Other Half (PsyCop book 12)

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Turned out Jacob hadn’t been apprehensive about the PDA—just startled. And once he got with the program, he was all in. And then some.

  I pulled from his embrace reluctantly and left him to Candy’s tender (and neurotic) mercies.

  I could get used to this public kissing thing, I decided. I was still warm and fuzzy from our lip-lock by the time I strode up to the florist two minutes later.

  Clauson’s Flowers, the shop handling our wedding, was in a humid storefront close to the edge of the little downtown. It was nowhere near as artsy-fartsy as the cake shop, but the riot of color in the window made up for the lack of a fancy paint job on the building.

  As I made my way through the forest of greenery inside, I remembered I like flowers even less than I like raisins. Luckily, when we placed our initial order, Jacob didn’t have any strong preference either. I think, in theory, he wanted to have an opinion. The words we should get something masculine did leave his mouth. But when I challenged him to name a masculine flower and he came up blank, we picked out something inoffensive and called it good.

  I guess we should’ve come up with a plan B.

  At the sound of the door, Jim Clauson came from the back room with pair of pruning shears in his hand. The way the tool sat in his meaty paw, he looked more likely to gut a fish with it than trim flowers.

  I waited for him to say something.

  He stared at me and blinked.

  “I’m Victor Bayne.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you just texted me?”

  “Uh-huh.” That was it? Uh-huh? We stared at each other—but I’m great at staring contests, and after an overlong pause, he said, “The refrigeration on the truck went out. Your clematis didn’t make it.”

  “Yeah. I gathered.” More staring. It was tempting to see exactly how far the standoff would go, but I didn’t have all day. “Now what?”

  “Wanna see ’em?”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe you could use ’em somehow. Scatter the petals on the floor.”

  The mere thought was enough to make me break out in hives. “No. I don’t want a bunch of dead flower petals.”

  “Okay.” Clauson looked around. “Did you want a substitute?”

  “Yes. I want a substitute. Because I’m having a wedding. And there should be flowers.”

  “Uh-huh. How about roses?”

  My first impulse was to say, Fine—just make sure they’re alive. But then Jacob’s initial flower suggestion came to mind. “Do you have something more, uh, masculine than roses?”

  “I’ve never had anyone ask for a masculine flower before.” When I was just about ready to turn on my heel and grab a couple of random bouquets from the supermarket—along with a backup vanilla sheet cake—Clauson cracked a grin that transformed his whole face. And he struck me as a guy who didn’t smile unless he really meant it. “It’s a good challenge. Same color scheme as before?”

  I’m sure the silvery muted lavender color we’d picked out in the first place was the reason our flowers needed to be shipped in special, and we couldn’t afford another bad batch. “White is fine,” I said. “Just white.”

  27

  IF JACOB AND I had complementary skills, I’m not sure why, exactly, his sister needed to be so involved in our wedding prep. But Barbara insisted on “helping,” so once the cake and the flowers were under control, we headed over to her place.

  The plan was to go over her reading and our vows, since we were in such a time-crunch, we’d foregone the formal rehearsal. Pastor Jill said that with our simple, small ceremony, it would be no problem. Barbara, however, was absolutely convinced the church would fall in.

  Weeks ago, Jacob and I had found our vows online and agreed they were exactly what we wanted. Maybe that wasn’t as personal as composing your own, but since neither of us had the faintest clue where to begin, we both agreed that sounding normal was more important than being original.

  Reading aloud in public was not my favorite thing, but at least the sentiment had been vetted by both of us, so I expected to be subjected to nothing worse than an awkward bout of public speaking. What we found at his sister’s house was awkward, all right. But not because I’d stumbled on a word.

  As soon as we got out of the car, we could tell we’d blundered right into the middle of an argument between Barbara and Clayton. Not because we were psychically sensitive to that sort of thing, but because we could hear them screaming at each other from all the way out in the driveway.

  “I hate you!” Clayton hollered. It might’ve even qualified as a bellow, if his voice hadn’t broken. “You never let me do anything!”

  “And I don’t intend to start, either—so long as you insist on lying to me about who you’re with and where you’re going!”

  “It wasn’t a lie! Some other guys showed up and we changed our minds and left—”

  “For all I knew, you were dead in a ditch—”

  Jacob cut his eyes to me and winced. “Maybe we should just move on to the next thing on the calendar.”

  The curtains rustled. “Too late. She’s already seen us.” I steeled myself, and we walked up to the house and rapped on the door.

  Barbara yanked it open and said, “Well, at least someone made an effort to be where they said they would be.”

  Across the room, Clayton stood sulkily with his arms crossed and twin points of color blazing from his flushed cheeks. “Uncle Jacob, tell her to chill out. I was just across the street.”

  Barbara snapped, “Which you could have let me know with a simple text.”

  Clayton said to Jacob. “She gets all weird in front of my friends. It’s embarrassing. I’m not a little kid.”

  At his age, I’d been left to my own devices—which involved playing kick-the-can with tetanus-riddled garbage and traipsing around on active railroad tracks. Jacob’s parents were just as laissez faire. In fact, before he was even in high school, they’d given him a BB gun and a utility knife for Christmas.

  But thinking back to those shots of Jacob and his sister at the Sacred Heart carnival—wondering what the hell had been going on behind the scenes of his seemingly idyllic childhood—made me suspect that Barbara was right to be concerned.

  Jacob sat on the couch, tugged Clayton down beside him, and slung an arm around the kid. “Look, I know you think your mother is overreacting, but I’m with her on this one. If you weren’t where you said you’d be when she came to pick you up, what’s she supposed to think?”

  “I was just across the street!”

  “And how was she supposed to know that?”

  “I don’t know—whatever—she didn’t have to have a total freakout—”

  “You’re right, Clayton, you’re not a little kid anymore, you’re a teenager—so I’ll level with you. Maybe you weren’t doing anything wrong, but it’s not just your behavior that your mom has to worry about. Human trafficking is a real issue. And don’t think that just because you live in a small town that it can’t happen here. A place that’s safe enough to make everyone feel complacent is the perfect place for a predator to look.”

  That spiel might’ve sounded canned from anyone else—but during Jacob’s tenure working sex crimes…he’d seen some stuff. He hardly ever talked about it. And when he did, no one would dare contradict him. Even an argumentative thirteen-year-old, one who’d clearly inherited the family stubborn-gene.

  “I’m sorry,” he told his mother, only somewhat sullenly.

  Barbara wasn’t exactly prepared to be mollified. “Set an alarm on your phone next time and text me where you are—if I ever let you out of the house again. If I have time to go to work, and clean up after you, and plan a wedding on top of it, then you have time to set an alarm.”

  Jacob stood and dusted off his black jeans. “Barb, we’ve all had our plates full these past few weeks. Thank you for all your help—I really don’t know what we would’ve done without it, handling this all from a distance.”

  Barbara b
linked as if she’d never heard the words thank you before. Given the thankless task of parenting a thirteen-year-old, maybe she hadn’t. “Of course. You’re my brother.”

  “Look, we’ve all had a long day—and I’m confident we all know how to read. We’re gonna head out and call it a night.”

  I was almost to the car when I realized Jacob had used the appreciation-speak we’d learned in Pastor Jill’s office to throw his sister off balance and extricate us from the situation.

  Talk about a quick study.

  While it seemed awfully early to throw in the towel, I figured he was just angling for a quiet dinner. Evidently, I’d subscribed to my own suggestion to throw myself into the wedding and pretend it was our only pressing concern, because it hadn’t even occurred to me that Jacob was just looking for an excuse to go back to Sacred Heart. It took a two-wheel maneuver on a hairpin turn of death for me to even realize that was where he was headed.

  Well, we had maybe three hours of daylight left, though calling that last hour “daylight” would be generous. By the time we got there, fireflies had started to twinkle and the sky was already looking pink. The stretch of woods was actually kind of pretty…if you didn’t know what lurked behind the trees.

  Jacob pulled onto the gravel shoulder across from the old access road and said, “Pull up the map we found at the library yesterday and compare it to the satellite photo.”

  The image on the burner phone was small, but actually, that turned out to be pretty helpful in helping us spot the most obvious landmarks. The old roads from the plat map were gone now, but there was a creek running through the edge of the land that appeared in both images.

  Jacob pointed to the satellite photo. “The hospital should be right about here. That farmer said they never tore it down, but there’s nothing in that spot but tree canopy.”

  “You know as well as I do that when some old psychic testing ground disappears, there’s a whole team of people behind the cover-up. I’m sure at least one of them is familiar with Photoshop.”

  We found a pen in the glovebox and started marking up the printout based on the library map, since neither of us was keen on getting lost in the dark. We were so focused on our task that a rap on the window nearly made me jump out of my skin.

  Was it our friend, the helpful farmer?

  Not at all .

  Not unless he was disguised as Barbara.

  28

  “YOU FOLLOWED US?”

  Jacob faced off with his sister on the side of the road, hands on hips and nostrils flaring.

  And Barbara? Not intimidated in the least. “Can you blame me? Since when do you make a big deal out of thanking me for doing what anybody’s sister would do? Obviously you were just trying to get rid of me!” She gesticulated at the trees. “But to drive way out here in the middle of nowhere—why?”

  “You followed us. For an hour. Just to make a point.”

  It might’ve been a decent deflection, but Barbara wasn’t taking the bait. Because the way she was now scanning the tree line, it was obvious she’d pieced together where we were. “Sacred Heart is closed, Jacob. It’s been closed for years.”

  “Turn around—right this minute—and go back home.”

  Barbara ignored him. “The pelican.” She squinted into the trees for a moment, then turned to me. “There was something weird about it. Wasn’t there?”

  I said, “All kinds of things seem weird until you find the explanation.” Jacob shot me a warning glare. “Or not. Usually it turns out to be perfectly random.”

  She didn’t buy it. “Like taking our picture in front of that stupid pelican year after year. Just random.”

  “Or maybe it was more like a tradition. Who’s to say how those things get started. Anyway—”

  “Barbara,” Jacob snapped. “I don’t have time to argue with you. We’re losing daylight.”

  “What is so important about that hospital you need to go look at it right this…second…?” Barbara’s eyes went round. She knows something, I thought. And Jacob must’ve thought so too, judging by the way we went all still and wary. Barb looked from her brother to the woods and back again—and then her hands flew up to cover her mouth as she sucked in a horrified gasp.

  Well, shit.

  You’ll only have so much success sweeping something under the carpet if the other person knows damn well it’s there. All I could do now was see where Jacob was leading with his damage-control and do my best to play along.

  Shakily, she said, “Those things you told Clayton before—about predators. I figured you got that from your job. Not because it had happened to you.”

  “No one was molested,” Jacob said firmly. “I just wanted to get some pictures of the old facade. I thought it might jog Grandma’s memories.”

  Plausible. I could tell Barbara didn’t quite buy it, though, so I added, “It would be a real shame if Jacob didn’t get a chance to connect with her before we went back to Chicago.” Or before she kicked the bucket—which even I was tactful enough to leave unsaid.

  Barbara squinted off into the trees again. “Couldn’t you just find a picture online?”

  Jacob said, “We looked, but pre-digital events are tricky. It’s old news—old rural news—and there just isn’t anything out there.”

  There were so many holes in our argument you could play it like a flute, but the best way to distract Jacob’s sister was to put a problem in front of her that needed solving. She glared at the trees across the way. “Look at that old road. It’s disintegrated. You can see from here—completely overgrown. How’re you gonna find the hospital in that jungle?”

  “Don’t worry,” Jacob assured her. “We have a satellite map.”

  “Let me see.”

  Had we drawn anything incriminating on it? Not really—just a few squiggly lines and a circle where we expected the old building to be. Jacob gave me a subtle nod, so I pulled the folded paper from my pocket and passed it over.

  Barbara scowled at the map. “This is terrible. How can you make heads or tails of anything?”

  Jacob took it back before she could absorb the full extent of its vagueness. “Now you know why it’s so important we get moving. We’ve only got an hour of light. Maybe less.”

  “Hold on. I have bug spray.”

  Barbara turned and jogged off toward her car.

  In a low voice, he said, “We’re not getting rid of her. She’s too damn stubborn.”

  Pot, kettle. “Why didn’t we see her tailing us?”

  “She must’ve kept another car in between.”

  That, and she drove the same silver sedan everyone else drove. “Well, the hospital’s not going anywhere. We can always come back.”

  “Agreed. We cut our losses for today—fumble around a little bit, let the light run out, and head back home.”

  Barbara came trotting back with a sizable Amazon box in her hands. I said, “That’s a lot of bug spray.”

  She set the box on the car hood triumphantly and peeled open the flap. “Good thing Clayton picked today to get himself punished. Otherwise I wouldn’t have his drone.”

  Well.

  Talk about a game-changer.

  Jacob edged toward the box as if he might grab it and sprint away. Clearly the wheels were turning, and he made a last ditch effort at scaring off his sister. “You took away his toy, and then you left him home alone?”

  “Of course not. He’s at Mom and Dad’s.”

  Damn. There’d be no getting rid of her now. But on the bright side, at least the drone would let us take a better look at those woods.

  “Do you know how to fly that thing?” I asked Barbara.

  “Given that my son has been talking about it nonstop for the past week? I may have picked up a thing or two.” People talk to me about all kinds of things—yoga, for instance—but that doesn’t mean I’m capable of doing them. “Plus, he insisted on giving me a few lessons. Mainly to show off…but looks like it’ll come in handy.”

  Apparently
, Barbara was a quick study. She had the drone up in the air in two minutes flat. “Okay, we’re good to go.” The drone touched down on the gravel. “We should get closer before we send it up for real. There’s only so much battery life.”

  Once she engulfed us all in a pungent cloud of bug spray, we were off.

  The woods were no less imposing than last time, but Barbara was just as sturdy as her brother, and having her with us didn’t slow us down. We did find occasional stretches of asphalt that corresponded with the squiggle that used to be a road, so it seemed we were on the right track. Until we came across a downed tree, anyhow.

  It was huge.

  Maybe the organization responsible for the cover-up had driven in with a tractor and pulled the thing down, or maybe Mother Nature had just been having a bad day. Either way, there was no climbing over, not unless we wanted an assful of pine needles. And taking the wrong way around could easily send us veering off in the wrong direction.

  It was as good a time as any to launch the drone.

  We all held our breath as it floated up into the air with a sound like a bunch of fans trying to blow away the smoke after a monthly sage smudge. The controllers looked like something from an old-school gaming system, with a bunch of buttons, a joystick for each thumb, and a pop-up viewscreen that showed a dizzying blur of vegetation.

  Motion sickness doesn’t generally affect me, but my throat fluttered at the sight of the topsy-turvy treescape. “It’s real windy up there,” Barbara said. “That’s bad for the battery. I’ll need to fly lower. We won’t cover as much ground that way, but—”

  A rooftop—a big one. We all saw it, just a flash, and then everything went wonky as Barbara struggled to stabilize the drone.

  “Ope—jeez—” Images flashed by. Sky. Trees. A blinding flash from lowering sun. And then? Gravel.

  “What happened?” Jacob asked.

  “I must’ve crashed it.” Barb jiggled the controllers. “On the roof.”

  Holy crap.

  I couldn’t say if that was good or bad. On one hand, our chances of getting rid of Barbara had just dropped exponentially. But on the other…at least Sacred Heart was still standing.