by K. C. Archer
“Did I miss something?” Teddy asked.
“We’re starting a new class,” Dara said. “Whitfield announced it at the start of assembly.”
When Teddy had been in the file room. With Nick. “What class?”
“Something about casework,” Dara said. “We’re actually going to start solving some crimes. I feel like I need to buy a pair of aviators or something.”
Finally, after months of Dunn’s psychic exercises and Boyd’s obstacle course, after forensics lectures and Clint’s conversations about empathy, they were going to work actual cases. But Teddy couldn’t share in the enthusiasm. Her mind was still reeling from the news that Christine hadn’t shown, though others might dismiss her disappearance as coincidence.
“Oh,” Dara said. “You also missed Boyd’s update on last semester’s theft.” She explained that there’d been no further evidence of foul play; though the school had taken the incident seriously, they didn’t believe that a student had been behind it. Instead, they increased security at the lab, replacing the locks with electronic key pads (so long, Internet access). But Teddy didn’t buy Boyd’s explanation. Shouldn’t the school be more worried if someone outside Whitfield had stolen the blood samples?
Teddy followed her classmates up the stairs and down the hall to room 203 for Casework. The professor hadn’t arrived yet, but a large stack of textbooks leaned precariously on the desk at the front of the room. Criminal Profiling: An Introduction, the cover read.
“Does anyone know who’s teaching the class?” Dara asked.
“It’s a profiling class. Probably Corbett,” Zac Rogers said.
Others murmured agreement, but Teddy was pretty sure they were mistaken. There was a new FBI liaison on campus, and she thought it was a fair bet that he would walk into the room at any minute.
When he did, everybody in the classroom sat up straighter. She slumped down, avoiding his line of sight.
“I’m FBI Special Agent Nick Stavros,” he said. “Some of you already know me.” With that, he looked straight at Teddy, who folded her arms and sank deeper into her seat. “This might be your first experience working with a member of the FBI. But this is not my first experience working with psychics. I think it might be useful to explain how I ended up at Whitfield.”
He opened his laptop and hit a key. An image appeared on the whiteboard at the front of the room. “This is Nogales, Arizona,” Nick said. “A border town two and a half hours south of Phoenix.” It was a small town in the desert, surrounded by scrubby foothills, miles of open road, and not much else.
Another click, another image. A young woman’s body, white and bloodless. Teddy looked away from the image. So did the other recruits around her.
“Our first victim was found by two teenage boys messing around in the desert on ATVs. No ID or identifying marks. Her description—approximately sixteen to twenty years old, five feet four inches, one hundred twenty pounds, Hispanic—matched no specific missing persons report.” Nick faced the room. “Normally, this would have been a local matter. But the woman was found on federal land, so I was sent down to lead the investigation.”
Another click. A close-up of the victim’s face. “The sheriff’s office released this photo to various media sites, hoping for a hit. Nothing. Then this woman came forward.”
The next image was a still shot taken from what appeared to be video of a police interrogation room: Nick stood on one side of a long table, accompanied by two seated uniformed police officers. On the other side of the table was a Korean woman wrapped in a shawl, her body bent with age.
“Hye Kim,” Nick said. “She didn’t speak English, so we brought in a translator. She claimed to be a psychic. She didn’t know the victim’s name, but she said the victim and many others had visited her dreams.” He lifted a piece of paper that appeared to be a copy of an official police report and read: “ ‘The women, and they are many, are watched over by the Virgin and guarded by dogs.’ ”
Teddy returned to the still shot of the interrogation room. The officers looked bored, but everything about Nick’s stance in the photo radiated impatience. His arms were crossed, his body tense, his jaw clenched.
“I wrote off Ms. Kim. Total waste of time,” Nick said. He dropped the report on the desk. “It’s normal to have people come into the station who are, let’s say, a few french fries short of a Happy Meal. Sometimes people will see something on TV or read something in the paper and get it into their minds that they know something about the case. We assumed that Ms. Kim was one of those people.”
“What happened?” Jillian asked.
“Nothing initially,” Nick said. “And then two more young unidentified women were found in the desert, not far from where the first victim was discovered.”
“A serial killer?” Jeremy asked.
“We didn’t know. The only thing we were certain of is that we had something bigger on our hands. I went back to Phoenix and had a beer with another agent, one who was older, more experienced, and a hell of a lot smarter than I am. You know what he told me?”
“Listen to Hye Kim,” Pyro said.
Nick turned to Pyro. “Exactly. A guy I respected told me to listen to a psychic. I couldn’t believe it. No offense to anyone here, but I thought psychics were con artists.” He shook his head. “But I had nothing else to go on, so I gave Ms. Kim’s statement another look.” He clicked to the next slide, projecting Ms. Kim’s words on the screen: The women, and they are many, are watched over by the Virgin and guarded by dogs.
“The dogs,” Jillian said, leaning forward as though straining to hear the animals herself.
“Not everyone speaks dog, Jillian,” Ben Tucker said.
The class laughed and Jillian blushed. “You could start looking for areas where there were large concentrations of dogs,” she suggested.
“Churches,” Ben said. “I’d start there.”
“Yes,” Nick said. “That’s what I thought, too. I started checking out local churches. Ran background checks on priests and preachers and church employees. Nothing.” His gaze moved to Jillian. “And then I thought about the dogs. So I went to training facilities, kennels, veterinary offices, and that’s where I got lucky.”
He hit the button again, showing an image of a modern facility with a sign out front: the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. He switched to another shot of the shelter, a different angle from a greater distance. Teddy spotted a small church with a statue of the Virgin Mary, arms outstretched, gracing the entrance.
“Remember, in casework, we never dismiss coincidences.” Nick pointed to a dilapidated adobe structure set about a half mile off the highway, between the church and the animal shelter. “Our perpetrator was running undocumented workers, mostly women, into the country. Some didn’t survive the journey.” He faced the room. “Everything was right there if I’d just bothered to look at it. Two more people died because I refused to take Ms. Kim seriously at first. That will always be on me.”
Silence fell over the room. Nick cleared his throat and moved on. “I’d like to say that ever since that moment, every psychic I met on an investigation has been an asset. But that would be a lie. Unfortunately, the majority of psychics who present themselves to the FBI really are con artists.”
Until that moment, Teddy had been avoiding Nick’s eyes. Now she looked straight at him. “If you feel that way,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
He studied her. “When Clint Corbett told me about a program to vet psychics—to weed out the charlatans—I wanted to be part of it. Because my experience has taught me that working with actual psychics can save lives.”
Teddy wanted to hate him at that moment. But he obviously cared about his job. About helping people. Plus, he was hot.
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Look, I don’t have a goddamn clue how any of you do what you do. It’s more than a little spooky to the average cop. And frankly, we cops don’t like someone else knowing more than we do and making us look stup
id.” He extended his arms, palms up. “You know what I say to that? Tough. It’s time to put our egos aside and work together.”
Teddy knew that her peers would be won over by this speech. Most of them—at least the Misfits—felt like weirdos out in the “real world.” They’d grown up knowing that what made them different should be kept hidden. And here was FBI Special Agent Nick Stavros telling them that their psychic abilities could actually save lives. In the end, that was all they wanted. Why else would they put up with the grueling physical tests and emotional trials—the bullshit insanity of Sergeant Boyd—to be here? Even the shocking knowledge that Clint and Nick had manipulated her into coming to Whitfield hadn’t deterred Teddy. Infuriated her, yes. Convinced her she couldn’t trust them, absolutely. Despite that betrayal, she had stayed.
“All right,” Nick said. “Casework. Let’s get to it.”
He returned to his laptop and hit a key. The adobe structure in the desert disappeared. In its place was a photograph of a striking young man, a teenager in baggy shorts and a T-shirt. He was lean and long-limbed, with shaggy sun-streaked brown hair and a brazen smile.
“Corey McDonald,” Nick said. He studied the photo for a moment, then swiveled back to look at the class. “Instant impressions. Throw out the first word that comes to mind.”
The answers varied. Athletic. Attractive. Young. Rich. Californian.
“Interesting. A roomful of psychics, and not one of you used the word murderer to describe him.” Nick clicked to the next image, which showed the same young man in an orange jumpsuit. “Who said Californian?”
Kate raised her hand. “I felt like he was near water, sand, a beach. So, Californian.”
“Corey McDonald went to San Jose State. And so did she.” The next image showed a pretty brunette with big brown eyes. “Marlena Hyden.” Nick turned to the class once again. “Initial impressions?”
“Gone,” Ava said flatly.
Nick closed his laptop. “Corey McDonald, a nineteen-year-old kid with no criminal record, was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Marlena Hyden. McDonald maintains his innocence, and so does his family.
“That’s where all of you come in.” Nick scanned the room. “An appellate court will review McDonald’s case. That’s on the docket three months from today. You’ll divide into two teams and perform a psychic analysis of the case. Then one representative from each team will accompany me to interview Corey at San Quentin in the weeks leading up to hearing. Look for anything that might have been overlooked during the first trial. There was a lot of media attention on this case, a lot of pressure to put it to bed quickly. If the investigating DA and local cops got it wrong, push us toward the right perpetrator.”
Nick scanned the room. “Each group will get the same information, but essentially, it’s a race against the clock—and each other—to find anything we missed and make sure justice is done.”
Henry was already whispering to Kate. Even though Teddy and Kate had formed a convenient alliance after their first exam, Teddy knew how the teams would shake out. Misfits vs. Alphas. And the Alphas had a claircognizant, two clairvoyants, a telepath, someone who received messages through dreams, and a medium. The Misfits had a weirdo who could sometimes predict someone’s death, a free spirit who could mostly talk to animals (both on this side and the next, to be fair), someone who was so crippled by her ability to read emotions that she’d just had a nervous breakdown, a bad boy with the ability to set things on fire, an awkward psychometrist, and a telepath who could barely control her own powers. Which team was going to win again?
“There’s an extra incentive to solving the case,” Nick said. “In addition to seeing justice done, the star student on the winning team will get a private tour of the FBI field office in San Francisco.”
Teddy couldn’t care less about the tour. Sure, she was sick of losing to the Alphas, but now she had a chance to do something important.
Dara raised her hand. “When do we start?”
“Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE MISFITS SPENT TWO PAINFUL weeks going through every piece of paperwork associated with the case. None of them had gleaned any insight from the astral plane, so they were determined to mine the physical one and learn the case inside and out.
Here was what they knew: a jogger had discovered Marlena Hyden’s body in a marsh along a wetland trail roughly twenty miles from San Jose State. Since the body had stayed in the water for so long, the coroner could not definitively determine the cause of death; in court, he said that he believed the bruising around Marlena’s neck indicated she’d been strangled, but physical evidence was inconclusive. It was the perfect case for psychics.
Here was what they guessed: Corey’s shifting account of his whereabouts the night of Marlena’s disappearance, physical evidence found in his car, and testimony given by dormitory residents that he and Marlena had fought before her death had led to his conviction. The DA had sold the murder as a crime of passion. The night of Marlena’s death, the DA claimed, Corey had snapped.
What they needed—and none of them saw a way around it—was to examine the evidence kits.
After trials, Nick explained, journalists and third parties were sometimes allowed to go through pertinent physical evidence. He made a call, pushing hard for the district court to release kits from both the prosecution and the defense. Ten days later, as Nick handed out gloves, he warned the recruits about possible contamination of the evidence, something that had been drilled into them in Forensics.
“Nothing we find here can be submitted as proof to the appellate court anyway,” Nick said. “But it might lead to new evidence that can.”
Each team had two hours to inspect the items under Nick’s supervision. The Alphas won a coin toss (supposedly fair and square, though Teddy suspected that Kate knew the right call beforehand) and chose to go first.
The evidence included: a knife taken from Corey’s tackle box; a photograph of the passenger seat of Corey’s car; fibers from the car itself; residue of Marlena’s blood; Marlena’s lipstick, sunglasses, and a pair of plastic flip-flops, all found in Corey’s car; additional photos of hair, fingerprints, and clothing fiber samples, also found in Corey’s car, in Corey’s and Marlena’s rooms, on Marlena’s body, and on Corey’s person; beer bottles recovered from the Dumpster outside the dorm with traces of Corey’s and Marlena’s DNA.
In addition to the kits, each team was provided with hair and clothing samples belonging to Corey and Marlena, as well as an intimate possession from each, which their families had donated to aid in the psychic investigation. From Marlena, a sterling ring set with an opalescent moonstone. From Corey, a copy of Romeo and Juliet that he was reading when he was arrested, which Teddy found both tragic and ironic.
The problem was that psychic gifts didn’t exactly work on command—or at least the Misfits’ didn’t. Which they were reminded of when Nick finally called them to the library to inspect the kits.
“I have a bad feeling about this knife,” Jillian said, dropping it as soon as she picked it up. “It’s caused a lot of death.”
“Yeah, to fish. All the blood found on the knife was fish blood,” Pyro said. “Just because the police found a knife doesn’t mean it’s the murder weapon. There’s nothing on the coroner’s report that indicates trauma relating to knife wounds.”
Pyro, despite having no psychic abilities that would reveal new evidence, had turned out to be a major asset to their team. As a former police officer, he knew more about procedure than all of them combined.
“What’s the point of this?” Jeremy said, pushing back his chair. Everyone hoped that he, as a psychometrist, would only have to hold Marlena’s or Corey’s personal items to crack the case open. But he hadn’t had any luck getting a clear read on the evidence.
“We just need something to go on before the interview at San Quentin,” Jillian said.
“I bet the Alphas figured it out this morning,” Dara said.
“Or maybe they’re working together as a group,” Teddy suggested, “instead of bickering, like we are.”
Teddy surveyed the team. Pyro looked like he was about to punch someone; Jeremy wasn’t far behind. Molly was chewing a fingernail, almost like she wasn’t listening to the conversation. Teddy had assumed that Molly’s powers as an empath would have helped them understand Corey’s emotional state leading up to the crime, but so far, she’d said barely a word.
“Why don’t we divide up the kits and work separately for a bit?” Teddy asked. She looked at her watch. “Dinner’s in an hour. With any luck, we won’t have to lie when we tell Ni— Agent Stavros that we’re making progress on the case.”
Molly looked up. “What?”
Dara sighed. “I’m sorry, did we interrupt you?”
Molly smiled. “I’m sure we can figure this out if we work together.”
Pyro stood, the tips of his gloves smoking. “Just please, someone, do something.”
“It’s not like your powers come in handy here,” Jeremy said as he reached for the copy of Romeo and Juliet.
“We’re all frustrated,” Teddy said. “We don’t need to take it out on each other.”
She grabbed a few photographs and wove through a row of books toward a small table in the corner of the library. She settled in, eager for solitude. But after a minute or two, she saw Molly flop down a few seats away.
Teddy had thought she knew Molly well enough—but the girl she’d met on the ferry didn’t seem like the girl who’d hacked Eversley’s computer, or the girl who’d attacked her in the exam, or the girl who’d returned to Whitfield acting like a Stepford wife. This Molly seemed distracted, out of sorts. Teddy silently cursed. When she’d been a loner in Vegas, life had been easier. She hadn’t needed to give a shit about other people, to talk about feelings all the time. She blamed Clint. Screw empathy.
