PsyCop 4: Secrets

by Jordan Castillo Price

  I clenched my teeth as he opened the car door and stepped into oncoming cars, which honked and streamed around him. He leaned into the car with the door wide open, and the interior filled with frozen air. “Don’t search me on the Web,” I said.

  “Sure thing, tiger. I snagged a picture of that pulsing love bite on my cell phone.” He made a jerk-off motion with a loose fist. “What more do I need?”

  “You look lousy with green hair,” I said, but the car door was already shut. It was a lie, anyway.

  I pulled away from the line of parked cars and took three right turns and a left to get myself headed north again. I drove fast, faster than normal. Ghosts were easy enough to spot in late February’s freezing rain. They were the ones that wandered by in shorts and sandals. They were the ones that strolled around without a care in the world while everyone else hunched deep into the collars of their coats and held soggy newspapers over their heads. They were the ones that didn’t splatter when I drove through them.

  I took a wrong turn at Montrose and went three blocks before I realized I was headed back toward my old apartment. I pulled into the bike lane, drummed my fingertips on the steering wheel, and tried to calculate the least congested way back to the cannery.

  I didn’t feel like going back there, but what other choice did I have? If I turned around and went to Crash’s place, I’d end up cheating on Jacob. Sure, my sex life with Jacob was incredible and he looked like a supermodel, but if I had to admit it, I’d always been more partial to rock-star types. Even Stefan, who’d carried around thirty extra pounds that drove him totally nuts, had looked like he’d just rolled in from touring with some underground British goth band.

  It wasn’t just a matter of style, either. Crash told me things, like the fact that I couldn’t be found on the Web. Neither could Stefan. Or Camp Hell. Jacob had to have known about that. I’d bet my right eye he’d tried to search Camp Hell himself. He’d probably searched me too, shrewd guy like him. I’d never known Jacob to skimp on his homework.

  I dug in the pocket of my peacoat and found a linty Seconal. I swallowed it dry and pressed my head back against the headrest. I told myself not to be stupid. I was just crabby from moving. I had cold feet. That’s all.

  And besides, maybe Crash wasn’t being totally straight with me, either.

  I stared into my rear view and waited for an opening, then pulled out and headed toward the cannery. I parked in front, pulled out my phone, and memory-dialed Crash’s number.

  “Changed your mind?” he said. “I was just getting dressed to go out for a drink. You’re welcome to come upstairs and undo all these buckles.” I didn’t know what he was wearing that had lots of buckles, and I didn’t care. I’d just remembered something from a conversation we’d had when he asked me to carry around those silver charms for him. “You said that you found out online that I was fifth-level,” I told him. He’d said it months ago, but I remembered it anyway. His exact words had been “juicy Internet rumor.” He’d practically licked the consonants and vowels on their way out of his mouth.

  “Oh. So you do pay attention when I talk.” I heard the snap of a lighter, and the sound of him sucking in a lungful of smoke and exhaling. “I thought you were too busy picturing me bending over the nearest horizontal surface to hear my conversation.”

  “So which time were you lying—when you said I’m nowhere on the Internet, or when you bragged about finding out my test scores?”

  “I’m probably lots of things, but I’m no liar. Ask Carolyn.”

  “Either I’m online, or I’m not.”

  “The actual words—in a password-protected Usenet group, I might add—were ‘a certain Chicago medium tested out at fifth level.’”

  “A certain Chicago medium.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What makes you even think that means me?”

  “Do you know any other certified mediums in Chicago? Let alone Class Five?”

  “I’m going,” I said, and hung up before he could plant any more ideas into my head about unbuckling his buckles and bending him over. I had enough uncomfortable thoughts to keep me occupied for a good, long time.

  -THREE-

  I searched the Web for signs of myself until the Seconal made the letters on the screen start to blur together. I’d found plenty of stuff about Jacob and Carolyn. The Chicago Tribune database was full of articles that mentioned them in conjunction with the crimes they’d solved—assaults and rapes.

  Crash? Totally searchable, if you knew his whole name—which I did, thanks to Miss Mattie, the guardian angel who watched over him. Curtis Ash. Plenty of hits on him. His store, Sticks and Stones, had a website that made it look a lot bigger than it really was in person.

  He had a presence in the Wicker Park Chamber of Commerce. His telephone number even popped up.

  Nothing about Maurice Taylor except an old article in the Chicago Defender about a convoluted embezzling scam he’d exposed before he became a PsyCop.

  And me, with all those murders that would have ended up in the cold case file without me and my wonderful “gift”?

  Nothing.

  By the time Jacob got home around three in the morning, I was so dead to the world that the front door didn’t even wake me. I sleep deeply on reds, even one pill, and Jacob had to shake me to bring me around. Unfamiliar couch, unfamiliar room, and all my clothes were still on, even my sneakers. “Come to bed,” he said.

  We made our way upstairs to the narrow lofted area that held a small bedroom, an even smaller bedroom, and a bathroom that must have been modeled after something in an RV. Jacob’s bedroom furniture fit in the largest of the small bedrooms—barely. Maybe the bed wouldn’t have looked quite so displaced if I’d bothered to put some sheets on it, but it hadn’t occurred to me to make the bed.

  The mattress sat there in the middle of the room, naked and shiny, and a hell of a lot less inviting than the couch. Jacob opened a couple of boxes while I stood there in my Seconal daze and rubbed my eyes. He threw a handful of pillows and blankets toward the middle of the bed and started to strip out of his suit.

  I looked for sheets. There were none. The pillows were all bare, with the words “King – Deluxe – Firm” printed on them, over and over, until the letters formed a meaningless pattern. I moved the pillows toward the head of the bed and shook out the comforter. I couldn’t tell the long side from the short side, and I kept rotating it around, trying to figure out which way it was supposed to go, while Jacob hung up his suit and tucked his gun and holster into the bedside table.

  “Forget it,” said Jacob. “I’ve got to try and sleep.”

  Try? Not to have a Yoda moment or anything, but I’d never known Jacob to “try” and sleep. It was something he just did. Expansively. Deeply. Even loudly, those nights when he snored. What did he mean by “try?”

  “You want a Seconal?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I’ve got to get up in three hours.” I left my clothes in a mound on the floor and climbed into bed. The mattress was slippery without a sheet to cover it up. I wondered why people even bothered with sheets, but I figured there had to be a reason, and it was just the Seconal thinking for me and enjoying the Teflon experience. I slid toward the middle of the mattress and pressed myself against Jacob’s side. “Want me to suck you off?” I asked. I figured that I always slept like a baby after a good blow job.

  Jacob rolled to face me and pulled me against his chest. He kissed the side of my head through my hair, and said, “I’ll take a rain check.” Which was good, since I was already halfway to dreamland.

  Q

  I woke up puzzled, and a tin ceiling embossed with stylized flowers came into focus.

  Weird. I sat up and looked at Jacob’s side of the bed. It was empty. Sunlight filtered in through a small, high window above the headboard. The headboard was made of actual wood, wood that hadn’t been ground up and molded into a big, pressboard shape.

  Jacob was gone and I was alone with a whole day
stretching out in front of me. We’d both put in for a few days off to get the cannery in order. But we both try not to hang too much hope on our time off, since PsyCops, unlike regular detectives, could be called back to the precinct at any time. The fact that it could have been either of us on the receiving end of that phone call didn’t make it any easier for the one who was stuck at home, staring at mountains of cardboard boxes.

  Maybe they needed me at the Fifth—some matter that wasn’t life or death, but something I could help out with, all the same. Something I could do.

  I found my cell phone in the wad of stuff on the floor and called work.

  A pleasant female voice answered. “Fifth Precinct. Sergeant Warwick’s office.”

  “Hi Betty, it’s Vic.”

  “Detective Bayne! Are you all moved in to your new house?” Betty was practically bubbling over with enthusiasm, so I figured I should do my best not to sound as pessimistic as I felt. “Yeah, everything made it in one piece. Even got my computer hooked up.”

  I spent two hours searching for myself on it, and apparently I don’t exist. I didn’t say it. It wasn’t as if Betty could’ve known about it. She was just the secretary.

  “I’ve got a card for you to fill out with your change of address,” she said. “Do you want me to take down all the information now so that you just have to sign it when you come in Thursday?”

  “Uh, no. I’ll, uh…fill it out myself. So Warwick’s not gonna call me in today?”

  “Not unless there’s an emergency, no. You enjoy your time off. And let us all know what we should bring to your housewarming party.”

  I forgot how to breathe. “My what?”

  “It’s your first home, isn’t it? You’ve got to let us all see. We’re all so excited for you.” Who the heck was this “all” she kept referring to? Betty was the only one at the station who was even civil to me, other than Sergeant Warwick and my partner, Bob Zigler. And neither Warwick nor Zig had ever expressed a desire to spend any time with me outside of work.

  “It’s, um…I dunno. I have all this unpacking to do.”

  “If you make a list of things you need, I’ll keep track of it for you so that we all know what to get you for housewarming gifts. You wouldn’t want to end up with two blenders or two crock pots.”

  “No,” I said dully. “No sense in having two of everything.”

  “Allrighty then, Detective. Don’t work too hard. And remember to stretch before you lift anything heavy.”

  “Yeah. Uh, thanks. Bye.”

  I disconnected and stared down at the phone. Was Betty serious about this housewarming thing? It sounded like it. I wasn’t about to invite my co-workers to my house. I was living with a man. I ran my fingers through my hair and stared at the phone some more. I could always set up the futon in the smaller bedroom and pretend it was mine. But come on—

  who’d buy that I’d suddenly moved in with a “roommate” at my age? Besides, we had that bedroom earmarked as an office, and we’d left the futon for the Goodwill truck.

  I stepped out of the real bedroom and stared over the railing at the disaster below. The floor was covered in boxes, with a bunch of really dinky white furniture shoved against one wall, and Jacob’s big, majestic pieces placed randomly throughout the room.

  I clutched at the railing and closed my eyes. It was all too much: the move, my Internet-nonexistence, and now this fucking housewarming party.

  I decided to unpack. Not because I was planning a get-together, but because I figured it was a logical thing to do since I’d just moved. Even though I had no intention of opening my house up to the rest of the precinct, my conversation with Betty kept on drifting through my head as I opened boxes, stared at their contents, and realized that unless it belonged in the kitchen or bathroom, I had no idea where to put anything.

  Did I need a fake bedroom? It seemed like a real waste, since although the loft was big, it didn’t have many separate rooms. It could be a guest room. But who would stay over—Jacob’s parents? Maybe. Or Lisa, if she ever spoke to me again. And since I hadn’t heard from Lisa since she changed her phone number on me, I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  I carried the box with Jacob’s computer stuff upstairs, realized that there was no way to hook it up to the Internet up there, and brought it all back down. I considered stowing all my furniture in the basement. But since that would involve me going down into the basement, I decided against it.

  I stared at the mess all around me and felt useless. I rummaged through some coat pockets, a briefcase and a duffel bag, and located a few stashes of Auracel and Seconal and a stray tab of Valium. I considered calling it an early, early night with the help of my prescription friends, but I decided it was really too pathetic for me to go to bed before it was even dark out.

  I went into the kitchen, opened up my laptop and signed in.

  The virus definitions didn’t start downloading. Amazing. I wondered if I’d broken it the night before. And then a little box popped up.

  Ash Man: hey psy-pig - what r u wearing?

  Huh? I stared at the box.

  Ash Man: cat got ur tongue - or is mr perfect right there?

  Crash had figured out yet another way to insinuate himself into my life. Great. I put the cursor in the box, typed something back and hit enter.

  LETS69: what did you do to my computer…is it ok…i’m not on any search engines…either is maurice hardly

  What the fuck was “LETS69” supposed to be? Was that me? Cute, real cute.

  Ash Man: doesnt ur comp work faster now? i can cum over if ur still having trouble

  LETS69: don’t come over

  Ash Man: ok lets just cyber then - i promise it doesnt count as cheating -

  what r u wearing???

  I closed the laptop’s lid. It didn’t make that annoying beep again like it had the previous night. Not bad.

  I made myself a sandwich, ate it, and considered making another. My cell phone rang.

  Good thing I have caller ID. Otherwise, I would have said something stupid, like, “Quit bugging me.” Because if Crash was desperate enough to try to have cyber sex, no doubt he’d be persistent enough to try phone sex, too.

  It wasn’t Crash on the line. It was Carolyn.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Vic? Is Jacob around? He’s not answering his cell.” I looked around the room as if he would just appear there. He didn’t. “He’s not with you?”

  “We left fifteen minutes ago. Are you at home? I don’t have the number for your land line.”

  The carbonless form was sitting right where on the countertop, just where I’d left it. One corner of it had gotten wet and then dried wrinkly, with the ink smudged in a snowflake pattern. I read the land line number to Carolyn, and thought about writing it down somewhere for myself. But then, I didn’t see a pen anywhere, and promptly forgot.

  “Tell Jacob to call me. He’s not feeling very good about this case.” Could anybody feel good about a case in an old folks’ home? “What’s going on? Anything I can help you with?”

  “You know I can’t discuss the particulars with you.”

  “Are you serious? You and what’s-his-name don’t talk about your investigations?”

  “Doug. No.”

  Jacob and I talked about our cases all the time. We weren’t supposed to, technically, but come on. We’re both PsyCops. Maybe that’s why Carolyn never discussed business at home. Her husband was a high school teacher or something.

  “Say, Carolyn, Jacob and I don’t have to have a housewarming party, do we?”

  “I guess not. Why?”

  “I never owned a house before. I don’t know how these things are done.”

  “Oh. Well…don’t you want to get all kinds of free stuff?” I sighed. “Never mind.” I wanted to ask her about Camp Hell. How could I do that if I couldn’t even explain to her about a stupid housewarming party?

  “Okay, then. When you see Jacob….” Carolyn was obviously trying to wrap
up the conversation, so I just came right out and asked.

  “Do you ever search yourself on the Internet? Because I’m not on there. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “No, I don’t search myself.”

  She’d only answered one of my questions. Which must have meant that she didn’t want to answer the other one. She couldn’t lie, so not answering was her only option. I bet she knew something.

  “Jacob knew I couldn’t be looked up, didn’t he? I’ll bet he searched me before we even started dating. He’s thorough like that. He would have tried.”

  “I’m going now, Vic. Goodbye.”

  I was right. Jacob had tried to search me. He knew I didn’t exist electronically. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned it?

  I decided to brave the laptop again, and lo and behold, no more love notes from Crash appeared. Maybe he was busy with a customer. Or maybe he’d taken an afternoon break for Oprah. He claims he turns on the show for Miss Mattie, but he was so religious about tuning in that I assumed he was hooked on it, too. I figured out how to shut the instant message program off. I hoped it would be enough. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to unin-stall it, if things came to that.

  I did some searches on how to search for people, but every time I thought I was getting somewhere, I’d hit a screen that asked for a credit card number to go any farther.

  I wouldn’t mind paying $14.95 if I knew it wasn’t a scam, but we get bulletins all the time at the Fifth about don’t click this, don’t put your information into that. I glared at the laptop. I heard about five-year-olds who surfed the Net. So why couldn’t I figure it out?

  I flipped open my cell phone and hit memory dial eight.

  The phone rang five times. I thought it would go to voice mail, but then my partner answered. My work partner. “Zigler.”

  “Oh, uh…hey, Zig. I was wondering if you could point me to a legitimate people-finding site. I’m trying to look up an old friend.”