I squinted, and waited for the flicker. If I was inside, I could look for cold spots. But Chicago at the end of November is nothing if not one giant cold spot. I walked back toward the pickle, placing my feet in my own footprints. They were far apart; I'd been walking fast. Angry.
I looked at the table. Orange soda. Coffee, steaming.
Partially eaten hot dog.
No dead guy with half a head.
I rolled my eyes. There was a dead guy around somewhere, and he was making an ass out of me. "C'mon, c'mon," I muttered, staring hard at the snow, willing some more blood to drip. Zigler hung back by the car, motionless, watching.
Another set of my tracks led back to the hot dog stand a dozen feet away. I followed those, coaxing the ghost to show himself just under my breath the whole way. Nothing.
I found myself back at the front of the stand, facing the plywood menu. The kid emerged from a clear plastic flap that separated a tiny part of the stand from the outside and served as a little windbreak. "Can I get you anything else?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I'm just, uh ... looking." Smooth. Really smooth.
"'Kay. Just holler if you need anything."
"Right."
The kid ducked into the back and left me there scrutinizing the number of toppings one could order on fries. Mayo.
Vinegar. Chili. Cheese. I was more of an old-fashioned ketchup guy, myself. Not that ketchup was all that appealing to me anymore—at least, not until something worse came along and made me forget about the blood dripping into the snow.
Zigler had snuck up on me during my exchange with the kid; he stood along side me gazing at the menu. "He keeps flickering in and out," I admitted. "He's got blue eyes, sandy blond hair. But I didn't look at what he was wearing." Or did I? I thought back to the shiny trail of eye jelly I'd tried so hard to avoid looking at on his shoulder. "A plaid jacket ... no, hounds tooth. Black and gray."
There. That ought to be specific enough for Zigler. I looked over at him triumphantly ... only it wasn't Zigler standing beside me. It was Half-a-Head. He stood there, quite obviously concentrating, reading the menu.
Zig was still leaning against the Impala, arms crossed.
"Hounds tooth jacket. Beige corduroy pants. Loafers." I took in what was left of his hair. There was something Duran Duran about the way it was cut. "I'd say nineteen eighty-five to eighty-eight."
Zigler froze. I guess the weather had finally gotten to him.
He stared. The dead guy stared. I barely resisted the urge to flop down and make a snow angel just for the sake of being different.
Zig pried himself off the car and took a few faltering steps toward me. "Where?" he choked out. I guess he was having some big emotional moment. Maybe I could forgive him for dragging me to a spirit surprise party, given that he seemed to be twice as freaked out as I was.
"Right here." I pointed to the spot where the guy stared at the sign, comparing the double decker with cheese to the bacon ranch burger. "He's less flickery now. Something special about this spot?"
Zigler's eyes went red. He swallowed and blinked a few times. "That's it."
I sighed and stuffed my hands in my pockets. My hot dog was cold. "Who is he?"
"Graham Leonard. Twenty-nine years old. Killed by a truck in eighty seven."
Not his son. Good. I hate dealing with the relatives of the ghosts more than I hate the bleeding, wailing, moaning, intestine-dragging ghosts themselves. "What happened?"
Zigler cupped his hand over his eyes, squeezing his temples. "It was my fault. I was the one who couldn't just take down the license number of the drunk driver and catch up with him later when he wouldn't pull over. I had to pursue."
"A drunk ... truck driver?"
"No. But the car I was chasing ran the truck off the road.
And Graham Leonard was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"He was reading the menu?"
"That's what the witnesses said."
"What happened to his, uh.... "I pointed toward the left side of my skull.
"The rear-view mirror on the passenger side struck him in the head."
Ouch.
Zig pulled a cloth handkerchief out of his pocket, ground it into his eyes, then blew. I stared at Graham, because it was easier to look at him than it was to see Zigler almost-crying.
"Look. Can you ... ah.... Can you ask him to forgive me?" Zigler said in a tiny, tiny voice.
Graham flickered a little, and kept on staring at the menu, frozen forever in that moment in time. Not the world's happiest ghost, but not persistently vindictive, either. "He says there's nothing to forgive."
Chapter Nine
Zigler did allow me to eat hot dogs in his car, after all. He even bought me new ones, since the first two I'd gotten were either frozen or squashed flat. I let him pay. I figured it was the least he could do after hijacking me to the near north suburbs to resolve a personal ghost issue while we were supposed to be turning up Lopez, Adamson, and Lynch.
Adamson's spirit wasn't lurking around his workplace, not that I could blame it. I hoped that I wouldn't end up hovering around the coffee pot at the Fifth Precinct for all eternity.
Then again, maybe the problem had nothing to do with whether or not his job as a collection agent was emotionally or spiritually satisfying.
Maybe Ronald Adamson wasn't even dead.
Right.
And I was the poster boy for a Drug-Free America.
We headed back to the fifth to wrap up for the day about quarter after five.
Zigler and I both focused on our cell phones as we headed back toward our desks. He was saying something about dinner, and I'd hoped to figure out how many condo viewings I'd need to endure that night. Not that knowing the number ahead of time actually made any difference; I was just feeling masochistic.
Jacob was in the middle of telling me about a brownstone off Lawrence that had just been listed, when I stopped dead in my tracks. Zigler stopped behind me, too close for comfort, and backed off a step.
There was a white-haired granny parked in front of my desk on a candy apple red scooter. There were patriotic red, white, and blue plastic streamers dangling from the scooter's handlebars, and a "My Cat is Smarter than Your Honor Student" bumper sticker stuck crookedly on the fender. She looked me in the eye and glared.
"Jacob? I'll, uh ... call you back."
I glanced back at Betty's desk to try to get a hint as to what Granny Sunshine was doing in our office, but her computer monitor was dark and her blotter was neat and empty. Betty didn't work on Sundays.
So someone up front had let this old lady in, given her permission to drive up to my desk and just sit there for God knows how long. "Um ... Ma'am?"
"Are you the policemen looking for Ronnie?"
I looked to Zigler for help, but he just stood there and waited for me, as senior officer, to answer. "Well, we're, uh... we're working on the case ... I assume you mean Ronald—uh, Ron—Adamson. Sergeant Warwick is actually in charge of the investigation...."
"Have you found anything?"
"I take it you're his...?"
"Ronnie's mother. Myra Adamson."
I maneuvered around her scooter and pulled out my chair.
The paperclips on top of my desk were exactly as I had left them, in a tiny, neat mound.
"Mrs. Adamson. Right. Yes. I'm Detective Bayne and this is Detective Zigler."
Zigler flipped open his notebook, pen poised over the blank sheet. "The last time you spoke to your son," he said, "did you notice anything peculiar?"
I was thankful that Zigler was willing to interview everyone. In fact, I would've been more comfortable if he could just call all the shots and drag me along like a really expensive and high-maintenance piece of forensics equipment. When everything was said and done, wasn't that all I really was?
"There's an unmarried woman living downstairs from Ronnie. You have to keep your eye on them, you know.
Women that age. I think maybe she's after
his money..."
Zigler was more qualified to run the show than I was. He'd graduated third in his class at Northwestern with a BS in criminal justice. Then he did post-graduate work in political science. Me? I had a GED. I never even went to college. The force actually considered my two year stint at Camp Hell to be the equivalent of an undergraduate degree. Boy. Some college.
"...he has to cross the street at California and Montrose to get to the train station, and people come around that corner so fast! It's like they don't even look. And they drink their coffee while they're driving and talk on their cell phones.
Everyone with their cell phones. I think one of those people ran him over on his way to work and didn't even notice...."
Maybe the problem with someone else being in charge was that they didn't necessarily have my best interests in mind.
Zigler probably wanted to solve crimes. He'd want to succeed.
I suppose that was what I wanted, too. Probably. Okay, maybe I wasn't the world's most vigilant crime fighter. But murderers really were at the top of my shit list.
"...and he's allergic to shellfish, papayas, peanuts, wheat gluten, dust mites, and bee stings. You don't suppose Ronnie got stung by a bee, detective, do you?"
"I believe that bee activity is fairly unusual after the first hard frost," Zigler answered, deadpan.
"Oh. I see. Well, Ronnie had this pair of shoes that he had to take back to the cobbler. Fallen arches, you know. And the last repair he had done made one leg longer than the other, so that..."
I was pretty darn sure that Jacob wanted what was best for me. I well and truly didn't care what kind of house he picked out, as long as it wasn't already inhabited. And sex? It was starting to look like I got off handing over the reins in that department, too. But I still needed to make certain choices myself. I think I'd get resentful, otherwise—start lumping Jacob in with all the people who'd run my life from the shitty foster parents up through the psychos at Camp Hell.
"Did you have any questions, Detective Bayne?" asked Zigler. He stared at me hard. He must've been dying to get home before his Tater Tots got cold.
I gave Mrs. Adamson the once-over, but there weren't any prophetical spirit heads protruding from the slight hump on her back. "I think that'll be all," I said. "We'll be in touch, ma'am."
"Find Ronnie," she said. "You have to find him. He could be sick, hurt..."
I did my best to look reassuring. I nodded. "As soon as we find anything, we'll be in touch."
* * * *
It was nearly eight by the time I dragged myself up three flights of stairs to my apartment. The next place would either need to be on the first floor or have an elevator for sure. I'd have to tell Jacob. There had to be some place in a city of three million that was both easily accessible and not haunted.
Right?
I opened my door and hung my blazer on its peg. A candle burned in my kitchen, which made it look nothing at all like my actual kitchen. You couldn't tell that everything was white, and as cheap as it was humanly possible to manufacture. But there were also shifting shadows everywhere. Not good. I flicked on the overhead. It may have totally ruined the ambience, but ambience was something I'd learned to live without.
Jacob came into the kitchen, squinting a little at its brightness. "Are pork chops okay? They might be a little dry."
"I don't care—I'm two hours later than I meant to be. Just don't put any ketchup on them."
Jacob took a foil-covered plate out of the oven. "Ketchup doesn't go very well with rosemary and fennel."
I wasn't quite sure what fennel was, but it sounded fancy.
"Sorry," Jacob said, sliding the plate onto the counter in front of me. "I already ate without you. I wasn't sure how late you'd be."
"Neither was I." I took a bite of pork chop. It might've been a little tough after sitting for two hours, but so what? It was tastier by leaps and bounds than anything I'd be able to produce.
Jacob sat on the stool beside mine and propped his elbow on the countertop, resting his cheek against his knuckles. He could've been modeling for a cologne ad—if the lighting were less severe. "I take it by the look on your face that you haven't found anything," he said.
"Nothing."
"It's pretty ballsy of the two of you to zero in on Adamson and Lopez when Andy Lynch was the last one seen."
At first I thought Jacob was criticizing our approach, but judging by the curve at the corner of his mouth, he was proud of us for not caving in and focusing all our efforts on the guy with connections.
"I think if we find one, we find 'em all. Besides, the NP detectives are all over Lynch's route." I plowed through everything on my plate, figuring the onion-looking thing that tasted weirdly sweet for the fennel, and waited for Jacob to tell me about the real estate he'd seen.
Only he didn't. He kept me company while I ate, got me a refill on my soda, and told me he was going to go and read.
No condos. No duplexes. No brownstones. No bungalows.
Huh.
I took a shower, then walked through the apartment and turned on the two lights that were still off—a crooked torcheire behind the futon sofa and a reading lamp next to the laptop that I never open.
I found Jacob propped up in bed with all the pillows, reading a manual that looked like a cousin to that monster text that Zigler'd been reading at work. "What," I asked, "did someone reissue all that inconclusive bullshit they pass for psych research nowadays? The publisher must've wanted a new yacht."
Jacob smirked over the edge of the book. "It's the new PsyCop procedures that NYPD's going to put into place the first of the year. Chicago probably won't be too far behind."
I made a snoring sound.
Jacob shrugged. "You're not the only PsyCop in the room anymore, mister."
Sure. Only the most neurotic one. I stripped down to my boxers and crawled over Jacob with the intention of just resting my eyes for a couple of minutes. I faced the wall with my back toward Jacob and my head pillowed on my bent arm, and that was it for me.
I woke up confused. The bedroom lights were off, but there was enough light to see by from the living room spillover. Jacob was curled against my back and I was using his arm as a pillow. We were warm, almost too warm, but not quite yet, and his chest hair tickled my back when I shifted.
Then a noise from the kitchen: my cell phone ringing and clattering around on the countertop from its vibrating.
Had I overslept? I looked at the clock—two in the morning.
At least, I assumed it was morning. I needed a digital alarm clock with a gigantic am/pm that was impossible to miss.
Jacob peeled himself off my back and re-established his domain over all the pillows. "You want me to get that?" he said.
"No. It's Warwick." I rolled over Jacob clumsily. He was smirking. I take it he recognized the ring and hadn't actually been offering for the sake of being helpful. I'd need to watch out for that sense of humor of his.
The call had gone to voice mail by the time I stumbled to the kitchen. It was silent for a moment, then started ringing and dancing around again. I got it in one ring, that time.
"Bayne."
"The NPs turned up Andy Lynch's wallet in a Dumpster three blocks from the park. Money and credit cards gone, everything else intact."
Andy Lynch had been robbed? And then what? A whole bunch of crime scene techs were probably very, very happy that it was below freezing out as they combed through Dumpsters for body parts. Those things smelled bad enough even when they were frozen solid. "You need me to take a look?"
"Come down to the station, grab Zig, and get over to that Dumpster. It's the best lead we've had so far."
I took a quick shower, blow-dried my hair for two minutes on full power, and stepped into my shoes. Jacob met me by the door with my winter coat, a plain black wool number that I'd bought on impulse one day when I was freezing my ass off outside a Big & Tall shop. It had always fit me exceptionally well. It looked a lot better than I remembered
it, what with all the lint brushed off and the buttons sewn on. "No rest for the wicked," Jacob said. He pressed himself against me and took my chin in his fingers, steering my mouth against his for a long, slow goodbye kiss. His lips lingered over mine, mostly chaste, except for a hint of tongue that grazed my lower lip, leaving me wanting more. He pressed a travel mug of coffee into my hands and unlocked the deadbolt. No mention of real estate. None whatsoever.
My previous boyfriends would've been baffled by the late-night summons to the station, had we ever been in the habit of sleeping in the same bed. Jacob was a PsyCop too; he understood the stress of the job. Maybe he really didn't mind scoping out all the properties by himself. Probably.
Chapter Ten
I made it to the station first, about two forty-five. Zigler showed up a few minutes later—looking puffy, but otherwise unremarkable—as Warwick walked me through a map of the alleyways where the wallet had been discovered. Zigler and I went back to our desks, though I obviously didn't need anything from mine, and I watched him while he flipped through his files, making sure he had everything.
Zigler wasn't such a bad guy, was he? He'd dragged me out to the hot dog stand without telling me why, but given how broken up he was about the whole thing, maybe I could cut him some slack. And he never mentioned me being queer.
I was fine with that. I told him my big, scary secret, he voiced absolutely zero opinion, and we moved on.
"I need you to drive," I said. "The ghosts are thicker in the middle of the night."
Zigler's eyes widened briefly, then he nodded. I guess he didn't know if he could talk to me about the things I saw any more than he could about my living arrangement with the hottest Stiff in Chicago.
"If you could do more of the talking with the witnesses," I said to his back as we headed downstairs. "That would be good. You could introduce us and all. I think you're better.
With people. You know?"
He paused at the front doors and turned to look at me. He was slowly getting less puffy, but I'd hardly call him bright eyed and bushy tailed. "All right."
Zigler was probably a better cop, too. I didn't think I'd need to lay that on the table. That was the sort of thing that would prove itself over time.
PsyCop 3: Body and Soul Page 8