“None taken,” I said softly, and I realized what a grade-A dickwad I was for letting my impatience run rampant. He’d been freaking kidnapped. I mean…kidnapped. Fucking hell. “Was this some kind of equipment you were testing? Maybe…against your will?”
“You heard.” He stared hard at a dog-eared sticky note gathering coffee rings on my desk. “It was kinda messed up.”
I let my breath out slowly and we both sat there feeling awkward, until the conversation on the screen scrolled up.
BornSkeptic67: You’d need a strong medium to figure that out. A real medium, not some scam artist. Good luck finding one.
Vic might not be a stellar typist, but he could read. He barked out a humorless laugh and said, “Never mind.”
He tried to roll back from the desk, but I stomped my foot down and blocked the chair’s wheels. “Hold up, cowboy. How do you expect to find anything if you fold at the first sign of resistance?”
I typed.
AshMan_Namaste: Hypothesize, @BornSkeptic67.
BornSkeptic67: Depends on the TV. LCD/LED or plasma.
“Not a flatscreen,” Vic said. “An old one. With a tube.”
AshMan_Namaste: CRT
BornSkeptic67: Electrons boiling off a tube can be directed either to amplify an electrical signal or to make phosphors glow. Why not a ghost?
I read that a few times. Vic stood up and said, “I guess it was stupid of me to think I could make my own GhosTV.”
I planted myself so he had nowhere to go but right back into the chair he’d just vacated. He sat down hard. “Not so fast—first you come in telling me the other side is driving you crazy, and now you want to crank up the volume?”
“Fuck, no. The volume goes both ways. I don’t want to amp them up, I’m trying to pull the plug.” As he spoke, a quiet and easy sort of anxiety emanated from him. It felt so right, I suspected it was his baseline vibe. And behind that, a gut-coiling embarrassment. He didn’t talk about this shit, I realized. And while it was scary for him to lay his cards on the table, it was also a relief. Vic’s back was to the monitor now. BornSkeptic expounded on waves and particles, and the feed scrolled along. Meanwhile, Vic’s eyes defocused as he stared at something, my earring maybe, and said, “I hardly ever come across someone like Miss Mattie. Most of the dead are tethered here with vengeance and spite. They wanna make sure whoever was responsible for offing them gets their just desserts. Either that, or they’re some kind of fucked up film loop that keeps on dying, over and over and over.”
His eyes locked onto mine, and widened as if he hadn’t intended to reveal quite so much, especially not to someone like me—someone unwilling to ooh and ah over his big-time psychic ability. I might not be impressed by his credentials, but heck. I couldn’t deny that he was genuinely distressed. I crouched between his knees and gripped the chair’s armrests. “Listen, if it’s that important to you, I’ll see what I can find out about this cathode ray tube. But let me do it in a way that’s not so traceable.”
“Okay. Cool.”
We stared at each other for a longish pause, and I enjoyed the feeling of his relief as it licked at the corners of my awareness…and I enjoyed the Vibe creeping in, too. The sight of me on my knees made his heart go pit-a-pat. And me, well, I must’ve dug the idea of toying with something I couldn’t have. Would he be nasty in bed, I wondered, or utilitarian? I had a feeling with all the neuroses swirling around behind those baby blues, he’d be into something freaky, whether he would admit it or not. I dropped a hand to his knee, and he stood so fast he nearly knocked me on my ass. And not in a playful way. He muttered something disjointed about not taking up any more of my time, and before I knew it, the only indication that he’d been there at all was the beaded curtain swaying in his wake, and a string of nonsensical crap in my Twitter.
Chapter 40
Ultimately, I played it safe. Not by easing up the pressure on Vic when he popped by the store—I got too much satisfaction from watching him squirm. No, it was the research I was handling with kid gloves. I didn’t know enough about computers to fully trust the cloaking software to cover my trail, so I hauled myself down to the library instead, and earned all kinds of dirty looks from people waiting in line to rip CDs and download porn. Tough luck. I had data of my own to collect.
Over multiple sessions on the private browser of a public computer, I discovered that Victor Bayne might’ve emitted plenty of psychic particles and waves, but his electronic trail was nonexistent. Since he was so clueless about Twitter, I wasn’t surprised he was absent from social media, but other things? Articles, news bites, all the crap that popped up when I searched Jacob? Nonexistent.
I could’ve searched Carolyn too, but decided I’d better not. One day the topic might come up, and if I found out anything about her I wasn’t supposed to know, I wouldn’t be able to deny it.
No matter how creative I got with my search terms, there was no “GhosTV” either. And the kidnapping? Never happened—even though I’d watched Carolyn’s involvement in it unfold, so I knew damn well it was true. I have serious chops on Google. I can Boolean search with the best of ’em. So if I couldn’t find anything, there was nothing to be found. And that absence of information made Jacob’s new squeeze a heck of a lot more intriguing. Possibly scary…nah, intriguing. I think.
I didn’t have a clear idea of Vic’s schedule. He stopped by with random concerns at various times of the day, in various states of dress-up or dress-down. Sometimes a couple weeks would go by without me seeing him. Other times, he’d be in every half hour making me re-explain centering techniques he could learn from any armchair meditator. Some concepts he got right away. Others slipped through his fingers time and time again. And if I ever felt annoyed by his periodic question, “So when you say counter-clockwise, which way is the clock facing?” I’d recall a time when my only definition of sitting involved styling chairs or barstools.
I also remembered how gentle Red had been when he suggested I might benefit from quieting my mind.
And then I felt abandoned.
Fall had turned to winter, and while I did occasionally attempt to dredge up some evidence of the GhosTVs, I no longer expected to find anything. But while I was incognito online, I also boned up on mediumship. If Vic was the real deal, I’d hate to screw him up any worse than the world already had. Plus, even though he resisted every advance I slid his way, I knew if our stars ever aligned, we could do some seriously naughty things together, him and me.
That winter had come early and hard, and one fine, brisk morning, after sweating me out of the place for nearly a month, the boiler up and died and left my radiators cold and silent. The temperature in my store plummeted, thanks to the windows I’d chipped free of their insulating layer of old paint. Lydia advised covering my windows with plastic. The concept baffled me. I’d been raised in a home with immaculate tuckpointing and double-paned glass. Maxine wouldn’t have taped plastic over her windows any more than she’d stick a flamingo on the lawn. But, hey, a few sheets of plastic were way more affordable than a new space heater and the electricity to run the damn thing. The store wasn’t open yet and I was up to my ears in plastic sheeting and tape when someone rapped on my front door, then followed it up with a call.
Must’ve been my lucky day. That was Victor Bayne’s M.O., my windows were tall, and he had himself some phenomenal reach. Luckily I like to razz him about showing up early before I let him in, because when I went to pick up the call, I saw it wasn’t Vic after all.
It was Jacob.
I answered with, “To what do I owe the pleasure?” in a commendably neutral tone. He hadn’t taken any pot-shots at me lately, so I wasn’t about to give him any ammo to claim I’m being immature.
“Are you home? I was hoping…we could talk.”
His voice was dripping remorse. When someone’s as full of themselves as Jacob is, I’ve got a real soft spot for hearing them eat crow. I opened the door and found him standing there in his casual gear—jeans
and designer leather jacket, black on black, with a dusting of snowflakes melting at the tips of his too short buzz-cut. “Why aren’t you playing cops and robbers?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve got a million and one errands to take care of. Can I come in?”
I stepped aside and indicated my store with an outstretched arm. He walked in. Humbly, if such a word could possibly apply to Jacob. Judging by his facial expression and body language, at least. In terms of emotional resonance, he might as well have been weatherproofing his windows.
“We haven’t really talked since you opened the store.”
“No. We haven’t.”
He strolled around the register and took a look around. “Vic spends an awful lot of time here.”
I was already regretting my decision to let him in. “And?”
“And nothing,” he claimed.
“Sure.”
“Come on, I’m trying to smooth things over. He doesn’t have many friends. I’m glad he’s found one in you.”
“It’s such a relief to have your blessing.” I cocked my head toward the window. “C’mere a minute. I need a hand.”
He assessed the window situation and said, “You need a stepladder, too.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t have one. What I do have is this chair, this roll of tape, and a monstrous sheet of plastic that keeps trying to stick to itself.”
True to form, Jacob loved nothing more than a problem waiting to be solved. He waded in with me to wrangle plastic. It slithered between us, and we moved in synch to contain it. Funny. I thought we’d surely be out of step after so long. But no. Apparently not.
The shielding power of plastic shouldn’t be underestimated. Even though Jacob and I could see one another through it—even though the two of us were touching as closely as we would through a condom—the barrier allowed him to speak to me without dredging up our old wounds and rubbing my face in them. And it allowed me to listen. “What you’ve done with the store is fantastic.”
“It beats working at the chop shop.”
“Hold that corner.” He pinned the side in place with his elbow, grabbed the tape roll from my wrist, and tore off a small piece with his teeth. “Now tack it in place so we can do some longer strips.”
We fell into a rhythm so easily. Maybe it shouldn’t have come as any big surprise, given how much time we’d spent learning one another’s moves.
A corner drooped, and our fingertips brushed as we both made a grab for it. He didn’t shy away—neither did I. It occurred to me that I might be presented with an opportunity to discover what all the ex-sex buzz was about. That’d be a new one for me, since I hadn’t really dated anyone other than Jacob long enough to consider them an ex. When I scoped out the level of Vibe, though, there was none. And maybe that was a relief. “So what’s it like trying to hook up with another PsyCop? Between both of your important police schedules, you probably never see each other.”
He focused hard on tacking down plastic. He wasn’t looking at me when he said, “We’re moving in together.”
Big shock. Most people bring flowers or champagne or a vibrating tongue stud to their second date. He brings a U-Haul. “Your place or his?”
“Ours. There’s a property we’ve been after for a while now and our realtor finally waded through all the red tape.”
That stung. I wasn’t quite sure why. If playing house was what I’d wanted, a white picket fence with my name on the mortgage, all I would’ve had to do was ask. I hopped down from the chair, plucked my tape out of his hand, and said, “Thanks, I got it from here.”
“Don’t be that way.”
“And what way am I being, Jacob? You found someone as needy as you are—congratulations.”
Anger seethed off him and raised goosebumps on my forearms. “So this is how it is? We have mutual friends, but when I’m around you, I’m supposed to walk on eggshells?”
“Gee, sorry, how immature of me to act like being with you actually meant something to me. I’ll just stuff it all down deep and congratulate the two of you. What did you want for a housewarming gift, a pair of handcuffs to make sure this one can’t get away? Oh, wait, you’ve already got a pair on your belt.”
“Are you through yet?”
“That about covers it.”
Jacob sighed. “Being with Vic, having him come home at all hours of the night, watching him go quiet and vacant when he’s been on a crime scene all day, it made me realize what it must’ve been like for you. Especially since you don’t have any idea what we actually deal with on the job. Theoretically, maybe. But you don’t see what we see—you’re not taking the statement of someone who’s just been raped or beaten. You don’t get to feel that rush when you catch the scum who did it.”
“No. You didn’t really talk about it.”
“I didn’t want to bring the ugliness home with me. All day long, the thing I’d look forward to most was leaving it behind so I could be with you. What little time we spent together, I didn’t want to contaminate it with the things I’d seen.”
He took the tape from me. The roll squalled as he pulled off a long strip, and I let the taping of the plastic fill the void where I didn’t know what to say. He seemed matter of fact about the whole thing, but why wouldn’t he? Where I hadn’t managed to measure up, he’d found someone who did. And now they were making it official.
* * *
Once Jacob took off and went back to his big, important job, the one where he saved the world each and every day while I stood around peddling incense, his little visit continued to weigh on my mind. So we weren’t seeing each other anymore. It didn’t mean I wanted him to be alone. I was happy for him. For them. Really. For real…even if I did nearly bite off Carolyn’s head when she called a few days later and asked me to help unload their moving truck.
“Why should I spend my precious free time hauling boxes?” I said. “Let ’em hire movers for the grunt work.”
“Apparently you need to book these things farther in advance,” she said. “Look, it’s either you or Doug. And I have serious doubts as to whether my husband’s back can take it. Besides, it’s no easier to find a sitter on the spur of the moment than it is to get movers on the first of the month.”
I supposed if I was looking for an opportunity to prove just how magnanimous I was feeling about the big move-in, I couldn’t do much better than unloading the damn truck with my bare hands. “Whatever. Fine. But if I break a nail, it’s all on you.” I ended the call and got to work ringing up a customer. A few more people wandered through, most of them sightseeing rather than shopping. And just when I’d resigned myself to an underwhelming end to a mediocre day, my friend in the parka, the undocumented Psych, hoisted a massive armload of reading material onto the counter.
I turn a good profit on books, but nowadays, between the steep online discounts and the two-day shipping, books are typically impulse buys. I’ll only sell one or two at a time. But this stack was so fat, it made my counter groan.
As I rang up the sale, I almost felt guilty enough to tell the guy he’d pay half as much online—and then I did my best to strike the thought from my mind, just in case he was reading it. After all, if he wanted to nudge my ledgers into the black for the day, who was I to complain?
“Nothing like the printed page to lull you to sleep,” he remarked.
“I suppose it’s healthier than a stiff drink.”
“So true. And a lot safer if you need to jump up and drive off in a hurry.”
And here I thought he just wanted to support local business. Funny, though, he didn’t strike me as delusional, only cautious. Either numerous discussions with Vic had inured me to paranoia, or the notion that psychics were monitored and tested, tracked and silenced, was actually starting to seem plausible. Because my customer wasn’t setting off any of my internal alarms. He felt calm, well-adjusted, and entirely rational.
Then again, crazy folks don’t know when they’re hallucinating, do they?
The books were so heavy, I had to divvy them up to keep the bags from splitting. The customer hefted one of the bags and said, “I suppose ebooks would be the way to go.”
“But then you couldn’t sniff the pages.”
“Oh no, I’m not sentimental. E-readers…you’re not the only one who knows what’s on ’em. I’m perfectly fine with whoever monitors the servers knowing I’ve actually read 50 Shades of Gray.” He held up a book to display the title: Activating Latent Psychic Talents. “But this one is our little secret.”
“So I’m guessing I can’t convince you to sign up for my mailing list.” I gave my signup sheet a nod. I went through glue sticks like crazy, changing out the display every few weeks, and customers still managed to ignore it. The current image was a field of sunflowers with cut-out llama heads in the centers.
The guy considered it, then shrugged and picked up the pen. “If anyone’s watching me, they already know I’m here. It’s not as if I can turn invisible…though that would be a good trick.”
Under “First Name” he scrawled Con, and under “Email,” [email protected]. He watched me with a twinkle in his eye while I read. And comprehended. And then wadded up a sale flyer and lobbed it off his head.
“You dick!” I said. “When the fuck were you planning on telling me it was you?” I squinted at the form, then said, “And what kind of name is Con—are you out on parole?”
“It’s short for Constantine. That’s what you get when your parents are history buffs.”
“Sonofabitch. How many times have you skulked through here without letting me know it was you?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Just the once. Cross my heart.”
“Fuckin-A.”
“Aw, c’mon, we both know I had to check you out before I made contact.”
“Made contact? What the hell do you call our 2 a.m. philosophical debate about the obsolescence of religion, or the new Clairvoyage season we buddy-watched last week? Check me out? You know me better than the last guy who sucked my balls.”
Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8 Page 30