PsyCop 1: Among the Living

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Carolyn was beside me, tugging at the sleeve of my sportcoat, but I was just too stunned to acknowledge her. Then she was gone and the music stopped reverberating, and the quality of the sonic aftershock changed somewhat in my own hearing. And then Jacob was there, shaking me by the shoulders, hard. “Vic,” his mouth said, judging by the shape of it. “Vic.”

  I tried to focus on him. I think he was clutching me so tightly he might’ve actually been hurting me, but I didn’t really care. Then Carolyn dragged him toward the bed and he left me there, leaning back against the closet door, standing amidst a spray of broken mirror.

  Chapter 12

  The sun was up by the time I was coherent enough to talk to Jacob. The paramedics said I was in shock. Jacob had done CPR on the tanned guy, one James Barlow, until the paramedics arrived, but it had been no use. James was victim number three—in our city, at any rate.

  We lingered in Barlow’s courtyard, well away from the plainclothes officers and the techs who were starting to swarm the scene. “I couldn’t hear anything over that music,” Carolyn said. “But Vic held his head like he was getting split in two.”

  “All right,” Jacob said. He pulled out his notepad. “So what did you see?”

  “Well,” Carolyn said, “the men were…together. Having intercourse. And the man, um…well, the killer, looked at us and opened his mouth, like he was yawning. And then the mirror and the window shattered and he was gone.”

  Jacob wrote very quickly. “Okay. But what did the killer look like?”

  “Caucasian. About forty-five. Short hair, salt and pepper. Brown eyes.”

  Jacob frowned. “That’s nothing like the other descriptions.” He turned to me. “Is that how he looked to you?”

  I shook my head. “Thirty, maybe less. Tattoos.” I felt myself color. “Actually, I thought he looked like a young David Bowie.”

  Carolyn looked away. “George Clooney,” she said.

  Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he considered Carolyn. “You got a thing for George Clooney?”

  Carolyn scowled at Jacob as if he was a jerk for even asking. “Don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not. I have a theory, and I know you can’t lie to me if I ask you something directly. So. Do you?”

  “I think he’s attractive, yes.”

  Jacob looked at me. “David Bowie fan?” He wasn’t making light of it, not in the least, but it still felt too personal to divulge that Bowie’d been my biggest masturbatory fantasy until I discovered flesh-and-blood boys who were willing to experiment with me.

  I thought of making a snide remark anyway, but I figured if Carolyn could admit her crush, I could admit mine. “What she said,” I echoed.

  At least Jacob gave me the courtesy of not verifying my truthfulness by double-checking it with Carolyn.

  “So our killer looks different to every person who sees him, tripping some part of the witness’ neurological wiring and showing him or her the image of someone they consider to be extremely attractive,” said Jacob.

  Carolyn considered. “And so a majority of people are going to see the killer as someone of their own ethnicity. But different ages, different particulars. We haven’t asked any of the witnesses whether or not they thought the suspect was attractive. But it might be a promising line of questioning to pursue.”

  Jacob stifled a yawn. “We’ve been at this more than twenty-four hours straight. I suggest we get some sleep and regroup at the Twelfth around two. That sound good to everybody?”

  Carolyn was halfway to her car before I’d even had the chance to agree. Jacob blocked me with his body before I could follow. “Stay with me,” he said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him over the residual ringing in my ears. Or maybe it was my brain.

  Relief washed over me, but it drained away as I realized that I really didn’t want Jacob to see me that way—spooked by some killer psychically disguised as David Bowie who sucked souls out of men while he fucked them. Because that was the only thing that syrupy stuff could’ve been. A soul.

  And the killer’d gotten too much of it before we’d arrived, and now James Barlow was on his way to the Coroner’s.

  “I really need to change my clothes,” I said, squeezing past Jacob as I tried to recall where I’d parked.

  Jacob fell into step beside me with a couple of long strides. “Then stop at your place first and then come over. You don’t look so good.”

  I neglected to say that I had to buy a jacket, actually, since both of mine had doubled as splatter guards in the past two days. Damn the police department’s dress code.

  I found where I’d parked and we approached the spot. “Two o’clock,” I told him, got into my car, and shut the door. I wouldn’t say he looked hurt standing there beside the car while the morning commuter traffic flowed behind him. But his self-assured grin was nowhere in sight, either.

  I pulled into the stream of traffic and gave the finger to some jagoff who honked at me. I’d wanted to stay with Jacob. In fact, I was kind of blown away that he’d even asked. But I felt like what I’d seen earlier had soiled me somehow, and taken a lot of the parlor-game fun out of my talent. And if Jacob figured that out, I’d go from being creepy and fun to just plain old creepy in his eyes.

  I wasted a good twenty minutes getting to SaverPlus, only to find it didn’t open until ten, and it was barely nine. Not having another hour to waste, I headed home and took a shower. I wish I could say it was a long one, but there just wasn’t time.

  And then I got into bed and closed my eyes. I’d been kinda scared that I might keep seeing that black, empty mouth again, the hole that led to nothing. But I could summon up images of lake skylines and whatnot to keep it at bay.

  The ringing in my ears was another thing entirely. I got back up and swabbed them out with Q-Tips, which changed nothing. I found a pair of earplugs in the back of a drawer and put them in. The ringing changed in pitch, but also seemed to intensify. Finally, I turned on the radio, desperately seeking something other than asinine morning DJ banter. I found a Spanish language station, which seemed okay at first, if a little chipper and bouncy. But then a commercial came on and it was so jarring it nearly blew me out of my bed.

  Finally, I flipped the dial until nothing but garbled noise came through, popped a Seconal, and passed out.

  Two o’clock was ancient history by the time I woke up—two o’clock in the afternoon, at least. It’d be two a.m. in about fifteen minutes. Shit.

  I checked my cell phone for messages. There were only a couple, both from Jacob. From two-thirty: “Vic. Your input would be helpful on this report—but if you can’t make it until tomorrow morning, that’d be fine, considering the shock. I let both of our Sergeants know what the paramedics said. We’ve got Archives researching to try to figure out what this thing is, based on Carolyn’s statement. Give me a call.” He left his home number.

  And then, from nine: “It’s me. Look, I hope I wasn’t out of line this morning. I just need to know that you’re okay. Call me.”

  I decided it wouldn’t be worth waking Jacob up just to tell him I’d overslept, so I texted him a note that said “SRY I MISSED U, WERE OKAY” It occurred to me that “we’re” looked more like “were,” but I was too lazy to find the apostrophe. I wondered briefly if SaverPlus was open at two a.m., and then considered that perhaps the shock hadn’t worn off yet. My ears still rang, but just a little, and I turned on the white plastic 9-inch TV in the living room to drown it out. Infomercials.

  Aside from the obvious concern in Jacob’s voice, the thing that stuck with me most was the idea that he and Carolyn thought they could put a name to this thing, this seductive souleater with a big, empty void inside him. And what if they could? What if it was actually some sort of known entity—and what if there was some sort of method or charm we could use to stop it?

  Each apartment unit in my building had a storage locker in the basement, behind the coin-operated washing machines. I kept my textbooks from Camp Hell down there. I figured I
might need them someday, though I didn’t want the evil I associated with them in my living space 24/7.

  As I dug the basement key out of my kitchen junk drawer, it occurred to me that maybe I could wash the marinara off my new jacket. It was from SaverPlus, after all. Maybe it was made out of indestructible, machine-washable polyester. I checked the label. Wool blend. Dry clean only. I wondered how bad it’d be if I machine-washed it anyway. And then I realized that since I didn’t own an iron, it probably wouldn’t do me any good to even try.

  I felt naked venturing down into the basement without a load of laundry to protect me. The narrow, dark stairs were a lot creepier at 3 a.m. than I’d imagined.

  I stepped carefully to avoid pissing off whoever else lived in the building and made my way down into the cellar. The part that housed the furnace and hot water heaters was closed off with some newish looking drywall, but the exterior walls were nasty, old limestone slabs with crumbling mortar and greenish mildew between. A bare 75-watt bulb shone scant inches from the top of my head, but the unfinished wooden floor joists above it were so dark that they seemed to eat the light. Kind of like the mouth of a certain creature whom I was absolutely not going to think about until I was safe and sound in my white apartment with every single light turned on.

  A gurgle sounded to the right of me and my glance snapped downward. I flinched back, thinking, “Rat!” But the thing that had caught my attention was barely visible, faint bluish lines that I had to squint to make out against a dark concrete floor.

  And then it came together all at once. A spectral baby, fists flailing, with an umbilical cord still attached.

  Jesus. Someone’d left a newborn to die down here. It could’ve been a month ago, it could’ve been half a century ago. I didn’t care. Humankind just sucked. If I had a bottle of Auracel in my hand I would’ve downed the whole thing in hopes of never seeing another fucking revenant.

  I stepped over the baby’s ghost and unlocked my storage unit, too disgusted to try to keep quiet any longer. I let the metal door bang open and yanked out an old nylon gym bag. How many times had I stepped over that damn baby and never seen it? It’d probably died somewhere around 3 a.m. and that’s when its presence was the strongest. Damn it all to hell. I was gonna have to start using a laundry service.

  I stomped back up toward the first floor. A door swung open on the landing and a guy in a robe came out to see what all the noise was about. He stepped into my path, but then recoiled and shut his door. I guess I must’ve looked pretty pissed off.

  Once I was back in my apartment, I turned on every damn light and left the TV going, tuned to a station I don’t receive so that it played nothing but a staticky white glow.

  I’ve never been booksmart, and I didn’t pay much attention to what they tried to teach me at Camp Hell unless it brought about immediate relief. And nothing had really done that except pharmaceuticals. But I remembered enough, if I pressed myself, to recall that there was a section on paranormal creatures in one of my texts.

  Vampires were the first thing that came to mind, but the two main categories I found were blood fetishists and psychic vampires. Since there’d been no blood at any of the scenes, maybe our killer was a psychic vampire, and that stuff I’d seen stretching between him and the victim was some kind of ectoplasm. I followed that line of thinking, about how the vampire was charismatic and seductive, and if he or she sapped a victim long enough, the drained person would eventually weaken and die.

  Except that didn’t make sense. The book said they’d die, not be utterly destroyed. It was a gradual thing, not the result of a one-night stand. And the thing we were hunting didn’t just drain people of energy. It ate their very essence.

  My eyes felt sandy. I closed the book and rubbed them, which made them feel worse, and went into the bathroom to see if I had any eye drops. I stopped in front of the mirror and stared hard, making sure the guy looking back was actually me.

  Sure, my hair was a mess, as usual, and I was working on three days’ worth of stubble. But my face itself was a wreck. Tiny red lines crosshatched my cheek, some crusted with dried blood, others just there, bled out. And my eyes were something from a bad horror flick, the whites all red with burst blood vessels. I’d always gotten some attention for my frost blue eyes, especially since they were set off by my black hair. But the red…it was a whole new look for me. Jacob had invited me over looking like this? Boy. He really did like his men creepy.

  That’d teach me to let mirrors explode on me. But my eyes—crap, that thing must’ve burst the blood vessels in my eyes with his scream. I shuddered and twisted open the eye drops, only to discover they had evaporated, leaving nothing but a tiny, plastic bottle crusted around the tip with salt.

  I watched the sun come up, then went to the drug store and grabbed some eye drops and sunglasses. After that I stopped off at the cleaner’s, only to determine that they kept items no longer than 90 days. I left them to deal with the marinara sauce, and then sat in the parking lot of SaverPlus until they opened.

  I bought two sportcoats. Both black. Tore the tags off and threw one in my trunk, put the other one on.

  Everything I needed to do had taken a lot longer than I’d thought it would, so I figured I’d better let Jacob know I was on my way. I peered over my sunglasses into my rearview mirror while I waited for him to pick up the phone. The part of my eyes that was supposed to be white was blood-crimson, even more hideous in natural light than it’d looked in my bathroom. No wonder Jacob had sounded worried.

  I got Jacob’s voicemail. “Hi,” I said. “I’m running a little late this morning, but I’ll meet you over at the Twelfth. Unless that’s not where you’re gonna be. In that case, call me.” Boy, was I slick or what?

  As I pulled up alongside the Twelfth, I realized that I could’ve called Jacob earlier instead of sitting outside SaverPlus twiddling my thumbs. I could’ve called Lisa, too, and filled her in. Sonofabitch, why was my brain such a sieve?

  I walked out and shifted my jacket, thinking that either I’d grabbed a different style or accidentally taken a 42. At least the sleeves were long enough. As I blew by the front desk, one of the plainclothes officers peeled out of his regular spot to intercept me. “Detective Bayne?”

  I stopped and turned, and wished I didn’t feel the need to wear my cheap new sunglasses inside. Between them and the overlarge jacket, the cop probably thought he was having an 80’s flashback. “Yeah?”

  “Sergeant Warwick called. He wants to see you at the Fifth Precinct.”

  I felt myself sag inside. I used to coexist peacefully with Warwick, but lately everything he said to me made me cringe. Or maybe it’d been Maurice who’d actually gotten along with him all these years.

  “Okay. I’ll just touch base with Detective Marks….”

  “He’s not here. I think you really need to see Sergeant Warwick.”

  My blood curdled in my veins as I wondered if something had happened to Jacob. I hopped in my car and slapped the police light on the roof, doing ninety all the way to the Fifth Precinct. I barreled through the front doors, up the stairs, past Betty’s desk and into Warwick’s office.

  He stood up and glared at me. “What’s with the sunglasses?” he demanded. “Are you on drugs?”

  I stopped and stared, flabbergasted by his question, but too scared to challenge it. “Where are my partners?” I asked him. “Have you heard from them?”

  “Marks and Brinkman are at the Commissioner’s office, giving their reports about the murder scene you discovered last night.”

  “Oh,” I said, and my heartbeat slowed. “Okay. Good.”

  “But they’re not your partners anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You’re off the case. In fact, you’re suspended.” He tapped on the desk with one thick, callused finger. “Your badge and your gun.”

  “Suspended? What for?”

  “I warned you not to leak information to Gutierrez—and who did you run to the second you left
my office?”

  I gaped at Warwick, wondering who could’ve possibly told him we’d gone to Gutierrez for help. Could he have a wire tap? Someone tailing her? Wouldn’t he need a court order for any of that?

  Whatever he had on me, I had no idea how to talk around it. I put my badge and my gun on his desk, thinking that I’d always imagined it would feel worse to give them up. It felt like nothing, like paying for the sunglasses or asking the pharmacist about eyedrops.

  It felt mundane.

  “And just so you don’t get any bright ideas, Gutierrez is in police custody.”

  “You arrested her?” My voice cracked.

  “She hasn’t been charged with anything…yet. But the two of you are through playing psychic telephone.”

  “What the…? You can’t just hold her. She can sue you. I hope she does.”

  “And then she and I can discuss the consequences of all those tests she cheated on.”

  Shit. I wished I was up on my legal rights, but I’d never even considered that I might be suspended. Never even known anyone who was.

  Warwick sat down and took my badge in his palm. I thought maybe he looked regretful as he stared down at it, but what did I know? My eyes hurt. “Go home and get some rest, Bayne. You look like shit. Let Marks handle it.”

  “I need to give my statement,” I said, grasping for some way to keep hold of the investigation. “I haven’t given my statement.”

  “I’ll tell Marks. But for now, Vic, just go.”

  Chapter 13

  I was glad that voicemail doesn’t register hang-ups, because then Jacob would know that I called him approximately every ten minutes, although I only left him one message where I stammered something about being really sorry that I wasn’t at the Twelfth like I’d said I would be, and that my text message was supposed to say “we’re” and not “were,” but that I was feeling much better and I really wanted to see him. I somehow managed to keep from apologizing for even being born. Barely.