A brief flash of memory. Me. Stefan. Under the weird afghan at the Camp Hell counselor’s office, laughing nervously because we were all the way naked together for the very first time….
I slammed shut the door on that thought, locked it up tight, and without a single word, strode out of the room.
* * *
“I think Stefan handled that well,” Jacob said.
I stomped the snow off my shoes with extra vigor. Gray snow hunks scattered to the far corners of the cannery’s entryway.
Jacob ignored my discomfort and plowed ahead. “It only makes sense that you’ll run into each other. You’re FPMP now. And it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that he’s a consultant.”
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” I said mirthlessly.
“You were the one who suggested the grief counseling tactic.”
“Which you don’t need to remind me. We did it. It’s done. Now let’s move on.”
Jacob waited until I was done punishing the welcome mat, then suggested, “Pizza?”
Pizza is never on the menu unless it’s way too late to make dinner, and I’ve just blown him within an inch of his life. “You don’t need to placate me. I’m not mad at you.”
Jacob hung up his coat. “It would be cliche to say time heals all wounds…especially since yours look like they run pretty deep. But it’s worth mentioning that when you and I started dating, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Crash. I could barely even look at him. And now he’s one of my most trusted friends.”
“Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said. “You and Crash were friends once to begin with. Stefan and me—we just happened to be in close enough proximity to collide.”
The darkened cannery was no comfort, even once I walked through and turned on every first-floor light. No amount of rearranging the furniture could erase the gap where Lisa’s big blue tent used to be. Why was it that Stefan could keep coming back like a bad penny, but my relationship with Lisa was so easily spent? Jacob lurked around, ostensibly clearing the dining room table, but it doesn’t take more than a couple seconds to throw the junk mail in the recycling and wipe down the tabletop. “I’ll heat up some leftovers. That casserole from my mom is still in there somewhere.”
“Eat what you want. I’m not hungry.”
He sighed heavily. “Vic.”
“I need to think. Just…let me think.”
Referring to my mental process as “thinking” was probably a stretch. It felt more like a broken record, and the part it kept skipping back to was the part where the world sucked, I sucked, and I was an idiot for thinking things would ever get any better.
According to both Stefan and Bly, we couldn’t rule out any of the coworkers. They all exhibited varying levels of distress. So might a potential killer. Agent Garcia was angry—and again, a killer might be angry too. Agent Frank, the crying precog, felt guilty. Because she should have seen the murder coming, or some more nefarious reason? And the fake schoolteacher, Lipton, felt smug. Normally, that would be a red flag for me. But when I took an honest look at my own feelings about Andy’s death, weren’t they tinged with a bit of smugness, too?
I stood there in the middle of the room and cycled through everything I knew about the case, over and over again. When my knees and hips balked about standing, I adjourned to the recliner with the intention of resting my eyes, then woke up at half past three with the lights off and a fleece blanket draped over me. I closed my eyes to see if I might drift off again, but no. I was up for the day, and I’d need massive amounts of coffee to see it through to the end.
I put on a strong pot, found a plate of cheesy chicken casserole covered with Saran Wrap in the fridge and stuck it in the microwave. While it nuked, I considered my options. I couldn’t go back to the Fifth Precinct. And I couldn’t really put up a fuss that my FPMP job was nothing like Dreyfuss had promised. Dreyfuss was gone. And besides, the things Laura wanted me to do absolutely needed to be done.
By the time our alarm clock went off upstairs, I didn’t have any earth-shattering ideas, but I did have a hell of a resolve. Jacob came down gingerly, maybe to avoid waking me, maybe worried that I was still too wound up to even speak to him. He found me standing in the middle of the vast living room, hands on hips, and brimming with purpose. “Even if it kills me,” I said, “I will figure out how Andy ended up in that goddamn chipper.”
Chapter 13
Autocorrect aside, it was a hell of a lot easier to text on my new phone.
You’re probably not up yet…but when you have a minute…I wonder if you can help me talk something through.
Crash’s reply came a few seconds later.
I’m here for ya, sweetcheeks. Haven’t gone to bed yet. It was just after six. Way to make me feel geriatric. Setting up new digs. Knock loud. We’re in back.
A street address appeared. It was blue and underlined, like a computer link, so I tapped it. A map popped up, and a button asking if I wanted directions, too. Wow. No wonder people were always looking at their phones.
I told Jacob, “You mentioning Crash last night got me to thinking, I could use a fresh set of eyes on this whole Andy Parsons thing. Can you spare me at the office for an hour?”
“Whatever you need,” Jacob said. Maybe more carefully than usual. But also relieved that I was no longer trapped in a downward spiral of suckitude.
Tracking down Crash somewhere other than Sticks and Stones was a wakeup call reminding me that I wasn’t the only one who’d been forced in a new direction to avoid being crushed under the relentless wheels of change. The Still Goods Consignment Shop was due west of me, in a working-class neighborhood where every other corner store did burner cellphones and payday loans, the hipsters spoke Polish, and the air was thick with exhaust from the Kennedy Expressway. The storefront looked old. Not abandoned, and not exactly neglected, either. But the brick façade did have a few cracks, and the painted woodwork around the doorway that had once been bright, artsy Victorian detailing was now muted with age and soot. I shielded my eyes against the glare of the rising sun and pressed my face to the window, but the glass was murky, or maybe it was the shop inside.
I rapped on the door. Loud. A cop-knock. Pulled out my weird, overlarge phone and was keying in I’m here when Crash opened the door with a saucy hand-on-hip pose and said, “Long time no see, Agent Bayne. Look at you and your fancy new phone. Bet you hate it.”
“Uh…jury’s still out.”
“Well, don’t just stand there with your thumb on the screen, step into my lair—I’m dying to show you around.”
One foot in the door and I was itching to turn around and leave. Take some junk, cover it in clutter, add a layer of dust, then repeat. Clearly, this was the business plan of Still Goods. “I don’t get it,” I said. “This place looks like it’s been here forever. Did you buy it this way, or what?”
“We don’t own the shop.” His casual use of the word “we” was oddly jarring. It wasn’t so much that I was jealous, more like I’d imprinted on him being a single guy. “I just got a major albatross off my neck, I’m not eager to replace it. Renting is much more my style. No down payment, shared risk. And best of all, the admin’s all handled, and I don’t have to waste my day standing behind a cash register anymore.” He paused, then gave me an uncomfortably lingering look. Up. Down. And up again. “After all, how can we be our glorious butterfly selves if we insist on clinging to our cocoons?”
Whatever that meant. He turned back and led the way without waiting for an answer. Thank God.
We traversed racks of clothes overseen by awkward, chipped mannequins. A room of toys filled with matted stuffed animals and smudged dolls. And a room of furniture grouped in unlikely seating arrangements, every wooden surface covered in yellowed doilies. I lost count of how many stale, overstuffed, shadowy rooms we navigated overall. Five? Maybe six, each one more claustrophobic than the one before. I was damn near ready to chalk up the whole experience
as a loss and flee back to my blissfully organized car when we came upon a doorway that glowed a cheerful yellow in the oppressive dimness.
“Back when my sole income came from doing hair, I rented a stall in someone else’s salon. My new arrangement’s pretty much the same. Still Goods handles the admin—believe you me, I’m beyond relieved it’s someone other than me saddled with all the boring parts. And Red and me, we’re free to focus on our collection.”
The room we entered was no less cramped than the rest of the place, though at least, I suspected, it was cleaner. It was maybe a quarter the size of Sticks and Stones, but the vibe was nothing like it. There was a shabbiness to Crash’s old shop that had morphed into something more intentional now, with a depth and richness that I’d never realized was lacking before, in a flow of colorful ornament and twinkling fairy lights. I stood there, rooted to the spot, and tried to orient myself and take it all in. But it was hard to see past the ultrahot guy standing on an old wooden buffet, painting directly on the wall, adding sweeping crimson strokes to the hypnotic purple and green pattern that stretched from one end of the room to the other. He finished the stroke he was painting with an expert flick of the wrist, then turned to me and said, “Hello, Victor, it’s good to see you again.”
“Hey,” I replied lamely. Because somehow, he managed to take a perfectly mundane sentence and imbue it with a sort of gravity that made me feel supremely uncomfortable for checking out his ass. Though, in my defense, his posterior was eye-level with him standing on the furniture.
Crash gestured to the mural in a grand flourish, and I realized it was an elaborate letter-C in the making. “Behold, Curious Curios. Your source for all things metaphysical, antique, and obscure.”
I looked down at a crystal ball on an elaborately twisted mahogany base, and did a triple-take at the steep price. “You’re doing…resale?”
“Sure,” he said, in a voice that implied, Go ahead and think that. “On paper, that’s exactly what we do.”
“Okay. And really?”
“Little bit of this, little bit of that.” Crash dropped his voice into full-tilt flirt mode. “Let’s just say we’re…versatile.” Red gave an unperturbed smile and turned back to his painting. Crash openly admired the view for a moment, then added in a more utilitarian tone, “By which I mean, resale, consignment, hair, house blessings, and whatever else it takes to pay the bills. So what about you? Beefing up on your espionage or what?”
“Not everyone at the FPMP is a spy.” Funny how that just rolled out, whereas I shook my head every time I heard it myself. “Heck, right now, I’m wishing we kept closer tabs on ourselves. Then I’d figure out how one of our agents nearly ended up spread across someone’s flowerbed.”
Crash pulled a pair of threadbare velvet chairs from an adjacent vendor’s room, sat in one, toed off his combat boots and pulled his knees up to his chest. I considered sitting in the other one, but was too keyed up to rest. I paced around it instead.
“If only I could see—” I nearly backpedaled and minimized my actual ghost experience, but why bother? They’d both watched me interact with Miss Mattie. “His ghost wasn’t with the body. Or the apartment. Short of finding the murder scene, I have no idea where to look.”
Crash had stretched out a leg to polish the dust off an old gilt cabinet with the toe of his sock. “When they say people get ‘attached’ to their stuff—is that just an expression? Or does part of them really come along for the ride? ’Cos Red and I have smoked out the vibes from this stuff so many times, I’m buying my incense in bulk. And I don’t even sell piddly little things like incense anymore.”
“His apartment was pretty generic,” I said. “The only thing worth anything was that autographed…baseball.” I pulled out my phone and jabbed out, Andy was big baseball fan…maybe a lead?
Jacob’s reply was fast. Season ticket holder. Check his seat.
Once I memorized the seat number Jacob gave me and pocketed the phone, Crash said, “Want me to walk you through voice-to-text?”
“It’s awfully convenient,” Red said.
I waved the offer away. “Some other time. I’ve gotta go take a look at this new angle.” I charged out the door, and shortly found myself at the top of a stairwell that led to a basement you couldn’t pay me to explore.
Crash, thankfully, was hot on my heels. He plucked at my sleeve and said, “C’mon, Speedy McGee, the door’s this way.”
I followed him through the warren of weird rooms, but whereas before they were closing in on me, now they receded into the background as my brain churned through a tentative plan. Time distorts for the dead. If the Cubs were the highlight of Andy’s life, maybe he wouldn’t realize it was a few months till baseball season. Or maybe he simply wouldn’t care. I was just about to burst out into the street when Crash swerved around me and draped himself dramatically across the exit. “So. Did you get what you came for?”
I took a disoriented step back. “I don’t get it. You’ve got this boyfriend who’s totally…I mean, shit. Why bother flirting?”
“You and I both know that not every pang of attraction leads to the bedroom.” A naughty smile spread across his face as he stepped aside to usher me out the door. I took the opening. At the last second, he leaned in and purred in my ear, “Besides…you’d be bummed if I didn’t acknowledge the Vibe. And I always aim to please.”
Chapter 14
Funny, how baffling other folks’ predilections can feel. Me? I’ve never understood the allure of baseball.
Wrigley Field is one of the oldest parks in the country, and it feels like it. Not in a worn and tattered way, like Still Goods, but a historic way, with statuary and plaques and a hundred years of spilled beer. I took it all in: The winter-killed ivy. The hand-turned scoreboard. The lighting that almost didn’t happen.
When I was a kid, they made a big stink about finally installing electric lights. How they managed to survive as long as they had without night games is a testament to Chicago’s stubbornness. Hopefully Andy Parsons came from that same pigheaded Chicago stock.
Jacob had arranged for a custodian to meet me at the gate and show me around. The rotund guy was white-haired and ruddy with cold. I flashed my new ID card. It felt flimsy compared to the weight of my detective badge, but it did the job.
My guide was obviously curious as to why a federal agent was poking around the seats. If anything, it would be an interesting story to tell his cronies when he clocked out and joined them for a brewski. “Off-season, tours come through at noon and three,” he said, “but there’s no reason for ’em to come up here in the stands.”
“Uh huh.”
“So, is this a ticket scalping thing? I didn’t know the feds cared about stuff like that.”
“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Civilians love hearing stuff like that. Makes them feel like they’re on a TV crime drama. The custodian nodded sagely.
He was slightly more winded than I was from climbing the stairs, which excused us both from making small talk. He led me to Andy’s seat. It looked just like the seats all around it. I made a show of assessing it anyway, even got down on one knee and shone my penlight all around. Nothing. Not even a crumpled napkin or an old wad of gum.
I’m not sure exactly what I thought I’d find. It wasn’t as if someone had lured the guy here, offed him, then dragged him halfway across the city to feed him through some heavy equipment. But the heart wants what it wants, and it wasn’t all that crazy to see if Andy’s extracurricular activities had mattered more to him than his ordinary life as the most obvious FPMP babysitter. If he’d been sitting in this seat when the Cubs finally ended the longest championship drought in sports history, it could very well be the spot in which his ghost dropped anchor.
I opened myself to the white light and tried to pull it down, but frankly, my head hurt from a shitty night’s sleep. Maybe it was too early in the day for ghosts. Maybe I was too tired to perform. Or maybe my big idea was just an overly-optim
istic dead end.
I straightened up and knuckled my eyes.
When it was obvious even to a casual observer I hadn’t found what I was looking for, my guide took it upon himself to make the trip worth my while. “You hear about that guy who fell out of the bleachers?” He made the sign of the cross, then pointed to the infield. “Down there, that’s where he landed. Right on his head.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked. Even through the frosty daylight, when I really focused, I saw a flicker that might have been a trick of the light, but probably wasn’t. I watched the spot, counted slowly to thirty, and saw it again. Clearer now. The shape of a man, partially. Just a fragment. Head and shoulders. But at least that was enough to let me know I was “on.”
I headed back to my office and found Darla scrutinizing a very complicated graphic on the giant screen. She glanced at her watch when I came in. I ignored the implied criticism and said, “Lemme run something by you. A violent death might cause a repeater…an echo. But it also might leave behind a full-fledged ghost. What makes the difference?”
“Interesting.” She turned toward me and crossed her arms. “That’s the first intelligent question you’ve ever asked me.”
“I’ll take that to mean you don’t know, either.” I looked at the chart she’d been studying, a tangle of colored lines and points that was as hard to read as my gas bill. “What about this?”
“I’ve asked your lab guy to analyze it in case there’s something I’m missing, but it looks pretty damn random to me. Plus, I think we’d need to walk a lot more people through the course to generate any useful statistics.”
Just what Laura wanted to hear. “We need to do something.”
Darla replied with such a look of utter disdain, my brain hurtled right back to Camp Hell. Not a full-on panic attack flashback, just a memory. But the memory was so intense, it might as well have been.
Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 Page 9