“Is there something about the pharmacist you didn’t want to say in front of Carolyn?” he asked. “If Erin confided in you, we need to know.”
“Nothing like that.” I didn’t know how to explain it. I was also worried about being completely wrong.
“She really is the logical suspect. You know as well as anyone how charismatic a person can be when they’re trying to win you over. Roger Burke, Patrick Barley—”
“I’m a lousy judge of character. I get it.”
“Not just you. They had everyone fooled.” How Jacob managed to refrain from mentioning that he’d always thought Roger Burke was fishy, I had no idea. “For all we know, the three of them are in it together—Erin, Troy and Bertelli. Or maybe it’s someone else at The Clinic we haven’t even considered yet.”
Holy hell. What if all this time, my buddy Gina had been baking up more than just brownies?
Jacob took me by the upper arms and said, “Listen to me. We both know you have a thick skin. If you need to compartmentalize, do it. And if it turns out that someone’s been playing you, it doesn’t make you gullible. Trusting people isn’t a weakness.”
Like hell it’s not, if you trust the wrong ones.
A text came in from our Surveillance team, a group of men and women who got paid to watch TV all day—whose job I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. They had tentatively ID’d Troy at the roachy store, and did I want to see the frames? Yes, I did.
Video surveillance captured only three shots of the guy, since they were all trained on the register, and our subject hadn’t actually bought anything, just walked past. They weren’t very clear and the guy was mostly turned away, plus he was wearing a baseball cap. But slap that same hat on Troy and turn him at just that angle? I’d wager a modest bet that it was him.
We rejoined Carolyn and Zigler. They were conferring together quietly, Zigler jotting notes while Carolyn talked something through with a scowl on her face, and I realized what a good fit they were. Zigler, methodical, tenacious and smart. Carolyn, just as smart, and brutally honest. With Zig scarred from his run-in with the “Body Snatchers” in the Zombie Basement, he needed someone he could really trust. And Carolyn couldn’t so much as placate him with a little white lie. An easy partnership? Probably not. But definitely solid.
They looked up when we approached. Zigler said, “The more I re-watch that clip of Bertelli doing the audit, the less sure I am that he’s palming drugs. We need to interview him.”
Jacob said, “I already did. He’s evasive. And since he has access to Carolyn’s medical records and psychiatric testing, he’ll know exactly how to get around her telepathy. Carolyn’s first shot at him is critical. We can’t blow it. He’s had weeks to practice responses to anything we might throw at him. What we need is a piece of evidence he doesn’t know we have—something to shock him out of any response he’s rehearsed.”
Zigler smoothed his graying mustache and nodded. He wasn’t the type of guy to feel threatened when someone came up with a better idea than him. He just added the technique to his arsenal for next time. He looked at me and asked, “What about the pharmacist? Sounds like you’re pretty close to her. How likely is it she’s working with the other two?”
I gave an uneasy shrug. “Maybe she sees the end coming and she’s setting up Bertelli for a fall. But she’s never said a word about Troy. Even if we can’t place the two of them together on the outside, they work in the same building. There’s gotta be a good dozen spots they could do a drop, from the break room to the parking lot. And they both have access to Carolyn’s records, too. They’d be ready with a canned response. We’re gonna learn a lot more from Troy if he doesn’t know we’re on to him, and we need to see exactly what Bertelli’s doing. I’ll recruit Erin. And while I’m at it, I’ll plant the seed that if she’s in over her head, maybe the best thing for her to do…is flip on her partners and save herself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Since I really didn’t want to go anywhere near The Clinic while the goons from FPMP National were there, I called Erin and convinced her to meet me offsite. She grudgingly agreed to see me at a shop in Chinatown where she sourced certain herbs. I suspected that if she weren’t low on botanicals, I’d have been shit outta luck.
Chicago’s neighborhoods change quicker than I do with a lapful of sloppy joe, and Chinatown is a colorful beacon in an otherwise bleak South Side expanse of warehouses and train tracks. A several-block stretch of Wentworth Avenue is lined solid with exotic shops where I could buy anything from a cheap knockoff handbag to a leathery whole smoked duck. Really. They were hanging right there in the window. A smell lingered up and down the street that might or might not be food. I decided not to overanalyze it.
I had to double-check the address Erin gave me, since the shop’s name was in traditional Chinese. From the outside, it was hard to tell what they sold. The window was full of sun-faded boxes of small appliances and kitchen gadgets, and lots and lots of dust.
Well, if it was a dummy address she’d given me, at least I could grab some steamed dumplings before I headed up north again. And maybe an electric rice cooker.
In my youth, back when I was a snotty teenager with tattered jeans and a bad attitude, store owners tended to follow me with their eyes. Since nowadays I’m a middle-aged guy in a suit, I don’t usually elicit much more than the “hey, that guy’s pretty tall” look. Today, though, the old woman minding the cash register watched me warily from behind her colorful magazine. I had a bag with me, and I hoisted it just a little bit higher so she could clearly see I wasn’t using it to smuggle out any of her merchandise.
The store was cramped. Its narrow shelves were crammed floor to ceiling with seemingly random items, from soap to slippers to salad tongs, and they were all either weirdly expensive or disconcertingly cheap. I made three whole circuits around the store and was debating whether to text Jacob about those dumplings or just multiply my usual order by three when I heard the gentle rise and fall of female laughter. I craned my neck around the nearest endcap and found the old woman with the magazine scowling pointedly in my direction, so it definitely hadn’t come from her. And then I noticed a curtained-off door among all the mishmash of wall hangings. There was a sign above it in Chinese. Hopefully it didn’t translate to KEEP OUT.
I slipped behind the curtain. The room beyond was dim. It smelled of resins and herbs, plus the whiff of old buildings you’d still find in the cannery, as if it was just too big for Jacob and me to force our own scents into every last crack and crevice. There were two women in the room, Erin and an Asian woman about her age. Their heads were bent together over a phone as they laughed over something—an autocorrect doozy, or maybe a cat meme. At my intrusion, their smiles died and they both looked leery, even as Erin said to her friend, “This is the guy I told you about. Can we have a minute?”
The friend gave me an especially cool look, then unlocked a door on the far wall and slipped through it, leaving us alone.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. “I’m sure Bertelli’s been a real delight since we had his office searched.”
She seemed surprised I wanted to know how she was doing. “I’ve seen less of him, actually. He’s been busy with those new agents.”
F-Pimp National doesn’t exactly check in with us regional guys and tell us what they’re doing, so I had no idea if they were interested in stopping Kick, stopping us, or stopping the staff from showing up on a syndicated talk show telling the world at large about the existence of the FPMP.
I said, “Listen, I hate to ask you for another favor—but whatever Bertelli’s doing, we need to catch him in the act.”
“Isn’t that why I planted your camera?”
“We need a better view.” I placed my bag on the counter. “This bluetooth speaker will grab a 360-degree view of the pharmacy. Just place it up as high as you can. And it’ll stream your music, too.”
I could tell she was ruing the day she ever stuck my air freshener to t
he wall. It wasn’t in my nature to try to scare people—probably because I’ve done so much of it inadvertently just by being a medium—but I couldn’t risk her siding with Bertelli over me.
“We both know he’s up to something. And when it comes time to throw someone under the bus, who’s that gonna be?”
“Fine.” Erin snatched the bag off the counter. “You’re just lucky I like podcasts.”
I headed back up to the Fifth. The team was watching Bertelli chat with our agents from National through The Clinic’s security feed. Carolyn looked particularly peeved. “I hate not being there in person. Watching these people talk without being able to pick up on extrasensory clues is disconcerting. I feel like I’m just watching TV and these people aren’t even real.”
If it was TV, at least we’d have some dramatic music hinting at who the villain was.
Something pinged on Jacob’s laptop and he said, “Looks like Erin’s plugged in her new surveillance.” He moused around. It wasn’t a solid 360—that’s impossible to get without mounting something in the middle of the ceiling—but it was still pretty damn good.
We watched as Erin put away her Chinatown purchase. Some herbs and tinctures went into refrigeration. Others in a series of glass jars. Then she sat down at her computer, pulled out her receipts, and started logging everything in.
Good thing I’d never aspired to being a pharmacist. Her job looked incredibly boring.
While Erin typed stuff on her computer and counted pills, Bertelli cycled through the building and Troy manned the reception window.
I switched her feed over to my phone so Jacob could focus on Bertelli, marking down who he talked to and when, scrutinizing all his movements. Jacob watched the guy so hard, he probably could’ve told you exactly what Bertelli had for breakfast, when he’d crapped it back out, and everything he’d done in between.
Meanwhile, Zigler and Carolyn scrubbed through old footage to build a timeline for Troy. That guy was busy, to say the least, hopping from party to party—most definitely not watching TV. When my attention wanders, I’m not necessarily aware that it’s happening. And my attention isn’t the only thing that wanders. I hardly see myself as someone who needs constant entertainment, but faced with several hours of watching someone work on spreadsheets was so mind numbing, the coffee machine and water fountain called my name every ten minutes. And once I processed all those fluids, the men’s room entered my rotation of distraction, too.
Since I know full well there’s nowhere good in that john to put your phone while you’ve got your dick in your hand, I’d left it on Zigler’s desk. And when I came back, he and Jacob and Carolyn were all staring at it. Hopefully, I hadn’t made myself look bad by letting my battery run down. I shouldered into the group of them and said, “What?”
Carolyn said, “Is this something she normally does?”
Erin stood very still in the center of the room with her head slightly cocked, staring. I’d probably look the same if I was trying to determine whether a distant speck was just a stray wad of dust or it had antennas and legs—and if so, what I should swat it with. “Can we see what she’s looking at?”
“That’s the thing.” Jacob moused the 360-degree cam and it swung around to her line of sight. “There’s nothing there.”
He pulled up the feed from the air freshener on his laptop, and now we had two views. One of Erin staring, and another of the blank wall she was staring at. This whole process had taken at least a minute, maybe two. And in that time, Erin hadn’t moved. Possibly hadn’t even blinked.
Stress makes people do funny things, and her job had been nothing lately if not stressful. Didn’t I often find myself wandering into another room with no recollection of why I was there? If I’m able to get lost in thought, surely anyone can.
It was when she finally got moving again I really started to worry.
Erin shuddered. She ticced a few times, then turned away from the wall and lurched a few steps to her right. Jacob followed with the camera.
“What’s that door?” Carolyn asked.
I scrambled to remember. “Storage.”
Erin pulled out her keys and unlocked the door. It took her three tries, but finally, she let herself in. Jacob tried to aim the speaker-cam to see what was inside, but the angle was all wrong.
“We need to see what’s in there,” Jacob said.
I scanned our group. Zigler hadn’t said a word and he was the color of ash. He’d seen the way Erin was moving…and whatever was going on, he was definitely not equipped to deal with it. But me? I didn’t see how I had any other choice than to try and handle the situation.
I said, “Zig, you and Carolyn stay here with the bird’s eye view, and get us some backup.” I turned to Jacob and said, “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jacob grabbed a squad car and drove like a crazy person. Even though it was a straight shot up Lincoln, The Clinic was still a few miles away. Far enough to make it impossible to avoid giving voice to what we were both thinking.
“It’s Jennifer Chance,” I said grimly. “And one guess as to who brought her in.”
Jacob swerved around a driver who’d panicked at the sight of the police lights and just stopped in the middle of the road. “This is not our fault.”
“How can you say that? We were the ones to troop out the GhosTV—at her last place of employment, no less. It must’ve been a ginormous, honkin’-assed beacon. She went sniffing around the tuner, then jumped into Erin. And now we’re fucked.”
“Regret is not helpful, Vic, not now. We have to move forward. Focus—what do we need? Florida Water? Salt?”
“We should’ve thought of that before we grabbed a squad car. All we’ve got are road flares and an assault rifle.” Could I use those road flares in lieu of candles? Not without burning the whole building down. I zeroed in on my crown chakra and scrambled to suck down as much light as I possibly could. As we roared up Lincoln, I envisioned myself as a whale cutting through the water with my mouth open wide, scooping up the krill of psychic energy. But unlike Moby Dick, I was only cut out to hold so much mojo.
Okay. What else was at my disposal?
I blundered out my phone, which was still streaming the air freshener channel. The spycam showed nothing but an empty pharmacy. If it were planted an inch or two to the right, it might show the door Erin had gone through. As it was, I could see one of the hinges. But unless it could peer through metal and wood, it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.
I flicked back to my menu and saw the Mood Blaster app. I should have done more with it, I now realized. Tested it methodically to find out what expanded my white light capacity and what knocked me out cold. Now I couldn’t risk dialing in the wrong binaural pulse and deadening my psychic edge. On top of that, I suspected my earbuds were still on Zigler’s desk, tangled up with a charging cable.
Of course, there was always the Kick. I didn’t need to touch the tiny plastic case in my pocket—I could feel it against my hip with the pill gently rattling around inside. Part of me wondered if I should take it now. Give it a few minutes to sink in. But the thing about the fatal seizures was that they only happened to people who’d done it more than once. And me? Maybe I’d never done Kick…but my body was no stranger to experimental psyactives.
To flush out Jennifer Chance and send her back to Hell where she belonged, I’d need to pinpoint that critical moment before the seizures took hold. I couldn’t risk it happening in the car.
We squealed to a stop in front of The Clinic in a loading zone. Thanks to the sirens, four agents from FPMP National had come out to meet us. Four black-suited thirty-something white guys with tactical stances and expressionless stares. The one at point position stepped forward. I took him to be the senior agent. I climbed out of the squad car and headed for him. He’d know what the M-5 on my ID meant. Hopefully that would be enough to make him hear me out.
But when I swung out of the vehicle and reached for my ID, things to
ok a crazy turn. First, the agents—from my parent agency, mind you—thought I was going for a weapon and drew on me. Jacob reflexively went for his weapon, too. I forgot all about my laminated card and stuck my hands in the air. My marksmanship wasn’t bad these days, thanks to long, tedious hours on the range with an instructor who took great pleasure in pointing out my flaws…but I knew I’d never pull the trigger.
Not while I was so distracted by the way the agents from National all sprouted a flickery third eye in the middle of their foreheads.
Telepaths. Within range of the GhosTV.
I had no idea why it was playing…but at least it meant it was still here, and not in pieces in the back of an unmarked van. I might regret it later, but for now I’d take all the help I could get.
I eased behind the dubious protection of my open car door, keeping my hands where everyone could see them. I’m not a hundred percent sure how strong telepathy works. Psychs who were used to the world being an open book might take none too kindly to encountering a True Stiff. But if their talent was anything like high-level empathy, they should be picking up enough from me to know I was really hoping bullets wouldn’t fly.
Either that or they were wondering how I knew they were all telepaths.
Shit. Maybe I should take a play out of Troy’s playbook and just think of the last TV show I saw. Though I usually only watched the news. And that always led in with a report about someone getting shot.
I decided to act as professional as I could and reason with the guys, Psych to Psych. “Agent Victor Bayne, fifth-level medium. We’ve got a situation inside with a nonphysical entity that I need to deal with. Pronto.”
Bitter Pill Page 21
