PsyCop 5: Camp Hell

by Jordan Castillo Price

  For just a second, I imagined a flash, and a detonation. But no, a bomb wouldn’t make any sense. Dreyfuss needed me to clean up his repeaters. And besides, a bomb would be too hard to cover up. It’d be a bitch to keep a big explosion on a residential, inner-city street out of the news. Anthrax, or maybe ricin? That seemed a little more like the FPMP’s style.

  Jacob lifted some bound reports out of the box. Still, nothing exploded. “Keith and Manny say that books are the perfect hiding place for transmitters.”

  It never fucking ended. “Do you want them to come over and scan the box?”

  “I want to be able to speak freely with you.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Just…don’t invite them to hang around for beers or anything. I don’t feel very sociable at the moment.”

  “In and out.” Jacob picked up the top report and thumbed through it. “And assuming that they’re clean…I can’t wait to read these.”

  I peeked into the open box while Jacob called his friends on the land line. Reports. Dozens of them. Books, too. With catchy titles like Statistical analysis of precognitive subjects, levels 3 - 4. I glazed over before I’d read beyond the title.

  Jacob, on the other hand, was raring to go. He even put on a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night—but at least he and I were on the same page.

  Manny, or Keith, who’s to say which was which, dropped by with the big metal detector and gave the scary box an all-clear. Then Jacob and I settled in to do some serious reading.

  The most relevant book I found in the stack was less than a hundred pages long, hardbound with a plain cover stamped Paranormal Eradication: A Modern Approach to Exorcism. No thumping bedframes or pea soup vomit in this one. Six case studies of modern exorcism, each one more bone-dry than the last. I skimmed.

  “Says here they use a different scale of ability in Japan,” Jacob said without looking up from the report he’d been working his way through. “No levels. More like X-Y axis personality profiles.”

  I had no idea what that meant. “Uh huh.”

  “Kind of makes you wonder how accurate the Western seven-level, six-talent classification system really is.”

  A draft snuck through a window in need of tuckpointing and hit me on the back of the neck, and I realized I’d just broken into a sweat. I shrugged off my flannel shirt and let it fall beside me on the floor, but even so, my armpits and the crooks of my knees felt clammy and wet.

  I stared down at the page, which looked like nothing more than a gray blur of ink and paper now, and told myself to get it together. It was just Jacob, and just a passing observation. Nothing to be scared of.

  Sweat beaded my upper lip. I went to the bathroom and splashed my face, blotted it dry. I gave myself a hard look in the mirror, and reminded myself that Jacob had only remarked on something I’d been thinking myself for a hell of a long time. That’s all.

  I coaxed myself out of the bathroom and found Jacob still engrossed in the report. “D’you maybe want to take a look at this exorcism book for me? I think I need a cheat sheet.”

  And just like that, Jacob switched gears, started plowing through the insanely dull exorcism book so that I didn’t have to. I felt a little bad. But mostly relieved.

  I’m not sure how far into the reading-bee I dozed off. Once I thought about it, I recalled moving over to the recliner when the dining room chair and I realized that neither one of us had enough padding to extend our acquaintance beyond an hour or so. And then I started rubbing my eyes, and decided it would be a good idea to rest them. Just for a minute or two.

  I woke up to Jacob running the backs of his fingers down my cheek. Everything was dark except a light shining out of the loft from our bedroom. But even in the mostly-dark, I could see him smiling at me. “You coming to bed, or do you want me to leave you here?”

  It was a great recliner, but I’m more of a side-sleeper. And besides, my back feels naked without Jacob curled against it.

  • • •

  Jacob tried to give me a crash course in exorcism while I ate my corn flakes, but even with him explaining it to me from the point of view of various religious disciplines, I still found my mind drifting to my day’s to-do list, and my eyes drifting to the vee of his unbuttoned dress shirt, where a few of his chest hairs beckoned from the top of his crewneck undershirt.

  I did gather this much: different religions and different disciplines each approached exorcism in their own special way—and supposedly all of these methods worked, to some extent, depending on the strength of the practitioner, and the stubbornness of the paranormal infestation.

  Which all seems like common sense, when you think about it. But my common sense wasn’t telling me which method would work for me. It only told me that I’d feel like a phony if I cracked open a bible like Richie, or swore by the sword of Saint Barbara like Miss Mattie. So that meant I had to figure it out for myself.

  I called the Fifth and took a personal day while Jacob got ready for work with one hand and one eye on a psy-manual. “When do you have to give these back?” he asked me.

  “I dunno.” I was sure the FPMP kept multiple copies. “Maybe never.”

  Jacob swung by me where I brooded beside the coffee pot and gave me a mouthwash-flavored kiss. “You’re sure you don’t want me to go downtown with you?”

  “They won’t let both of us in to see Burke,” I said, which I knew that he knew. “You weren’t involved in his case. And it’s not like we’re his family.”

  “Don’t go there, mister.” Jacob kissed me again, then ran his fingertips down my forearm. “There’s creepy, and then there’s creepy.”

  I watched the vestibule door as Jacob left, heard his Crown Vic’s engine turn over, and then settle into a low purr as the car pulled away. I felt very, very alone without Jacob there, but free to flex my talent, too.

  I could think of a few things that amped up my talent. The GhosTV was the most high-tech, but I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on one of those until I coaxed their location out of Doctor Chance. Alcohol was an option, but everyone insisted it wasn’t really a psyactive after all—and besides, it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to show up at the prison smelling like a brewery. And there was High John the Conqueror, which came in bath salt or soap form. And which I still had a rash from, thank you very much.

  If only I had a practice ghost to exorcise. I could hunt down Tiffany, the dead girl in the alleyway, but it seemed rude to exorcise someone I knew. I’d rather start on a repeater, but all the repeaters I could think of were in such public places that I’d probably get carted off to the loony bin for trying to erase them.

  I glanced at the clock. I needed to get moving. Preparing for an exorcism wasn’t like studying for a test. I’d have to wait and try it on the real deal once I was faced with an actual ghost. I drove downtown, parked in an outrageously-priced lot, and locked my gun in my glovebox so I didn’t have to deal with checking it in at the desk. And then I headed in to the Metropolitan Correctional building to give Roger Burke the “good” news.

  The wheels of injustice would take a few days to grind into motion, but for now there was a scarred plastic tabletop between me and my buddy in orange. As much as he needed me to recant, I think that on some level, it disgusted the ex-cop in him that I’d done it. Sure, he’d been punching two time clocks: the Buffalo PD’s and the FPMP’s, but in his heart of hearts, I doubted he saw himself as a dirty cop. Not if he actually got both jobs done.

  Burke sat with his shackled hands folded in his lap and his head high, glaring at me as I wrote on the notepad I hardly ever used. “Here’s the structure,” he said, taking no pains to talk slowly enough for me to get everything down. “Headquarters in D.C., but most of the work done in the regional branches. New York, Chicago, Seattle, Vegas and L.A.—those are the cities with their own branches.”

  Vegas? Shit. Maybe the Joneses weren’t hiding in plain sight quite as well as they thought, after all.

  Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin had on
e poor sap trying to keep tabs on all the Psychs spread over all those miles of rolling cornfields, not to mention Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Des Moines. Missouri’s director was in the doghouse for the kidnapping debacle—the very same one that had put Roger, and me, in this piss-and-disinfectant-smelling meeting room in the MCC.

  Burke gave me the names of each and every one. They were all men—no big surprise there. They were probably all white, too. And each and every one in the Midwest answered to Dreyfuss.

  “Why’d you start off by giving me the name of the top guy?” I asked. I didn’t necessarily expect an honest answer, but I might get some insight into the way Roger Burke ticked.

  “You think this is some kind of poker game? Every day I’m in this place is another day I could get shanked with a sharpened pen. Besides, if there’s a bigger mindfuck than Dreyfuss, I’ve never met him.”

  Seeing as how Dreyfuss’ office was my very next stop, the confirmation of my suspicions about him made me feel oh so much better.

  Then he started in on the addresses. He knew them all by heart, and he was able to spit them all out without any hesitation. Even the Chicago office. And that one checked out, as far as I knew. The street, the number, it all looked right to me.

  “So what do you suggest I do with all these names, other than shove them up my ass?”

  “You’d probably enjoy that.” His mean smile was back. “I gave you what I promised. If you can’t figure out what to do with it, that’s your problem, not mine.”

  I’d suspected he would say something like that. The worst part about it was that it was true. Still, Burke had always thought he could run mental circles around me—and when you think about it, he could. But if he had a weakness, it was that he was in love with how smart he was. “So the FPMP is everywhere. What does that mean for me? What do they even do?” I considered baiting him, implying that maybe he’d always been too low on the ladder to know. But I figured that was laying it on a little thick.

  “You’ve seen what they do. They watch.”

  “Why? Why the hell should they care about what I’m doing?”

  His nasty little smile widened. “What do you think would happen if foreign intelligence pinpointed you as the next Marie Saint Savon?”

  I imagined myself having a long chat with Lenin inside his glass coffin. Through a translator, of course. “They would… try to hire me?”

  Burke laughed. It was an ugly little bark, a perfect match to his smile. “Okay, Boy Scout. You go right on thinking that.”

  Was that so farfetched? After all, the first thing Dreyfuss had me do once I’d returned his call was to clean up the board room. Roger gloated, and I stared him right in the eye. Finally, when he realized I wasn’t going to prompt him, he let me in on his little joke. “Why should they risk bringing a double agent into their inner sanctums? Much quicker to put a bullet through your head and be done with it.”

  “But how would that…?”

  “Where do you think all the remote viewers go? To the Bahamas?”

  I swallowed hard, and did my best not to lose my corn flakes all over that graffiti-covered tabletop. “So all those creepy cops who aren’t really cops—and Dreyfuss, too—you’re saying that they’re actually looking out for me? That they’ve been protecting me this whole time?”

  Burke’s smile reached his eyes. He really was enjoying our little talk.

  “Give me the locations of Doctor Chance’s transmitters,” I said. I felt exhausted. My voice was small and dry, as if the volume had run out.

  “Now why would I want to do that? I might need a favor from you someday. It wouldn’t be very smart of me to give away that information for free.”

  I stood up. I had gotten my names and my addresses, and that was all I could expect to get from Roger Burke. Maybe Dreyfuss was the biggest mindfuck he knew. I guess it takes one to know one. I’d tell him to look in the mirror, but he’d probably take it as a compliment.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, Detective.”

  I was all out of witty replies. I made for the door.

  “One more thing.”

  I looked over at my shoulder at him. Maybe he’d tell me what it would take to get the locations of the GhosTVs from him. And maybe it would be a price I’d willing to pay. I had no doubt it would cost me dearly, but maybe it was something I could part with. “The transmitters?”

  “You wish.” He gloated. “No. Of course not. But there was one name I neglected to give you.”

  I wanted to wipe that smile off his face so bad that when I clenched my fist, it ached to punch him. “Watch it, asshole. There’s nothing stopping me from calling the FBI and saying that I was confused about being confused.”

  He did a que sera sera shrug. “You keep on tarnishing your reputation, eventually you won’t have anything left to polish. But that’s up to you. See, the reason I can’t give you that final name is that I don’t know it.”

  I stared. Because I knew he hated it when I stared at him.

  “The assassin,” he said, once he’d gotten sick of my staring. “No one knows who he is.” He raised one hand to his forehead and mimicked shooting a bullet—straight into the spot where Chance had gotten plugged. The other hand, shackled, came with it. But even that didn’t ruin the effect. “The FPMP, Detective Bayne, is like a mean, crazy dog. He’ll make the crackheads think twice about pissing in your front yard. But keep your eye on him, or the second your back is turned, he’ll maul you.”

  -TWENTY SEVEN-

  My phone rang while I was on my way to the Chicago branch of the FPMP, whose official address was recorded in a little book that I’d locked in my glovebox once I’d taken my gun out. I checked the number to decide whether or not I should answer. It was Zigler’s cell.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning.”

  “I called in,” I said. I decided not to tell him that my phone had been in a locker at Metropolitan Correctional when he’d left his message.

  “I know you’re dealing with that therapist and whatnot,” he said. Whatnot. What a bizarre way of telling me he was doing his best not to pry. “But I got Gillmore to agree to keep the cold-spot partition clear for the morning so you could look at it.” He lowered his voice. “And she’s pretty pissed that you’re not here.”

  Well, crap. I’d wanted some exorcism practice away from Dreyfuss’ prying eyes, and there it was. I tried to remember if I’d promised Dreyfuss one way or the other that I’d be in today. He must’ve know that I’d called in to the Fifth. “Okay Zig, I’ll, uh….” What equipment did I need for an exorcism? “I’ll be there.”

  I could stop by Crash’s store, but between getting on and off the expressway, explaining to him what I was trying to do, looking around for Miss Mattie, and fending off his friskiness, it would add another half hour to my trip. At least.

  Instead, I swung by a convenience store that was between the exit ramp and the hospital. Their selection of herbs and spices was lousy. Then again, what did I expect them to have in stock? Rue? Mugwort? I thought back to the botched exam where I’d recommended scattering flour for protection. Black pepper—that was supposed to be good stuff. And salt. They had both of those, in a couple of cardboard tubes printed with onions, tomatoes and lettuce, one with an S and another a P, shrinkwrapped together. I was about to leave with my salt and pepper when I spotted a shaker of cinnamon sugar. Plain cinnamon would have been better. But I doubted that a little extra sugar would stop it from working.

  I got to LaSalle before eleven. Patients inside two of the emergency partitions were trying to hack up their own lungs, but I suppose that gut-wrenching coughing is par for the course for snowy, damp Chicago springtime. I spotted Zigler before I saw Gillmore. Good. I thought that Gillmore liked me, more or less, even though I was a fifth level psych—but it freaked her out a little, too. And also, I was nosing around her emergency room and probably getting in the way, even though I supp
osedly knew what I was doing.

  Zig he had been writing on his notepad. Or at least pretending to, so that he looked like he had something to do while he waited for me to show up. Probably actually writing. Maybe. “Good, you came.”

  I scratched the back of my neck, which I realized was some kind of tell that advertised that I was nervous. I stuffed my hand in my pocket. “Yeah, sorry. I kind of have a lot going on.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  Zigler’s role in this whole thing had never occurred to me. What did I need him to do? And more importantly, what could he do? He was a Stiff, just like Jacob—but did that mean he had the ability to put the kibosh on psychic phenomena, or was he just perfectly, absolutely average?

  And if he was like Jacob, would he think I was nuts if I asked him to picture a remote viewer spying on me, and to change that bastard’s mental channel? I don’t think so. Zig took psychic stuff very seriously.

  “Why don’t you run interference? That will buy me some time.”

  Zigler nodded and planted himself beside the partition opening. I went in. The enclosure spooked me, but not because of the cold spot. It was the stainless steel table, the defibrillator in the corner, the rolling cart with drawers full of tongue depressors and syringes and latex gloves. I hated that shit. I would always hate that shit.

  I pulled three bottles of spices out of my overcoat pocket. I set them on the exam table. Salt, pepper, cinnamon-sugar. I was glad Zigler was outside. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could look at my pathetic ritual supplies and not laugh, even Zigler.

  I had no idea what to do, but I figured I wouldn’t make anything worse if I winged it. I took off my overcoat. There was nowhere to hang it, so I rolled it up and placed it on the exam table. I held out my hands and walked slowly up one side of the table, then back, then up the other. I thought I had felt a cold spot in back. I lingered there. Maybe—hard to tell.