Spook Squad

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Once I got over the idea of Einstein singing karaoke, I attempted to wrap my head around the cost of comping thirty-two people at Soldier Field—especially on Thanksgiving Day. That game had sold out two hours after the tickets became available…not that it would prevent Dreyfuss from scoring more. Just that the thought of him being willing to do so was interesting, to say the least.

  “I don’t know if we can swing that many behind the fifty-yard line,” Dreyfuss said. “You’re sure you don’t want a skybox instead?”

  “It’s only three more seats.”

  “Free booze, Richie. People love an ice cold keg. Think how much fun it’ll be in your exclusive box—climate-controlled bliss. Shrimp cocktail and caviar. Sexy bartenders. Hell, I can even get you lap dances if that’s what you’re into.”

  “Not in front of my neighbors.” Richie flushed pink. “How about pizza? Will there be pizza there?”

  “I think that could be arranged.”

  Richie considered the offer, then swung around to fully face me. “Hardcore Vic—did you want to come?”

  The thought of watching Richie’s bowling team scarfing down some fat, oozing deep-dish while sexy bartenders rode their groins was mildly amusing, but it wasn’t the way I wanted to spend Thanksgiving. It would probably be funny for about ten minutes…and then I’d start thinking about the way we all had to chip in five bucks the last time someone made a pizza run back at the precinct, and how there’d been nothing left but a few crusts by the time I got to the break room. “Jacob and I already—”

  “Agent Marks can come too,” Richie added.

  “We already have plans.” We hadn’t discussed whether we’d be heading up to Wisconsin or not, but I wanted to leave the day open in case we did. Even if that meant turning down all the shrimp cocktail I cared to eat.

  “There’ll be pizza.”

  “I heard. But, you know. Family stuff.”

  Richie seemed puzzled by that excuse, but Dreyfuss adroitly steered the conversation away from my personal life. “Speaking of Agent Marks, would you mind getting him for me, Richie?”

  “Sure,” he said. “No problem.” I guess it didn’t occur to Richie to wonder why Dreyfuss didn’t pick up the phone and buzz him.

  * * *

  After the door sighed shut with a gentle magnetic click, I asked, “So how much is Richie’s Amazing Thanksgiving Adventure setting you back?”

  “About half as much as it would have if he’d insisted on the fifty-yard line seats.”

  If I tried to get a single pair of tickets from Sergeant Warwick, even up in the nosebleed section, he’d tell me to go beat them out of a scalper myself. “Deep pockets.”

  “Money is only money—the treasury prints more of it every day. The seats behind the bench, however, have strings attached I’d just as soon not pull. I’d rather juggle my budget than burn favors.”

  Money, favors, connections, all of it was worth something. Seconal required all of the above, and I’d be blissed out for the rest of my life on the amount of reds he could score for the cost of a skybox. Heck, I’d do a tap dance for the handful of reds in his pocket, but I didn’t let on. Seemed to me I was nowhere near as demanding as Richie, and I provided a lot more value in return for my fee.

  I paced the room. The three repeaters looked the same as they had the day before. “Chance isn’t here,” I said.

  “Of course not.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, turning to catch Triple-Shot in my peripheral vision. The first bullet took him in the thigh. I glanced away before I saw a replay of the other two rounds, disgusted. Salting the dead junkie shooting up in the corner of the convenience store was one thing. The poor saps working the cash register had nothing to do with his death. Dreyfuss, though? “If you don’t like working in a haunted office, you should’ve thought of that before you had the guys killed.”

  “You think it’s a pain in the ass to score tickets?” he said. “Try covering up a shooting. I think you know me well enough by now to see it’s not my style.”

  “I like to keep an open mind.”

  “You don’t believe me? Ask ’em yourself—who put them here, me or the old guard? I’ll just stand here and pretend you’re floating a rhetorical question.”

  The ducking throat-shot repeater pitched backwards. It would be a hell of a load off my mind if I could ask them. Sure, they might lie. But usually they didn’t, not about their killers. They were just repeaters, though. They had nothing to say…verbally, at least.

  I stared at the spot where the victim landed, then knelt and touched the berber. The texture looked different where his blood pooled, though when the blood disappeared, the texture moved, shifting until it blended with the rest of the rug. So the carpeting had been replaced since the shooting. I scanned the current carpet. It had been there a while; I could detect a subtle hint of wear between the door and the old position of Dreyfuss’ desk. But the pile was expensive and didn’t give much away. Plus Dreyfuss had been Regional Director for a few years now, so carpet wear was nothing much to go by.

  I glanced up at Triple-Shot. While I didn’t think I’d suddenly find a date and time of death stamped on his forehead, it would’ve been nice. It also would’ve been nice to notice he was in a leisure suit with a great big collar, or a power-suit with giant shoulder pads. But menswear doesn’t exactly have major fashion swings every decade, so there weren’t any clues in his wardrobe, either. I thought maybe I could date the hair of the guy by the bathroom, but it turned out he just had high widow’s peaks.

  Dreyfuss’ voice startled me. “Maybe you don’t need to ask anything…maybe you communicate with them telepathically.”

  “Who said I was communicating?”

  “You, my friend, are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a polyester blend.”

  I refused to let him bait me.

  “Still, your body language tells me they’re not much of a threat…unlike a certain someone who can apparently come and go as they please.” He glanced at the tiny cactus on his credenza to remind me of our flower shop chat about Dr. Chance, then lowered his voice and said, “It’s refreshing that I don’t need to tell you how to play the game. You know nothing. You see nothing. You’re operating under the vaguest impressions. Fine. But if you should happen to ‘sense’ something important, it’s in both of our best interest that you tell me about it—not like the major sighting you decided to keep to yourself. Got it?”

  “If her whereabouts are that important to you, maybe you should have the guy who just got the skybox find her.”

  “We both know that’s not happening—so what’s your point?”

  “I don’t appreciate having my payment doled out one pill at a time.”

  “Get rid of the problem and I’ll set you up. Gladly.”

  I was about to pin down the specifics of getting “set up” when Jacob and Mr. Skybox himself joined us. “Sorry I took so long,” Jacob said. “I was right in the middle of something.” As the words left his mouth, I realized that he’d probably intuited Dreyfuss’ reason for sending Richie to fetch him, and stalled the poor guy to buy us some time alone. Jacob must be in his glory. He no longer had a partner who’d pipe up, “No you weren’t!” and spoil his truth-bending.

  By way of greeting, Dreyfuss asked Jacob, “Any luck getting the Metropolitan Correctional Center to play nice with your investigation?”

  “Not yet. Your contact hasn’t called me back.”

  “Well, keep chipping away at him. He owes me a favor.” Dreyfuss turned to me. “Let’s focus on our home turf—which parts of the building are first in line for Operation Cactus?”

  “The conference room I searched the last time I was here.” And if Dr. Chance wasn’t waiting for me there, then what? “The last…physical site, too.” In other words, wherever it was he’d ordered her gunned down.

  “Any supplies we should get you?”

  I had my salt and my Florida Water. I shook my head.

  “Agent Marks
will show you around,” Dreyfuss said.

  Jacob said, “The conference room, that’s by personnel, right?”

  In his best “duh” voice, Richie told him, “Totally different floor.”

  “And the other location,” Jacob asked. “The subbasement?”

  “Fourth floor guest suite C,” Dreyfuss supplied.

  “Someone really needs to get you a map,” Richie said. “How long have you been here, two months?”

  Jacob gave a shrug—and as I saw the minuscule movement, I realized his “I’m lost” act was yet another ruse. He knew full well where everything was. He’d probably plotted out the entire building within a week. But why set me up to have Richie as my tour guide instead of him?

  About a million reasons why. My relationship with Richie spanned nearly two decades. Sure, most of that time consisted of a few years when we were in our early twenties, and the majority of that time I spent ruthlessly mocking him. He seemed to have made out well enough in the end to let bygones be bygones. Or maybe, despite my shitty attitude back then, I’d been the closest thing he had to a friend.

  Not only did Richie seem to enjoy my company, but he’d been working at the FPMP for years. While Jacob could certainly show me around, he wouldn’t have a feel for the history of the place, especially the dirty little secrets I wasn’t supposed to know.

  And not only did Richie like me…but he wasn’t bright enough to censor himself in my presence. Especially if he was trying to impress me with how much he knew.

  If only I could get him to stop talking about cars.

  “I’ll probably have better luck scoping things out with Richie,” I said. “Jacob’s vibe might send something into hiding.” This was patently untrue, of course. Jacob’s Stiffness didn’t act as any kind of ghost-deterrent—they just couldn’t sneak inside his skin.

  Fortunately, Dreyfuss didn’t know that. “Whaddaya say, Richard? Can you make the time in your schedule to show Detective Bayne around?”

  Most people given additional work would have hemmed and hawed about how they’d need to shuffle their responsibilities so they could milk something out of Dreyfuss for taking on an extra task, but Richie immediately said, “Sure! No problem.” Then again, he’d just been handed a skybox on Thanksgiving. Maybe it was simpler that way, to give and take in an exuberant display of trust without holding any collateral in reserve. But I couldn’t see adopting that methodology myself.

  We turned to go and Jacob filed out of the room first. As he brushed past me, we locked eyes. For someone as inscrutable as he can be, the micro-expressions he manages to slip through are beyond intense. The way I’d flowed with his lead? He approved. His eyes were two dark points of fierceness, and he’d sucked in his cheeks for a split second to make his supermodel cheekbones jut in a way that left me weak-kneed. That look promised to take me and use me and make me beg for mercy…then leave me wrung out and hung up to dry. He slipped through the door, and the devastating look was gone.

  I moved to follow, and Dreyfuss said to me, “If you do make contact, act fast and do what it takes. She’s no dummy. If she figures out what you’re trying to do, you might not get another chance. No pun intended.”

  Although most of the ghost-zapping I do consists of erasing repeaters, moving Jennifer Chance along wouldn’t be the first exorcism of a sentient ghost I’d performed. I’d escorted out about a dozen spirits with personalities since the day I released the Fire Ghost from her spectral dog chain. Those spirits had been victims, though. I’d nudged them out of the rut where they lingered around wallowing in their deaths, figuring I should help them move on to something better. Although Dr. Chance technically qualified as a victim, something about the way I’d been deployed made me feel less like an assistant and more like an assassin.

  Maybe I had more in common with Laura Kim than a history with lousy used cars.

  * * *

  Richie and I arrived at our first location, the conference room. I caught a whiff of spice on the air, which confused me because herbal props were used in earth magic and Hoodoo, and Richie was more of a holy water and frankincense guy. Then again, it smelled suspiciously like tandoori.

  “You want me to have the power cut so we can concentrate?” Richie said.

  I really didn’t feel like blundering around in the dark if I could avoid it. “Let’s hold off for now. You haven’t sensed any activity here lately, have you?”

  “Just the quarterly budget meeting. Heh-heh.”

  I laughed unconvincingly and scrutinized the spot where the repeater who’d blown his own brains out used to be. Suicide guy wasn’t there anymore. But seeing that expanse of table and the subtly textured wall behind it—a wall that had probably been entirely replaced to get rid of the trace evidence—I couldn’t help but wonder. Why did that guy pull the trigger? Maybe he saw it as a better option than submitting to interrogation. Or maybe there’d been another set of hands in play that I couldn’t see, as their owner wasn’t dead yet—a kind of macabre grown-up version of “Why are you hitting yourself?”

  Or maybe there was a high-level telekinetic pulling the victim’s strings.

  I shuddered.

  “Do you feel a cold spot?” Richie said. He got up in my comfort zone. “I don’t think I do.”

  “No, it’s just…it’s nothing. It’s clean.”

  Richie marched around the table. His stride was weirdly balanced, heavy, graceless. When he completed his circuit, he stood in place, swung his arms parallel to one another and looked at me expectantly. Given my aversion to being locked up, I wasn’t exactly eager to see the “guest suites.” But since Dr. Chance wasn’t in either of the places I’d seen her before, I supposed her holding tank was the next logical place to look. My discomfort grew to something closer to fear as we neared the super-high-security area, passing first through a keycard slider, then a manually locked door with two very large and capable hard-eyed men in plain black suits keeping tabs on it. Richie spoke to them with as much obnoxious entitlement as he had Laura. “We need room number, uh…d’you remember what it was, Vic?”

  “Suite C,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.

  One of the grim agents turned back to a computer monitor. The other was watching me, and though I didn’t know why I’d caught his eye, I’m guessing it wasn’t because he was hoping I’d be free for dinner. He was a few years younger than me, buff and capable, and while the level of his personal grooming pinged my gaydar, the rest of his body language definitely didn’t. His hair was cropped even closer than Jacob’s, practically bald. He was tanner than the rest of us white guys, as if he’d just come back from a Florida vacation, and his pale gray eyes were striking against the tan. It was possible he knew who I was, and who Jacob was, and exactly who we were in relation to one another. Probably, some thicknecks back at the Fifth knew too, but it wasn’t openly acknowledged. Here, though? I wasn’t sure. Being out on the job was new to me, and I wanted to make sure I handled it right. Since I didn’t want to seem like I was cruising him, I looked away first.

  He left the other agent at the computer and led us to a hallway that contained four staggered doors and no windows. It didn’t look like a prison, or a hospital, or even the strip search rooms at O’Hare airport. It looked like a nice apartment building or maybe a classy motel, albeit a motel with incredibly robust locks on every door.

  Back at the flower shop, I’d said Jennifer Chance couldn’t really do anything other than make a cold spot, and for most people, that was true. Because of my talent, my subtle bodies were a lot looser in my physical skin than most people’s. Disgruntled ghosts sometimes grab at me, as if I don’t notice them trying to sneak in—and Jennifer Chance was the poster child for disgruntlement.

  I sucked white light as we walked down the short hallway to the second door on the right, opening myself wide like a fireplug at the scene of a big blaze, encouraging my connection with whatever cosmic psychic energy fuels my ability to load me up, pronto. And then I channeled all of that b
right white energy into a psychic bodysuit to protect me from being penetrated, by Chance, or by any other potential ghostly trespassers.

  You think walking and chewing gum is hard? Try walking and sucking white light. My vision went wobbly and I listed toward Richie. He shouldered me into place and said, “Walk much? Heh-heh.”

  We paused in front of the door, which didn’t look nearly as ominous as I thought it should. The agent used a key card as well as a metal key to open the suite. “You want the door open,” he asked Richie, “or shut?”

  “Open,” I answered, before Richie could volunteer to have us sealed into this place, the one where Dr. Chance met her end…because before, seeing her in the boardroom or in Dreyfuss’ can, I could have dodged her. Or maybe not, since she was noncorporeal and wasn’t hindered by slippery shoes or poor aerobic capacity, but at least I maintained the illusion that I could at least try. Locked in a room, though? No thanks.

  Richie strode right on in. I hung back in the doorway. The bald guy stood at the ready in the hall.

  It was a plain room, no sharp corners. The curvilinear edges gave it a sixties mod feel. If there’d been any windows, it might have felt like executive quarters for temporary staff. Its appearance was completely at odds with what I’d expected, which involved fire pits, manacles hanging from the ceiling, and whatever gear they use to waterboard terrorists at Gitmo.

  “Here it is,” Richie said, again swinging his arms in tandem, front, back. Front, back. “I don’t feel nothing.”

  I peered around. There was a built in bed, a built in desk, and a toilet in a discreet nook in the corner. Not entirely private, but better than a communal jailhouse crapper. The soothing colors and lines were not only modern, but they’d show off a ghost as effectively as my old white-on-white apartment…if there’d been a ghost to show.

  I took three steps in and helped myself to a few cleansing breaths. Then I channeled some of that protective white light into my vision. I know it’s not really my eyeballs and optic nerves that perceive the spirit plane—but maybe that ability lives close enough to the visual part of my brain that the distinction is moot. I sucked light, and I peered.