Psychic City

by Page Turner

  “Now, I don’t think my sister is going around murdering psychics, and your mother is the last person I’d suspect, Viv, but who knows what additional leads those interviews could generate? You know how it is. Witnesses will reveal small details that bust an investigation wide open.”

  Viv nodded. “My mother knows everyone. And she’s a busybody.”

  Martin smirked. “You said it, not me,” he said.

  “We should get you a button to push that says that,” Penny said. “You said it, not me. You said it, not me.”

  There are certain people in this world who have a knack of getting you to say the bold, outrageous thing yourself, talking up to the point where it becomes the obvious conclusion, and then gracefully backing away from actually stating it themselves.

  Martin was particularly skilled in this area.

  “The third and final option is that we proceed as normal, in spite of any perceived or actual conflict of interest. This has the obvious benefit of efficiency. We don’t have to brief another team on the case en masse or coordinate with one for isolated interviews. It does run the risk of appearing improper, if anyone reviews this case looking for ethical breaches. I’ll level with you. That’s extraordinarily rare. If such a request comes through, it usually comes from way above me. Well, you all remember the Door-Winchester case.”

  How could they forget? The son of a high-ranking State official had been arrested and indicted as a result of a very well-conducted investigation. Instead of accepting that his son could have committed the crime, the official had declared the whole thing a witch hunt, started screaming about corruption in PsyOps.

  The Door-Winchester case was audited with a level of scrutiny that was beyond anything PsyOps had ever seen. Even though their team had been far removed from the investigation (thank goodness), no one working in PsyOps had felt safe while the ethical inquiry was ongoing.

  The official’s lawyers worked so diligently at nitpicking minor procedural deviations that they were able to successfully throw out the case, only to have the same son reoffend within the following year. This time, investigators took every precaution and made sure to stave off a repeat fiasco. There was talk that the official successfully influenced the judge overseeing the case, however, as the official’s son ultimately received one of the lightest murder sentences on record.

  “Now, I haven’t gotten any indication that this case will be a repeat of that. But you never really know what’s going to be behind doors when you start opening them up,” Martin said.

  Viv nodded. “I know it isn’t exactly scientific – and not within the scope of my powers – but something has felt different about this case from the very beginning. At least for me.”

  “Me, too,” Penny added.

  “Same,” Karen chimed in. “It’s not every day that you have a serial killer targeting psychics, er, intuitives.”

  “I’m going to suggest Option Three,” Martin said. “I think we should keep this case in house as much as possible. I want to see it through.”

  The detectives all nodded in unison. Talking it over before coming to Martin’s office, it was what they wanted to do; they just needed his blessing. Or, rather, the lack of his curse.

  “As far as I’m concerned, I have no problem with my sister being questioned by you three. I trust you to follow the facts wherever they lead. And I trust you to know that even if they lead somewhere ugly for me personally, somewhere that would mess up my family life, that I won’t take it out on you. Even if you needed to go around me in the reporting structure. Whatever you needed to do.”

  “I know, Martin,” Viv said. “You’re not the kind of guy who punishes people for the truth.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”

  “Viv does the extremes well,” Penny said. “Nice and mean. It’s the middle ground that trips her up.”

  Viv laughed. “Fair.”

  “That basically just leaves one interview to talk about. Euphemia Tender Lee. I’m going to leave it up to you whether you feel like you can handle it. Whether you three want to tackle it. Or maybe Detective Lee stays out of that one. Or maybe that’s the one interview you outsource.”

  “What do you think, Viv?” Penny said.

  Viv sighed. “I… don’t know.”

  “Well, you don’t have to figure it out right now. It seems to me like you have plenty of investigative ground to cover before you have to worry about interviewing her, but give it some serious thought,” Martin said.

  “It isn’t just impropriety that I’m worried about,” said Marin. “I know bias can make it hard for psychic powers to work. Can generate interference.”

  Penny nodded. “That’s generally true, although it’s not much of a factor for eideticists or mediums.”

  “But it does affect empaths a bit,” Karen confessed.

  “A bit,” Penny said. “But it’s nothing like what happens to a precog or an invalidator.”

  “True,” Karen said.

  “Just something to keep in mind,” Martin said. “I really should keep up better on my taxonomy if I’m going to keep herding tueys like this.”

  “I have a book I can lend you,” Penny replied.

  “If you’re going to keep herding tueys?” Viv said suspiciously. “Something you’re not telling us, Martin?”

  “Oh, nothing new,” he said. “You know my wife’s always on my case about this job.”

  “You need to buy her a swimming pool or something. Maybe put an addition on the house. Give her an easy way to show off to the neighbors,” Viv said.

  “Maybe,” Martin said. “Maybe that’d do it.”

  “Good meeting!” Viv said, raising her first in the air.

  “Good meeting,” Martin replied.

  The three psychic detectives walked out of his office, wisecracking and telling private jokes in a rhythm that had become all too familiar to Martin over the years they had worked for him. They were as dear as the birdsongs that he heard waking up every morning as a young boy. As regular and known.

  After the detectives left his office and closed the door, Martin sank down into his office chair.

  “I hope they don’t find anything on her,” he said, thinking of how hard it’d be to explain indicting his older sister to his parents. Or his wife.

  Talk about not impressing the neighbors.

  He winced, feeling a sour feeling take over his stomach.

  “Don’t find anything on her,” he said again, pressing his hands together.

  “They won’t find anything,” he reassured himself, but he knew things had become grim. It was always a bad sign when his hands started praying without his conscious effort.

  “Maybe I do have a bias here,” he said. “But in the other direction.”

  Because something deep inside him gnawed at him. Warned him that this whole investigation was close to home.

  “I might have a murderer in the family,” he said aloud, hoping that admitting it would make him feel better. That accepting it would clear up the sour pit in his stomach.

  It didn’t.

  It turned out that Martin’s sister and Viv’s mother weren’t the only familiar faces on the list. The very first client they visited was an old college friend of Viv’s.

  “Martha Pointer!” Viv exclaimed when the door opened.

  “Viv Lee!” Martha cried out, throwing her arms around Viv’s neck.

  Karen and Penny stared at them. This wasn’t like Viv at all. Squealing. Girlish. Sororal.

  It didn’t last long.

  “I must have the wrong house. I’m looking for a Martha Cooper,” Viv said, after she’d collected herself.

  “No, that’s me. Married Doug Cooper,” Martha replied.

  “You don’t mean…” Viv said.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, whatever, that Doug Cooper.”

  “I always thought you’d marry another artist,” Viv said.

  “Did you marry another artist?’ Martha asked.

  “Well, no,” Viv said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Martha said. “Tueys can’t get married.”

  “Right,” Viv replied.

  “Glad to see you’re still painting,” Martha said, pointing to Viv’s overalls, which were splotched with various paints.

  “Oh,” Viv said. “I’m not. These are old stains.”

  “Well, why not? Why aren’t you painting?” Martha asked.

  Viv frowned. It was an uncomfortable question. “Can we come in?”

  “Sure,” Martha said. She led them into a tastefully appointed living room, one where complementary shades offset one another beautifully in that effortless-seeming cascade that’s often very expensive to achieve. Usually the work of a professional decorator. Every item of furniture and decorative ornament was well made, expensive-seeming, but impersonal. “I’d suggest you might like to take a look at my studio, but…”

  Viv sighed.

  “People change,” Martha finished her thought.

  “They do,” Viv replied. “And they’re allowed to. Even if it’s jarring, when it doesn’t square with how we remember them.”

  “Even if,” Martha replied.

  You’ve changed too, Viv thought but did not say. She flashed her badge instead. “I’m a detective now. Green Star. Level 3 Investigator, Department of Psychic Operations. These are my associates, Detective Dreadful and Cross.”

  “Dreadful, you say?” Martha said. “That’s an unusual surname. What’s the nationality? Are you British?”

  Penny’s nose twitched. “That’s immaterial. And I think this interview will go better if you keep in mind that we’re here to ask you questions. Not the other way around.”

  Martha blinked twice slowly. “So that’s how it’s gonna be,” she said.

  “You and I may go way back, but I’m afraid it’s a serious matter,” Viv replied. She pulled out a photograph of the deceased fortuneteller, not a crime scene photo but her senior portrait, the one that had run in her high school yearbook. “Do you know her?”

  “Yes,” Martha said. “Why?”

  “When was the last time you spoke with her?” Viv asked, ignoring the question. Penny was correct. They were here to ask questions, not answer them.

  “I don’t know…” Martha said. “Maybe a month ago.” She frowned. “Has something happened to her?”

  Viv ignored the question again. “And what were the circumstances of that encounter?”

  “It was a meaningless interaction. We had a conversation,” Martha said.

  “And what did you talk about?” Viv asked.

  “It was a private conversation. About private issues. It was hardly a matter that concerns public safety. Nothing PsyOps would be interested in,” Martha said.

  “Martha,” Viv said. “They found this woman dead a few days ago. She was killed by someone.”

  Martha gasped.

  “I don’t believe that you had anything to do with it. I really don’t. But we need you to tell us everything you know. Even if it’s embarrassing. You never know what’s important. What will lead to something else. Something that will help us catch the person who did this. And stop them from doing it to others,” Viv said.

  “Others? What makes you think whoever did this would do it to others?” Martha asked.

  This question Viv did answer. “Because this isn’t the first murder like this. It looks like this is related to another attack that occurred several months ago. There’s a killer on the loose.”

  “I see,” Martha said. She took a deep breath, let it go. She turned her gaze to the wall, as though she preferred not to look the detectives in the eye as she spoke.

  “I went to Heather for professional reasons. I’d hired her to tell my fortune,” Martha said.

  Viv nodded. “We suspected as much.”

  “I had started to suspect Doug was having an affair. Ugh,” she stopped, rubbed her chest with the flat palm of her hand. “It’s humiliating to even admit to you.”

  “Humiliating how?” Viv prompted.

  “To be dealing with these sorts of suspicions at my age. I had always thought this was the kind of thing that I’d be wrestling with in middle age, not worrying about before my thirtieth birthday. But there were signs, you know… signs that troubled me. He’d changed. He was colder. And he stopped initiating sex. We were going weeks without being intimate, and I always had to initiate. Always. It’s not an exaggeration. He’d put a lock on his phone. And was always popping off to meetings at strange hours. So yeah, semi-dead bedroom, locked phone, running off to who knows where… a woman starts to wonder. To worry,” Martha said.

  “So you hired Heather?” Viv said.

  Martha nodded.

  “How?” Viv asked.

  “What do you mean how? I called up the Warrens of Persephone, made an appointment, came down to the facility, had a reading. I hired her the usual way. I’m not aware that there’s another method,” Martha snapped.

  “No, no, I mean… did you ask for her specifically? Or did you just ask for any fortuneteller who could see you?” Viv said.

  Martha hesitated. “I asked for Heather specifically,” she responded.

  “How did you know to ask for her? How had you heard of her? And why did you want to see her and not other fortunetellers?” Viv asked.

  “People talk, you know,” Martha replied. “The law’s the law, so it’s not exactly like you can go find a public directory of tuey fortunetellers posing as entertainers, but… people talk. People know. It’s not that difficult to figure out if you talk to enough people.”

  “And if you make sure to reward the referral. With favors or a wad of cash,” Viv said.

  “That’s a disgusting implication,” Martha said.

  “One that you’re not directly denying,” Viv observed.

  “Nor one I’m directly agreeing to,” Martha said.

  “You don’t have to,” Viv replied.

  It wasn’t the first time in her line of work that Viv had run into this particular theme: If you had enough money you could pay your way out of following the law. Especially on smaller matters like the laws prohibiting the commercial use of psychic powers in sexual intercourse, regulations that didn’t differentiate between sex and love. Although in Martha’s case, Viv mused, it would seem that sex may very have been her primary concern. Both the fact that she wasn’t having it anymore with her husband and the fact that he might very well be having it somewhere else.

  This was a classic situation where flashing cash or pointing at the right social connections would make a crime essentially invisible. The kind of corruption that was not only excusable in the eyes of the most powerful (who made the rules) but expected.

  After a few more minutes, Martha agreed to it, like Viv knew she would. She’d seen it many times in her line of work, that most people would eventually admit to ugliness but only after a song and dance, a bit of a struggle to show that they weren’t exactly proud of the behavior.

  Because it was one thing to admit freely to immoral behavior; it was another thing to do so begrudgingly.

  To Viv, the difference didn’t seem that vast, but to witnesses it often did. So she spun around with Martha, knowing the steps to this familiar dance a little too well. Bored but capable.

  Karen dutifully recorded the highlights of the interview in the notebook.

  As Martha led them to the door, she said to Viv in a soft voice, “I hope you paint again,” before closing the door.

  “That makes one of us,” Viv said to the closed door.

  There’s a certain way that a person looks when they’ve been up all night. Their body starts to prot
est about it. Show less than subtle signs that it hasn’t gotten to do its normal business.

  There are, of course, the famous bags under one’s eyes. The eyeballs themselves are known to act erratically after an all-nighter, darting one way and then another as though the person looking through them is incapable of sustaining attention on anything.

  And at intervals, the eyes stop all activity, as the sleep-deprived person stares off into space. Almost like the brain is commandeering the body’s machinery and trying to impose a sleepless sleep.

  Darian Meek had all the signs of pulling an all-nighter but far more pronounced, as though she’d been pulling all-nighters for years.

  Perhaps she has, Karen thought.

  Darian’s eyes themselves were jaundiced, the sclerae not white but closer to the shade of tea-soaked parchment. Her skin seemed at turns both tight and loose, as though she were wearing a face that did not belong to her.

  Now there’s a thought. Karen shuddered. Despite having visited many crime scenes, she hadn’t ever witnessed a killing in progress. She’d never seen someone kill someone else, nor did she want to. Despite working as a homicide detective for years, she didn’t imagine what murder must look like. She left that to Viv’s starkly visual imagination and the work of crime scene technicians and the forensic unit. For the most part, she wasn’t plagued by thoughts of the actual gruesome act of murder, let alone unsavory cousins like mutilation.

  But sitting before Darian Meek, she began to.

  Is this a sign? She wondered. Have we found our killer?

  Perhaps there was something so lethal about this woman that one couldn’t help but imagine dark acts.

  “Martin’s team, right?” Darian said after she answered the front door. Her voice was gravelly, but there was nothing hostile or defensive in it.

  Viv nodded.

  “Well come in,” Darian replied. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  The detectives followed, tentatively. Darian’s place was small, crowded, cramped, and dirty.