Psychic City

by Page Turner

  Piles of clothes dotted the single room. There appeared to be items under them but no way of knowing what. And none of the detectives really wanted to look, even if Darian had granted permission.

  The dwelling smelled like a car does when you park it directly in the sun on a hot day, forget a package of steaks in it, and then return to it several days later.

  Karen gagged. Penny discreetly covered her nose. Viv frowned at the scent and was glad she hadn’t eaten in hours so there was nothing in her stomach to act up in response.

  Darian darted to a small closet and pulled out four folding metal chairs. She set them up in succession, spacing them evenly apart with great care. Viv offered to help, but Darian waved if off. “No, I insist. Let me do this,” Darian said, smiling wide. “You are my guests.”

  The chair backs were marked SPRIGLEY in permanent marker, the name of a local high school. Either pinched or rescued from a dumpster, Penny surmised, although noting they were in such a bad state, dented and discolored, that as much as she enjoyed the sport of dumpster diving, she would not have been tempted by them.

  The detectives sat down on the chairs slowly, tentatively, not sure if the surfaces were clean and also worried that they might not be structurally sound. But the chairs held fast.

  “I so rarely get visitors,” Darian said. “That’s what happens when you’re the junkie sister.” She laughed. “Oh shit, you’re cops. Shit, shit. Forget I said that.”

  “We’re not that kind of cops,” Viv assured her. “We don’t worry about little things like that.”

  Darian nodded. “That’s what Martin has told me. But you never know. You relax, and people screw you. Once you fall down, it’s hard to get up. No matter how much you try. You try to go straight, and people are always holding the worst thing you ever did over your head. You’re defined by your biggest mistakes. They won’t give you a fresh start. You’re not allowed to be imperfect. So you start to ask yourself what’s the point? What’s the point of even trying if it’s going to get you nowhere? Might as well fuck off and have fun if no one’s ever going to forgive you.”

  Karen felt bad about coming. There was something pitiful about this woman… and in a way quite likeable. She didn’t seem like a murderer.

  Oh c’mon, Karen, snap out of it. People don’t come conveniently labeled with a neon sign that reads “murderer.” Even the most evil actor could be capable of charm in small bursts, Karen reminded herself. Don’t get sucked in.

  “I’d offer you some refreshments,” Darian said, “but as you can see I’m not exactly swimming in money here. I’m as poor as a lizard-eating cat.”

  “Colorful,” Viv said.

  “Well, you have to have a sense of humor about yourself. Especially when you have little else,” Darian said. “Anyway… I figure you’re not here on a social call. So what’s the deal? What are you looking into?”

  Viv pulled out her investigative folder and pulled out a picture of Heather. “Do you know this woman?”

  “Of course,” Darian replied. “That’s my love tuey. Paid her to help me figure out my love life. Good work. I heard the news. Real shame about what happened to her. She seemed like a nice girl, and her predictions were amazing.”

  “You hired her to give you relationship advice?” Viv asked.

  Darian nodded.

  “That’s strange,” Viv said.

  “How so?”

  “You’re living here. You’re as poor as a lizard-eating cat, as you just said. And yet… you somehow had the money to pay a Fortune-Telling Service,” Viv replied.

  “And why wouldn’t I?” Darian said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Viv asked.

  “By your own logic, I shouldn’t be buying drugs either. And well… just fill in the blank. I know you say you’re not that kind of cop, but I’m not looking to confess to something that’s not hurting anyone and is none of your business. Anyway, being poor and having no money whatsoever aren’t the same thing at all,” Darian explained.

  “I see,” Viv said.

  “Not that tone again,” Darian said.

  Viv wasn’t sure what she was talking about. What tone?

  Darian rolled her eyes. “It’s so easy to judge me. I know that. It’s one thing when you can pay all of your bills comfortably and then afford things after that. But when there’s no way to do it all, you make your choices. For me, it’s a bit of escapism and looking for love. What’s wrong with that? You’d probably do the same if you were in my shoes.”

  The detectives stared at her. Finally, Viv said. “Actually, I get it.”

  “What?” Darian said.

  “You may have forgotten, or maybe you were never told, but intuitives are poor. And we’re intuitives. So, no, I understand. We’ve set priorities, too, even if you wouldn’t know by looking at us,” Viv replied.

  “I dumpster dive for furniture,” Penny offered.

  Darian brightened. “Oh.” She visibly relaxed. Began to tell them of her time with Heather. “It could have been my imagination, but she seemed scared at our last session. I asked her what was wrong, but she told me she couldn’t break any professional confidences.”

  “So the threats came from a client?” Viv asked.

  “As far as I could tell. That’s what I thought. She excused herself to take a call during the session. Probably rude of me to listen in, but I heard her saying something about damn rich assholes, too, to whoever was on the other line. That stuck out to me. Both because she was never negative about anyone, and I don’t think I ever heard her swear before,” Darian said. “I remember thinking ‘damn right, damn rich assholes.’”

  “Did you ask her about it?” Penny said. “About who called her, what it was about?”

  Darian shook her head no. “I didn’t dare. Didn’t want her knowing I’d been nosy and listened in.”

  “It’s a good lead,” Viv replied. “Thank you. We’ll have a look at her phone records. When was your last session?”

  Darian told her. After a series of basic questions surrounding her alibi, any other things she may have noticed, the detectives concluded the interview.

  “One more thing,” Darian said, as they were leaving. “If you find the bastard who did this to her, you give them a kick in the balls for me. She was a good woman. I’ll miss her. And I’ll probably die alone without her.”

  “Thanks for your cooperation,” Viv replied.

  The team worked their way down the list, heading from interview to interview.

  It was mind-numbingly dull. No one seemed to know anything.

  Everyone seemed sad that Heather was dead. Many expressed that they were going to have a difficult time replacing her services.

  Viv idly wondered the third time she’d heard that if they were only saying it because they were nervous about talking about hiring love psychics in front of police.

  No, they weren’t that kind of police. But people didn’t always know that. And you couldn’t blame people for being cautious or not trusting the Psychic State to tell them the truth about the real legal risks.

  Besides, Viv thought, it could all change overnight. It had before. True, things were a lot more stable than in the early days of the Psychic Phenomenon and certainly a lot more stable as the Psychic State stayed independent and looked as though it wouldn’t be reabsorbed into the union.

  But you never knew.

  Not even the precogs could see the future for sure.

  And good luck waiting on forensics. It was true that when this murder cropped up with the same exact modus operandi as the Snow White case, the crime scene unit had collected more samples this time around. But it was also true that the lab was so backed up that it might very well be years before everything could be properly analyzed. Department budgets had started out tight at the time Viv had first joined PsyOps, and with each passing year, th
ey seemed to be getting tighter.

  Besides, forensics weren’t nearly as much of a priority in the Psychic State as they were in their neighbor, the United States. DNA analysis would have to be shipped off internationally to an American lab, and tensions were tight. The Psychic State preferred to save such a favor for their highest-profile cases. And while these murders were certainly unsettling, Viv knew she’d be told they had bigger fish to try.

  Everyone knew that things between the two nations had been tense following the War of Independence. The ceasefire was one thing; mutual respect was another. Peace itself was tenuous. Perhaps one day they’d be strong allies, but now was not the time. It was too soon.

  So Viv was forced, as usual, to work with what she had.

  She had worked her way through nearly the entire list of leads, growing increasingly more frustrated with each pointless, repetitive conversation with an apparently grieving client (who may or may not be faking said grief) when Martin handed her a note with her name on it:

  Let’s do lunch.

  -Roscoe

  Viv groaned and folded up the paper in her hand. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but they weren’t exactly getting anywhere.

  “Damn,” she said.

  She swallowed hard and rolled her eyes before whipping out her phone and drafting a quick email in response.

  “I’m sorry, Karen,” she said, as she hit send.

  Viv had known it was a risky move, accepting Ryan Roscoe’s invitation to lunch with him in the PsyOps cafeteria.

  Even having lunch during a workday was a normal change of pace for Viv. She’d eaten there a lot when she was a rookie, but that was back in the time that PsyOps included a free meal with every shift.

  Sure, they were pretty basic offerings – questionable meatloaf whose contributing animal (or animals) was never identified covered in a brownish-red sauce that tasted as though the last bits of several condiment bottles had been thrown into a pot and comingled. Overcooked green beans as tough as Pilates bands. Something Viv assumed was pizza but reminded her of sights she had witnessed at crime scenes.

  Any sort of upgrade, the premium meals, had always cost additional money.

  They weren’t glamourous, but the basic meals were free, after all. Or had been. Now they, too, came with a small charge, just enough to scare Viv off.

  Viv had considered complaining then, when free “food” was no longer available in the PsyOps cafeteria, but she didn’t dare to. There had been simultaneous rumblings that PsyOps was considering taking away their work vehicles, gas, maintenance, and mileage.

  If that went away, it would be a much bigger blow than some food that she couldn’t swallow without grimacing. A much bigger financial hit.

  It was better not to rock the boat, she decided.

  Still, she wasn’t about to pay for the work meals.

  She’d rather take a chance on food that Penny rescued from dumpsters. After all, Penny could be quite clever and when seeking out meals targeted the hoity toity neighborhoods, supermarkets that specialized in imported goods.

  Even though Penny never directly acknowledged it, Viv knew that Penny ate a lot of her haul long before she ever arrived home with food for Viv and Karen. Not that Viv minded. It was only fair, considering the effort Penny put in scavenging.

  Besides, the extra calories had helped Penny stay curvy, even as starvation had whittled Viv and Karen down to bonier versions of their former selves. And that last thing Viv would ever complain about was Penny’s curves poured into a pink jumpsuit. It was worth skipping a snack or two – even a meal – here and there.

  And Penny did provide. After discarding a suspiciously rain(?)-soaked cardboard box, Penny had presented them with a full year’s supply of protein bars. Good ones, too. Not even short coded this time but with valid dates well into the future.

  It simply seemed as though the box had gotten damaged during the shipping process. “Probably left outside in a loading area and forgotten and rained on,” Penny had said, presenting them.

  After observing Penny to have eaten a few of these protein bars and noting that she suffered no ill health effects, Viv had begun to bring them every day for her lunch.

  “It’s such an honor to be the king’s taste tester,” Penny had joked about Viv’s habit of letting her take the risks on salvaged food. But she had seemed pleased that Viv enjoyed the spoils of her hunt. “The unspoiled spoils,” Penny had emphasized.

  Today’s protein bar was tucked into the pocket of Viv’s paint-stained overalls the day that she sat down to lunch with Ryan Roscoe.

  Because you never know, Viv reflected. Always best to have a backup plan.

  It didn’t take her long to second guess her decision.

  “Really?” Roscoe said, reading her thoughts. “It’s been that long since you’ve bought lunch here?”

  Viv scowled. “You know, you’d think after an entire life of being able to read other people’s thoughts, you would have learned by now that it’s rude to answer them, as though they’d been spoken aloud.”

  Roscoe smirked. “I get that a lot,” he replied.

  “You get told that you’re rude, and you keep on doing it?” Viv asked.

  “Sure,” Roscoe said.

  “And why’s that?” Viv asked. “If you know it’s rude, and people ask you to stop, then why do you keep doing it?” Viv asked.

  “Do you follow every order you’re given?” Roscoe asked.

  Viv didn’t know what to say to that. No, she didn’t. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

  “I didn’t think so,” Roscoe said.

  Oh right, Viv said. I don’t have to admit it. Little bastard will extract it from me no matter what.

  “My parents were married when I was born, thank you very much,” Roscoe said.

  “Seriously, Roscoe,” Viv fumed, “wouldn’t it be a lot more efficient to engage with people in the way that they choose to present themselves rather than rifling around their subconscious and questioning them about garbage they’d rather throw out?”

  He paused. “I’ve never really thought about it that way.” Roscoe scratched his chin. “Every person I meet has a different distance between their thoughts and what they say aloud. I know it annoys you when I… rifle around in your trash, or however you put it –”

  “However I thought it,” Viv said. “I think the whole business of thoughts being translated directly into words is suspect anyway.”

  “I know,” Roscoe replied. “You think it every time you’re around me. At least once. Sometimes more.”

  Viv nodded.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, when I rifle around your trash, I find that what you think is not that different than what you actually say,” Roscoe said.

  “Are you saying I’m a trash talker?” Viv asked.

  “No, I’m saying you’re honest. Blunt. A bit too much for most people, judging by what I hear them think about you,” Roscoe said.

  Viv winced at that idea, the reality that other people were thinking about her, whether she liked it or not, as well as the fact that not all of what they thought was positive.

  “But it’s refreshing to me. A break from the constant hypocrisy, the duplicity that most people have,” Roscoe said.

  “Some people call that tact,” Viv said.

  “People are good at justifying what they do,” Roscoe said.

  “Alright, whatever. I’ll stay,” Viv said. She poked at the Swedish meatballs on her tray tentatively.

  “They’re pretty good actually,” Roscoe said. “I have no idea what’s in the sauce, but the egg noodles are surprisingly decent.”

  Viv took a bite. He wasn’t lying. Not bad. She took a larger second bite and felt her body react to how good it was.

  “Well, as much as you hate having your thought
s read, there is one benefit,” Roscoe offered.

  Viv looked up at him, wondering what he was on about.

  “You can eat as much as you want and still answer my questions without having to talk with your mouth full,” Roscoe said.

  Viv continued to eat.

  “The reason I asked you to lunch is that I have a media contact who might be able to help you out on your psychic murders. Martin let it slip to my supervisor that you haven’t been getting anywhere, really. Lots of data points but no way to draw a line through them. I think what you might need to do here is get some publicity. Let the public know what’s going on. Someone’s always seen something in cases like this. Anyway, you call up the station and see if they’ll do a feature on the murders. True crime television brings people right out of the woodwork. People who’d like to be on the evening news as the hometown hero who solved the case,” Roscoe explained.

  Viv paused and thought, wondering who in the world Roscoe could know in television.

  “Regina Withers,” Roscoe said.

  Viv sat up straight. The Regina Withers?

  “Yes, The Regina Withers,” Roscoe replied. He slid a business card across the table. “Just don’t call her that when you talk to her. She hates that.”

  Viv slid the card into a pocket. How in the world did Roscoe know Regina Withers, the queen of true crime? Viv wondered.

  “It’s a family connection,” Roscoe replied.

  What does that mean? Viv thought.

  “That’s as much as I’m saying,” Roscoe said.

  I bet that bastard is glad this telepathy thing only runs one way.

  “Yes, it comes in handy,” Roscoe replied. “Although you’re not listening well. My parents were married when I was born.”

  “Viv!” Penny called out, walking up to their table, with Karen following close behind.

  “There you are,” Penny said. She looked at Roscoe and then at Viv. “What are you doing… umm…”

  “Having lunch with me?” Roscoe asked. “I’m helping out on the case.”

  “Not double checking your work again, Karen, don’t worry,” Roscoe reassured her.