Psychobyte

by Cat Connor

  “Nope. Bathroom cupboard, go see.”

  He frowned and went into the bathroom. I heard the cupboard open and close. He came back holding a white stick by the very tip of one end.

  “You peed on this, right?”

  “Not on the outside. It’s got a cap on it. You’re quite safe,” I replied.

  “It’s also got two blue lines.”Kurt’s voice came from the doorway where he leaned on the frame, “That’s a positive result.”

  He straightened up and walked into the room. “You couldn’t have told me?”

  “Not before I told Mitch,” I replied.

  Mitch stood in the middle of the room staring at the two blue lines.

  “How?” Mitch said as a smile settled on his lips. “And wow. Not what I expected from today.”

  “Maybe Holly’s grandma was right, nature is cunning,” I said and that was all I had, nothing else made sense.

  Kurt chuckled. “She’s right. Trust me. I learned a long time ago that somethings are meant to be regardless of our interventions.”

  “Meanwhile, let me give you something so you don’t feel ill all the time,” Kurt said.

  “Something safe,” I replied.

  “Of course. Undo your jeans and pull them down a bit.”

  Mitch hadn’t moved. Kurt walked around him.

  “Why?” I asked, unzipping.

  “Humor me.” He moved a little closer and rubbed his hands together. “Sorry, might be cold. I want to feel your tummy.” He pressed quite hard on my lower abdomen. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.” I tried not to wince. “Uncomfortable.”

  “When was your last period?”

  “Seven and a half weeks ago.”

  He pressed again; it felt like his fingers had pressed right through to my spine. He stopped.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Very sure. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” From his bag, he took a vial and a syringe. “Roll onto your left hip.”

  A cold, a stinging sensation followed, then cold again.

  “That should help, it might also make you sleepy.”

  “Thanks.” I rolled back and pulled my jeans up properly. “Tell me why you questioned my dates?”

  “Because I can feel your uterus above your pelvic bone by about two inches.”

  “And?”

  “An ultrasound would be a good idea. Have you seen an OBGYN yet?”

  I stared at him. “Not yet. Should I be worried?”

  “No. You might be further along than you think. I’ll get an ultrasound scheduled soon. I know a guy. He’s the head of the Obstetric Department at Inova Fairfax. I can get you an appointment with him.”

  “That would be good, thanks.”

  Mitch sat down next to me on the bed. “We’re pregnant?”

  “Technically just me, but yeah, we are.”

  He smiled. I don’t know what I expected but I don’t think it was a smile.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kurt packed up his bag. “I’ll leave you two to talk. Yell if you need me.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  Mitch nodded. “I’ll need a bit of time to catch up …”

  I waited to see if he was mad or mention the fact I hadn’t said anything and had blocked this from his radar. I’d done nothing but think about this for the last two weeks … well, this and the wedding.

  “This wasn’t something on either of our life plans, so … we need to think and talk and figure this out together,” I said, surprised at how grown up I sounded.

  Mitch chewed his lip and looked at me. His hand found mine. “No wonder you’ve been so distracted for the last few weeks. I knew it wasn’t all work and the wedding. Hasn’t been easy for you, has it?”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “I wish you’d confided in me from the start.” He kissed my forehead.

  Safe. I sighed. “Me too. I just needed time to get my head around this, you know?”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “And because there could’ve been a natural resolution.” That was still a possibility.

  “And to be able to support you, if that were the case, I’d need knowledge.” His fingers squeezed mine. “El, I’m not going anywhere. This is about us.”

  He had me there.

  “I should have told you.”

  “This is your first and last warning, almost-Mrs. Iverson … there better not be a next time.”

  I laughed at his attempt at sternness. “Fair enough.”

  “And I should’ve noticed.” His smile faded a little. “That’s why you blocked me.”

  I swallowed hard. Hate being caught out and not pleased at all about blocking him. Would’ve been easier and less stressful to tell him outright in the beginning.

  “Partly.”

  “Now we know … how do you feel? Up to a chat about the changing future?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me neither. Shuffle over. Let me get in there.” Mitch crawled up beside me and pulled me into his arms. My head rested comfortably on his shoulder. “Don’t throw up on me,” he said, kissing the top of my head.

  “We’re okay?” I asked as I curled into him.

  “Of course,” Mitch said. “We’re great.”

  “You are more than I deserve, Mitchell Iverson.”

  I knew he smiled when he said, “We’re having a baby.” And held me close. “Still feel sick?”

  “Not so much. Kurt’s magic shot worked.” My eyes closed. The absence of nausea and the relief that Mitch knew, left me feeling both relieved and tired all at once.

  Thirty-Four

  Demons

  I watched from the car as Mitch ran across the parking lot and disappeared through the door to Safeway. My smile reflected from the car window as I waited. It was Tuesday. Five days before our wedding and I felt okay.

  A phone call distracted me from my vigil. Kurt.

  “Conway?”

  “Yep.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m on my way to work.”

  Pretty sure a hamster running on a wheel filled the silence at his end.

  “We have another death.”

  “I’m twenty minutes away.”

  “About that … you’ve got an appointment this morning with my pal Jeremy Johansen.”

  “And he is?”

  “The doctor I mentioned yesterday. The appointment is at ten.”

  My watch said half-eight.

  “Where’s his office?”

  Mitch opened the car door and angled in behind the wheel. He reached over and dropped a box of crystallized ginger in my lap. I smiled at him and mouthed ‘thank you.’

  “Kurt? Where do I need to be?” I hoped he’d say D.C.

  “Falls Church.”

  Damn.

  “Where’s the latest crime scene?”

  “Reston.”

  That wouldn’t work. “Are you in the office now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait for me. I’m coming to you.” I hung up.

  Mitch’s hand rested on the ignition. “Problem?”

  “Scheduling conflict,” I replied. “How flexible are you this morning?”

  He took his hand off the ignition and turned to face me. “Kurt got you an appointment with the specialist?”

  “Uh huh, at ten in Falls Church.”

  Mitch took his phone from the cradle on the dash and made a call. I tuned out, my mind flipping between another death and thoughts of the specialist appointment. The hum of Mitch’s voice stopped and I glanced up at him. He placed the phone back in the cradle and said, “I’ll need to work late tonight but I’ve cleared my morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hadn’t expected him to come with me, and that he wanted to, meant everything. Okay, we’d both be working late.

  “I need to go to the office before we go to Falls Church.”

  He n
odded and turned the key.

  I zoned out almost as soon as the engine started. Words danced around me. A few took form and dropped into my lap. A poem?

  Before I could consciously stop it, the rest of the poem manifested. My brain whirred: the odds of it being a random poem about a scent ‒ nil. For a few seconds, every victim inhabited me at once.

  Someone spoke. I had no idea who; apart from Phoebe, I didn’t know any of their voices. But I knew it was one of the victims.

  “A simple scent dragged me back to hell. Lighting incense brought a tale to tell. A flash went off in my disturbed brain. Throwing me back into turmoil again.” Her voice faded into the vortex of faces that inhabited my mind.

  Lines of another poem appeared on a whiteboard written by an ethereal hand. Chance swinging through the door drew my attention away from the emerging words. He grinned and stood next to me, facing the whiteboard.

  His arm draped around my shoulders. “What are we doing?”

  “Reading. One of the victims, I think, wrote a poem.”

  “How many of them were poets, El?”

  “Just one as far as I know, but two wrote fiction. Jane Daughtry was the poet.”

  “Jane was FBI?”

  I nodded. “This might be something then,” I said. The ethereal hand vanished taking the white board marker with it. Revealing a poem. Chance and I read aloud.

  Patchouli

  I smelled the scent before

  Long ago and far away

  When you knocked upon my door

  Your cologne wafted through my home

  Lingered on my clothes

  Every room in which you went

  Lay heavy with that earthy-musky scent

  I never knew what the base note was

  Until I smelled it again today

  Back came the total horror of you

  I’d so carefully hidden away

  You unlocked the door to immeasurable pain

  Never will I be trapped here again.

  Patchouli lingers in the air

  Its drifting tendrils everywhere.

  He stepped back and I read it twice more.

  “Chance, she knew the killer …”

  “Looks that way.”

  “We were looking at self-help groups or therapy groups because their houses were almost OCD clean.”

  “And now?”

  “I think it’s more than Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I think it’s a symptom of abuse. Control. They clean to regain control over their lives or part of their lives.” I couldn’t prove that either, but it felt right. Deep in my bones it just felt like it.

  “And Jane?”

  “The intended victim all along. She knew one of the Unsubs. What if one of them had abused her in the past …” Thoughts collided and reformed as new ideas. “She could also be an anomaly. A neat freak with no history of psychological damage.” I needed to look into that. Whatever drew me back to Jane was important.

  “Is that unusual, killing the intended victim early and then carrying on killing?”

  “Every nutjob is different.”

  “I thought that was snowflakes,” he said with a chuckle.

  Chance: so close I could feel his presence. Comfortable. Warm. Weird. My mind knew he wasn’t there and I wasn’t in my office standing in front of my whiteboard, so why could I feel Chance?

  Best not to dwell.

  “We’re looking at the wrong kind of groups.”

  “Not necessarily, El. Just not looking deep enough.”

  That made sense.

  “Jane knew her killer. If he abused her, if he was an ex-boyfriend, who would know that?” Then the other thought forced its way to the front of the queue. “What if Jane knew her killer but there was no abuse. Who would know people she’d met recently?”

  “A current boyfriend would know her friends and she may have confided in him about historical abuse.”

  “A paramedic …”

  Matthew Collins.

  Time I had another chat with Matthew Collins. Don’t think he shared everything he knew about Jane. Benefit of the doubt might be necessary, though I didn’t specifically ask if she had an abusive fucktard as an ex-boyfriend.

  I straightened up as Chance stepped in front of me, obscuring most of the poem. “How you feeling?”

  “Okay.” Suspicion mounted as he stayed in front of me. “Why?”

  “You haven’t been well. Thought you were looking pale.”

  “I’m pregnant, Chance. Nothing to worry about.”

  He smiled, not the warmest smile I’ve ever seen from Chance.

  “Be careful El, you fit the profile and the killing isn’t done yet.”

  “You worry too much, Chance.”

  “I saw the letter from Hank. I don’t think I worry enough.” He turned and walked away. He paused and looked over his shoulder. “You’ve got more to lose, you need to be careful.”

  I watched as Chance melted into a puddle of denim-colored paint in the doorway.

  The scenery beyond the window drew my attention. We were approaching the office and the entrance to the underground parking garage.

  “Hey. You’re back,” Mitch said, glancing sideways at me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yep.”

  The guard on the gate pressed the button releasing the barrier arm and waved Mitch through.

  “Anywhere in particular?” Mitch asked, driving down the ramp into the dark below.

  “Delta teams park on the far side by the elevators.”

  Several minutes later in the elevator, I found myself questioning the cleverness of steel boxes that moved at speed. Still better than the stairwell. Maybe.

  Sandra greeted us with her usual enthusiasm as we approached her desk.

  “The happy couple!” she crooned. “How long now?”

  “Five days,” Mitch replied, beating me to it.

  “Sandra, I need Matthew Collins in here. There are some more things I think he can help me with.”

  “I’ll give him a call, O Genie of the White Veil.”

  “Ask him nicely and let him know I would like his help.”

  “If he refuses?”

  “Send a car, I need his help,” I replied. “Get someone from Delta C to pick him up if necessary.” A phone rang, reminding me we had a 1-800 number set up. “Anything on the tip line?”

  “Every lunatic in D.C. is on the tip line,” Sandra said, scrolling through comments on her screen. “Uniform are coping with the calls. A few I kicked back to them to investigate but so far nothing useful.” The scrolling continued. She paused. “Hang on a minute. Did someone mention a bloody bag?”

  “Yeah, the car thief mentioned seeing someone with a bloody bag.”

  “I got something here. A gentleman called in saying that an art gallery near him had bloody bags, cushions, and aprons.”

  “His reason for calling?”

  “Lonely?”

  “Send someone, if our Unsub purchased the bag from a gallery, they might have a credit card receipt.”

  “Worth a shot, O Genie of the Underworld.”

  “Thanks, Sandra. We’ll be in my office. Kurt said we have a new crime scene.”

  She nodded, stuck a pencil in her hair and typed at a frantic pace. “New scene, Jodie Norris. I have an appointment for you with Mallory Steven’s bank manager at half-one this afternoon.”

  “Send me a reminder and thank you.” As I was about to walk away, I stopped. “Did Sasha Petrovovich send a report through yet?”

  “Just checking … bear with.” I waited while Sandra checked email. “Not yet.”

  “Okay, thanks. Better go see Kurt.”

  Keys clicked under her fingers. Sandra smiled at me over her screens. “He’s in your office.”

  Figures. No one’s ever in their own offices these days.

  Kurt looked up from behind my desk.

  “Vacate,” I said, motioning to him. “That’s my chair.”


  “I’m done printing crime scene photos for your board.” He pointed to a pile of paper sitting in the out tray of the printer in the corner.

  “Thanks.”

  Kurt passed me and sat in one of the two chairs in front of my desk. Mitch sat on the couch and picked up a book from the coffee table. He didn’t want to be part of the conversation. Not his job. I sat in the warm chair. That never feels right.

  “You look like you know something …” Kurt said. “You sharing?”

  I nodded.

  “There was something I couldn’t grab on to at Jane Daughtry’s home. The poetry felt like something but no one else seems to write poetry and her having my book actually looked like a coincidence.”

  Kurt laughed. “Trying to imagine you even considering coincidence as a possibility.”

  “I know … not easy.” I sighed and rested my elbows on the desk. “I saw a poem on our way here.”

  “I almost don’t want to ask … but the curiosity might kill me … how?”

  Letting the crazy out. Never easy.

  “I saw a ghostly hand write it on my whiteboard.” My eyes flashed to the board. No poem. Disappointing. “How, really isn’t that big a deal. It’s what it said that’s important and who wrote it.”

  “Carry on.”

  I stood up and walked over to the board. Could I replicate it? Hope sprang eternal. Pollyanna was alive and well and living in me. Unicorns do exist and shit doesn’t stink.

  The whiteboard marker in my left hand drew a line down the board and then wrote. The entire poem emerged, messy but legible.

  By the time I’d finished, Kurt stood next to me. “Impressive for your left hand,” he said.

  “Surprised myself.”

  Kurt read the poem aloud. “What do you want to do?” He turned his head to face me. “Never mind, I know. We’re going back to Jane’s place to find that poem.”

  “Yep, and because I missed something. I missed a scent.”

  I didn’t really miss it, I just didn’t comprehend the significance. That faint smell of musky wet dirt in the bathroom clothes hamper: now I knew it was relevant.

  “Not like you.”

  “Nope, but it happens.”

  I Googled patchouli. It definitely fitted with the wet dirt smell in the clothes hamper. Discovering the plant was related to mint surprised me.

  “Find what you need?”