Chapter 21
Aside from the striking aroma of old socks, Roger Burke’s cell was clean. Maybe that was for the best. If there’d been a repeater in residence, it wouldn’t have supplied me with any useful information. And if there’d been a sentient ghost lingering around, I would have exposed the extent of my ability to Richie and Bly by talking to it. Seeing Jacob’s eyes, the longing look he cast on the door of the cell, wrenched my heart. If we couldn’t get to the bottom of Burke’s final mind-game, he’d be stuck squandering all his FPMP time trying to solve a puzzle with key pieces that were long since lost.
Agent Bly said, “We should see if the staff would let us join them for lunch.” When he piped up with that suggestion, I realized he hadn’t said much. Maybe it was Jacob’s investigation, but Bly had been an FPMP agent longer than him. Richie actually had seniority…but obviously, his opinion didn’t carry much weight unless it had to do with cold spots or football.
Some phone calls were made and lunch was confirmed. While the MCC guards didn’t have any say as to where we were allowed to go, there was nothing written in stone about them needing to go over and above to accommodate us, and certainly nothing forcing them to have a deep heart-to-heart chat with us over our lousy sandwiches and vending machine chips. Sure, they’d all done their jobs. Burke had made it out through the facility’s front doors alive. But my experience with the people in these types of professions is that they give the facts and leave it at that, for fear of bringing down some kind of recrimination on their own heads. So it floored me when the guard and the nurse we broke bread with were downright friendly.
Don’t get me wrong—I know exactly how charming Jacob can be when he sets his mind to it. But before the sandwiches were even unwrapped, these guys opened up to him like long lost brothers. The guard said, “I dread getting an ex-cop on my cellblock. Fucking dread it.” He was a middle-aged Latino guy with “don’t fuck with me” written all over him. “But Burke could handle himself, and there was something about him…the other inmates took to him a lot better than I thought they would. He spent as much time as he could in the library, trying to figure out how to get off. He probably told a few of the other ones he’d help them get off, too.”
I’d wager he didn’t mean “get off” in the porno sense, given that Burke would rather cut off his own dick than let another guy handle it.
I took a bite of my sandwich, an institutional approximation of a BLT that tasted like the plastic wrap. The bread was spongy, the lettuce was soggy, the tomato was crunchy, and the bacon—if that’s even what it was—had the consistency of beef jerky. The meatlike-substance was so bad that even Richie the carnivore peeled open his spongy bread and picked it off. Then he tried a bite of the veggie mush-and-mayo sandwich and opted to not eat it at all. Jacob was probably crying inside while he ate, but he didn’t show it. The prison staff seemed accustomed to the cuisine. “However Burke finally worked it for himself,” the guard said, “however he got his sentence overturned, looks like it didn’t pan out too good for him after all.”
The nurse was a younger guy, tough, black, and just as big and imposing as the guard. “Even if he stayed,” the nurse said, “there’s no guarantee he would’ve been safe. Couple months later, flu ripped through the inmates. Took out a half dozen guys in his cellblock. Makes you wonder about the hand of God. Maybe when your time is up, nothing you can do to get out of it.”
I was well aware of the mortality rate of the latest flu outbreak. We’d had our share of cases in the Fifth Precinct’s residents…though the cause of death was plain enough that they didn’t need me to confirm it. I said, “It must’ve been brutal to contain it here.”
“You got that right,” the nurse agreed. “Keep everything as clean as you can, don’t matter. Whatever’s catching, it spreads.”
“The inmates who passed…any of them friendly with Burke?” I asked.
The guard ran through his mental roster of recently deceased inmates. “Could’ve been. Like I said, he got along a lot better than you’d expect.”
“And did the flu patients die here, or were they transported elsewhere?”
“Flu or no flu,” the nurse said, “these are dangerous felons. They treat them here, in the infirmary.”
I looked up and met Jacob’s eyes, and he rewarded me with the grim shadow of a smile.
* * *
Certain types of places just seem like they’d be haunted: cemeteries, abandoned houses, disturbed Indian burial grounds…places people avoid, and places people die. Since plenty of convicts probably have an axe or two to grind, enough unfinished business to cause them to stick around, I figured the Correctional Center’s infirmary would be swarming with spirit activity.
So, of course, it was clean.
Jacob and Bly took one of the doctors aside, a greasy looking guy who seemed eager to be distracted from his job. There were a few patients in hospital beds. I wasn’t sure if they were as out-of-it as they looked, or if they were faking because they had no desire to help the Law. Richie moved slowly up and down the center of the room, scrutinizing each patient in turn. I had no idea why he was insisting on making eye contact. I personally didn’t want to interact with any surly, diseased convicts. But I suppose I should’ve been happy that at least Richie wasn’t subjecting us all to his exuberant galumph-walk.
A second doctor sat at a desk toward the back of the room, arms crossed, scowling down at a pile of reports as he read. His demeanor struck me as more serious than the other doctor’s, since he was less eager to drop what he was doing, I suppose. Maybe he would have heard something about Roger Burke’s final plans. And maybe he’d be willing to tell me about them. Not here—I imagine there’d be a possibility of recriminations for him here. But I could get his number and have Jacob call him later.
“Doctor, I’m Detective Bayne. We’re investigating the homicide of former inmate Roger Burke.”
To say I startled the guy was an understatement. He nearly fell out of his chair.
I scanned for a name tag, but he wasn’t wearing one. Caucasian male, average height and slightly overweight. Age, approximately fifty. Gray hair, a sparse beard, and thick glasses. And he was staring at me like I’d just crept up behind him while he was reading and yelled “Boo!”
Hoping to let the whole startle-thing slide, I acted like I didn’t notice the spooked look he was giving me, and said, “Were you acquainted with Burke?”
“What are you?” he said.
I got a better look at him and saw his elbow was intersecting the plastic arm of the office chair. The nearest inmate was peering at me through slitted eyelids, probably wondering why I was introducing myself to thin air. I had a potential witness—a really solid ghost—but I also had a bunch of people around me I couldn’t simply shoo out of the room. One guy was in traction. Another one was on dialysis. I couldn’t exactly give the ghost my business card and have him meet me after work. Could I?
I dug out my paper PsyCop license and placed it on the desk. The doctor didn’t try to pick it up, but he bent over it and read. “I’ve heard of Psychs, but you can see me? Actually see me? And hear me too?” I looked him in the eye and nodded. “I always thought this psychic business was a bunch of malarkey. I see I was entirely wrong. You’d think I would be used to it by now, too.” He gave a grumpy huff, crossed his arms and shook his head.
There was a desktop computer and laser printer on the desk. I pulled a pen out of my pocket and a sheet of plain paper from the printer, and began to write.
“Patient records are privileged information,” the greasy doctor called from across the room, not seeming particularly alarmed that I was monkeying around on his desk.
“Just making a few notes,” I called back.
“That guy’s an idiot,” the ghost doctor said. “He’s given up, you know? Lost his practice and now he’s here, and he can’t give two shits about the job.”
You worked here? I wrote.
“Eight years. Eight long,
ugly years.”
Did you know Roger Burke?
He stared at the question for a moment, stroking his beard in thought. “The ex-cop. Ex-fed. So that’s why the big guns are here.”
I’d hardly call myself a “big gun” but luckily I was able to keep my side of the conversation to a minimum.
“I didn’t know him,” the ghost said. “But I’d heard of him.”
Any idea who’d want him dead?
He leaned back in his chair, though his chair didn’t move, and folded his hands behind his head in a show of excessive casualness. “They say he kidnapped a cop. Does the cop have an alibi?”
My first impulse was to roll my eyes and assure him I could be fairly certain I knew where that cop was…and then I realized that I was damn lucky I didn’t have the FBI breathing down my neck. Lucky…or enjoying the protection of the FPMP. Eager to find something, anything of use, I wrote, Did any of Burke’s pals die in the flu outbreak?
“Could be. There were a dozen casualties. Me included.”
Can I talk to them?
“Can you?” he echoed. “I don’t know. They’re gone. I moved them along, the ones that were troubled, confused. Hard to explain why I bother, it’s just something I feel the need to do. So they’re not here.”
Talking to spirits who’d moved along would be like trying to call the ghosts back to the repeaters. It seemed possible, but only in theory. I felt like I had access to a telephone, but dialing random numbers was getting me nowhere fast. Where are they?
“Wherever it is we go when we finish our earthly business. Heaven? Reincarnation? The Elysian Fields? Wherever we go, that’s where they are. Whether you can call them back from beyond the veil, I have no idea. I’m a man of science, not superstition. It never occurred to me that the afterlife was anything more than a morality tale to keep people from slaughtering each other.” He glanced at the guy in traction. The patient was covered in prison ink, including three tattooed teardrops at the corner of his eye—one for every life he’d taken. The dead doctor sighed. “Not a very effective morality tale, either.”
While part of me found it encouraging that some dead folks stuck around to keep the spirit population in check, I was disappointed that they seldom told me anything helpful. Maybe Miss Mattie would know how to contact the dead-and-gone. I’d avoided asking her since she’d probably say something cryptic about believing in myself and suggesting I pray, but I supposed I shouldn’t presume that’s what her answer would be.
Since this dead guy’s vocabulary seemed a lot closer to mine (or maybe it’s just we were both clearly pessimists) and since he was willing to discuss the matter with me, I tried to puzzle through another question that would help me figure out how to broaden my reach. I was about to write, Can you hear my thoughts? when a hand clapped down on the back of the office chair, and now I was the one to nearly jump out of my skin.
Richie.
“We gotta go,” he gasped. He was covered in a sheen of sweat. “I need to eat something. I’m going into hypoglycemic shock.”
The dead doctor must’ve been good and startled, too. Now he was gone.
* * *
The greasy-looking doctor actually concurred with Richie’s diagnosis. I figured Richie had just read the word hypoglycemic on someone’s chart and repeated it because he wanted to be the center of attention. Luckily, there were glucose tablets at hand. But with the FPMP’s house medium cranky, shaky and sweating, the Metropolitan Correctional Center outing Dreyfuss had called in his favors to arrange was over.
On the force, I work weekends as often as not. But today, Friday afternoon meant release from my bondage, and thanks to the FPMP, I could finally appreciate the sentiment behind TGIF.
Lisa was out—I did my best not to visualize with whom—and after wolfing down an early dinner, Jacob and I had become one with the couch. I slouched, sprawling back into the pillows, with his head cradled in my lap. While we hashed over the day, I twirled his short dark hair between my fingers, absently forming small liberty spikes that unraveled as soon as I let go. I looked forward to this one-on-one time all week. I felt like I could relax my shoulders and breathe all the way in. His features softened from not needing to hold his cop-face in place. In the spaces where our words trailed off, the silence was soothing. We had a lot to talk about, though. Even without running the blender. The infirmary convicts must’ve been on some pretty good opiates; Jacob said he’d found them surprisingly chatty. They told him Roger Burke was always up to something. He was maneuvering to get me to recant my testimony—and if that hadn’t paid off, he was hoping to barter some very special technology for his release—the remaining GhosTVs.
Compared to the convicts, the dead doctor hadn’t told me anything useful. Still, I recounted the conversation for Jacob the best I could. He listened in that way he does whenever I talk ghost, so focused I can practically hear the gears turning. “We know Burke contacted you about your testimony,” Jacob said. “But what about the GhosTVs?”
“I’m under the impression that Dreyfuss scooped them up. Maybe someone was trying to stop him from grabbing them…but who would want to keep the GhosTVs under wraps?” I asked. Anti-Psych groups? The government? I can’t imagine how I’d ended up with a console of my very own growing cobwebs in my basement if anyone knew the half of what they could do. The only group that understood the GhostTV’s potential was the very organization investigating Burke’s shooting. Ironic? Maybe not. It was entirely possible the right hand didn’t know that the left was covered in gunshot residue. “We thought it was a good idea for one of us to keep tabs on the FPMP,” I said, not getting into the fact that we’d disagreed which one of us was the best guy for the job. “But what if we were wrong? What if we should stay as far away from them as possible? Because people disappear there. Jennifer Chance. Detective Wembly. All those repeaters on the fifth floor. Someone’s taking people out—maybe not Dreyfuss, I’ve got to hope Lisa eliminated Dreyfuss before she shacked up with him—but someone.”
Jacob didn’t disagree. He thought for a while, then said, “Lisa couldn’t eliminate Laura Kim.”
“But she didn’t say Laura did it, either.” The thought of collaring Laura made me sick. I genuinely liked her, and my gut was telling me she acted nothing at all like a killer.
There were all kinds of Psychs on staff, though. What if Laura Kim hadn’t voluntarily pulled that trigger? What if a powerful Psych had forced her hand? My fingers stilled mid-twirl. “Jacob….”
“Mm?”
“We need to take a better look at Agent Bly.”
Chapter 22
I slept like crap with visions of that morgue-like bunk bed shelf and the toilet fountain dancing in my head. I’d thought murderer-ghosts would be the thing to trigger my anxiety, and instead it had been the sight of the cells that spooked me. I’d waited too long to take a Seconal. If I took one now, I’d sleep my Saturday away. I indulged in a Valium instead. It made my limbs feel heavy, but left my thoughts returning to the sight of the prison cell. I gave up trying to get back to sleep pitifully early. Even so, Lisa had come and gone before I could catch her and question her about Agent Bly. Jacob didn’t need to tell me I’d be an idiot to utter his name over any phone, or to even say it outside of one of our safe spaces, without alerting the whole FPMP to the fact that we were on to Bly.
“It’s six fucking thirty,” I snapped. “Does she have yoga on Saturdays?”
Jacob was still in the land of grog. “Actually,” he said into his pillow, “I think she does.”
There was no guarantee she’d be coming home afterward, either. Armed with a map printed off the Internet, I made my way to Lisa’s gym. Since there was only one door, I planned to snag her on the way out and figure out what the hell Agent Bly’s game was…and whether he’d managed to force or coerce Laura Kim into killing someone.
I sat in my car sipping my big coffee, watching the windshield gradually fog over. It started around the edges, creeping toward the center,
but I had my eyes on the prize. After the email-theft incident, Lisa had opted against joining Jacob’s gym, which was full of beefy gay guys who look pretty much like Jacob. In contrast, hers seemed more like a mom-gym, the type of place where even I wouldn’t feel too intimidated. The clientele I saw going in and out was mostly female, and a big poster in the window advertised free child care. The few guys who did show up seemed like they probably had booster seats in the backs of their minivans. I’d spied Lisa’s VW in the lot, though the parking places on either side of it were taken. That was fine, as long as I had a good view of the door. There was a yoga session scheduled—I’d checked when I printed off the map—and just as my clock showed 7:33, a stream of mostly women emerged from the front door. They had pastel yoga mats slung over their shoulders and water bottles clutched in their hands. Their body language was easy, as if they all knew each other, holding open doors, chatting amiably, waving goodbye.
Lisa’s not one for neon colored workout clothes. She dresses like a cop—navy, black, white, gray, denim and khaki. I recognized her navy jacket right away…and then the crowd shifted, and I recognized a certain atrocious knit hat. And the guy shameless enough to wear it.
Con Dreyfuss strode beside Lisa with a day-glow yellow yoga mat clamped in his armpit and an acid green water bottle with a loop-top swinging from the pinkie of the same hand. He needed to keep his other arm free, obviously, to prevent Lisa from escaping. That’s what I told myself. Even though she appeared to be trying to cradle her head on his shoulder as they walked with their arms around each other, swerving like drunks. And even though they were both smiling so brightly they practically lit up the dingy parking lot.
I slid down lower in my seat and squinted, relieved that there hadn’t been a spot free near Lisa’s Beetle after all. No way she’d miss me if she walked right by my car. I was two rows over, though, and she had no reason to look. She was too wrapped up in Dreyfuss anyway. They paused by her car to disentangle from one another, and he took a moment to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear while he gazed into her eyes and said something that was undoubtedly charming. I’d seen him look that way before, dopy with longing, when his astral body went to sit vigil by a medicated Faun Windsong’s bedside, so seeing this side of him didn’t shock me now. Like before, he didn’t know I’d borne witness to it, so I could hardly tell myself he’d trumped up a show of devotion simply for my benefit.
Spook Squad Page 20