Bitter Pill

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “According to hospital policy on patient privacy—”

  “I already have their names, I just want to know which emergency bays they died in.”

  Gillmore narrowed her eyes and said, “Let me see that new license again.”

  I half-suspected she’d go throw it out the window. But if she did, HQ would just print another one, so I handed it over. She turned and strode off, leaving me to wonder if I was supposed to follow, or what. I glanced around. The ER nurses who’d been watching us face off quickly got busy doing something else. I glanced down at the sink. Pinkish spatters clung to the basin where some unfortunate person’s blood hadn’t quite rinsed away. I’d seen my share of blood spatter through the years. Even so, I was staring at it, noting the position, the pattern, the density, when Gillmore returned.

  She handed my ID back to me with great annoyance. “Three, four and eight.”

  “There. Was that so hard?”

  I turned to get out of her hair, figuring that she was eager to see the tail end of me, so I was surprised when she had something more to say. “Just because that badge is as good as a subpoena, don’t let it go to your head. Someday, it might be you under the microscope, dealing with whatever precedents you set.”

  I gave a humorless laugh. “You have no idea.” When I glanced back, I saw she was at the sink again, rinsing away the spatter. I said, “The patient who belongs to that blood—don’t worry, no names—are they okay?”

  “Sure. Now that I sewed their finger back on.”

  “Didn’t they need a specialist for that?”

  “It was just the tip.”

  Was that…a joke? Damn it. My life would be so much easier if I could hate her.

  I approached the emergency bays with no little trepidation, funneling white light for all I was worth. The image of Tammi Pauls in her purple corduroy jumper was fresh in my mind. I could still picture the flickering twitch of her ghost, and the freakish way it exited the physical plane. And the thought of someone hitching a ride out of LaSalle inside my body made me wrap the light around myself tight.

  Jacob, Carolyn and Zigler were talking with some orderlies over by the desk, and I swung by and grabbed Jacob. Not only was he most likely to notice if I suddenly didn’t sound like myself anymore, but he was impervious to possession.

  As we headed for the first emergency bay, he asked, “If a Psych dies—let’s say a telepath—do they die with their telepathy intact?”

  “I dunno. Some ghosts focus in on a single, obsessive thought, and some wake up to expanded horizons. Maybe those are the Psychs.”

  As little as I knew for sure about ghosts, I did know a thing or two about LaSalle. In the weeks I spent scrubbing terrified ghosts and repeaters from a long-ago fire, I’d learned that in terms of physical traffic, it was feast or famine in the ER. It was either packed to the gills from a ten-car pileup or an outbreak of food poisoning, or it was quiet enough to hear crickets chirping. Fortunately, we’d hit them in a slow patch, and we were able to get in and out of the three bays in a reasonable amount of time.

  Un-fortunately…there were no ghosts sticking around to tell me where they’d scored. I did encounter one disgruntled ghost wandering down the hall with a blood-soaked throw pillow clutched to his belly, calling out, “Who do I gotta blow to get some help around here?” He didn’t know anything about Kick. And when he called me a useless piece of shit for telling him he was dead, I threw salt at him till he moved along.

  The staff weren’t too freaked out—they remembered me from the exorcism. They just slid me some cautious looks and called the janitor to sweep up after I was done. As Jacob watched me brush off a few stubborn grains clinging to my hands, our former PsyCop partners joined up with us. And Zig had an evidence bag in his hands.

  It was like that end-of-the-meal moment at a restaurant where I didn’t know whether to try and pick up the check or throw twenty bucks on the table and call it good. Someone would need to process the amber plastic pill bottle in that baggie. And if we were all working for the Chicago PD, I don’t suppose it would’ve mattered one way or the other. Not unless our respective precincts had some sort of unspoken rivalry.

  All four of us stared at the pill bottle, waiting to see who’d eventually make the call. “We all have access to the same federal database,” I said.

  Jacob added, “But the Program has more technicians available to process the prints.”

  Zig handed over the bag. Carolyn scowled and said, “Did you seriously think I’d challenge you on which agency claimed the evidence?” Luckily, she didn’t wait for either of us to shoot ourselves in the foot over that one. “Psychs are dying. We need answers. That’s my top priority.”

  It was a palpable relief to climb into the car and head downtown to drop off the bottle.

  “She hates me,” Jacob said.

  Poor guy was patently unused to people treating him like a pariah. “Did she say that?”

  Jacob shifted his jaw mulishly and gazed out the passenger window.

  So, no.

  “If she hated you, she wouldn’t be upset about you not giving her a preliminary heads-up on the wedding. Give her time. She’ll come around.”

  After all, she’d handed over the evidence without complaint, hadn’t she? Unless you counted the complaint about us doubting her, anyhow.

  When I ran the pill bottle up to the F-Pimp forensics department—and when I compared the facility to what we’d had back at the Fifth—it was obvious we’d made the right call. The evidence guy at the Fifth was no slouch, don’t get me wrong. But the FPMP had something the Fifth didn’t: federal funding. There wouldn’t just be a tech lifting prints. There’d be an entire team…one equipped with all the latest and greatest toys.

  Eileen, the tech who’d greeted me, was a sturdy, middle-aged woman with a P-4 designation on her official F-Pimp badge. I wondered how much of her precog ability played into her work—if she was ever tempted to just say, “Eh, don’t bother,” and lob something straight in the trash. But precogs aren’t as omniscient as you’d think. Even if their flashes of insight are accurate, they usually only make sense in hindsight.

  “You might as well stick around,” she told me. “Director Kim said this is our top priority, and with the latest improvements, the federal database can turn up results surprisingly fast.” The team subjected the bottle to some specialized colored light sources and snapped a bunch of photos. “We’re in luck, these are good, clean prints. We’ve got the decedent’s prints on file, so we’ll eliminate those. And we’ll run what’s left through the criminal module—it’s a smaller database than the general archive, so it’s faster to search. And since we’re looking for a drug dealer, chances are good they’re on record.”

  I watched with interest as a massive print filled a monitor, along with a bunch of data I had no idea how to interpret. But I also kept one eye on the techs, and I saw the moment their eager anticipation ebbed.

  “No hits,” Eileen told me. “But don’t worry. We still have more modules to search.”

  Did she realize she was subtly herding me toward the door now? Or was her precog sense subconsciously telling her not to bother wasting any more of my time? I might not be able to see the future. Even so, something told me our pill bottle wasn’t such a hot lead after all.

  I swung by my office to refill my sacred salt, brought Carl up to speed, then went to grab Jacob from the Oversight Division. Unlike me, he’s got a private office. I used to envy that privacy, especially whenever I realized Carl was watching me accuse my computer of hiding my files with that look of disgusted resignation he does so well. But Jacob is a social creature. And if you leave him alone in a room with a problem, he tends to stop working and start brooding. He claims he’s thinking. But I can spot his brood-face a mile away.

  I got Jacob up and out of his seat and hauled him off to start canvassing the victims’ family and friends, searching for any crossover we might find. Common friends, acquaintances, routines. I don’t
know what it says about us that interviewing a weeping mother or a shell-shocked boyfriend was in our comfort zone. I guess it was better than glowering at the walls.

  Unfortunately, we came up dry. Carolyn and Zigler too. And while I was as invested as the next guy in getting a lethal Psych-targeted drug off the street, I realized the bigger reason I wanted to crack this was for Jacob. If he and Carolyn could have this win, it would go a long way toward smoothing over whatever resentment and hurt was between them.

  The wedding catalogs were piled in the recycle bin and our dining room table was now brimming with lists and notes. We sat, long after Carolyn and Zig had called it quits for the day, silently cradling our half-eaten takeout and staring at our notes.

  “We’ve got nothing,” Jacob said with disgust.

  Not only was it past our bedtime, but he handled discouragement worse than most people, having so little experience with it.

  “We’ve only just started the case.”

  “We’re supposed to be elite psychic investigators—the best of the best—and what’ve we done? Interviewed some useless neighbors and dug up a fingerprint with no match. Tell me how a bunch of NPs right out of the police academy would do anything different?”

  There was no comforting him when he was in a mood like this, and I tried not to take it personally. True, I was one of the highest-level mediums on record. Even so, psychically, I’m a one-trick pony. And it wasn’t my fault if there were no useful ghosts to see.

  At least…not the victims’ ghosts. But maybe there was another living-challenged witness who could shed a little light on our investigation. “Heads up,” I said, and tossed Jacob the car keys.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe we haven’t gotten anything we can use from the victims—yet—but I can think of someone who’s always taken a very particular interest in the neighborhood drug trade. With any luck, maybe she can tell us something.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Pulling up outside my old courtyard building was a major blast from the past. Back when I lived there, I would have said I was content. That the sounds of other people’s TVs and the smells of their cooking didn’t bother me. That I was perfectly fine with microwave dinners and waking up alone. Seeing the place now, I realized how numb I’d been. And how far I’d come.

  Jacob, too. He always figured himself for a boring old NP, and here he was, some important so-and-so at the FPMP—and psychic Teflon, to boot. Still, his anti-talent was nowhere near as flashy as he might have liked, and as I powered up on white light, I wondered how hard he would take it if I told him to stay in the car. His presence had never seemed to make any difference before. And given how much I wanted to talk to this particular witness, it wouldn’t surprise me if—

  “Hey, white boy!”

  Well, damn. I gave Jacob’s forearm a quick squeeze, turned toward the sidewalk—even though I couldn’t see her, as usual, and didn’t know exactly where she was, the sidewalk was the best bet. “Hey, Jackie… Long time no see—”

  “Twenty dollar. Twenty dollar and I’ll do you and him. Suck you both off. You want a little pussy, that’s thirty.”

  “Jackie, it’s me.” Did she even know my name? No idea.

  “Twenty dollar—blow both of you. You know that’s better than you’ll get anywhere else around here. You know I’ll suck you good.”

  I rolled down my window and leaned my whole head out. “Jackie—it’s me.”

  “Fine. Ten dollar, but only because you’re a repeat customer.”

  “What the—? No, I’m not. I used to live here, remember?”

  “You wanna go upstairs? Twenty dollar for pussy, both of you. And you don’t need to wear no rubber.”

  I shoved open the car door and hopped out onto the sidewalk. I stood with my legs planted wide and my arms spread so she could look at me in all my tall, gangly, black-suited glory. “I am not here to solicit you. I’m here to talk. That’s all.”

  “All right, all right…. You’re one of those? I can talk you through it, I can get you off. But we should go up to your place and get off the street. There’s law sniffin’ around.”

  “I am the law!”

  Silence.

  “Jackie?” I turned in a circle—as if it would help me get a bead on her when she was completely freaking invisible. “Jackie!”

  I had no idea ghosts had such lousy memories. We met umpteen times over the years, though. Shouldn’t that count for something?

  I got back in the car and did up my seatbelt with a disgruntled jerk.

  Jacob was watching me sympathetically. “No luck?”

  “Useless.” I was still pulling down the white light—not that it did me any good. “I couldn’t see her—that’s nothing new, I usually can’t. I mean, one time I did. It was easier when I could see her. At least I could read her body language and tell whether she was listening to me or not. Have some clue as to whether I was getting through to her.” I thought back to that time I’d had a really solid visual of her with the shank that killed her sticking through her chest…and remembered that sighting only happened courtesy of an experimental psyactive Roger Burke had been slipping into my Starbucks.

  A little devil on my shoulder whispered, Maybe with a little Kick, you could see her now.

  I shuddered and pushed that thought far, far away.

  We took the long way home, zig-zagging through Ravenswood to see if there were any other ghosts around who might care to spy on their dealers. We couldn’t pay them off. Despite what Jackie seemed to think, ghosts had no use for cash. But maybe the satisfaction of knowing they’d stuck it to a dealer would be a decent incentive. Even though we hit every major intersection, every known OD hotspot, we found nothing but an alleycat fight club and a heart attack repeater.

  It figured.

  The only time I ever stumbled across ghosts was when I’d rather be dealing with anything else.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I’d long ago resigned myself to having a one-note talent, because at least it could shed light on some deaths.

  Except when it didn’t.

  The next morning, we hashed out our plan of attack. My best chance at grabbing the next drug casualty before the ghost headed off to the Great Beyond would be corralling the ghost just after it ejected. Zigler and Carolyn would keep an eye on LaSalle while Jacob and I scoped out The Clinic. That way, while Jacob kept plugging through old records for Dr. Kamal, I could question staff members who were so inured to Psychs that I didn’t freak them out by simply existing.

  On the surface, the mood at The Clinic was somber. They’d lost their first patient yesterday. I’ve learned this much from living with Jacob—when you’re unaccustomed to failure, it hits pretty hard. As the day wore on, people opened up and started talking. A few words here and there at first. Then more. In whispers, glancing around to make sure Dr. Bertelli wasn’t eavesdropping. And finally, full-blown retellings of exactly what they were doing when the girl in purple coded.

  I listened, and I responded with my most sympathetic nods. But eventually I realized everyone was just processing their shock and guilt aloud, and no one knew any more about the victim than I did. No one could do anything more than spew gossip and conjecture about Kick, either.

  Then again, the pharmacist hadn’t weighed in with her opinion yet.

  I headed downstairs and over to the pharmacy, and found Erin Welch running off prescription labels. If she’d been working at your typical chain drugstore, she’d have helpers doing her grunt work. But she served such a small and specialized clientele, it was only her, doing everything from counseling the patients to sticking the stickers.

  Erin glanced up from her work. Her glasses were so thick, they made her eyes look beady even when she wasn’t squinting…although she may very well have been giving me the stink-eye for interrupting her, regardless. She tucked her limp hair behind her ear, and said, “This isn’t a dispensary. Your Auracel’s ready, but I can’t just hand it over. Policy is very str
ict on this. You really need to check in with Mr. Malone.”

  “Who?”

  “Troy Malone.” When she saw the name rang zero bells, she added, “At the front desk. Where you sign for your meds.”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah, I’ll do that. Say, listen—what can you tell me about Kick?”

  Like most introverted workaholics, she was happiest when you left her to her job, so she seemed relieved I wasn’t just there to try to be social. She called up a report on her computer. Even from where I stood, it looked as dry as the jars of powder in the locked cabinets all around her. “Well, Kick affects the adrenal system,” she said…and then launched into an explanation of the mechanics I had no hope whatsoever of comprehending. After a litany of phrases that meant nothing, ratios that could have been anything, and terms I couldn’t pronounce, she added, “There was a psyactive called Palazamine that was never approved by the USDA. According to mass spectrometry, Kick is most likely a combination of Palazamine with amphetamines and a few synthetic compounds that don’t appear on the controlled substances schedule.”

  “So…it’s a Frankendrug.”

  Erin was not impressed with my summary.

  I said, “If Palazamine was never marketed, where would someone go about getting their hands on it?”

  “If I were to guess? India, maybe China. Government oversight can be lax overseas, not to mention the counterfeiting. Drugs that are banned here could very well be legal there. It’s not as if psychic ability is strictly an American phenomenon.”

  I was suddenly very aware of the fact that people out in the real world didn’t walk around labeled with a psychic rank and level, not like they did back at the FPMP. “What about you?” I asked. “Have you been tested?”

  “Everyone here has been tested.” Yeah, a fat lot of good that did with Patrick Barley…though given that he was a True Stiff, I could hardly ding the evaluators for marking him as an NP. “Don’t tell me the FPMP doesn’t have a mile-long dossier on everyone here.”