“Where is she?”
“I’m not privy to the details,” I said, and when he saw I wasn’t going to give him anything, he turned around and stomped right back out.
I should probably tell Jacob. What, exactly? That Carl seemed upset about Agent Lipton’s break-in? That didn’t mean a thing…other than the realization that I’d never fully appreciated how harrowing it must’ve been for him to find out Laura Kim fired the shot that ended Roger Burke.
Even when Jacob slapped the waterlogged gun on the table, I’d had a hard time believing it was her. And I had just as hard a time imagining Carl putting someone through a mulcher. I wandered over to the window and stared out at the highway. Morning rush was in full force. Traffic crawled. But they were making a hell of a lot more progress than I was.
Maybe I could kill two birds with one round. As if I was innocently brainstorming aloud, I said to Darla, “According to Carl’s badge, he’s NP. Maybe we could test out some alternative medium-finding methods on him.”
Darla left off watching the burly guys wrestling with the treadmill, joined me at the window and mirrored my stance, feet planted, arms crossed. “Like what?”
“Have him handle some of the typical props. Incense, Florida Water. See how he reacts.”
“What would that tell us? You and I handle that stuff plenty, and it never made either of us burst into flames.”
But what if we’d been possessed at the time? That might make a difference, though I wasn’t about to volunteer my body to see if the theory held water.
“If testing mediums was as easy as sprinkling them with salt,” Darla said, “don’t you think they would’ve figured it out at Camp Hell?” As critical as she’d been acting, this time she wasn’t challenging my suggestion. More like thinking out loud. “I remember my test. I was twenty. Community college dropout. Still living at home. I’d answered some ad I’d seen on TV. A plain black car picked me up and took me to an active crime scene. The cops, they were having conniptions about letting some random person into their crime scene, but someone talked to them, and they let us in. And there was this group of creepy old fogies in overcoats standing to the side. Just watching me…while the victim cried about her boyfriend unloading an entire clip into her for saying she didn’t want to see him anymore.” She suppressed a shudder. “I got an invitation to Heliotrope Station for training, all expenses paid, by the end of the day. Via messenger. My family was so poor, we’d never actually seen a messenger before. Dumb detail to remember, right?”
“Guess it’s hard to forget your first time.”
“We spent how long together at Camp Hell, and you never really told me about your first time. What’s your story?”
“Sometimes it feels like my life began in the psych ward.” I admitted. “Before that, everything’s kind of a blur.”
“Seriously?” She swung around to face me. “How could you possibly forget your first encounter with the dead?”
“It’s not so much specifically that one incident that’s hazy…more like the majority of my childhood.”
Her reaction was so cold, I could practically feel the temperature in the room drop. “After all the personal stuff I’ve just laid on the line, you don’t want to tell me? Fine. Be that way.”
“It’s not a matter of what I want. I don’t remember. It must’ve been the drugs. Too much Thorazine, too few shits to give.”
Disgusted, she let the matter drop, though it was obvious she didn’t believe me.
To be fair, neither did I.
Chapter 23
Maybe finding mediums was more important than elbowing in on an investigation where I wasn’t actually helping, but Jacob was way more sympathetic to me than Darla was. I found him in his private office with a gargantuan cup of coffee and a pile of trashed burner phones. “I’ve got the safe houses all figured out,” he said. “Veronica Lipton’s already on her way to hers. Garcia…he’ll be here any minute. What’s up with you?”
“Just…thinking.” I rubbed the back of my neck and peered out the window. Jacob had the best view yet: a stand of winter-blighted weed trees tangled with decaying plastic bags. “No one remembers their twelfth birthday, right?”
After a pause, Jacob said, “Uncle Leon took me fishing on the Mississippi and I caught a catfish too big to fit in my bucket. When he told me to cut it in half, I started crying, and we ended up letting it go.”
“Well yeah, but…that’s you. You did things worth remembering. I’m me. I’m lucky if I got a cheap birthday card and some half-off Valentine’s Day candy. It’s totally normal that I don’t have extensive memories of my childhood, right? Just because I couldn’t tell you what my favorite toy might’ve been or what I wore to school on the first day of kindergarten doesn’t mean I’m repressing everything because I was abused.”
I’d been aiming for an over-the-top delivery to express how ludicrous I found the whole concept.
Neither one of us bought it.
There was a rap on Jacob’s door, and he said, “We’ll pick this up again later.”
We found Agent Garcia dressed for another day as an unremarkable maintenance man in jeans, steel-toed work boots, tool belt, and a Lakewood Manor polo. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you find out anything new about Colleen?”
Jacob closed the door and said, “Maybe you should sit.”
Garcia was too much of a tough guy to oblige. “Whatever you’ve got to tell me, just say it.”
“Veronica Lipton’s house was broken into last night,” Jacob told him. “She’s fine. But we’re going under the assumption that both of you are targets, and you’ll each be relocated to a safe house until the investigation is concluded.”
Upon hearing that, Garcia dropped the machismo and slumped into the nearest chair. “Oh my God. This could be days…weeks….” That was optimistic. Realistically, he’d be lucky if he got back to his old life anytime soon. “My nephew’s a standup comedian. Got his first real gig coming up this weekend. Not just an open mike—his name on the lineup. Small, but it’s still there. After he worked at it so long. And now I gotta….” He sighed and shook his head. “I got no business complaining.” He indicated the office with a sweep of his arm. “This is the life we all chose. Right?”
Was it? I didn’t remember being presented with any viable options to pick from.
I left the two of them to work out the details of Garcia’s relocation in private so I didn’t need to worry about being a liability to any telepaths, but my own buried secrets were still nagging at me. My personal stuff didn’t matter—I’d put money on it that my twelfth birthday had been utterly forgettable. But my first ghost? That felt so slippery around the edges, I’d never buy that I just so happened to forget.
Would Laura grant me access to my permanent record? Maybe. If I ever got enough time alone with her to plead my case. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only high-clearance employee with whom I shared a pretty good rapport.
I found Patrick squinting hard at the phone as he keyed in a long string of digits. It beeped. He looked up and shot me a rueful smile. “I think it’s forwarded to my bluetooth. At least, I hope so.”
“I can call you and check.”
“That would be great. You’re a lifesaver.”
I could hardly put calling a phone number on the same level as keeping people from ending up dead, but if it earned me a little quid pro quo, I wasn’t about to point out that distinction. We did our test. It seemed Patrick really was beginning to master the world’s most Byzantine phone system, and while I couldn’t take much credit for helping, it didn’t stop me from trying. “Uh, say, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing me a little favor in return.”
“Shoot.”
“I wanted to take a look at my FPMP record.”
“Sure. But I can’t change your firearms score.” We shared a lackluster chuckle as he keyed in a series of passwords, and then my name. “Here it is. Any particular part?”
“Older stuff. J
ust curious what kind of history’s been following me around.”
He scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled some more. “Wow. I wonder if everyone’s files are this…thorough. I started around the same time as you, let’s see….” He opened a second window and typed in his own name. His info only required one scroll to hit the bottom. “Guess not.”
We stared together, uncomfortably, at the screen. Too late to pretend I was just indulging in random curiosity, but way too late to turn back. Eventually, I said, “How far back does mine go?”
He scrolled some more. “Pretty damn far. So…I’m not actually sure we should be doing this.”
But we’re so close. I didn’t say it. Not only was he right, but I suspected there were multiple cameras trained on us. So even though I wanted to encourage him to keep going, in all good conscience, I knew I shouldn’t. His finger rested on the scroll wheel, paused…then flicked one more time.
The document that rolled up was so old, it looked more like a physical copy than a computer document, with yellowed, dog-eared edges.
“Whoa,” Patrick said. “Pre-digital. That’s…wow.”
Don’t stop.
He was as curious as I was. One more flick. Another scanned document. But this one was full of fat black marks.
My history went back pretty damn far, all right.
Too bad a good hunk of it was redacted.
* * *
Can we ever really anticipate how we’ll react when push comes to shove?
Deep down inside, I must’ve believed I was a fragile flower that couldn’t handle the truth. Why else would my memory have more holes than my rattiest pair of boxers? And yet, faced with incontrovertible evidence that big brother existed—and he’d been the source of every last swirly, wedgie and Indian burn that plagued me—I felt surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Hell, maybe even vindicated.
“Don’t print it out,” I said. “Apparently that would leave some kind of trail. But what about my phone—if I take a picture, does it stay with me, or is it free game?”
Patrick considered. “Most phones need to be plugged in to update, but hell, I don’t know. They’re made to send and receive. Even if you shut off bluetooth and wifi, it’s probably safer to presume nothing’s private.”
“So other than memorizing this really fast….” I sighed. “Never mind. Not your problem.”
“I’m really sorry, but if I get caught doing this….”
“I hear you. Back away—save yourself. I’m sure it’ll keep.” Unless it was deleted by an “accidental” electrical glitch. “Can you get my appointment with Laura moved up?”
“No luck yet. But I’ll keep trying.”
“Let her know it’s important.”
“You got it.”
I strode back to my office with great purpose, and found Darla with her high heels off, marching on the treadmill barefoot, while the walk-back-and-forth channel played on the bigscreen and Carl scanned a dusty old book.
“We need to figure this out,” I announced.
Both of my officemates gave me a look that said, No shit, Sherlock.
“We do,” I insisted. Because if I was going to go to Laura Kim and demand a copy of my permanent record, I’d better have some way to diagnose a medium.
Darla stopped the motor and stepped off. “The echoes we’re using now just aren’t enough. And we both know that even killing someone wouldn’t produce a reliable spirit to test with. The woman in the stairwell was gone within minutes. I don’t know of anyplace with a reliable ghost. Do you?”
We might be able to find Jackie prowling around my old apartment, though I doubted she’d take kindly to being my guinea pig. If not her, then what about the creeper by Jim’s Original, the guy who was always looking to joyride in unsuspecting U of I students? I hadn’t yet managed to send him packing. Oh, I’d given it a good try, all right. Several, in fact. But he was too strong for salt and Florida water. Like a belligerent drunk at last call, he needed someone to force him toward the exit. And giving him a personal escort to the veil felt too damn risky without dangerous psyactives in my veins and a GhosTV cranking in the background. Bringing potential mediums out to meet him would be the equivalent of leaving your car running with the keys in the ignition…then sticking a TAKE ME sign on the windshield. “There’s this one jagoff…but I’d rather not expose anyone to him who’s not trained yet.”
Darla shuddered. “We’d need someone safe. You know what I mean? A sweet little old lady who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Just because someone’s old doesn’t make them ethical. You never know how someone will react to the smallest taste of power. And then there’s the logistics, even with all our FPMP connections. Taking the staff to sit a bedside vigil, I can’t imagine we could do groups any bigger than four or five, plus one of us there to evaluate…that could take months.”
On the big screen, the agent, a broad-shouldered guy in a black suit, reached Con’s old desk, turned, and walked back. And then Carl surprised me by asking a question. “How have you been choosing the agents you’re testing?”
“They’re all NPs,” I said.
“I know that. But how are you prioritizing them?”
Did alphabetically count? “I’m…not. I’ve been going down the list.” Suddenly that felt phenomenally inefficient. “Did you have some other way in mind?”
“You mentioned talking to the TV,” he said to Darla. “And so did Richie.”
“I was just excited to show off my Cantonese. But that reminds me of something else—I got my hearing tested multiple times because I heard whispers so much, my pediatrician thought I had tinnitus.”
“Lucky for you it wasn’t schizophrenia,” I said. Out loud. Before I could check myself.
Darla said, “Oh,” and looked away.
Carl didn’t acknowledge it. I had a feeling he didn’t really do big emotional displays. Briskly, he went on. “So you talk to other mediums, figure out what you’ve got in common. Narrow the testing down to some likely candidates. Then talk to them and see what you think. Maybe they’ll see whatever it is you see in Constantine’s old office. Or maybe there’s some other way you’ll know. But you’ll find what you’re looking for a lot sooner without having to watch eight hundred and forty-six NPs walking back and forth all day.”
So did he want me to solve the whole medium dilemma, or was he a possessed medium trying to misdirect me? Because that plan sounded awfully simple.
But apparently, where mediums were involved, even the simplest of plans was unworkable. Darla said, “There are no other mediums to talk to. The only other medium I’ve spoken to since training is Vic.” She said my name as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
I felt somewhat smug when I said, “I can get ahold of Faun Windsong.”
“Oh, great,” Darla replied. “Faun and her purported ancestors. She was worse than Richie, because she at least had the intellectual capacity to spin a convincing lie. Here’s my take on Faun Windsong: mediumship was all wishful thinking on her part and she didn’t actually sense a damn thing.”
A memory of her scrawling messages on the floor with a burning lump of charcoal made me shudder. “Don’t be so sure.”
Chapter 24
Even though she was the director of PsyTrain, the biggest psychic training facility on the West Coast, maybe even the country, because we were old friends, Faun Windsong made the time to take my call. “I think it’s commendable that you’re putting together some new resource material,” she said. “Everything out there is completely outdated. There was that big rush of exploration in the seventies and eighties when Marie St. Savon was all over the news, but then nothing. Even once the official reports came out.”
I wasn’t necessarily sure mediums were as few and far between as they seemed to be. Mediumship encompasses a lot more than just talking to dead people. Maybe it was just difficult to tell if your subtle bodies were sliding around. “Anything you could tell us about your early experiences would
be great,” I said.
Faun gave a wistful sigh through the speakerphone. “Things were so different back then, weren’t they? Only three channels on TV, cable if you were lucky, and the whole family shared the same phone. Maybe that’s why we all played with Ouija boards.”
I never had, but even with my faulty memory, I recalled that my general selection of toys was so poor that I could attribute it to a lack of funds rather than anything more foreboding.
“Obviously,” she said, “the pointer isn’t going to move across the board of its own accord unless you’re a telekinetic.”
An image of Movie Mike sprang to mind. Young and cocky, making tiny origami cranes skitter across a tabletop…before the bad drugs put him in diapers and a wheelchair. Psyactives? Probably. As if I needed any more reason to avoid drugs.
“But back when we were kids,” she went on, “there were no levels and talents. I don’t think we even considered whether or not we might be psychic. We attributed all the power to the board. The spirit. I played with my best friends in the world, two girls and a boy. We all lived on the same street, and had gone to the same school from kindergarten on. Inseparable. The four musketeers. We were still in grammar school when I got the board and we started engaging with it, and at first, it was fun.”
Her voice went a little wistful. “Do you think we’re all tapped in to a greater intelligence? I like to think so, but the questions a ten-year-old would think to ask aren’t exactly earth-shattering. Questions about who we were going to marry and how many children we’ll have. Not Dave, he wanted to know if he’d ever play for the Bears. But the rest of us, all we really aspired to was settling down and making a home.”
Which, it turned out, she never had. Unless you counted PsyTrain, but that really wasn’t the same.
“As far as I know, none of those predictions came true. I’ve never seen precognitive ability go hand in hand with Lightworking. Maybe they’re mutually exclusive. Anyhow, it was when we started asking for advice and not predictions that the board’s answers started changing.
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