Criss Cross

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Chapter Fourteen

  The jarring sound of an old-fashioned phone ringing startled me out of my dazed inertia. I stared at the gigantic plastic behemoth on the table between the beds. It rang again. I picked it up and held it to my ear. It might be Chance calling from downstairs, after all, acting like everything between us was hunkey-dorey and she was really concerned about my well being.

  “Vic?”

  Except if it was Chance, she was doing a pretty damn good impression of Jacob.

  “How did you get this number?” I whispered, worried that Chance and Roger had heard it ring and were making tracks back to the room. Frankly, I was shocked that they’d take my cell and leave a working phone just sitting there beside me. But since I was in a hotel, maybe outgoing calls were blocked. Incoming calls were apparently free game.

  “Lisa narrowed it down. You’re in Missouri, twenty miles away from a town of any size. The Sheriff sent someone over, but I really couldn’t give him much to go on.”

  “Crap,” I said, steadying myself against the headboard as I tried to remain upright. “I’m locked in a room and they’ve got my cell phone and my gun. What do I do?”

  “I’m putting you on speakerphone,” said Jacob. “Okay. Ask us something Lisa can work with.”

  I racked my brain for a question other than, “What can I do?” Yes or no, I told myself. “The door’s locked,” I said. “Is there anything in here I can open it with?”

  “No.”

  “Can I get out through the window?”

  “No.”

  I pushed the curtain aside. A decorative metal grating covered the outside of the window. In the country, on the second floor? Why?

  “If I make lots of noise, will the deputy hear me?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t pick this place out at random,” I said, “Did they?”

  “No.”

  “Who else is there besides Roger?” Jacob asked.

  “The guy who let us in, it seems like he’s in on it. And Doctor Chance,” I said, “if that’s even her name. If she even is a doctor.”

  “He’s in on it,” said Lisa. “And Chance is a doctor.”

  “Think,” said Jacob. “Is there anything you can use as a weapon?”

  “Against two armed people?” I said, trying to keep an edge of hysteria out of my voice. “Should I just keep going along with them?”

  Lisa huffed in frustration. “Too complicated. I can’t tell.”

  “There must be something I can do,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, what?”

  “You’re not helping,” she said. “Yes or no questions.”

  A bark of a laugh worked its way through. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked all around the room. “The desk?”

  “No.”

  “One of the beds?”

  “No.”

  “The TV?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said cautiously. “Yes and no. Look at it and tell me what....”

  I heard a key turning in the lock and cut her off. “They’re back,” I said, and hung up the phone. I threw myself into bed and tried to look medicated.

  The door swung open and Crewcut Guy peeked his head in to check on me. I lay there with my eyelids nearly shut and didn’t move. He stared at me for a while, then closed and locked the door again.

  I stared at the rotary dial for a long moment and then my stomach sank. I’d planned on doing a star-69 to get Lisa back on the phone, but there was no star. I picked up the handset. There was no dial tone, either. My theory about the outgoing calls must have been on the mark.

  I looked back at the big wooden bureau that housed the TV. That had to be it -- though what “it” was, exactly, I hadn’t figured out. I opened the door and looked at the set. Nothing unusual there. I tried the drawers. Empty. There was maybe an inch of clearance between the bureau and the wall. I peeked behind it and saw a mess of cables.

  It seemed like a lot of cables for a TV hookup. Maybe they had satellite. That would explain the off-season basketball game. I searched for the remote but came up empty handed. That didn’t make any sense. I could see Roger taking my gun and my cell phone. But the remote?

  I swung around and started pulling and pushing at the TV set, hoping to find something, anything I could use, before Roger and Chance got back.

  Something clicked on the front of the television set as I yanked on it, and the big tube tilted forward into my hands. I had no idea what the inside of a television was supposed to look like, but I suspected that the panel of hidden knobs and LCD readouts weren’t standard-issue. A slim DVD player was duct-taped to the inside. I figured that probably explained the off-season basketball game.

  I could just take a handful of wires and yank them out -- but what would that possibly accomplish? I wished Lisa would call me back and tell me what to do. Unplug the thing? Smash it? Change the settings?

  I forced myself to think. If Roger and Chance wanted me dead, I’d be dead. They needed me alive, presumably for my talent. I saw myself hooked up to a gurney, electrodes wired to my head and a bunch of IV’s feeding into my arm, and my vision started to tunnel. Camp Hell all over again.

  Dammit. It wasn’t the time to be crying over Camp Hell, not now.

  Okay. So there was a machine and it was doing something electrical. It was on. I could turn it up or down.

  I turned some dials up. The numbers on the LCDs increased, but nothing happened, at least that I could tell. I turned them down.

  A big black guy in a turn of the century butler’s uniform appeared beside me. He reached for me and I backed away.

  A thin girl with Mary Crawford hair in a floor-length nightgown appeared to my right. She reached toward me too.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snapped, but it didn’t look like she heard. I began to back off from both of them but decided I should probably peek over my shoulder first to make sure I wasn’t headed for anything creepier.

  Doctor Morganstern stood behind me. “Holy shit,” I cried. How did he get to Missouri? Had he ever really been in Japan? “You’re in on it too?”

  He pointed at the TV guts. “Turn the second dial up a little,” he said. “You’ll filter out the older ones.”

  The little girl was trying to grab my arm, but the farther I got from her, the farther I’d be from the TV. The room was small enough that she’d grab me eventually, and if not her, the black guy would. I grabbed the second knob and turned it the opposite way, and she seemed to dissolve. The butler grew very faint.

  “Not so much,” said a faraway voice. I turned around and Doctor Morganstern was almost as transparent as the butler.

  “You’re dead?”

  He pointed at the console, and I turned the knob down just a little. Morganstern grew more substantial. But so did the butler, who got his hand around my wrist.

  I felt resistance, and then a little give as his hand slipped inside my forearm. “Holy fucking God,” I yelped, and pulled my arm away. “Don’t you dare get in me.”

  “Try the other dials,” said Morganstern.

  “Which one?” I demanded, wondering if wrapping myself in tin foil would help, since supposedly everything was made of particles and electrons. Not that I had any tin foil.

  I twisted another knob and the butler got really solid. I imagined a white bubble around him -- my very lame method of shielding, on par with hopscotch and pixie sticks. The ghost seemed puzzled by it for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for me to spin down the second knob before he used me for a human condom. He grew faint.

  I turned back to Morganstern. He was solid enough. “My God,” I said. “You stuck around just to help me?”

  “Not exactly.” He looked somewhat abashed. “I’m following Roger Burke.”

  I shook my head, trying to get used to the idea that someone I knew -- and knew pretty well -- had died. “Isn’t there some kind of light you’re supposed to go
toward?”

  “You were wrong, back there in the car. Sometimes people do have one more message, one more task to complete, before they can move on.”

  “But why...?”

  “Put it back together,” said Morganstern, pointing at the TV. “They’re coming.”

  “Shit.” I snapped the TV up and closed the bureau, then flopped down on the bed. If Chance took my pulse again, I’d be fucked. My heart was pounding double-time.

  “Detective,” said Chance as she came through the door, Roger hot on her heels. “How are those meds doing?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. I think I’m good for now.”

  “They want you to go along with them,” said Morganstern, “but they’re terrified that you won’t. They were just going to pay you off at first, but Roger got a look at that bank balance you never touch and decided that money wasn’t a viable incentive.”

  Roger’d been stealing my mail. Great, just great. I did my best to relax and look out-of-it. If I could pull off a decent fake stupor, I’d have plenty of time to be pissed off later, once I gave them the slip.

  Chance pulled up a chair. There was no discussion of moving me, so I figured they’d gotten rid of the deputy easily enough. “Let’s talk about the increase in spirit activity you’ve been experiencing.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s those pills she gave you,” said Morganstern. “They’re psyactives, and they’re opening your power up so that it runs both ways. You’ve been shining like a beacon to the dead.” He pointed a ghostly finger at Roger. “This one’s been slipping them into your coffee until Chance found an opportunity to just give you the pills and trick you into taking them. And they fed you that line about your liver so you wouldn’t counteract the drug with your Auracel.”

  My liver was okay? The Hallelujah Chorus started to play in my head.

  “We’d like to do some tests with you,” said Chance, talking at the same time as Morganstern. “See if it’s possible for you to command the spirits once they’re in visual range.”

  “They want to get you to use spirits to blackmail people,” said Morganstern. “They’ll tell you it’s to fine-tune that new drug, or that electronic technology. But once you’re part of their inner circle, they’ll want more funding. Lots of it.”

  “I hate tests,” I groaned.

  The lock tumbled and the guy with the crewcut came back into the room. “That deputy’s back, and now he’s got three more with him. We should abort.”

  Chance looked hard at me. “Out of the question.” She brushed my hair back from my forehead in an eerily tender fashion.

  “Go along with her,” said Morganstern, “or Burke will murder you. Like he did me.”

  Oh. So that was why he was following Roger. Morganstern had never struck me as a particularly vengeful man, but then again, I only knew him as my doctor. Not the dead husband of a widowed woman, or the dead father who wouldn’t walk his daughter down the aisle. Dead people are pretty big on grudges.

  Chance’s hand lingered at my temple. “Detective Bayne is perfect for our project. You want to be part of this groundbreaking Psy research,” she said to me, “don’t you?”

  Morganstern seemed to know what he was talking about, and I struggled to figure out how to play along without seeming as if aliens had landed and turned me into a pod person. I gave Chance a vacant grin, doing my best to look like an oblivious, doped-up fool. “You’re the one with the meds.”

  The tension left the room as if I’d found the magical switch. I couldn’t be bribed with money, since no amount of money ever brought me peace. But it was entirely plausible that I could be bought with drugs. Morganstern smiled and nodded; I must’ve been convincing.

  Chance smiled, too. “I’m going to have Roger drive you to another safehouse while I talk to the deputies. I’ll do everything I can to keep you comfortable, Detective. You and I have got a lot of work to do together.”

  Chance left with Crewcut Guy while Roger turned to gather our bags.

  “Do something,” said Morganstern.

  I did a palms-up gesture at him. What was I supposed to do? The Amytal had started to wear off, but come on. I was no match for Roger, especially unarmed.

  “Mister Bayne, you’ve got to get him while you’re alone.

  Roger shrugged his blazer on, and stuffed my jacket in a bag. He disappeared into the bathroom. “He’d kick my ass,” I whispered. “What do you expect me to do?”

  Morganstern looked down at the remaining syringes by the side of the bed. “Amytal. Inject it into an artery and you’ll subdue him immediately.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Sure -- I’ll just find an artery. And I’ll ask him real nice to hold still while I do it.”

  Roger came back into the main room with a damp washcloth, wiping our prints off all the surfaces.

  “It’s the only way,” said Morganstern.

  I gave him my best “yeah, right” look.

  “If you can’t do it, then let me.”

  I swallowed hard and slid a syringe into my pocket while Roger’s back was turned. I’d relied on Morganstern in life, but I wasn’t sure he was entirely trustworthy in death. What if he didn’t want to leave me once he got under my skin? Would he march around inside my body forever, leaving my friends to wonder when I’d taken to wearing sweater vests?

  And what if a shot of Amytal to the artery would kill Roger? Without Carolyn or Lisa to back me up, I had no way of knowing if Morganstern was using me for revenge.

  Roger threw the washcloth into the bathroom, snapped up the case of syringes, and drew his gun. “C’mon, Bayne. Time to go.”

  I stood and the room dipped -- I guess I was still woozier than I’d thought. Morganstern hovered beside me, saying, “You’ve got to subdue him. It’s the only way.”

  Roger got a shoulder under my armpit to help me to the door, and I fumbled between us to try and palm the syringe in my pocket. My hand brushed against his hip and he cringed. “Touch me again and I’ll blow your hand off, faggot,” he growled, hustling me toward the door.

  It wasn’t the threat that did it; it was the realization that Roger would just as soon shoot me as not, regardless of how integral I was to their precious operation. Because I was queer.

  “Okay,” I whispered. Roger would think I was talking to him, but it was really aimed at Morganstern. I did my best to relax.

  I felt Morganstern entering, like the sickening rush of an unfamiliar drug. He came through somewhere in my core and extended himself into my extremities, arms and legs, fingers and toes. I felt numb and disconnected as Morganstern settled in. And then my body surged into action.

  My hand whipped the syringe out and flicked the protective cap off with my thumb, holding it as easily as I might have held a pencil, or a gun. I stuck the needle into Roger’s neck and plunged in one smooth motion. Roger raised his gun and started to pull the trigger -- and then collapsed with his double-action semi-automatic just another small squeeze from putting a hole in my forehead.

  I made to reach for Roger’s gun but I couldn’t move. This was seven colors of weird. “Get the gun,” I tried to say, and I guess Morganstern understood. I picked up the semi-automatic and felt myself jerked toward the door before I could even see if Roger was still breathing. My body jogged to the end of the hall and down a back staircase I hadn’t known about, heading unerringly toward a way out.

  Morganstern stopped me at the back door, twisted the knob a few times, and then tried harder.

  “It’s locked,” I thought. “The more you rattle it, the worse you’re making things.”

  The room lurched and I was myself again, with a semi-transparent Morganstern standing beside me. “Can’t you kick the door in?” he demanded. “Or shoot the lock out?”

  “You watch too many cop shows,” I told him, noting that my mouth worked again. I raised a hand and that worked, too. I pulled the curtains aside on the back hall window. It was barred.

  I would have t
o shoot the lock out, after all -- though I doubted it would be as neat or efficient as they make it out to be in the movies. I tore down a curtain and wrapped my arm and hand to give it some kind of protection from the spray of wood and metal I was about to cause, took aim at the lock at the best angle I could figure, and squeezed.

  The gun popped and there was a clatter of metal. There were also shouts and running footsteps. “Drop the gun and put your hands above your head,” someone shouted.

  I didn’t think it was Crewcut Guy, but I didn’t know for sure. I spun around to face the voice and found a pair of men in sheriff’s khakis pounding down the hallway toward me, weapons drawn. I started to put my gun up, but then I hesitated. What if Chance had an inside man there, too? They’d infiltrated my precinct and my clinic -- why not the sheriff’s department where they’d planted the safe house?