PsyCop 4: Secrets

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “You know their full name, don’t you? Just have Betty skip-trace ‘em.” It hadn’t occurred to me to use the station’s resources. “I can do that?”

  “Sure. She runs ‘em all the time.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a pause. “Anything else?”

  “You ever try to search the Internet for Heliotrope Station?” Zig didn’t answer me for a long time, but I heard him breathing through his nose. “It’s not there,” he said eventually.

  “You knew? Cripes, was anyone gonna tell me?”

  “Vic….”

  “What’s next? Are people gonna say I made it up? Maybe it’s like Manchurian Candidate, and my memories are all switched. What was really going on was that I lounged around and ate loads of starchy cafeteria food for two years while everyone else had to go to work and pay their taxes to support my luxury lifestyle. And all that scary shit I remember? A figment of my imagination. Never happened.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Zig said. He hung up.

  I’d always thought people who suspected the government was monitoring their cell phone conversations were just paranoid. The fact that Camp Hell had been wiped from history was making paranoia seem like good common sense.

  I took a shower and nuked a frozen burrito, burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and determined that I was unable to lift Jacob’s TV and unable to find mine. I’d run out of ways to do nothing, and had made up my mind to drive to Zigler’s house and wring some answers out of him in person when Jacob came home. It was past eight, nearly three hours after I’d spoken with Carolyn.

  “Hey. Carolyn was looking for you. Where’ve you been?”

  “At the gym.”

  For me, going to the gym ranks right up there with getting my teeth cleaned. To each his own, I guess. And I’ve got no complaints about the results. He was wearing his suit and overcoat, so I figured he’d showered there. My hair would’ve had icicles hanging off, but his towel-dried in a minute flat. “Are you hungry?”

  “No, I ate.” He pulled out his cell and hit Carolyn’s memory dial. “Yeah. Uh-huh. The gym.” He wove through a couple of stacks of boxes and headed toward the stairs. I felt vaguely bad for being such a lousy unpacker. I’d had the whole day to work on it and I’d achieved pretty much nothing. “No, I don’t think she’s delusional. Listen, I know it sounds far-fetched, but it could just be a matter of semantics.” It sounded complicated. I wondered what he meant. I followed him upstairs so I could hear some more.

  Jacob went into the bedroom and cradled his phone with his shoulder while he unbuttoned his shirt. “Look, it comes down to this. Are you going to trust a rape kit, or are you going to trust your talent? She says she’s been assaulted, and you say she’s not lying.” Jacob paused and listened for a long moment. “Then maybe we should find some Alzheimer’s patients and question them so that you do know how it feels when you X-ray them.” I heard Carolyn’s voice carry across the room, not the specifics of her reply, but the tone.

  Not happy. She must not have been keen on testing her abilities out on people with dementia. I didn’t really see the problem. It’s not like she’d cause any permanent damage.

  The next day, they’d forget they’d even spoken to her.

  “Just…sleep on it. Okay? You know I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  That was an interesting choice of words. And it had to be true, since he was talking to Carolyn, who could even sniff lies through phone lines and cell towers. Thing was, I didn’t doubt that Jacob would never force any of his friends or colleagues to do anything. That didn’t mean we didn’t have to watch out for his powers of persuasion.

  I admired the way he handled Carolyn’s questions. If I had a partner who saw through all my lies, they’d probably get fed up and quit on me. But how much was Jacob holding out on me, so slick that I’d never even noticed? That was the big question. What did he know about my nonexistent Internet presence, and why hadn’t he ever told me? Did I even want to know?

  Jacob disconnected and put the phone next to the clock radio. “It’ll be a good night to turn in early,” he said.

  I still hadn’t put any sheets on the bed. I wondered how it would feel to slide around on the satiny polyester of the bare mattress while Jacob pounded into me, but I suspected he might have a hard time keeping my attention if I was busy wondering what he’d known all along, but hadn’t told me.

  “I think…” I faltered, then took a deep breath. “I think there’s something screwy about our Internet.” Oh God. Could I have come at it from a weirder angle?

  Jacob had everything off but his boxers. Navy. It was difficult to think with him mostly naked like that. “I’ll take a look at it soon. But tonight I’m running on fumes. I’d probably do more harm than good.”

  It wasn’t fair to press my advantage when Jacob was exhausted, but really, when else did I stand a chance of outmaneuvering him? “No, I mean, it’s hooked up and everything….” Jacob sprawled on the bed and gave a long, bone-tired groan. “We have sheets. Somewhere. But maybe it’d be just as easy to stop at the store and grab another set.”

  “I was trying to look something up…” I had some sort of momentum going, and I wasn’t about to let sheets, or the lack of them, get me off track. I focused on my hands and kept talking. “Something that really should have been there—and I kept coming up with nothing. Which was kind of weird. Because it seems like when you search for people online, you usually find something. It might not be recent, and it might not be what you’re looking for, but it’s something. Like you, for instance. You’re all over the place. No wonder people stop you for autographs when we go out to eat.” I laughed. It sounded nervous.

  “But me…there’s nothing about me on there at all. Not anywhere.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I glanced up at the designs on the tin ceiling instead.

  There was a long pause. No doubt it was the last subject Jacob had been expecting me to bring up that night. He didn’t have a reply ready. That was good. It would be harder for him to brush off. “Not that I know for sure I’ve ever been on there at all, but come on. I’ve solved hundreds of murders. I won that microwave in the raffle at the grocery store last year. You’d think there’d be something about me online, even if it was stupid, even if it was small. It’s almost as if someone erased me from the Internet.” Even I hadn’t known that’s where my line of reasoning would take me, and I shuddered.

  “Well?” I said, and then I couldn’t stand not knowing what Jacob thought anymore. “What do you make of it?”

  I turned. I’m sure it was a very dramatic turn. Sadly, the drama was lost on Jacob.

  He was asleep.

  And not just pretending to be asleep so he could avoid the conversation, either. His mouth was open. He never did that if he was faking.

  The comforter was tangled with his bare legs. I slid it out from between them. He didn’t stir, didn’t even breathe differently. I covered him up and enjoyed a little fantasy about waking him up and demanding that he look me up on the laptop. But with my luck, a

  “let’s cyber” message from Crash would pop up, and I’d end up looking guilty of something I hadn’t even done.

  I dug around for my Sudoku magazine, and wished I had a TV hooked up so I could watch some porn, or even some static. I’d ask Jacob tomorrow. My Internet blackout would be right there waiting for me once I managed to corner him.

  -FOUR-

  It was a crisp February morning, and I stood on the narrow concrete-slab porch of a red brick building that had been constructed to look like the existing architecture in the area, but screamed out “new” nonetheless. Bob Zigler lived in Skokie, a suburb you’ll hit if you’re headed north through Chicago and you’re bound and determined to squeeze by the congested Indian neighborhood on Devon and the dilapidated row of bizarre 1950’s motels on the Northern end of Lincoln Avenue. Zig’s expression told me I was about the last person he expected to see on
his doorstep when he opened his front door.

  “Vic. What’re you doing here? Did we get called in?”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “We’re going to talk.”

  Zig deflated. That’s what he does when there’s no way he can possibly get the upper hand.

  His shoulders sag, his spine compresses, and he seems to get about two inches shorter.

  Zig’s not good at the cop-face like Jacob is. That’s probably why Zig hides behind a graying Mike Ditka mustache. “It’s not a good time.”

  “Look. You can’t say it on the phone. You can’t email it. I get that. But I need to hear whatever you know about Heliotrope Station and the Internet.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I don’t know shit.”

  “All right, all right.” Zig held up his meaty hands as if to ward himself from me. “But watch the language. The kids are home from school today. Parent-teacher conference. If you need to say that, say ‘crap.’”

  I don’t curse nearly as much as, for instance, Crash. But the chance of me adopting the word “crap” in my commonly-used vocabulary was slim to none. I nodded anyway.

  “C’mon in,” he said. “We just put on a fresh pot of coffee.” I stepped into the vestibule and shrugged off my wool overcoat. I had a black turtleneck on underneath to hide the toothmarks, and I was hoping that Zig didn’t know me well enough to know that I wore a turtleneck maybe once every five years.

  Zig didn’t say anything about my shirt. He took my coat and hung it in a small closet.

  Every other wall in the vestibule was covered with photos, a boy and a girl at various ages. Both of them had sandy brown hair, and snub-noses like their father. In the younger pictures they were practically twins, especially when the girl’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. But as they got older, the girl shed her awkward stage and turned into a young lady. The boy put on some weight and got a mouthful of metal. He looked like a young Zig with braces.

  Zigler led me through an archway into an open-plan living room/dining room, where a chunky, teenaged version of him was sprawled on his stomach in front of the biggest TV

  I’d ever seen in my life, playing a video game where he was some kind of ninja. Or maybe he was the other guy, the one with the blue hair. Either the kid was completely engrossed in his game, or he was pointedly ignoring us. Probably a little of both.

  Zig spoke to his back without waiting for him to acknowledge us. “Vic, this is my son, Robbie. Robbie, this is Victor Bayne. The medium.”

  In a move I might have expected from one of the characters onscreen, Robbie dropped his controller and leapt to his feet so quickly I actually took a couple steps back. On the gigantic TV, the ninja stood there in a light squat, bouncing on the balls of his feet, while the blue-haired guy beat the shit out of him. I mean, the crap.

  “Whoa. Can I, like, shake your hand? Or will that mess up your psychic field?” I shrugged and held out my hand. He shook it with a look on his face that bordered on reverence. “Nancy?” called Zig. “Caitlin! We’ve got company.” Damn it. I’d wanted to give Zig the third degree about what he knew or didn’t know about the burying of Camp Hell, and here he was introducing me to his family. A gong sounded as the ninja’s head was torn off and slammed to the floor. Zig’s wife came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a tiny towel. “Honey, this is my partner, Victor. Vic, my wife, Nancy.”

  Nancy Zigler was short. I guess women call it “petite”. She wore jeans that looked like they’d been starched and ironed, and a spotless white sweater. Her brown hair was long in the front and short in back, flipped up and sprayed stiff. She had lipstick on. At home.

  “Detective,” she said warmly. “It’s great to finally meet you. Have you eaten breakfast?

  Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Just coffee, uh…thanks.” I gestured toward the front of the house. “If you need to go to that thing at the school….”

  “The conference? That’s not until two. Come on in the kitchen and sit down.” Young Robbie bounded back toward the vestibule, then up a flight of stairs with the force of a herd of buffalo. The house muffled whatever it was he said up there, but it couldn’t mask his excited tone. Two pairs of feet thundered back downstairs as Nancy set me up in the kitchen with a mug so huge I had to hold it with both hands. I guess everything was done big at the Ziglers’.

  “Vic,” said Zig, “my daughter, Caitlin.”

  Caitlin was nearly as tall as Zig. I’m bad with kids’ ages, but I’d say she was maybe a junior or senior in high school, a year or so older than Robbie, with long, sandy hair with white-blond streaks in front. She was slim, in that carefree way that kids are slim before they either put on weight like Zig or turn bony like me, and the oversized Cubs sweatshirt she was wearing drooped over one shoulder. Caitlin didn’t request to shake my hand. She stared at me, round-eyed and flushed.

  I stared back. I searched for something to say. I finally settled on, “Hi.” I held my hand out to Caitlin and she gripped it and pumped my arm up and down.

  “Ohmigod. This. is. so. cool. Is it true you can talk to spirits without having, like, a séance or anything?”

  I clutched my jumbo mug of coffee hard, wondering how long my left hand alone could support it. “No. No séance necessary.”

  “And you totally see them.”

  “Y-yeah.”

  “Caitlin,” said Nancy, “let Detective Bayne enjoy his coffee. He came here to talk to your father.”

  Caitlin backed into the doorway and stopped beside her brother. They kept on staring at me like I’d grown a second head.

  Zig pulled out the chair beside mine and sat. He ignored his gawking teenagers. “We went to a psychic fair down at Covered Bridge in Indiana last summer.” He sighed and scooped three sugars into his conventionally-sized mug. “They’ve been interested in psychics ever since. Well, and then I got the job.” His voice had dwindled and he focused on stirring his coffee. He glanced toward the sink, where Nancy, wearing a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves, washed out a coffee cup. “But anyway. I’m thinking you might’ve wanted to talk shop a little?”

  “Yeah. Work stuff.”

  Nancy took the hint. She peeled off her yellow gloves and draped them over the edge of the sink. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said. Her hand brushed over Zig’s shoulder as she walked by. “I’m happy to make you some eggs.”

  “No thanks. I’m good.”

  “If you change your mind, just holler.” Nancy herded the kids away from the door and left Zig and me alone. We watched the doorway until the footfalls receded, dispersing throughout the house.

  I drank some coffee. Damn Zig and his accommodating family. I’d been all geared up to accuse Zigler of holding out on me about Camp Hell. But he was such a softie at home I just couldn’t raise my voice to him.

  “So. Why can’t I find Heliotrope Station on the Internet?” I said, much more calmly than I’d rehearsed.

  Zig stared into his cup so intently that he could’ve been reading tea leaves. “It never occurred to you to look it up until now?”

  “Don’t answer my question with a question,” I snapped. Though as questions went, it was a good one.

  Zigler hunkered down closer to his coffee cup. “It’s all classified,” he said. His voice was so low I had to lean over the table to hear it. “I’m not supposed to talk about you to anyone other than my immediate family. Except for this therapist at The Clinic. You know, the one I started seeing after we found the reanimated bodies in the basement…?”

  “I’ve never found anything good in a basement. Ever.”

  “If I say a word to the media—TV reporters, newspaper, anything—I could get fired on the spot.”

  “What’re you saying? That I’m some kind of big secret?” Zig turned his cup handle one way, then the other. “I thought you knew.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Zig’s eyes were fixed on the cup. “What if you weren’t? What if every time yo
u solved a murder, your name showed up in the Tribune? Wouldn’t you be mobbed all the time by people who wanted to talk to their dead family members?” Whoa. I sat back and drained my gigantic mug just to buy myself a little time to let the idea of myself as some sort of high-demand commodity sink in. I never considered that my talent would have any appeal in the private sector. After they were done poking and prodding me at Heliotrope Station, the Chicago PD scooped me right up. I’d never been a psychic civilian.

  “And then there’s the security,” said Zig. “The religious right gets pretty paranoid about precogs and mediums.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Victor. You don’t think that level-four in Miami was killed by a stray bullet, do you?”

  “That’s what I heard.” He wouldn’t be the first innocent bystander to buy it in a sloppy gang-related shooting.

  “I’d bet the Impala that he was assassinated.”

  “Assassinated? Cripes, you make it sound like a Ninja video game.” I looked back at my mug, and when I looked up again, I caught Zig staring at me, but just for a second. He dropped his gaze back down to his coffee. “Look, maybe it would help if I knew what you were looking for in regards to Heliotrope Station.”

  Zigler never called it Camp Hell, and I never corrected him. If you haven’t been a “guest” behind its electrified fence, the nickname just sounds cheesy and melodramatic.

  Maybe that’s why I needed to talk to someone who’d been there.

  “Like I said on the phone, I want to look up an old friend, that’s all. See how he’s doing.” See if he’s hung himself yet. Not that a successful suicide would necessarily stop me from visiting someone. But I wouldn’t waste my time digging around for their phone number.

  “Another psychic?”

  “What do you think, I want to invite the fucking orderlies to a poker game? Yeah, another psychic.”

  “Language,” Zigler whispered.

  I sighed.

  Zigler lined up his spoon so that it was perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the table.