PsyCop 5: Camp Hell

by Jordan Castillo Price

  A haze of sage smoke hung near the ceiling. Crash and Jacob stood on either side of a high-set window, Crash on a stepladder and Jacob on a chair. Jacob held a cordless drill, and Crash was hammering nails into the windowsill. Once the nail was sunk, I cleared my throat.

  Crash and Jacob both turned and looked. Jacob was unreadable. Crash smirked and held up a nail. “Hi ho, silver.”

  Well, I had asked him to protect me from the remote viewer. But I didn’t mean tonight. “Do you have a fax machine?”

  “Used to. It broke. I do it all online now. Why, you need to fax something?”

  I hadn’t really thought Crash was leaking information about me to Dreyfuss, but it was a relief to hear it, anyway. He glanced over my shoulder and I turned.

  Carolyn came out of the kitchen with a smoking bundle of sage. Her hair was covered with a bandanna and she had a faint smudge of charcoal on her jaw. Never one to mince words like “hello,” she said, “How reliable is your information about the remote viewer?”

  “Reliable. And confirmed by a second…source.”

  “Seriously,” said Crash. “Do you pigs always talk like a basic-cable crime reenactment, or do you just toss the lingo around for my benefit?”

  I sat on the arm of the couch, because it felt less vulnerable than sitting all the way down, and glared at each of them in turn.

  “Obviously, you resent us being involved in the situation,” said Carolyn. “But if you’re being monitored, then I’m sure Crash and I are, too—even if it’s only because of our proximity to you.”

  Jacob was. Crash was. Dreyfuss had hinted as much. I didn’t volunteer it. Carolyn? Undoubtedly, her too. “You’re a Psych. I’m sure you had your very own file before you even met me.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I just wish you’d trust that we’ve all got the same goal.”

  “Do we? What do you want to get from all this?”

  “Well, I….” She stopped, frowned. “I don’t know.” She thought, and the room went so quiet that the crackle of her smudge stick made me flinch. “It doesn’t feel right that we should be followed and watched just because we’re Psychs. It’s a talent like any other talent. But I think that psychic abilities are considered to be somehow evil, at least subconsciously, by a certain segment of the population. I worry about what will happen to all of us if a spark of panic ever flares up.”

  Oh. Maybe we were all on the same page. Only Carolyn was able to articulate what she saw in her worst-case scenario a hell of a lot better than I ever could.

  “So, what’re you working on?” I asked.

  “House blessing, protection. Wicca-fusion.”

  “What about…Christian?”

  All three of them stared at me so hard that I squirmed. “I thought you were agnostic,” said Jacob.

  I shrugged. “I’m not really sure what I believe.”

  “That’s the definition of agnostic to everyone but philosophy geeks,” Crash said.

  Oh. “It’s just that, today, I saw this guy exorcise a repeater with some bible verses.” Of course, as soon as I volunteered that, I had to explain where I was, and why, and pretty soon I’d told the three of them everything I knew about the FPMP. Which specifically went against the contract I’d signed for Dreyfuss.

  I was only slightly concerned. We now had silver nails pounded into our thresholds and windowsills, after all. And I was sure that neither Jacob, Crash or Carolyn were the fax culprits. Pretty sure.

  “Chance was murdered,” Jacob sat down hard in the chair he’d been standing on, cupped his hand over his face, and squeezed his temples between his thumb and middle finger. “Shit.”

  I shifted and found an interesting speck on the coffee table to look at. Giving the three of them the FPMP’s secrets was one thing; I’d also told them exactly how much I saw, right down to the glow that surrounded Richie. The Stiffs I’d worked with knew I could see and hear the dead—and even then, I usually downplayed the specifics—but I’d come clean about everything, right down to glowing Richie.

  It was naïve of me to think it would feel better after I’d spilled my guts. I must’ve mistaken confession for puking. I was still ready to jump out of my own skin.

  Crash stood up. “I need a cigarette.” He walked out before I could tell him that he might as well stay inside. What was another cigarette’s worth of smoke compared to the bucket of sage they’d already burned?

  “Did you seriously think he was the one sending faxes about you?” Carolyn snapped.

  Oh. Right. I’d asked him if he…oh, shit. “Well…no. I mean, I just had to check. I thought he’d own a fax machine, since he has a store….” Okay, that sounded really lame. Carolyn narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t tell me I was lying. So I guess it was also true. Lame, but true.

  I decided it was in my best interest not to divulge that I’d also wondered if Jacob’s inkjet printer was an all-in-one. “Listen, I’m gonna go talk to him….”

  Jacob’s cop-look slipped. He was not thrilled—with my tactlessness, or with something else? Who knows?

  I snagged my overcoat and went out front. Crash sat on the concrete stoop, huddled in his leather biker jacket. Thermal underwear poked through holes in the knees of his jeans. Fresh snow dusted his shoulders and sleeves, and glittered in the pale green spikes of his hair. He let out a long exhalation of smoke, and didn’t look at me when I hovered beside him. “I should’ve done something mean to you when you were passed out in my bed, like sticking gum in your hair, or writing my name on your wiener in permanent marker. But I resisted the urge. ‘Cos I’m such a sensitive guy.”

  Up and down the block, the streetlights flickered on, all except the one in front of the cannery. I stared at the dark glass globe. “I didn’t really think the faxes came from you. I just…had to figure out who owned a fax machine.”

  “Police procedure or some such shit. Right?”

  “Right,” I answered, before I realized how thick the sarcasm was. I sighed and sat down.

  He smoked, and he stared out at the street, and finally he said, “I know. You just piss me off to no end, is all.”

  I stopped myself from asking what he had to be pissed off about. Maybe the implication that he was the faxer, maybe the Stoli, maybe having to come out to SaverPlus on a cold and blustery night. Or maybe something else I’d done without even realizing it. “I’m trying to apologize, here.”

  “Oh, so you can just say and do anything you want—why, ‘cos your life had been so hard? Get over yourself. Everyone has their own shit to deal with. Not just you.”

  Not everyone had the FPMP spying on them, but I wasn’t going to point that out in a spot where someone with a really sensitive microphone might overhear us.

  “Still…” said Crash. “You gotta wonder who you know that would be willing to sell you out—who’d be smart enough to pull it off.”

  “You’re really not making me feel any better.”

  “And that’s what you dig about me—I’m not gonna pull any punches when you ask for my opinion. So who do you think it is, really? Someone who hates you? Or someone who can be blackmailed or bought?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, can we not talk about this?”

  “For someone who’s supposedly open to the possibility that Christianity is legit, you’re really disrespectful. Y’know that?”

  I looked at him, finally, because I figured I’d better take aim before I backhanded him. He was watching me over the sleeve of his biker jacket. His eyes were laughing. Nothing like Jacob’s eyes, which were always so serious lately. “Fuck you.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You’re just disappointed that I didn’t have my wicked way with you last night.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “Baby Doll, you want it so bad I can practically feel your hard-on poking my thigh.”

  Nice image.

  He scraped his cigarette out on the stair, then tossed the filter among a small cluster of identical butts on the sidewalk. �
��When I rock your world, I want to make sure you’re awake to enjoy it.”

  The whole experience I’d had the day before felt surreal now, and not just because I’d been drunk and high. Crash’s bed, even his whole apartment, so like something I would have stumbled into ten years ago, before I had a mortgage, before I found the occasional gray hair to pluck out.

  Crash stood and dusted off the seat of his jeans. “Hey,” I said before he went inside.

  He looked down at me.

  I reached into my overcoat and took out the fat envelope from Dreyfuss. I wondered what Crash would normally charge for a whole-house smudging. The cost of a video camera, whatever that was. I could ask him, of course, but it seemed like it should have been one of those things that I knew intuitively. If I asked, he’d think I was even less savvy than he already did. And if I gave him too little, or too much, he’d get insulted.

  The envelope held only hundreds. I guesstimated enough of them to cover the big, red past-due notices, the ones I’d seen, anyway. “For helping us out. With the house. We’re lucky we’ve got an expert to turn to.”

  I’ve never been weird about money, but I didn’t care for mixing business and pleasure, especially when I didn’t know what the rules were supposed to be. I didn’t quite look Crash in the eye as I handed him the folded bills, and he didn’t quite look at me, either. “Okay, cool.”

  I guess nothing deflates a guy like a big handful of money that he can’t afford to turn down.

  It was late when Crash and Carolyn left, and no one suggested doing anything social, like ordering a pizza. They were probably already in the FPMP’s Rolodex for being close to me, and a simple pizza wouldn’t have made it any worse—but I had the feeling I wasn’t going to crack open the dictionary and find myself under the heading for popular anytime soon.

  I heard the water running in the kitchen, and found Jacob standing there, leaning against the countertop and staring at the wall. I came up beside him, and turned off the faucet. “I thought we were going to do something fun tonight. If this was your idea —”

  “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Hey, don’t make me the bad guy. What about the phone call today, when you said you wanted things to be good again? What was that? Just something that sounded promising at the moment?”

  “You were at the FPMP.”

  “Yeah, I was. You knew I was considering it. And I couldn’t very well announce it right there, not when the ink was still wet on the thing I’d signed that said I would keep it quiet. Give me at least that much credit. It’s not all about keeping things from you. I came home and told you everything, didn’t I? Sometimes I just need you to trust me. We’re both on the same side, right?”

  Jacob’s gaze had moved from the wall to my eyes. I wanted to squirm. “You’ve got to start acting like it,” he said.

  -NINETEEN-

  “I think I might have found something.” Zigler consulted his notebook, then looked up at the room. “Nearly forty percent of the patients who died spent some time in this emergency partition.”

  I decided I didn't like the ER, not at all, and I was filled with gratitude about the fact that when I sprained my elbow, I had gotten to go to The Clinic, where they ushered me into a private room right away, and saw to me within a reasonable amount of time. And there wasn't a scary, toothless guy who smelled like vinegar sitting next to me, cursing up a blue streak. And there wasn't a little kid crying loud enough to shatter my eardrums. Don't get me wrong; I felt bad for the kid. Heck, the vinegar guy, too. But I wouldn't want to be sitting among them if I was in need of emergency medical care.

  “Forty percent,” I repeated. I wondered if that was statistically important, and decided it probably was. If not, Zig wouldn't have mentioned it. “And, uh, the other sixty percent?”

  “Divided among seven other partitions.”

  Sixty divided by seven…or was that seven divided by sixty? Seven sixtieths? I sucked at fractions. Anyway, it was smaller than forty percent. Probably.

  We approached the curtained-off area, and Zigler poked his head in. “Occupied,” he told me. I peered over his shoulder. A middle-aged Asian woman was laying on a table, covered with a blue blanket that wasn't long enough to do her much good, unless she was only cold from the waist down. Zig backed out, and I scooted over so he didn't have to brush up against me. “So forty percent of the people who come through here die?”

  Zigler looked at me funny. “No. Forty percent of the deaths came through this station.”

  As I struggled to see the difference, a pair of swinging doors clanged open, and a couple of paramedics steered in a collapsible gurney with an IV swinging back and forth like a bell on a kids' train ride at the amusement park. And I wondered when anyone had ever taken me to an amusement park, that I'd been able to come up with that association. But I didn't have too much time to wonder, because I noticed something else attached to the gurney that I’m guessing hadn’t come from a kit in the ambulance.

  It floated along behind the gurney to one side of the patient’s head. It was dark, and semi-opaque, and it kept roiling around so that I couldn’t really pin a particular shape on it. It was like smoke, kind of—smoke that didn’t dissipate. And that looked somehow evil.

  And totally connected with the patient on the gurney.

  The paramedics hauled her into one of the safe partitions, and I lost sight of the thing.

  “What is it?” Zigler asked me.

  I pointed weakly. “There was a, um….” How much could I tell Zigler, really? That I'd seen something? He already knew I got visuals. Did he know I could see them like they were solid, corporeal things sometimes? That if I got close enough to this being, I could probably detail it down to each slithering, smoke-like coil? By now—yeah. He had to know. And he was a lot more accurate about recording my exact wording than Maurice had ever been. Damn it. “I kind of sense a…uh…I dunno. Hard to tell.”

  One of the paramedics left. The other hooked up with an ER doctor and started talking, giving a report of some kind, judging by the fact that the doctor was taking notes on a clipboard. They stood close and mirrored each other’s body language while they spoke, like they knew each other all too well, and had seen too many sick things together to be formal anymore. The EMT rolled his eyes, and he and the doctor both shook their heads.

  I took a few steps closer and tried to eavesdrop.

  “You sense something with the patient?” Zig asked me.

  I nodded.

  “The patient was alive, though. Right? She was moving around. And speaking.”

  Actually, she'd been kinda swearing and muttering. I guess that qualified. Zig would probably always be somewhat concerned that a moving person might not actually be alive, since the zombie incident made such an impression on him. “It's not on her—more like it's around her.”

  Zigler approached the doctor, a stout black woman with gray-flecked hair, and talked to her in a low tone. Her manner did a 180, from the laid-back attitude she'd had with the paramedic, to a stiff, guarded, no-nonsense demeanor with Zig. I wondered why.

  “If there hasn't been a criminal complaint, then there's no reason for you to be in the ER at all,” the doctor told him.

  “We're conducting an investigation….”

  “If it doesn't involve my patient, then you've got no business being here. My patient isn't suspected of anything, is she? Your badge is green. You need to go back out in the lobby.”

  “But we….”

  “I haven't got time for this. It's an emergency room. My patient is my priority. Understood?”

  “But I….”

  “I trust you won't make me call security, Officer?” The doctor stepped into the enclosure and yanked the curtain shut with a decisive snap.

  Zig could've corrected her, told her he was a detective, not an officer. He didn't bother. I'm guessing he didn't think it would make any difference. Either did I. Zigler glanced down at his badge. “I’m going to put in for some
better clearance.”

  “But maybe she’s right. I don’t really want to be in the way if they’ve got a bunch of spurting GSWs rolling through the door.”

  “There’s a woman lying in the forty-percent partition. Just lying there. Nothing’s spurting, no one’s calling the crash cart. You think it’s a problem if you go in there and look around?”

  I tried to remember how big the security guards were. Once in a while, you come across a security guard who flunked out of the Police Academy, and he’d take extra care to be a complete and utter dick where authority overlapped. “I guess not. Once we get better badges.”

  Something tugged at my conscience as we walked out of the ER, though, and I couldn’t ignore it. That thing, that supernatural whatever-it-was following the patient…what was I supposed to do about that?

  Not that it was my problem. But it wasn’t as if anyone else could help her out with it.

  The paramedic who’d been talking to the doctor—before she went off on Zigler—was signing some paperwork at the intake desk. “Um, ‘scuse me.” I tried to look as unintimidating as I could, since Zigler’s tough-cop act had put everyone off. Which meant that I slouched a little, and didn’t make assertive eye-contact. And that all came naturally to me, anyway. “Y’know that patient, the woman you just brought in…is she gonna be okay?”

  The paramedic was a forty-something Latino with a shaved head, fairly buff. “As much as she’s ever okay,” he said. He looked me over. I watched his shoulders relax underneath his reflective-trimmed uniform jacket. “Homeless schizo, falling-down drunk. She should probably be institutionalized. But they’ll keep her ‘til she dries out, and when she’s more or less lucid, send her on her way. Happens all the time.”

  “You mean schizophrenic.”

  He gave me a “duh” look.

  “She’s been tested?”

  “For what? Drugs?”

  I ran my hand over the back of my neck. I was starting to sweat again. Damn it. Maybe The Clinic could give me some kind of salt pill to make me stop perspiring at the first sign of anything that reminded me of Camp Hell.