by J N Duncan
Nick gave a noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t feel his presence, but he could very easily come back, too. Shelby and I will check it out again today.”
It was time to change the subject. The creeping nerves of the situation were working their way in. Jackie knew she had killed someone, someone who didn’t deserve to die, a victim of circumstance and caught in the crossfire. It happened in law enforcement. You just hoped it never happened to you. The worst of it was, everyone else figured Morgan was the bad guy, and she was in no position to tell anyone what the truth of the matter was. It was not a subject she could afford to deal with right now.
“What have you reported about the incident? McManus is all nerved out wanting to ensure we have consistent stories. He’s not sure how to deal with the ghost business, though I guess I’m not either. I still don’t understand what’s happened to me, Nick.”
“None of us do,” he said. He laid a hand across one of her ankles. “But we’ve figured out some of it and we’ll figure out more until we get a firm grip on your abilities, Jackie. It’s just going to take a little time.”
She gave him a disheartened smile. “Prefer it was sooner than later. Seeing and talking to ghosts is one thing, but this channeling bullshit can go away.”
“Pick up your feet,” he said.
“What?”
“Lift your feet up. You’re stressed. I’m going to help you out a bit here because you’ve got a shit day ahead of you.”
Jackie narrowed her gaze at him but lifted her feet. “What are you going to do?”
Nick slid over until his lap was beneath her feet. “Pressure points. You familiar with that?”
“I’ve heard Laur talk about them,” she replied.
“If it makes you feel better, think of it as a glorified foot rub.”
He pulled off a sock, her bare toes staring up at him, unpainted and in need of a trim. “My feet aren’t much to look at right now. I haven’t—”
“Your feet are fine, Jackie. I haven’t had a pedicure in months either.” His hands weren’t overly large, but they easily wrapped around her foot. The coolness of his hands was soothing on her aching feet. “If I do this right, it’ll help. If not, it’s no loss because it’s still a foot rub. Shelby used to swear by them, but I haven’t given her one in about thirty years.” His hands relaxed for a moment as he stared at her. “You look unsure. It’s not going to hurt. Trust me.”
Jackie shifted her gaze from his hands up to his face. Perhaps she looked as dumbfounded as she felt. “I know. It’s just . . .” You really want to rub my feet? Seriously? “Never mind. Go ahead.”
“Good,” he said. “Just lay back and relax. Try to think about something unrelated to anything going on here. Walk in the woods or swim in the ocean. Something you find peaceful, and in thirty minutes you’ll feel much better going into the rest of your day.”
Walking sounded like a very bad idea just then, so Jackie opted for sitting in the woods on a large, mosscovered stone near a stream that rushed and tumbled over the rocks below. A groan involuntarily escaped her lips when Nick’s fingers began to work their way into the muscles and tendons of her feet. She could feel herself sinking into that fresh, earthysmelling moss, the cool mist from the water hitting her legs, and a warm sun caressing her face.
“OK. You seem pretty relaxed now,” Nick said.
Jackie tilted her head back down to look at him. “Thirty minutes already?” It barely felt like five.
“Thirty-five,” he said. “I was feeling generous.”
She wiggled her toes and rotated her feet. The bones had all turned to mush. Best of all, her headache had receded to a manageable, dull throb. “Damn, Nick. Shelby was an idiot to leave that.”
His face eased into a pleasurable smile. “My hands weren’t the problem. I was a depressed, grumpy, sonofabitch.”
She could certainly relate. “You might have to come over every morning and do this.”
One corner of his mouth turned up even more. “Perhaps I shall.”
Not serious! Hello, cowboy. I didn’t literally mean it. Not really. But I kinda sorta did maybe. “As long as you stop at Annabelle’s,” she said, trying to cover up the warm flush flooding her cheeks, and reached over to grab the other croissant from the bag on the coffee table. “I actually feel capable of going in now. Thanks, Nick. Really.”
“Anytime,” he said and shifted himself out from under her feet. Before he got up, Nick stared at her very seriously, his bright, brown eyes dancing, and said, “Really.”
Jackie felt the squirmy worms of nerves wiggle into her belly. Nick’s subtle, or perhaps they never had been subtle, cues about his interest in her were growing by the day or so it felt. They had not even had a real date yet and a couple of kisses did not count. Nothing would happen until they had gone on a real date. There had to be some sort of normalcy to them if it was going to happen at all, and nothing to this point had been anywhere close to that. Regardless, a small part of her grinned at the thought of reaching up and hooking her fingers in that six-shooter buckle of his and pulling him down on top of her.
“So, what are you doing today?” she asked instead, and managed to stand up on loose, wobbly legs.
“Shelby and I are going to see if we can track down Rosa or Vasquez. At this point, either one will do. We’ll keep in touch with McManus.”
“No word from Laurel about what she’s found over . . . there?”
“She’ll have walked, since she had no reference points to travel to in that area of town. Hopefully she finds something.”
“Yeah,” Jackie said, remembering Laur’s voice calling out to her at the end of her dream. “Hope she knows to get out if she finds Rosa.”
“She’ll leave her alone and discuss it with us if that’s what she finds,” Nick replied. “My suspicion is we’ll find her here, controlling someone else to get this Vasquez fellow.”
“Let’s hope they can avoid Morgan’s fate.”
Jackie,” he said in a low voice, “you can’t blame yourself for events you don’t have a lot of control over. Trust me, I’m an expert. The point is, you can’t, and—”
“I know. I know.” She waved off his words. She knew what they were going to be. She had told them to others and herself. Still, when it came down to brass tacks, all of that went out the window. The haunting specter of doubt would be nagging at her for days or weeks to come. “I’ll get over it, but right now I still am not even sure what happened.”
Nick nodded. “Understandable.” He began to make his way toward the door. “OK if I call you later, see how you’re feeling?”
“Not sure how available I’ll be with the Standards guys crawling all over me, but sure. I’d um . . . I’d like that.” And there it was, an open invitation. For better or worse Jackie had just put it out there for Nick to run with. She followed him to the door, knowing full well he could let himself out.
Nick opened the door but then turned and nearly bowled Jackie over. “Call Shelby or me if anything odd comes up.”
“I will. I just want to go in and tell them what happened and then get back home and sleep for fifteen hours. That’s all I plan on doing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said and his hand came up under her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “Plans tend to go astray around here most of the time.”
Jackie gave him a little shrug but didn’t pull away. “Shit happens. What can you do?”
His lips came down, soft and quick, just a light brush of a kiss. “Please, be careful.” He stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll call if we find anything useful.”
Jackie smiled and closed her door. She felt so good at the moment she wondered if Nick had worked a little more than just his fingers into her feet.
The mood took a sharp right turn into Shitsville in about the time it took for Jackie to dress and drive over to headquarters and park her butt in her chair. Just getting from the parking garage to her chair had felt like it took undue effort. A Post-it was stuck to
her monitor from Belgerman, reminding her of the meeting with the BPS guys at eleven-thirty. McManus had left to track down leads on Vasquez, but at least he had left her a copy of his report on her desk, along with a copy of the morning paper turned to an article about the incident.
Tillie had left a brief but kind message to drop by her office in the afternoon if it was convenient or to call and set up an appointment in the next couple of days. That wasn’t about her issues. That was regulations. She had been involved in a shooting and the visit was mandatory. In some ways it might be preferable to talk about her issues instead of about killing Morgan. Maybe she would not be going home early after all.
It was only a few minutes after ten, so Jackie had some time to deal with getting all her facts straight and go over what she wanted to say to the Standards guys. They would be thorough, more so than usual because Morgan had been a cop. Every damn i had to be dotted and every t crossed in these situations or you could end up with a public relations disaster. Jackie picked up the paper and skimmed through the article.
FBI STOPS ROGUE COP’S VENGEFUL GANGLAND KILLING SPREE. Poor Morgan. Jackie felt even worse for his wife and daughter. It looked like he had gone insane. Nice legacy. There had to be a way to inform the family and keep it hushed. Maybe in a couple of weeks when the media frenzy had died down over it. Or a couple of months. Sometimes these things would drag on and on. She would have to ask John what his thoughts were. Damned if she would let psychic politics ruin the family. They would be screwed on benefits, too, without any way to prove what had happened.
Jackie threw the paper hard into her wastebasket, which sent it spilling into the aisle. “Damn it.” She wheeled over and reached down to pick it back up and was greeted by familiar-looking shoes and crisply pleated pants.
“Got my note?” He pointed at her monitor where the Post-it used to be.
“I’ll be ready, sir, much as I can at least. I had one question, though, related to all of this.” He raised an eyebrow but said nothing and took a sip from his coffee. Jackie lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “What happens to Morgan’s family in all of this? Morgan, the real Morgan, was as much a victim in this as everyone else. He wasn’t a murderer.”
Belgerman gave her a pained smile. “I know, but we can’t let that be public knowledge. It would be a disaster for the department. The best we can do, which is all that we are going to do”—he motioned with his coffee cup at her—“is make sure that whatever pension and insurance he had coming in case of death on the job is correctly and fully paid out.”
“You don’t think Beverly Morgan will wonder about that?”
“Would you want to lose a twenty-year vet’s benefits?”
Jackie shrugged. “Nope, guess I wouldn’t. I suppose that’ll have to do. Which sucks by the way. He had a thirteen-year-old daughter.”
“I’m sorry, Jackie. That’s the best we’re going to be able to do. You good with that?” Which was John’s kind way of asking if he could be assured she wouldn’t go behind his back and do something stupid and the complete opposite.
“I’m good, sir.”
“Great. You have any questions about the BPS before your meeting with them, feel free to ask. I’ll be in my office until lunch.”
Sure as hell the sky would fall if the public found out the FBI used psychics. She understood though. It was a credibility issue. Ironic that she was now becoming one. Jackie scooted back to her desk and picked up McManus’s report. “My whole fricking life has credibility issues.”
After reading through the report, and then a second time to make sure she had got everything, Jackie sighed, closed the report, and leaned back in her chair while rubbing at her temples. They would be all over this case. Things just did not add up well. The biggest problems were a perp three seconds from death who managed to stumble around a corner and fire off two perfectly aimed shots before falling back to die, and an agent lying unconscious with a direct line of fire on the victim. Shooting Morgan was clear self-defense, but what the hell had happened after that? No matter how hard she tried, Jackie could remember nothing after that death grip around her neck and having her head slammed against the hardwood. There was just no way she could have done anything, right?
Jackie sat back up and called down to the forensics lab. There was one easy way to find out. She got herself transferred back to one of the lab techs. “This is Agent Rutledge up on five. You guys were running ballistic tests on the guns brought in from yesterday’s shooting incident?”
“I didn’t run them, but I can check for you right quick, Agent Rutledge,” the tech said. Jackie could hear the quiet clicking of a keyboard in the background. “Yeah, here we go. Two Glocks.”
“That’s it,” Jackie said. “Can you tell me how many rounds were fired from each one?”
“Looks like three from one and five from another.”
“Which was which?” she asked.
“Oh, um, five from the perpetrator’s weapon and three from—Hey! This is your gun, Agent Rutledge.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks for the info though. Big relief.”
She hung up. So despite the coroner’s evidence, which suggested that Morgan likely could not do what he did, he had fired five rounds. Rosa had managed to keep him going long enough to finish off her target. That woman was very dedicated to her revenge. Jackie could appreciate her as far as that went. It was the callous disregard for everyone in her way that put her over the line. Jackie supposed having your baby cut from you and being shot in the head would do that. You would not stop until you were done. Was Rosa done, though?
Jackie did not think so, unless Rosa had no choice. Without Morgan perhaps she could only stew in endless frustration over in Deadworld. Last night’s dream came back to her, disturbingly real in its vividness. Dreams like that were always unsettling. Rosa had spoken to her. The babe had screamed in her head, and Laurel had been there. Somewhere. It would have been good to see her, even in a dream.
Head propped on her hand, elbow on the desk, Jackie had started to drift, but then a metallic bite slathered her tongue and the scent of blood clogged her nostrils. She jerked back upright, coughing and reaching for her cup of cold coffee. “God! Gross.” Her pockets were empty of change to buy some gum, which would force her to go beg some from Belgerman, since the office was virtually empty. She decided to pass. If anything could, the office coffee would kill the taste.
Back at her desk, sipping on bitter coffee, Jackie worked on something she had done almost none of for at least three years. Incident reports. Laurel had taken that responsibility. She had done practically every bit of paperwork they had to do, and Jackie knew it was a lot. Government bureaucracy was rife with it. How did people do this kind of thing on a daily basis? Why did Laurel let her get away with never doing this crap? Groceries, paperwork, clothing, and even working the damn GPS. All of the annoying detritus of life, Laurel had constantly worked at, to keep it away from Jackie’s life so she could “focus on the job.”
Jackie sniffed away a tear, and made a face at the bile in her throat. She had to dab at her nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. How selfish could she have been or just bloody ignorant of what was going on around her? Either one was bad. Fuck. Did she have to have a moment now? At work of all places? The phone rang and Jackie glanced at the clock on her computer. It was eleven-twenty. No doubt a reminder call from John. But it was one of the BPS people, calling to say they were ready if she wanted to come down a few minutes early. Jackie let out a deep breath and told them she would be there at the allotted time.
Chapter 26
“Sleep in today?” Cynthia asked. She wore emerald green, a form-fitting skirt and jacket over a cream silk blouse. A simple thick band of gold adorned her neck and, contrary to her usual fashion, Cynthia had her hair down, gentle waves of walnut brown tumbling down her back.
Nick smiled. “Good morning, Cyn.” He paused. When was the last time he had seen her with her hair down? Not within the past cou
ple of years. “What’s the occasion? You look . . . good.”
“I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight,” she announced, beaming up at him. “My house is finally livable. Be another couple of weeks before it’s all finished, but I’m just glad to be able to sleep in my own house again if I want.”
“You have everything you need?”
The smile faltered a bit. “I’m fine, really. You’ve spent too much on me already.”
“Nonsense.” Nick reached out and laid his hand upon her arm. “I have more money than I will ever be able to spend, and you’re family. You need anything else for the house, just charge it to the account. Honestly, Cyn. You deserve to get anything you need.”
Her cheeks flushed a soft shade of pink. “Thank you, Nick. You . . . that means a lot. So,” she continued and turned back toward her desk, “what was that message all about? This about that FBI case you’re helping with?”
Why would she be so embarrassed about that? He had made it clear in the past that SI would take care of anything she needed. Nick watched her form-fitting skirt pivot around the corner of the desk and Shelby’s words about her crept back into his mind: Like she would ever say no to you. Did her feelings really go there? Nick pushed the question aside.
“Yeah. I want to find out if a certain spirit has moved on or not.”
“Sounds fun,” she said
“And we need to find the guy she’s after.”
“This guy kill her?”
“Believe so.”
“I’m in. Just tell me what, where, and when, Sheriff.”
Nick’s smile broadened. “Thank you. I’ll be in my office having some coffee. Come on in with Shelby when she gets here and I’ll tell you what we’re doing.”
“You seem . . . different today,” she said, giving him a curious eye. “I can’t even remember you having a smile like that on your face.”