by Page Turner
Viv had found this out the hard way.A human rescue was a first, but there had been half a zoo’s worth of adoptions, rehabilitations, and releases in the years that they had lived together. Including the incident with the python, Viv thought in passing, but they’d agreed long ago not to discuss that anymore.
“Well, it’s like I always tell you. You were kind enough to take me in when I was wandering around lost. It’s the least I can do,” Penny said.
“I don’t know where we’ll put her,” Viv said. Theirs wasn’t a big house by any means, and the few rooms they did have were small and spare of furniture. They didn’t exactly have a second bed kicking around.
“She can sleep on the couch,” Penny said.
“And what about food? Utilities? Rent?” Viv asked.
“Does she look like someone we should be asking about rent at the moment?” Penny asked.
She had a point, Viv conceded silently, noting both the state of the pile of wet clothes dropped abruptly at the edge of their home and how little Penny’s punchy sartorial influence did to make this tiny woman look any less wretched. Penny wasn’t exactly a tall woman or one with broad shoulders, but this visitor for all the world looked like a small child wearing her mother’s clothing.
“Anyway, we can probably get her a job Downtown,” Penny offered. “We can drop her off on our way to PsyOps.”
“Maybe,” Viv said. “If she’s stable enough to work.”
“Viv, we don’t have to figure all of that out right now. We don’t have to work it all out tonight,” Penny said.
“I know I’m going to regret this,” Viv said.
“But?” Penny prompted.
Viv said nothing.
“Please, Mommy,” Penny said in her best little kid voice, “Can I keep her? Can I keep her, huh?”
Viv rolled her eyes. “On one condition.”
“And that is?”
“That you never call me Mommy again,” Viv said.
“I make no promises,” Penny replied. “Especially if you start talking about handcuffs again.”
“Incorrigible,” Viv replied. “Simply incorrigible.” And after a beat, she added, “You were the one who brought up the handcuffs this time around, don’t you remember?”
“Me? I’d never do something like that,” Penny said, affecting her best innocent face.
They exchanged a knowing smile before stepping forward together to welcome the soggy visitor into their home.
In a few hours they would know that Karen had psychic powers of her own when she finally came clean about what had drawn her to them in the first place. The sense of calm – and sheer quiet – that their mere presence offered.
It would be months, however, of living in their house and eventually becoming employed at PsyOps on their investigative team (a highly improper assignment but something Karen insisted upon and got the department’s respected health department to sign off on because of its benefit to her mental health) before any of them realized Karen had fallen in love with them both.
And as usual, Karen would be the last to know how she truly felt.
A Cold Slog
The Snow White case was turning out to be a difficult one to solve.
A quick visit to the hospital to visit the other victim, the one that had seemingly been stricken mad, turned over no new evidence.
No new leads.
Nothing.
In fact, Penny thought as the three detectives tromped silently back to their car, that was one of the most pointless trips I’ve ever made in my career.
The interview at the hospital was extraordinary in its lack of new information. Typically, they managed to learn something additional by visiting a scene, talking things over with a witness.
Just as Amarynth had conveyed to them, Neia Stavropolous confessed to murdering her partner. But when questioned on the details, she clammed up and couldn’t elaborate.
A series of followup questions yielded no answers. “I don’t know,” Neia said over and over again.
As more questions were asked of her, Neia began to curl into a protective posture, forming a ball with her body, tilting down her head.
The last “I don’t know” was rather muffled.
From the doorway, a nurse scowled, throwing them a look that indicated she thought the detectives were bullying the poor girl.
Just as the truth evaluators before her had found, Karen noted a lack of deception. Neia believed that what she was saying were true – even if she had no way to explain her confession or piece together a convincing narrative of how in the world she killed another demotivator.
They left the interview knowing just as little as they had before. Arguably less.
Viv grumbled as she received an email from Martin on the walk out of the hospital. Blood typing at the scene revealed that the bloody inkblot on Stephanie Mack’s chest didn’t match either victim.
Of course there was no DNA testing done, nor any indication of when or even if they’d get that. Psychic State labs didn’t have that technology, and the sample would have to be shipped internationally to the United States. And I can’t see the department heads wasting one of their diplomatic favors on the murders of two psychics, Martin had written bluntly.
Of course not, Viv thought. That would involve treating us like we were actually human. Or important.
She was disappointed but not exactly surprised. She conveyed the information in the email to Karen and Penny as they walked through the parking lot.
Once they reached the car, sat down, and closed their doors, Penny spoke first. “Could it be that someone implanted a false memory?”
Viv raised an eyebrow. “Sucked out her sanity and implanted a false memory? Never seen anything like that before.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” Penny shot back.
“Possible doesn’t solve murders,” Viv replied.
Penny said nothing in response.
“Anyway,” Viv continued. “We can’t arrest her. Not with the fact pattern the way it is. The lack of physical evidence. Her inability to connect the dots for us on how she actually did it – if she did it.”
“I guess there’s a reason that Amarynth didn’t tell us to come here,” Karen said.
Viv scowled.
Karen immediately regretted invoking Amarynth’s name, since the Connections agent wasn’t exactly Viv’s favorite subject.
“It would have been bad procedure not to come here,” Viv said defensively.
“Yeah, Viv, I know,” Karen replied.
“Do you?” Viv’s tone was sharp.
Karen exhaled slowly. “Yes. I do.”
Viv took a few deep breaths herself. Finally, she said, “Well, there’s not much to be done about it. We have other cases to work on.”
Penny waited a few moments and then started the car.
There was still a lot Detectives Cross, Lee, and Dreadful didn’t know, but one thing was for sure: They had hit a dead end on the Snow White case.
This wasn’t all that uncommon, for a case or two to go cold. For the team to be at a loss on how next to investigate a crime.
Sometimes these cold cases would spontaneously reheat after days, weeks, months, or even years under deep freeze. And they’d be back in the game.
But other times, that was the end of the investigation.
Even with a team of psychics working on the case, not every crime would be solved.
This was a very troubling reality for Karen when she’d first joined PsyOps. That not every problem would present as solvable, no matter how hard she worked. Not every wrong could or would be met with justice.
Sometimes working as a detective made her feel as though there was no such thing as closure. Just luck. Chance. A dice roll with your eyes closed.
It wasn’t at all like the m
urder mysteries she’d grown up reading led her to believe. In her beloved books, the detectives found their way through a mass of unrelated clues through the power of deduction. Usually while eating something exotic and cozying about an English country garden. However, real life didn’t always hand out hors d’oeuvres or even clues. Nor did it always reward your efforts to try to scare them up, clues or snacks.
It was frankly quite rare that a crime scene had catering. Not that you’d be allowed to eat at a crime scene even if there were snacks – all those forensic rules and crime scene investigators with bugs up their asses.
And real life’s answer to Sherlock Holmes was a wild-haired Connections agent with a city-sized chip on her shoulder. Not the most ideal ringer to be depending on.
Not only did Amarynth not believe in closure, she seemed to be stubbornly opposed to it. “Everything is revealed when it’s time,” she’d say, when pushed. It didn’t seem to bother her that their team had the highest rate of open cases at any given time.
“We’ve also never charged anyone who was truly innocent,” Amarynth would add as a followup observation.
“How do you know that?” Viv would ask.
Which would be met with a glare. “Just come up with an explanation that makes sense to you,” Amarynth had countered, “And I’ll co-sign it.”
Normally, the sting of a case gone cold would quickly fade. The city of Skinner could be busy and admittedly quite unsettled. A new crime would quickly come into the picture, edging out the former case. There wasn’t much time to dwell on the past and what was still unsolved.
There was always a new puzzle to work on. And it was far too easy to forget about the rooms and rooms of puzzles that were still incomplete. Puzzles that might never get put together.
This time, however, was quite different. All three detectives found themselves thinking of the Snow White case quite often and at random times. Feeling a sense of sadness that the investigation had ground to a halt as well as a sense of implacable foreboding.
It was a cold slog, working through their normal case load over the next few weeks. The City of Skinner itself seemed to have a sense of humor about it, or at least decided to dress up for the party they were attending, as an unseasonable cold front hit them out of nowhere, confounding meteorologists who had not only not seen it coming but were also hard pressed to explain why it was happening.
People in the neighborhood had begun to comment that it was a bracing cold, one that reminded them more of artificial refrigeration than anything natural or expected.
You know, like a deep freezer.
It was said like an obvious fact in small shops, in fleeting niceties bandied from cashier and customer and back again. Cursory, quick.
And curiously cold in its own right.
It was though a deep freezer permeated their collective psyche. Skinner. Their neighborhood. PsyOps. And of course, Detectives Dreadful, Lee, and Cross.
There was no mistaking it. It had become incredibly cold.
And not only was it cold, it refused to thaw.
Even after the cold front moved out of the area, and temperatures began to rise, Karen found herself shivering at odd moments.
Viv fumbled with fine motor tasks, feeling like the circulation had slowed in her hands.
Cutis anserina sprung up on Penny’s arms. Goosebumps, she thought. I haven’t had these since I was a child.
First, they attributed the chilled feeling to a psychosomatic reaction to working a case of the body they had found in a deep freezer. “I can’t get warm ever since then,” Karen said. “It’s so strange.”
But as the weeks wound on, the sense of coldness only grew.
I feel it, too, Penny caught herself thinking, although she didn’t dare talk about it aloud.
Viv bore it stoically but carried a spare pair of gloves wherever she went. (Never mind what people might think or what they might call her.)
After her initial pronouncement – and Penny and Viv’s fittingly chilly responses to it – Karen didn’t bring it up the cold weather again. Instead, the three detectives did their best to huddle together for warmth and hope the chill would pass soon.
But it didn’t.
Even as they tied up all the loose ends on a case they’d been investigating for months, their standard celebration lacked its usual fire. Even as the weather warmed and people shed the jackets they’d thrown on so quickly in concern.
A different cold persisted, a deep freeze that wasn’t so easy to thaw.
Nothing seemed real or satisfying while the Snow White case was unsolved.
It was almost a relief when the next body was found.
The Whisper Street Affair
Viv woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat.
She’d been dreaming that she was walking down Whisper Street, when a soft song began to play off in the distance. Ambient at first, but crescendoing as she focused her attention on it.
Just like when Viv was a little girl, and her mother would turn the music on her stereo down when she went to bed. At first, the soft music would be inaudible. But if she sat and focused on it for long enough, her ears and brain would adjust, and the music would seem as though it was the same volume as before.
A cycle of habituation where she would adjust to the stimulus, and so the stimulus would change in her mind.
As she focused on this soft music, it swelled. Louder and louder. The chords seemed quite familiar. But she couldn’t quite piece together the melody. Each note was clear and resonant enough, but it seemed to be slowed down to a tempo where by the time the next note sounded she’d already forgotten the one before.
Could it be a lullaby? Or was every slow song played in the middle of the night easily mistaken for a lullaby? Viv couldn’t quite tell.
As she came to the end of Whisper Street, she stood below an apartment with a blue light in the window. Shadows moved across the pane, suggesting activity.
As she approached the door of the building, she knocked twice, and the music stopped.
A moment later, Viv was awake.
She picked up her cell phone from the nightstand. Glanced at the screen. A text from Amarynth: 659 Whisper Street.
As Viv held the phone in her hand, a second text came in. You’re welcome.
Viv rolled her eyes and called out to Penny and Karen.
When word of the first verified precognitionists hit the general public, the media couldn’t get enough. The whole phenomenon had started rather quietly. A case here, a case there. Strange things happening that were hard to explain.
The earliest intuitives thought they were all going mad. As did people around them.
It wasn’t for several years after the emergence of psychic powers that anyone thought to test for them. To study them. And later, to regulate them.
The original confirmed cases of psychic power were found chiefly among university students, volunteers for research experiments who participated in studies for academic extra credit.
The first study, conducted by Janira Watson, a young professor and descendant of the esteemed Watson Research Family, was far from a methodical examination of the issues and actually kind of a fluke.
Scrambling for a hypothesis, she had come up with a basic test design that involved a series of questionnaires asking participants carefully worded questions after a series of meticulously selected semantic primes.
She wanted to test the potential strength of advertising effects on consumer behavior, even in the absence of perceived relevance.
Professor Watson theorized that the simple juxtaposition of positive images next to products would render them more valuable and that being exposed to a brief negative image would conversely prime participants to like a product less. Even if the images were completely irrelevant. (The images had been independently scored by another group on th
eir degrees of positivity and negativity. Participants were surveyed on image relevance as part of the study.)
Janira Watson wasn’t optimistic as she set out. She had a feeling that her study design was flawed somehow. While she’d done a literature review, she wasn’t fully confident that she’d done it well enough. It was possible that the idea was derivative, that this was a replication at best. And she wasn’t sure she had dug up enough sources for a strong introduction to the study, even if she eventually did publish one.
She managed her expectations, telling herself that this would be a pilot study. A way of figuring out if the design even worked. Something she would later refine and shape into a suitable research project.
She’d spent far too long coming up with ideas and rejecting them. She needed to test something. If too much more time passed without her conducting a study, she’d likely lose her job, famous name or not.
So it was back to her original discarded idea pile. This one seemed simplest to throw together quickly, so this one it was.
Once the study was underway, Professor Watson’s research assistant noticed a curious thing: Certain study participants were coming in and filling out all three questionnaires without waiting for the subsequent primes.
“Well, they’re probably half-assing it, trying to get done early. Maybe we should exclude those?” Professor Watson said.
“No, you don’t understand,” her assistant replied. “They’re filling them out correctly.”
“Correctly?”
Sure enough, when Professor Watson went to examine the forms, the participants had correctly identified the primes in the space provided – before being shown them.
“If I didn’t know any better,” Janira Watson mused, “I’d say that they could see the future.”
They both laughed, but on the walk to give her next lecture, Professor Watson found herself wondering. Could it be?
In the end, Watson’s initial experiment was a pilot study – but not for an investigation into the role of semantic priming in advertising. No, she realized, it was a pilot study for the presence of precognition among the general college population.