PsyCop 5: Camp Hell

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Zig sighed, deflated, and slouched into his seat. “I don’t know. I think we’ll spot them eventually if we keep our eyes open.”

  “Back there in Warwick’s office—why’d you keep trying to shut me up, anyway? What do you care if I ask him about all the extra security? Or did you sign something else that said you’d pretend nothing weird was happening?”

  He cut his eyes to me. “Don’t be a prick. Something weird’s always happening.” He stroked his cop-mustache for strength. “You looked too mad to get what you wanted out of it, that’s all. Do I want you to know what’s going on, who’s authorizing which men, who’s cranking out the next stack of papers to sign? Sure, if it’ll give you some peace of mind. But I don’t think you’ll find anything out by going off half-cocked in Warwick’s office.”

  I could’ve lightened the mood by asking him if he realized how many penis references were contained in his little tirade, but I decided against it. Mostly because he’d stopped me from acting pissy at Warwick because I was mad—and he’d probably been right in doing it. Also, Zigler and I don’t joke about penises. Not with each other, anyway.

  In the course of my day-to-day life, I’d driven by LaSalle General, but I’d never had any reason to go inside. Where the last medical institution I’d spent time at, Rosewood Court, was squared-off and horizontal in a sixties kind of way, LaSalle seemed to tower over us, five stories, huge and solid. The bricks were dark. The windows were small. And anywhere something had been added, changed or repaired, there was a patch of masonry that almost matched, but not quite.

  The exterior doors and fittings were all brand new, huge sheets of plate glass that whisked open while we were still several steps away. Zigler went to the front desk and talked in low tones to the nurse on duty, who wore brightly colored scrubs that looked more like pajamas. When I was an inpatient at the Cook County Mental Health Center, the scrubs were all blue. Medium blue, navy, or sometimes teal, but always blue.

  Times change.

  I vaguely wondered what the staff wore at Camp Hell, and then I wondered why I didn’t remember. My CCMHC memories were older, and soaked in Thorazine. So why couldn’t I picture the wardrobe at Camp Hell?

  Zigler handed me a plastic holder with an alligator clip and a piece of tagboard inside that read, “Security Level 2.”

  “Visitors have security levels?”

  Zigler clipped an identical badge onto his lapel. “Looks that way. We can get into any of the public areas right now, and the guards will let us in to the pharmacy and admin sections whenever, but they’ll need to assign a guide to us for Emergency and the ICU so that we don’t get in their way.”

  I wasn’t really looking forward to visiting any area of the building where people were wheeled around on creaky metal gurneys, anyhow. Although maybe things were done differently now. Maybe gurneys were made of plastic, and you couldn’t hear them coming.

  “You see something?”

  Only in my own mind. I shook my head.

  “So the lobby’s clean.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you…up for going in any farther?”

  I blinked a few times. “Hm? Oh. Uh, yeah. How about the gift shop?”

  We poked around for a few hours. There was a repeater in the gift shop, a repairman who kept spackling the same spot on the wall. He seemed old, and I kept losing parts of him in the balloon bouquet that framed him in a riot of color. The waiting room had a couple of ghosts sitting around looking spectral, some in physical chairs, and some floating around sitting positions without any furniture to prop them up. A transparent kid with a burnt face lingered by the elevator, her mouth wide open as if she was crying, or maybe screaming, but no sound came out. And a nasal voice near the information desk was threatening a medical malpractice suit.

  “So, where do you want to grab lunch? I meant what I said about the cafeteria. It’s not bad.”

  I could always trust Zig to make sure we didn’t work through lunch. “Let’s sweep it first. This whole building’s thick with ghosts.”

  Zigler turned gray. “Sure. Or we could hit that pizzeria on Kedzie. They have a lunch buffet.”

  We climbed into an elevator with a guy carrying a potted plant that had a Mylar “get well” balloon sticking up of the center of it on a foot-long plastic straw, and a couple of nurses in wildly colored scrubs: flowers on one, starfish on the other. Zig’s eyes darted from the doors to the numbers as we sank to the hospital’s lowest level. That’s what it was called—LL. I was pleased that they didn’t call it the “basement.”

  “Y’know, I think I have a taste for pizza,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you if there’s anything in the cafeteria that would ruin your lunch—if you could see it.”

  The nurses strode out of the elevator with purpose—the balloon-guy, Zig and me, not so much. I looked around for ghosts, Zig watched me in case I was holding out on him, and the other guy rotated around to try to get his bearings.

  Once the lost guy wandered away, Zig pulled out his cell phone and touched base with his wife, Nancy. He calls her without fail twice a day, at lunch and at five. I guess it reassures Nancy that nobody’s shot him yet.

  I’m not a big phone talker, so I don’t usually bug Jacob unless I’ve got a question. And I trust him to do his best to not get shot at. I know that I do.

  The sight of Zig on his phone did lead me to wonder whether Stefan had gotten my message yet, or if he didn’t check his work messages on his day off. He was a therapist or something, right? He’d have to check his messages in case one of his alcoholic patients was on the verge of hitting the sauce. Wouldn’t he? Or was that what the “other options” on his voice mail were for?

  He probably checked his messages, I decided, because he never liked letting things build up. When I wanted to ignore something, a test or a paper or a big, nasty pill, he’d always tell me to stop agonizing over it and just get it over with as quickly as possible. So if he was going to return my call at all, I figured he’d do it sooner rather than later.

  I patted my pocket to check and see if maybe he’d called me but my phone wasn’t on, or the battery was run down. My phone wasn’t there.

  It was still in the fridge.

  “Zig.”

  “Hold on, Nance.” He looked at me.

  “I need to stop at my house.”

  His eyebrows bunched up. He knew something was going on, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.

  “Then we’ll hit that pizza place.”

  Zigler stared for a moment, and then nodded. If I was willing to entertain his contrived yen for pizza, then he’d need to be willing to drive me home for no good reason—none that I was willing to detail for him, at any rate.

  He parked the Impala in the only empty spot on the block, the one by my walkway. “That’s…different,” he said. He was staring at the lotus shapes that bordered the slightly flared roofline.

  “Yeah. It used to be a cannery.” I could have invited him in. He might have even been hinting that he wanted to see the inside. But I was too worried about whether or not Jacob had found my phone on ice to remember if there was anything particularly gay laying around—anything that would put a strain on my relationship with Zigler if he ran into it. “I’ll just be a second,” I told him.

  Some intrepid soul, or someone who didn’t know the haunted history of the cannery, had left a plastic bag of Avon catalogs hanging on the front doorknob. Every time I got my key in the lock, it swung down and knocked the key away. I snapped it off, opened the door, and went in.

  My phone was exactly where I’d left it. Which didn’t really prove whether Jacob had seen it there or not. After all, he was probably wily enough to just leave it in the crisper and give me all the rope I needed to hang myself.

  I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples as I flicked open the phone and checked my messages. The viewscreen fogged up, and I buffed it on my sleeve. Caller I.D. told me I’d only gotten a single message that mor
ning. Russeau and Kline. I swallowed. My mouth had gone dry. I hit play and placed the phone to my ear. It was really cold.

  “Victor Bayne,” Stefan began. His already-deep voice dropped half an octave when he said, “Bayne.” Not good. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a year or two. Or fourteen. My schedule’s not quite as forgiving as it was back in the day, but I suppose I can fit you in tomorrow at three if you want to talk. Meet me at my office. You know where that is, don’t you? I’m sure you’ll be able to find it; according to the little ‘I’m not here’ message on your cell phone, you’re working for the police now. Fifth Precinct? Detective. I’m sure the story behind that is simply fascinating.”

  I realized I hadn’t been breathing. I took a few breaths and told myself to calm down. He said he’d see me. But the tone of his voice told me I shouldn’t be expecting a balloon bouquet to be waiting for me when I did.

  -FOUR-

  Jacob had settled into our new kitchen by the time I got home. He chopped carrots on an imposing cutting board that most definitely had to have come from one of his boxes, since it never would have occurred to me to buy a kitchen accessory that I’d need to lift with both hands. At the sink, water ran through a colander full of lettuce. Good thing I’d swung by and grabbed my phone, otherwise I’d have some explaining to do.

  Jacob leaned in for a kiss, then went back to his cutting board. I turned to go upstairs and ditch my suit. “You came home for lunch?”

  I paused with my finger hooked over the knot of my tie. “Why would I?”

  The sound of the knife clicking against the board stopped.

  “Turn around.”

  Damn. I plastered on my best non-expression and faced Jacob. He stared into my eyes. I couldn’t imagine how he’d caught me. Video cameras? Spies? Tracking device?

  “Let’s try that again. Hi, Vic, how was your day? You came home for lunch?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Jacob turned off the water and wiped his hands on a kitchen towel. He looped his arm through mine and walked me into the other room. We sat on the couch. He pulled me into the crook of his arm and stroked my hair, and sighed. “It doesn’t matter.” He kissed the top of my head. “Tell me something else.”

  Way to make me feel like the world’s biggest A-hole. “Fine. I stopped back home to get my phone. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “I was just curious.” He kept his voice gentle and non-accusatory—as if he thought I’d cut and run if he cornered me.

  “How’d you know?”

  “There was a bag of catalogs on the hallway floor. That’s all.”

  I sighed, and looked at our reflection in the dark television screen. “So, here’s the deal. I tracked down someone from Camp Hell. I’m meeting up with him.”

  Jacob’s arms tightened. He hugged my head to his chest. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No. I trust him. We were…well, we were really close, actually. You know. Like that. But that’s not why I don’t want you to come with me. I mean, if you want to, I guess you can.”

  “Shh. It’s okay.” Jacob kissed my hair again. “Do what you need to do. Just remember that I’m here if you need me. Always.”

  Obviously, I didn’t deserve Jacob. I pressed my ear against his chest and listened to the slow thumping of his heart, and felt like a jerk. I wondered if he’d known all along that I was planning an excursion. Maybe he’d seen my phone in the crisper while I was in the shower. Heck, maybe he’d seen me talking on it at four o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t ask him without coming off like an even bigger dumbass, so instead I reached up and found his hand, and clasped it under my chin, and didn’t say anything at all.

  • • •

  I’m not sure where I got the bright idea to have a yogurt in the cab on the way to Stefan’s office. Maybe I was in the mood for blueberries. Maybe I thought it’d settle my stomach. Maybe I just wanted something to do, so I wouldn’t have to think about the fact that I was actually nervous about seeing him again.

  Anyway, that yogurt? I peeled up the foil, and it sprayed me with pinkish-purple flecks. Smooth.

  I managed to rub in most of the yogurt before I got out of the cab, but it left my hands sticky and covered with black wool fiber. A revolving door led into the lobby, so I could push through with my upper arm. The elevator button was already pressed. If I could just make it to a bathroom, I’d be golden.

  The high-rise housed a number of medical professionals, from dentists to acupuncturists to certified psychic healers—like Stefan and, I’m assuming, his business partner. It was bland in that way that all office buildings are bland, with everything done up in various tones of putty and beige.

  Once I was on the elevator, I pressed the button with the one clean knuckle I had left, and rode up to the twenty-third floor. Thankfully, the men’s room was right next to the elevators, so I didn’t have to go into Stefan’s office holding up my sticky hands so it was obvious that I’d just been slimed.

  The bathroom was yards of even more shades of beige, granite or marble or some other kind of stone, expensive but unobtrusive. A big guy with a gray-streaked ponytail was washing his face at the beige-tiled basin. He wore a vest with a watch chain dangling from the pocket. I couldn’t imagine the last time I’d seen someone in a vest. And I wondered if he’d had yogurt for lunch, too.

  He reached back in my general direction while he knuckled soap out of his eye. “Hand me a paper towel, would you?”

  It looked nothing like him…but, my God, there was no mistaking his voice. “Stefan?”

  He straightened up slowly, pried one eye open, and squinted at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Figures.” He wiggled his fingers at the paper towel dispenser. I pulled a couple out, being careful to handle them by the corner, and passed them over.

  I sized him up while he groaned into the paper towels and blotted his face. He’d put on weight. And he’d stopped dyeing his hair—which was thinning on top. But there was something flashy and retro about his suit, like he’d just stepped out of an H. G. Wells novel. The suit was only part of his look. His facial hair was too edgy to let him blend in with the other corporate drones I’d seen in the building—a stripe of a beard down the center of his chin, and long, pointy sideburns that must’ve been a bitch to shave without screwing them up.

  He sighed and lowered the wad of paper. He looked a lot older. But then again, so did I.

  “You’ve still got most of your hair. I’ll bet you still have a thirty-inch waist, too.”

  “I, uh…really need to wash my hands.”

  He stepped to the side and gestured toward the sink. I almost blanked out on the whole procedure. Water, check. Soap, check. Rub hands together—damn, did he really have to look at me so hard? Especially with that slightly curled lip. He used to look at the orderlies that way.

  “So. Uh. This is your…building.”

  “I rent an office here. That remark you made, on your message, about me changing my name. What was that supposed to mean?”

  Cripes. He could always argue circles around me, and now he had an arsenal of therapy-tactics to batter me with. “I just…I don’t know. I couldn’t find anybody—you, Big Larry, anyone else from Camp Hell. I couldn’t find anything about the whole place.”

  I watched him in the mirror because it was easier than facing him. He’d been imposing in his twenties. Now, at forty-something, he looked like he could haul you down to the principal’s office and give you a whack with a ruler that would sting for a week.

  He tilted his head back and gave me his most imperious down-his-nose look, held it for a moment, then rolled his eyes and gave another long sigh. “Are you having a panic attack? Because I really want to be pissed at you, but it’s kind of hard when you’re peaking.”

  “What’re you pissed at me about?”

  “Earth to Victor. You were the one who left.”

  Left what? Oh, right. Camp Hell. We were talking about Camp Hel
l. And I left….

  I left.

  He was still there.

  “Not that I blame you—I left the first chance I had, too. But you could have sent me a letter. A singing telegram. A cake with a file inside.”

  “Well, I just, um…. I mean….” I could have lied, said that I had written to him, and blamed Camp Hell admin for ditching my letters. But I hadn’t written him, not once. I hadn’t even thought of it. “How long?”

  “Oh, a year,” he said with fake breeziness, “maybe two.”

  “God.” I held onto the beige sink. My knuckles were white.

  “I’m not saying you should have stuck around and waited for me to get placed, of course. That wouldn’t have made any sense. So what else could you have done?”

  The sink was wet.

  “I mean, aside from telling a reporter what was going on there. Or, how ‘bout this, maybe someone at the Police Academy? Oops, did I say that out loud, or just think it?”

  I grabbed a paper towel and dried my hands with it. I twisted too hard, and it started to shred.

  Stefan stared at me. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything but the twisted pills of paper towel that fell onto the sink and stuck there in the water. But I could feel him.

  “I’m going outside,” he said. “I need a cigarette.”

  • • •

  When Stefan said he needed a cigarette, I’d just assumed that he already had a pack, and he wanted to smoke one. Turns out he hadn’t smoked in over ten years.

  He scowled down his nose at the colorful, candy-like stacks of cigarettes behind the counter. “Almost six dollars a pack. I never would have started if it was this expensive.”

  “You don’t need to start again now.”

  “It’s not your business to tell me what I do or don’t need.” He couldn’t decide which brand he wanted, and since both Camel and Marlboro had come out with new varieties since the last time he’d lit up, he decided he might as well try them all. He couldn’t decide which color lighter he wanted, so he got a purple lighter and a red lighter, too.