PsyCop 1: Among the Living

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “Please,” I mumbled against the window while his tongue traced the divot between my balls.

  “Please what?” he said, his mustache tickling me right below the asshole while his hot breath had me squirming.

  Damn him for making me say it. “Suck me,” I said, and it hardly even sounded like my own voice saying something so porno. He reached a hand around the front of me just enough to press my stiff cock downward and aim it between my thighs, toward his mouth. He led with his chin and could hardly reach me, but my whole body bucked against the glass when he dragged his lower lip over my cockhead, swirled at it with his tongue, and teased my slit between long, leisurely sucks of the tip.

  “Please, oh God. Please do it deep.”

  He slid his hot mouth from me and then flipped me around, one strong hand keeping me from tripping over the wad of clothing at my feet. “That’s right,” he said, caressing the side of my cock with his cheek. “I want to look up into your face while you come.”

  And then my awkwardness increased exponentially as I realized Jacob Marks was gonna stare at me while my cock sank into his throat. He was gorgeous—simply beautiful. The most handsome man I’d ever been with, that I ever even dreamed I’d be with. And yet it was easier to spread myself wide open and half naked on that damn window than it was to look into his eyes.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the rhythm he set, on the exquisite suction he maintained and the way he opened his throat every few strokes to take me all the way in. But then I heard a murmur of distant laughter—maybe just some tourists on the lake, but maybe not—and I opened my eyes again to keep myself with Marks, anchored in the present, among the living.

  I grabbed his short hair, struggling to find something to hold on to, and he grasped me by the hips and sucked hard. My whole body tensed, poised on a painful brink, and then everything crashed open, my hips bucking as Marks rode out my orgasm. His fingers sank deep into my hipbones with a force that’d leave bruises.

  Marks pulled off slowly and gave my wet, red cockhead a lingering lick while I stared down at him, dazed. He looked up at me for a long moment, and then kissed it again. And licked it. I pulled back from him, quelling the need to giggle at the sensitivity. “Stop it, Marks. You’re killing me.”

  He sat back on his heels, still fully clothed, and licked his lips. “Why don’t you call me Jacob?” he suggested.

  Chapter 10

  Marks—Jacob, I mean—snores a little. I think I was relieved to learn it. If he was absolutely perfect, I’d have to be suspicious.

  I woke around six, and while it would’ve been nice to get a few more hours in, I was surprised to have slept as soundly as I had. I hadn’t spent a night in another man’s bed since…I thought back. Maybe eight years earlier. That college professor who was always high—on weed, not Auracel. That was back before they even made Auracel and I’d needed to take Neurozamine with a Benadryl chaser to shut out the voices.

  Eight years. I felt old. Jacob mumbled a little, as if my stirring had bothered him, and then rolled onto his back and settled into the long, slow breaths of deep sleep.

  I stared at his gorgeous profile and told myself, yet again, that I was actually sleeping with him and that he’d been the one to initiate it. Maybe I’d just been poised for a little good luck. It was about time.

  I’d showered and made a pot of coffee by the time Jacob shuffled out of his bedroom in nothing but a pair of blue paisley boxers. “It’s seven o’clock,” he said, squinting. “Are you crazy?”

  “They did treat me for schizophrenia for a couple of years before they figured out I was talking to real dead people,” I replied. I’d meant it as a joke, but it’d come out kind of edgy.

  Jacob looked me in the eye for a long moment before he sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Well, you’re not a kid in an institution anymore,” he said. He took a sip of the coffee and winced, then scooped a few spoonfuls of sugar into it. “You’re a cop. You can speed. You can carry a gun. You can tell other people what to do and they’d damn well better do it.”

  Maybe in his world. He was a big, strapping guy with a deep voice and a piercing gaze that could nail you to the wall. I just talked to dead people.

  But Jacob didn’t see me that way. Psychs were like shiny new toys to him, endlessly fascinating and inspiring. If he felt cheated that he only had access to five senses, he didn’t let it slow him down much. And why should it if he could demand the services of two federally licensed Psychs and a suspended cop with the elusive gift of sí-no?

  “Someone told Warwick I was talking to Gutierrez,” I reminded him as he speed-dialed Carolyn.

  “And?”

  “And he said he’d suspend me if….”

  “Carolyn? Hey. Let’s get together at my place today for some brainstorming. No, you don’t have to bring anything. Mmm hm. Yeah, I do have some ideas, but it’ll be easier to just show you when you get here. Right. Bye bye.”

  I got Lisa’s number from the Fifth Precinct and convinced her to take a cab over to Jacob’s. She insisted that there wasn’t much she could do without her gun and badge, but I reminded her that she’d been at the Blakewood scene and seen the victim with her own eyes. We’d just bat some ideas around, I told her. I hung up and looked at Jacob. He had that grin on. Okay, and maybe I was also a little curious about how far sí-no could actually be taken.

  The girls arrived at Jacob’s around noon and we convened around a table full of salty Chinese take-out. “So you’ve played the sí-no game most of your life,” Carolyn said, “but haven’t had any formal training.”

  Lisa nodded. I think Carolyn intimidated her. Heck, Carolyn intimidated me a little.

  “We’ll need to be careful how we phrase our reports,” Carolyn said. “You’re not officially part of this investigation at this time.” She looked at me. “Unless you think you can convince Sergeant Warwick…?”

  “Not a chance. I thought he was gonna have an aneurysm.”

  “Fine. Then we’ll just need to be aware that anything Lisa says is unofficial. Nothing appears in the report. If her talents lead us to the murderer, fine. But we’ll have to scrape together some kind of evidence that could’ve plausibly led us there besides the sí-no game. Got it?”

  “Carolyn can’t simply lie,” Jacob winked at her. “The downside to her talent.”

  Carolyn ignored him and consulted her notepad. “Let’s establish some boundaries first.” She fired off a series of questions about current events and other factual things to establish a baseline.

  “Does Lawrence Avenue run North-South?”

  “No.”

  “Do I have an aunt named Mabel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has Jacob ever owned a dog?”

  “No.”

  Carolyn looked to Jacob, and he nodded. “Poor baby,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching. He smiled. Carolyn turned her attention back to Lisa. “Am I happy?”

  Lisa stared.

  “Well?”

  “I—I dunno.”

  “Too broad,” Carolyn said, scribbling notes. “Do I like my job?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You just let me unnerve you—don’t worry about it. Not everything can be answered yes or no. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it’s neither. And sometimes the question is just too vague.”

  It occurred to me that Carolyn would make a good Psych Coach. She was just so nonchalant about it all, and yet you could see she had all eight cylinders firing. Plus, she knew if you were lying. Okay, maybe that part was a little bit scary.

  “All right. Let’s look at the case. You understand you are here in an unofficial capacity.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Let’s focus on the killer. Is the killer male?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about the anal penetration and blushed. Lisa knew I was with Jacob. And Carolyn? Jacob said he was out to her. So she probably knew, too, because if the subject had come up at all, it wasn’t as
if he could hedge. I blushed harder and drank some soda, tilting the huge cup back to hide my face.

  “Is he Caucasian?”

  “He….” Lisa stared off as if she had to search for the sí-no.

  “Is he Latino?”

  Lisa thought hard.

  Carolyn scribbled some notes and then looked up. “Is he of mixed heritage?”

  “No.” Lisa looked as if she’d surprised herself. “No, he’s not.”

  Carolyn tried a barrage of ethnicities: Greek, Lebanese, Egyptian, every Asian type she could think of, and on and on. Jacob and I chimed in too, but all of our guesses were definite “no”s.

  After fifteen minutes of hunting, Carolyn held up her hand. “Let’s move on,” she said. “We’ll wear her out if we continue in a nonproductive vein. She’s a resource, not a suspect.”

  “Unofficially,” Jacob said.

  “Unofficially.” Carolyn turned to face Lisa, her hands on her knees. “Let’s look at his history. Has he killed more than two victims?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than two in this city?”

  “No.”

  “Is he intending to kill again?”

  “Yes, I think.”

  “Too vague,” I said. “Maybe he’s crazy and he doesn’t even realize he’s killing them.”

  “Right,” said Jacob. “He’s so sexy they just die from the touch of his dick.”

  I felt my face flush so red at that one I had to hide it in the napkin, but Lisa went pale.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “You’re kidding,” said Jacob. “Yes?”

  “There’s something paranormal at the heart of this,” Carolyn said, mostly to herself, as she jotted some more notes.

  “Yes,” said Lisa, and I shivered.

  Chapter 11

  We rested awhile, turning on the news, which nobody watched, and then they grilled Lisa again. I could tell she was getting fatigued, but she’s a tough girl and she was willing to keep going with it late into the night.

  If we couldn’t get an I.D. on the killer from the witnesses, Jacob reasoned, we’d just have to get a look at him ourselves. We narrowed our questions down from, “Is he in the city?” to “Is he east of…?” “Is he north of…?” “Is he on this block?” “Is he in this building?” “This apartment?”

  I think even Lisa was amazed at the power of the sí-no in the hands of a pair of relentless questioners.

  “Does he live in this apartment?” Carolyn asked.

  “No.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “No.”

  Jacob stood up. “I think we’d better pay Casanova a visit. Right now. You go home,” he told Lisa. “No gun, no badge—it’s safer for you that way.” He turned to me. “You riding with us?”

  The image of me riding in the back seat like a little kid returned. “I’ll…uh…take my car.”

  Carolyn verified the address with me and I nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, and we were off.

  I turned off the GPS and drove there myself. We headed for the northern edge of Boystown again, not two blocks from the record store where the clerk I’d dated used to work. I wanted Maurice. Or Lisa. Or even to be sitting in that damn back seat. I turned the GPS back on just to have a little company, though since I hadn’t entered a destination, its tasteful British voice was silent.

  An SUV pulled away from the curb right next door to the apartment building and I pulled in, glanced around, and found Jacob parking across the street. We met up at the gate.

  This gate actually locked, unlike mine, but Jacob ran a pocketknife down the edge and it popped right open. We trooped across the courtyard to the far right vestibule, and Jacob studied the apartment numbers by the beam of his penlight. “Here’s the one,” he said, tapping on the name “J. Barlow.” “Get one of the neighbors to let us in.”

  Carolyn glanced up to see which windows were lit. “They’re less likely to hide from her,” Jacob explained. “Strangers don’t realize that she’s the one they need to be afraid of, not me.”

  “Ha ha,” she said dryly, then pushed a button. A woman’s voice said “hello.” “Official police business, ma’am. Please buzz us in.”

  A crackle that sounded kind of like, “…bzzt…finally here…called…” came through the speakers and the inner door clicked open. Music with a heavy, thudding beat flooded out.

  We jogged up to the second floor and stopped. Someone’s stereo blared so loud that I could feel the vibration through the soles of my shoes. Carolyn gestured to me and I bent so she could talk in my ear, not that I thought the suspect would’ve heard her if she’d shouted aloud. “Loud music—like the first victim.”

  And maybe the second, for all we knew. The other half of Ryan Carson’s duplex had been empty that weekend. That’s why it’d taken so long to discover his body.

  Jacob scowled at the unmarked doors. We were looking for apartment 2a. But there were three doors to choose from. Was ‘a’ on the far left or the far right? I touched one door, then another, but they were both rattling equally from the cranked up stereo. Jacob gestured for Carolyn to go with me, then pulled out his gun and approached the left-hand door—the most likely door, in my mind, if the lettering system went left to right like a western alphabet.

  Of course, the right-hand door was closer to the stairs, and would be the first door you’d approach. I drew my gun and wished Maurice was there. He wasn’t very quick, but he was accurate.

  Jacob’s hand was on his doorknob and he watched me to make sure I’d do the same. I put my hand on mine and felt the vibration carry right through it. Jacob nodded and we both tried our doors at once. Mine opened. I didn’t have time to see if his did or not.

  I held my gun at my side, camouflaged by my body. There was no need for the whole, “Police! Freeze!” business since we were acting out a routine noise call, but the thought of coming face to face with the mystery man gave me the creeps.

  Carolyn had her gun out, pointed to the floor. She edged to the right, my usual position, so I went left. I passed by the stereo and saw it was on. Framed photos on top had fallen over. I swallowed. I’d picked the magic door—lucky me.

  I wished I could turn the damn music down. The beat of generic technopop made my fillings rattle. But at least it hid the sound of our entry and would give us a chance to get a look at whatever we were up against.

  Carolyn ducked into a doorway then came out signaling clear. We made our way through a sparsely furnished dining room. I glanced into the kitchen—empty. She checked a bathroom. There was one room at the end of the hall, the door open a few inches with yellow light shining through the gap.

  Carolyn held my glance for a moment and then nodded. The bedroom. It was the only thing left. I nodded back and we burst in together, both our weapons drawn.

  It was like a bad porno, only I was there, front and center. A dozen candles ringed the bed, lighting the room in a warm, inviting glow. The pair on the bed were kissing while they fucked, and the muscles of the top’s buttocks flexed as he pushed in. The bottom was a tanned guy who clearly worked out. He lay back on the bed with his feet slung over his lover’s shoulders. The guy on top was tattooed and sinewy, his amber hair cut in a shag like an early-70’s glam rocker.

  Carolyn stepped back, but I just stared. The tattoos were so strange, colors and whorls, and they seemed to undulate as the man moved, always moving, caressing, thrusting.

  He couldn’t have heard us over the music. Couldn’t have seen us with his eyes closed. Yet somehow I could tell he knew we were there. He raised his head to look, breaking the kiss, and that’s when I knew for sure that he was our killer.

  Something stretched between his mouth and his lover’s. It was thick, viscous, and thinner in the center than either end, like the tanned guy was full of syrup and the tattooed guy was sucking it out. It quivered there between them, glistening and slimy, and then it grew so thin in the middle that it snapped.

  I know it was probably there j
ust a nanosecond. But I saw what I saw. When this gelatinous funk snapped back toward the guy on the bed, there was a face in it, a stretched-out, human face. And it looked like it was screaming.

  Then I staggered back, sickened by the sight of that ooze, but Carolyn was at my side with her gun leveled at the tattooed guy. “Freeze,” she shouted, her voice hardly audible over the music. “Police!”

  He cocked his head and looked at her as if she were the most peculiar specimen, and then he looked back at me, and somehow, into me. He opened his mouth.

  I didn’t want to know what was in there. I tried to look away, but the strength had leeched right out of me. I didn’t have enough left to even avert my eyes. I’d rather see anything but that sickening maw. But there it was, filling my vision, opening wide.

  He was displaying himself to me, I think. Showing me that inside him was nothing, an absolute void. Pitch black where teeth and tongue and throat should have been. Flat black and featureless, like a poorly doctored photo. Nothingness had never been so scary.

  And then he screamed.

  At least, that’s the best way I can describe it. It was more like the shriek of a train trying to brake, hitting too many discordant, screeching pitches all at once. Horribly loud, even over the blare of the music, loud enough that it hurt, badly, and I shrank back and covered my ears.

  I saw the dresser mirror beside me shatter, rather than hearing it. It was almost beautiful, like snow falling. A thousand shards glittering as they rained against my side.

  Then the windowpane blew out, and gauzy curtains fluttered through with the force of the blast, like a gale had whipped up inside the room and sent them streaming toward the outdoors.

  The guy with nothing inside him stretched, very quickly, until he was more of a rubbery line than a person. And he was out the window and gone before I could fully register how he’d even moved.

  The beat of the music continued to pound through the soles of my feet, but I realized I couldn’t hear it. My ears were still ringing from the sound of that metallic shriek the killer had made before he’d disappeared.