I’m not a murderer, and, no, I don’t have a black belt. I have the unarmed combat training the Army gave me. If a black belt had been floating around there, we’d improvise and use it to strangle you. It’s more efficient. Now, sit down. I’m too tired to strain my neck looking up at you all night.”
I grumbled under my breath but sat on the opposite bed. I pulled the rubber band out of my hair and scrubbed my scalp with gloved fingers. My hair, my clothes, my skin, it all still smelled of quarry water. I hadn’t taken advantage of the tiny shower in the equally tiny bathroom. Not yet. Hector had said it: someone had tried to kill me. If Psycho and Anthony Perkins had taught us anything, it was that someone else always had a key to your room, and naked in a shower is no kind of defensive position. That didn’t make me a coward. It made me practical, with a good base knowledge of classic horror cinema.
“Find anything out about the fire?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Definitely homemade napalm. The instructions on how to make it are all over the Internet, but the heat of the fire was so intense that it melted the triggering mechanism, although it could’ve been a simple one, for just opening the door a few inches to set it off. Or it could’ve been a complicated one. There’s no way to know now if it was set up before we left or quickly jury-rigged after we came back.”
“So it could’ve been anybody?”
“Except for the guy who punched you the first day. Sergeant Borelli. He’s still in lockup, but other than him, yes, anyone that has access to the base. A little over a hundred. Even Cafeteria Carl is on the list. He could’ve done it on a break between scooping up mashed potatoes. Homemade napalm probably tastes better than the food he serves.” He dropped his head in his hands, looking the same as the soldiers had at the quarry. “God help me. I sound like you now.”
“Nice to know something good has come out of my all-knowing, all-seeing presence.” I grinned despite myself, but the smile fell away with my next question. “Why is there a murder to cover up at all? Why would someone want to kill Charlie?”
“I don’t think it was about Charlie. I think … no, I’m certain it was about taking down the project, or s
tealing it, or both. Thackery always thought he should be the lead on this. If he was and it was successful, he could write his own ticket for the rest of his life. And to be open-minded, there is always espionage, foreign and domestic. The project could be sold for billions, especially to an unfriendly country who’d like very much to get a behind-the-scenes look at every secret we have.”
“I still put my money on Thackery.” I got back up and started opening the drawers to the one bureau. There were sweats, jeans, and long-sleeved T-shirts, all new with the price tags still on them. It seemed like Hector had been planning on watching my back even before the fire, and I’d been there long enough to be running out of clean clothes—burned-to-a-crisp clothes now. Hector would know that I wouldn’t want anyone touching my clothes to run them through whatever industrial mill of a laundry they had there.
Except Thackery. I’d give a great deal to get a look into his inner self, to see if murder lurked there or just general jackassery.
“How’d you know my size in jeans?” I asked suspiciously. The sweats and shirts would be easy enough at a glance, but jeans?
Hector lifted his head to give me his own version of a grin, small but real. “Eden picked them up for me. Apparently, she has the dimensions of your ass down to the millimeter. Must’ve done a lot of mental measuring.”
“Who can blame her? Best damn ass in the psychic community. Ask anyone.” I grabbed a pair of sweats. “I’m taking a shower. Think about how you’re going to steal something of Thackery’s. An ink pen won’t do it unless he’s had it several years.”
I took my shower, and a crazed killer didn’t try to stab me, which I took as a good sign but not a sign that Psycho was wrong. After all, someone had tried to burn me alive. Even Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t gone that far. I tried to save some hot water for Hector, whose day had been as long as mine. It wasn’t easy, considering the water had never been hot to begin with, tepid at best. I came out and crawled into the lower bunk I’d been sitting on. Hector headed for the bathroom. If the water was cold and he yelped, I didn’t hear it. I was already asleep.
14
“I wasn’t able to lift anything for you to read from Thackery in the lab earlier.”
I snorted and pointed at Hector with a fork. “You’re big, but you wouldn’t have lasted a day on the street.”
“Maybe not, but I pull my weight in other ways. I have decided to pull those strings and let your sister out of jail early. Blackmail never sat easy with me before, and it sits even less so now that someone tried to kill you. Your life is at risk, and I won’t force you into this if you could die as a result. I’d prefer you were here of your own free will.”
Mornings … they didn’t bring bluebirds in this place, but they brought surprises.
Not that it was that much of a surprise. It’d only been a matter of time. Hector out of the goodness of his heart was going to let my baby sister go. That was a good one.
I finished chewing the soggy toast and said, “Glory escaped, didn’t she?” I reached for the cardboard carton of OJ on the breakfast tray. “She hurt anyone? Correction: how badly did she hurt them?”
Sheepish was a good look for Hector. I liked it. “She took down one guard and one policeman. They’re in stable condition. She did some serious, ah, testicular damage to them both with the guard’s baton and then drove off from the hospital in the police car. Disappeared off the face of the earth, a nine-months-pregnant John Dillinger.”
“Faked labor pains, right?” I shook my head at my own stupidity. “I should’ve told you to stuff her file up your ass when you showed up at my door. I knew she’d get out sooner or later. She doesn’t need my help. She hasn’t in a long time.”
“But you still gave it.” Hector was eating his own breakfast, eggs and toast. He hadn’t eaten meat since the barbecue-joint incident. Wise choice.
I shrugged. “She’s my sister.” And that, as far as I was concerned, said it all. I was done with my OJ, so I took his. It was what he got for being a crappy liar. “So out of the goodness of your heart, not to mention your loss of blackmail material, I can now take that free will, get up, walk the hell out of this bucket of crazy you have going on, and save my life in the process?”
He gave me what normal people consider a penetrating, assessing look. But then again, normal people spend their entire lives blindfolded. They only find the truth by accidentally running into it face-first. As he looked for the selflessness deep in my soul, most likely getting eye strain in the process, I didn’t wait on his answer. Holding out my hand, I ordered, “Your car keys. Sorry about no ‘please,’ but I’ll throw in a really hearty ‘thank you.’”
“After all you’ve seen, what you know has happened and will keep happening, you could actually go?” The doubt and disappointment were palpable. Then it was only disappointment as I half-stood, leaned over the table, and fished in his lab-coat pocket for his keys.
“Let’s see. People are going ghost-psychotic, and, yeah, I know there’s no such thing as ghosts, but it’s a good phrase for what’s happening. They’re throwing people off roofs, gnawing bites out of their legs, trying to drown people in God’s name, and none of that was even personal. Then someone tried to burn me alive. Alive. That is personal, and it’s only going to get more personal until I’m dead.” I found the keys and held them aloft, jingling them in triumph. “Hear that? That’s the governor calling to pardon my nearly fried ass out of the electric chair.”
Hector—being Hector—didn’t give up. “You’d leave Charlie the way he is? You’d take the chance people might die?”
“Sooner or later, you’ll happen to have your fancy million-dollar Charlie lifeboat in the same location he pops up in. There are only so many local massacre sites, and I’ve helped you map all the questionable ones. And I haven’t stopped anyone from almost dying. You’ve done most of that yourself. Now, where’s your car parked?”
“Fine.” His lips tightened. “I won’t make you stay.”
“But I will.”
A hand grabbed my shoulder, squeezed it painfully tight, and pushed me back down. Good old sociopathic Thackery—I’d seen him across the cafeteria from the moment we sat down.
“Allgood, if you can’t deliver what the project requires, I will. We carry dual responsibility here, which means dual authority.” The grip tightened. “If it takes guards to keep you here, Mr. Eye, I know we have a sergeant locked up who’d enjoy some face time with you.”
I gave him a shove away. “I don’t do my best readings with a broken jaw.”
“All we need you to do now is Charlie detection and acting as a lure. You can do that with several broken bones, jaw included. Think about that.”
With those friendly words, the dick was gone. I waited a beat and tossed Hector’s keys back to him before flourishing another set with a smug grin. “And that, Dr. Allgood, is how you steal an object to read.”
We went back to our room where we’d slept and Hector had played Secret Service. He’d ruled out an empty lab as too dangerous. Thackery was everywhere in the science division, overseeing all, stealing every ounce of credit he could, and stripping away any presence of self-esteem down to the bone, then sucking the marrow as an afternoon snack.
“No, tell me what you really think about the guy, Hector.” I grinned as I sat on the mattress and studied the key chain on Thackery’s keys. It was a small, squat metal rocket with “Fat Man” hand-painted on the side. Figured.
Oppenheimer, Father of the Atomic Bomb, had once quoted “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He’d had concerns over what he’d helped birth into an unsuspecting world. Thackery was no Oppenheimer. Thackery was all about patents and royalties and the hell with the consequences.
“How about I tell you instead what I think about you and your show at breakfast?” He wanted to be pissed, but I, who myself was all about self-survival and cynicism, was putting my life on the line for him and his brother. It left him without a leg to stand on and hesita
nt about using the other one to insert a boot up my ass. Despite what he’d said in the cafeteria, I hadn’t done what he’d expected. I hadn’t done what I’d expected, either.
Argh, I couldn’t be changing. If life had taught me one thing, it was that change was rarely for the better.
“Never mind that. Why don’t you tell me why you’re staying? It’s definitely not in your best interest.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. As for the show, the Art of the Con,” I offered cheerfully, in spite of my inner perplexity at straying outside the Jackson norm of looking out for my own ass and my own ass only. Ignored it and went with the good mood, because putting one over on Thackery just automatically summoned one. “Misdirection, misdirection, misdirection. Oh, and dumb marks and clueless eyewitnesses.”
The clueless eyewitness didn’t care much for that, either, but gave it up with a disgruntled exhalation. I laid the keys down on the bed and peeled off my glove, letting my tattoo show. “I picked pockets before I was a psychic. It’s like riding a bicycle. Larcenous fingers never forget. And I faked years of psychic shit before I gave in and started using the real deal. You don’t have to have special talents to steal from or manipulate people to get things done. You only need flexible morals and an extra-small in off-the-rack consciences.”
“You didn’t use your psychic ability when you worked the carnival as a teenager?” When I shook my head, Hector asked in the simple confusion any normal person would use, “Why?”
“Because it’s not fun.” I hovered my hand over the keys. “It’s never fun.” It sucked is what it did. It sucked long and hard, but I muscled through because it was how I made my money and it was who I was. I hadn’t wanted to believe that for a long time, but in the end … it was me.
