Chapter 38
I thumbed in, Are you avoiding me? and hit send. And waited. And before I could threaten to show up at Carolyn’s house and embarrass her by shooting the moon on her front lawn for all her neighbors to see, she texted back a single word.
Yes.
Not fair. She started this whole thing by bringing Surly Guy into my shop. She owed me an explanation as to where she’d found him, and what his deal was, and who the hell had told him about Miss Mattie. Most people ask about her the first time they see my ink, at least if their mouth isn’t busy on my dick. But I don’t go into detail. I’ll say it’s a memorial tattoo, and that’s all anyone needs to know.
Detectives being what they are, though, I’m sure it was possible either Carolyn or Jacob could’ve dug up dirt on Miss Mattie. Though when I plugged in her name and scoured the internet myself, my own searches brought up nothing. And they wouldn’t even have the advantage of knowing her surname was Hicks, and she spent umpteen hours a week in church praying the rosary, and when she laughed it was this big, deep booming sound, and she brought me homemade oatmeal cookies in the pocket of her apron, wrapped in paper towels with flowers printed on them. They would only know the name Mattie. And that shouldn’t tell them squat.
I glanced at the old photo tacked to the wall behind my monitor. There she was in her groovy seventies multicolored scarf.
Hmph. Psychic medium, my ass. The only thing the PsyPig had actually mentioned was her weight and her head wrap. And I’d been so startled, he almost had me going for a minute there. Almost. But not quite.
When I looked at that picture, I’d try to remember the specific moment it was captured, as if dredging up the somatic feeling of the scene would reconnect me to Mattie herself. Why? I suppose she was the only one who made my childhood self feel like I wasn’t in dire need of improvement. Everyone else qualified their affection with “if only.” If only I could sit still for half a second. If only I would focus on my grades. If only I’d be like all the other Stepford children up and down the block. But not Miss Mattie. When I was with Mattie, I was enough. Just the way I was.
Victor wouldn’t have been able to glean any of that. Not from a photo.
I often wonder if most mediums are really telepaths tuning in on people’s minds and parroting back snatches of remembered conversation and glimpses of memory. I knew mind reading was real—I’d seen Carolyn in action. But ghost talking? It would take more than the description of a photograph to convince me that mediumship was legit. It bothered me, the notion that someone might be privy to knowledge that transcended life itself. Some things aren’t meant to be known, at least it seemed that way to me. And how did they test for it, anyway? Hold seances on the other side of the acoustic dividers?
The world wide web had no answers for me. If only I could think of some better terminology to search with. The search term psychic medium brought up a bunch of ads, and REAL psychic medium was no better. Psychic medium PsyCop Victor Chicago was a bust too, just a bunch of Chicago PD propaganda for their block parties and after school programs, some astrologers and a ghost tour.
I didn’t really expect to find much when I navigated to the psychic wiki in search of more info on the PsyCop program. Jacob’s smug picture was all over the place, but Carolyn’s wasn’t. So the lack of anyone named Victor—the lack of any psychic medium at all—didn’t tell me anything conclusive.
The ads in the sidebar seemed psychic themselves. The books I’d scoped out, the clubs I’d perused in hopes of a decent drink special, the leopard Doc Martens I couldn’t possibly afford. With each click of the wiki, the ad refreshed, and a new and tantalizing glimpse of something I thought I wanted was presented for my scrutiny in hopes that repeated exposure would wear me down, and I might change my mind, surrender, and hit the buy button.
I ignored the ad and focused on my search. What other search terms could I use? Spiritual? Occult? Metaphysical? How about…ethical? That last one seemed promising, at least until I got a load of what they did to my sidebar…with Red Turner’s face gazing out at me from the electronic ether, all heavy-lidded bedroom eyes that knew way more than they should, and a supercilious tilt to his slightly raised eyebrow.
Inner Beauty Salon Services. Right.
Well, Red could stare at me all he wanted to. I wasn’t about to be sucked in by that knowing look. Because he might have acted as if he knew everything, but he didn’t see Ralph for what he was, did he? Sure, really enlightened. And so I refused to click. No way.
Nope.
Not…gonna….
I clicked.
Of course I fucking did. And I hoped it cost him a big hunk of his pay-per-click ad budget, too. As if it was as disappointed in my lack of self-control as I was, my connection chose that moment to lag. And lag. And lag. I stood up, sat back down, stood again, and was on the verge of inventing a new swear word when the browser symbol stopped spinning and a page began to load.
My heart skipped a beat, but then I realized it wasn’t taking me to Red’s site after all, just a generic landing page telling me the domain was for sale.
I hit the back button, but whatever hoodoo had served up Red’s photo decided I needed to see an organic shampoo alternative in that ad slot instead. Searching for his business only brought up old history, mentions from before his move to Chicago. Red Turner had dropped off the map. And no amount of coaxing would convince my pixels to yield him up again.
It took the jingle of a customer at the shop’s door to draw me out of the office and stop me from lobbing various search terms at the cold, cruel internet. An aging hipster in a parka meandered up the herb aisle with the browse of someone who knew his stuff, but wasn’t after anything in particular. While he shopped, I carried on my fruitless search for Red on my phone. Because surely it was just a matter of using the right terms. People don’t just disappear.
I got so deep into the search that I forgot the guy was there until he stepped up to the counter. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” I asked him.
He gave a jaded laugh. “I always do.”
“Guess that makes one of us.” I considered his stuff as I rang it up. Sometimes I can read a person by their shopping choices, whether they follow a certain path or they’re tackling a particular problem, but not this guy. Some of his items were utilitarian, like herbs and incense, and some was decorative, like the hand-dyed prayer shawl. A little bit of everything, but nothing that added up. “Crisis of faith?”
“That would require having faith to begin with. It’s not all for me—I have lots of interesting friends who could stand to broaden their horizons. You’d be surprised how many Psychs are averse to using props.” He hefted a polished gazing crystal off the counter, then added it to his pile. “Me, I’m a fan of working smarter, not harder.”
“So, you’re a Psych.”
“I’m lots of things—an art collector, a secular humanist, a hopeless romantic, and a phenomenally bad cook. Some things are safer topics of conversation than others.”
“A Psych who’s not shoving his talent and level down my throat? How refreshing.”
“It’s not worth the bragging rights. The thing about the psychic ranking system is that it comes with a cost.”
“No shit. I could pay down an awful lot of bills with the wad I blew on that asinine test.”
“I’m not talking about the money. As long as you’re still up and kicking, you can always make more.” He leaned in and dropped his voice. “Psychics make convenient scapegoats. And with the internet, we’re so connected nowadays, it’s practically impossible to lay low.”
Sure. Tell that to Red.
“Funny thing about the internet,” the customer said as I bagged up his purchase. “Some people are bright enough to keep photos of their drunken indiscretions from ending up on Facebook for their proud parents to behold, but they don’t realize it takes more than clearing your cookies to wipe out a search.”
No doubt when I was a teenager, Maxine
had gotten an eyeful of plenty of stuff she couldn’t unsee. Porn might not trip my trigger like good, old-fashioned flirting, but I had to pick up my bedroom techniques somewhere.
And I could think of a certain someone who would really appreciate that education.
Once I closed up shop for the night, I gave Carolyn a ring. I told her I’d been too hard on her pal the medium, which was true, and asked if I could get his number to smooth things over. She didn’t question whether that was the only reason. Guess she didn’t want to know.
I called him. “I acted like a dick before,” I told him. “You know? But it just blew my mind when you said you were talking to Miss Mattie.” Even if mediumship was nothing more than telepathy-meets-therapy, it might be interesting to explore my connection with Mattie from an adult perspective. “So is she, like, watching me all the time?”
“No. She comes and goes.”
“That’s a relief. ’Cos I know a few moves that’d probably kill her all over again if she saw ’em. I can show you some, if you wanna come over.”
“I don’t think so.”
He was playing hard to get. How cute. “C’mon, man. I know you want to.”
“I’m in a relationship right now,” he said. And as I tried to finagle a workaround, he added, “With Jacob.”
Chapter 39
There’s plenty of fish in the sea—and plenty of guys on Tanngo. So I wasn’t wallowing in too much annoyance that Jacob had discovered a taller, broodier, more psychically tweaked replacement for me. Who needed a boyfriend, anyway? It would’ve been a distraction. All the dinner and conversation and lengthy, drawn out bedroom antics were fine and dandy. But my priority was combing eBay for good deals on odd lots and balancing my books. I was busy, so once the hookup du jour left, I was perfectly content to spend my evening time alone. Although, when Carolyn called and asked if I wanted to help her find something to wear, I realized it was Valentine’s Day…and I did notice a little pang that felt suspiciously like loneliness.
We hit a boutique in a gentrified part of Bucktown where artsy met commercial. The jewelry was chunky, the woolens were hand-spun, and the clerks all smiled at me as they made sure I wasn’t stuffing my pockets with their soy candles or sea glass.
I considered buying my mother an early birthday present, but nixed the idea. I could find the same stuff online at half the price. No, I wouldn’t be supporting my local art community by outsourcing, but so what? Borders are arbitrary. I’d support the global community.
Carolyn turned and held a silk scarf to her throat. The tints were subtle. Pale celadon and a hint of slate. “What do you think?”
“Go bolder. You can totally carry it off.”
She reached for a slightly darker version of the same. I hustled over and grabbed the reddest red I could find. It looked like someone had used it to staunch a nosebleed. And it was perfect. “Stop trying to pretend you think you’re mousy.”
“I’m not pretending.”
Funny, now that the shock of knowing she was telepathic had worn off, it was so easy to forget her curse of truthfulness. “Fine. Then allow me to reiterate the same damn thing I always tell you. You’re gorgeous. Get used to it.”
She scowled into the mirror as she arranged the scarf, gave it a critical once-over, and said, “I probably can’t. But maybe that’s better than being arrogant.”
When we were done shopping, we decided to evaluate the margaritas at the bar across the street. It was a pretentious joint and the prices were outrageous, but the music was low enough that we could tuck ourselves away in a secluded corner and talk, and actually hear one another’s replies. Carolyn was frowning into her drink as she said, “I don’t suppose you’d consider giving Jacob another chance.”
“The sociopath with the emotional resonance of sawdust? I don’t suppose I would.” I refilled our glasses. “Why, was the other PsyCop too much work for him?”
“I wish.” Her shoulders sagged. “I’d love to think Jacob can handle himself. But this guy he’s involved with…damn it, this guy is a disaster waiting to happen.”
That probably shouldn’t have intrigued me as much as it did. I leaned in and said, “Go on.”
“First there was this thing, this predatory…forget it. I don’t even know what it was. It’s gone now. But then this splinter group kidnapped him to test some kind of psych-enhancement equipment on him.”
“They kidnapped Jacob?”
“No, Detective Bayne.”
Oh sure. Even the guy’s last name was cool.
“Not just random people, either. A PsyCop and a doctor. They’d infiltrated the police department and our private medical clinic. How is that possible?”
Where there’s a bribe, there’s a way. “What about you, they didn’t do anything to you, did they?”
“No. Different precinct.” She shuddered. “Thank God. But this is why we need to be careful. It’s not safe for psychics. There are just too many ways we can be exploited. And since Jacob’s a Stiff, he’s totally cavalier about the whole thing.”
I had a sneaking suspicion Jacob wouldn’t be circumspect even if he was a fifth-level whatever. Hiding his light under a bushel basket would never occur to him. No matter what kind of deadly moths were drawn to that flame.
Not only was I disinclined to try and woo Jacob away from this Victor Bayne—deep in my gut, I knew I couldn’t. Maybe if I hadn’t flaunted Matthew in Jacob’s face…no, even still. When things were good between Jacob and me, they were pretty good. But when they weren’t, they tanked fast and hard.
The thing that did surprise me? I was actually worried about the big lug.
At two o’clock in the morning I gave up all pretense of trying to sleep and decided to see about this kidnapping myself. I opened up a private browser, typed the letters V - I - C…and then stopped myself. Maybe a private browser would keep your porn history from popping up on your mother’s computer, but would it really stop Big Brother’s prying eyes? I checked in with my buddy BornSkeptic and he gave me the lowdown on some open source software that would shield me by bouncing my data through a warren of random nodes. But once I read the accompanying documentation about all the entities who regularly track everything we do, I decided I didn’t know enough about Spy vs. Spy-level computing to risk searching any deeper than I already had.
I was running on fumes the next day when my door opened and the man himself walked in. Victor Bayne. Cop. Medium. Kidnapping victim. I’d been gearing up to stick him full of barbs ever since I found out he was Jacob’s new psychic bedwarmer. His atrocious suit, for instance, was just begging for an insult. But in the grand scheme of things, taking pot-shots at him would be petty, and instead all I could come up with was, “What now?”
He rubbed the back of his neck as if he’d slept wrong and said, “Um…I was thinking…since you know about things.” Great. He’d led with flattery, of the unintentional sort. Which is the worst kind of all, when you’re doing your best not to get involved. “A big, overblown antenna. That’s what you called me.”
“Sometimes words are just words. Don’t read into every little turn of phrase that comes out of my mouth—that’s bound to piss you off.”
“I’m not pissed off. I want to know more.”
I’d been trying to cut back the in-store smoking since I read the review that said shopping at Sticks and Stones was like wallowing in an ashtray, but if any occasion called for a cigarette, this was it. I stuck a “back in 15” sign to the door, locked up, and invited the distraught medium into my office. I was so cordial I even let him sit in the office chair while I perched on a box of prayer candles. I lit up, took a deep drag, and said, “Okay. Let’s say for the sake of argument that psychic energy exists—”
“Can we skip to the part where electricity screws up the signal?”
“I never said that.”
“Sure you did. High tension wires.” Well, maybe I did, right after BornSkeptic had spent nearly an hour trying to convince me that tin foil ha
ts served an actual purpose. “Look,” he said, “I know you think I’m full of shit, but suspend your disbelief for a few seconds and tell me this—what part of an old tube TV might hum in the same frequency as psychic ability?”
“Electronics aren’t my forte—I was on the college prep track in high school, and shop class wasn’t part of the curriculum. But I have a friend who might know.” I reached across him and jiggled my mouse, and the screen lit up. The private message tab was still up, right where I’d left it, with a string of messages between Skeptic and me about which Netflix show we should binge watch next. “Go ahead, type in your question.”
He began hunting and pecking his way across my keyboard. His two-fingered typing was like something out of a cheesy police procedural. I studied his profile. Cute enough, but I knew Jacob would be on board even if he was a dumpy little troll. Whoever said beauty is only skin deep wasn’t accounting for fetishes.
Vic started pummeling my d-key and said, “It’s not working.”
“You only get 140 characters.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Was he seriously that oblivious? “Because it’s Twitter, that’s why.” I hit the return key. “There. Keep going.”
He started clicking on the hunk of message I’d just sent. “How do I fix a typo?”
“For crying out loud.” I pulled the keyboard away from him and read what he put down so far.
AshMan_Namaste: @BornSkeptic67 lets say if you cuold see ghosts & a TV set could make teh ghosts disappear-and this is totally hypatheticle- which part of the TV set woul
“Gimme that before you break the internet.” I typed in, That wasn’t me, let’s try this from the top. And once I got over the atrocity that was his typing, I said, “You came across a TV set that tuned in ghosts?”
He swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. A chill ran through me. I couldn’t tell if I was the one who was spooked, or if the unease was bleeding over from him. “Not…on the screen. Not like I was watching a show. You wouldn’t have been able to see it.” He flinched. “Which I totally don’t mean as any kind of insult.”
Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8 Page 29