PsyCop 4: Secrets

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “Hold on, lemme try one more time.” It’d taken me twenty minutes to get her first name out of her, but maybe she’d have more to say about her husband. “Peg, what’s Charlie’s last name?”

  “Here kitty-kitty-kitty.” Her voice was thin and insubstantial, weaving in and out of the wind.

  “I think she’s fading,” I said.

  Zig stuffed his pad and pen into his pocket. “That’s all right. Let ‘er go. With that wedding date and the first names, we’ve probably got enough for an I.D.” Zigler headed toward the street, snow squeaking under the treads of his heavy, black-soled shoes. I stood and looked hard at the alleyway, the graffiti-covered dumpster where the dog walker had found Peg blue and stiff in a housedress, a pair of boots and a few swipes of bright orange lipstick. I imagined white light flooding the area, and pushed hard at it, straining to feel its substance. “Go to the light, Peg,” I told her. I concentrated until I felt dizzy, and then I stopped and listened.

  All I heard was the wind gusting, and in the distance, traffic.

  Zigler had the heat blasting inside his Impala, and the police scanner murmured low under the rush of hot, dry air. I knocked as much snow as I could from my shoes before I climbed in, and managed to close the passenger side door on my overcoat. I considered leaving it where it was so that Zig didn’t see me opening the door to pull it in, but I figured the hem would get pretty nasty dragging along the street all the way back to the station.

  I opened the door and situated myself better. Zig didn’t notice. He was finishing his notes.

  “About that thing I asked you the other day,” I said.

  Zig’s pen stopped squeaking. He sighed and tucked the notepad away.

  “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you thought all the secretiveness about me and my identity was for my own privacy,” I said as he put the Impala in gear,

  “but there had to have been someone who spelled it all out for you. Who was it? Warwick?” Ted Warwick, our commanding officer at the Fifth, was the one who’d hired Zig.

  Zigler shifted in his heated leather seat and checked his rearview and sideview one time too many. “No, not Warwick. He did the interview, him and your doctor, and of course the Chief. But the intake was mainly Betty.”

  Betty? As in, Betty of the chipper hello, and Betty of the incredibly awkward housewarming? “Betty,” I repeated. Her name sounded strange, like when you try to freak yourself out by saying the word “the” until it sounds funny and its actual meaning starts to slip away from you.

  “She keeps all the personnel files,” said Zig.

  “Jesus H. Christ. Is there anyone who doesn’t know about all this top-secret bullshit?”

  “What about Taylor? He was your partner for, what, a dozen years? He never said anything?”

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rumble and splash of slush funneling through the Impala’s steel-belted radials. Of course Maurice knew something. And I’d probably known that in the back of my mind ever since my Internet search failed to yield anything on him, either. But I hadn’t called him. It would’ve been easy. Hi, Maurice, how’s it going? And by the way…what the fuck?

  Then again, I could never claim to have given Maurice full disclosure, either. He’d figured out that I was queer—heck, he’d even pinpointed who I was dating—but still, I’d never actually told him. It was likely that Maurice had categorized the ix-nay on the ictor-Vay as one of those things we both knew full well and chose not to discuss. And if that wasn’t the case, if he’d just been keeping it from me deliberately, I didn’t care to know.

  -NINE-

  Lisa had been busy.

  When I got home from work, the cannery looked like an actual dwelling instead of a ware-house that’d been organized by a nearsighted drunk. The bigger pieces of furniture—the couch and the entertainment center—were still exactly where we’d plunked them down.

  But anything that could be moved, squared up, dusted and organized without heavy lifting had been put together and stocked.

  “I didn’t know what to do with that stuff.” She pointed to a stack of boxes and a few pieces of my old white furniture. “I put them near the cellar door in case you want to store them down there.”

  “Yeah. I, uh…I’m not big on going down into the basement.”

  “But you said this place only had one ghost in it, and she left.” I had. But I never claimed that my loathing of basements was entirely rational. “I had a bizarre fabric softener incident once,” I told her. “It scarred me for life.” She gave me a “whatever” eye-roll. “Are we gonna eat? Or do you wait for Jacob to get home?”

  “We never wait up. One of us is always late.”

  “I’d offer to cook—not that I’m all that great—but maybe you want me to do laundry instead?”

  “Lisa, I’d worship you if you did the laundry.”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, smiling shyly. “And don’t worry—I’ve got three brothers. I’ve seen men’s underpants before.”

  Great. I hadn’t even thought of that. “Leave Jacob’s shirts. He has them done at the clean-ers’. Mine can go in, though. They’ve been getting overinflated egos from having Chinese ladies ironing them all the time.”

  Lisa dragged the hamper to the basement door. “What about Jacob’s gym clothes?” I went into the kitchen to see if we had anything fast and dummy-proof I could warm up.

  “Yeah, sure. He’s been working out every day. He’ll be thrilled to have something clean.” I’d been the one who’d done the shopping, but nothing appealed to me. I bet if I suggested a pizza, Lisa wouldn’t complain. Too bad we didn’t have any menus yet. I supposed I could call information for the phone number of a nearby pizzeria and order something basic, like a large sausage with double cheese and a side of wings.

  “Whoa.”

  I peeked around the freezer door. “Whoa?” I remembered the lube in Jacob’s bag and hoped that he’d relocated it to our bedroom.

  “Jacob’s gym bag smells just like this Wicca workshop I took.” Lisa had the bag open on the arm of the couch. She pulled out a T-shirt, puzzled, and held it to her nose. “I remember ‘cos my hair smelled like this even after I washed it. I think it was copal resin and sage.”

  I was puzzled too, for maybe a second. And then a bunch of things clicked into place like lock tumblers sliding together. Carolyn calling our land line because Jacob had his phone turned off. The empty cup from Greener Bean in Jacob’s car. Jacob stopping at the gym three nights in a row when he never weight trained more than three times a week. And, of course, Crash bragging about his sage smudging on that goddamn camcorder.

  “Vic? What is it?”

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and looked at the buttons. I could call Jacob and demand to know where he was. That’s what anyone’s first course of action would be. But Jacob could lie to me. Carolyn couldn’t.

  “Victor?” she said quietly after two rings. “Is that you?”

  “Are you at work?”

  “I’m at Rosewood, not the Twelfth. Why? Do you need to talk to Jacob?”

  “Is he there?”

  “Sure, he’s…is everything all right?”

  I could have gone on, answering Carolyn’s questions with still more questions. “I don’t know, is it?” would have been particularly fitting. But I was too pissed off to play it cool.

  “Never mind,” I said, and hung up without saying goodbye.

  Lisa stared at me wide-eyed from the living room. She knew something was up, and she was probably working the si-no to within an inch of its life to figure out what.

  “I’m going out,” I said.

  “Wait, will you wait a second? I’ll come with you. Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t you.”

  Lisa had darted up behind me in stocking feet and grabbed me by the arm, and I pulled her along the hardwood floor behind me like a water-skier. “You shouldn’t drive when you’re this upset. What if you make the
wrong call and end up hitting someone? Let me drive.”

  “Are you used to driving in the snow?”

  “I’ve driven in the mountains.”

  Snow plus altitude. I figured I might as well take her up on it. All I needed was to top the evening off with a vehicular homicide that involved me. Unless it was Jacob under the wheels. Or maybe Crash. I hadn’t quite decided which.

  “Put your shoes on,” I said, and Lisa ran off to find her sneakers.

  I think that if any part of the equation had been missing, I might not have figured out why Jacob had been getting home so late all week. If I hadn’t seen that video, I wouldn’t have an image in my head of the two of them smiling and playing kissy-face, and worse, gazing into each others’ eyes like they were head over heels. And then there was all the evidence. Jacob had left the coffee cup in his car and the clothes in his gym bag because never once in the time we’d lived together had I taken out his trash or done his laundry.

  By some fluke, I’d pieced it all together. I didn’t know whether to feel like a genius or a chump.

  Lisa dashed into the vestibule in her inadequate tracksuit with one of Jacob’s T-shirts layered beneath it and one of his hooded sweatshirts over the top. “Keys,” she said, and I dropped them into her hand. I could feel her eyes on me as we got into the car, and I think her lips were moving in an endless string of silent questions. Si? No.

  “Where are we going?” She pulled away from the curb.

  “Rosewood.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “No, that’s Rosehill. Rosewood is the old folks’ home on Foster.” I’d always left plenty of room between me and the local cemetery. It seemed like a no-brainer.

  “Is it safe for you to go there? Don’t people die there all the time?”

  “I’m going.”

  “You gotta tell me what’s going on. I said Jacob’s clothes smelled like incense and you just froze up.”

  I nodded. That was about the size of it.

  Lisa made a cautious right on red. “And that’s a problem because…?”

  “You’ll know in about ten minutes.”

  “Damn it, Vic.”

  I ignored her and tried to figure out what I’d say to Jacob. I was so mad I might not even string together anything coherent. Wouldn’t that be pretty? If he wanted to fuck Crash again so bad, he could’ve just told me. Or had he? That time he suggested the three-way…maybe that was more for his benefit than mine. Maybe I should have taken him up on it.

  I wasn’t so keen on having my scrawny self put side-by-side with Crash’s thug tattoos and his six-pack, but it was better than being lied to.

  “Take the handicapped spot,” I told Lisa. I had my seat belt off and the door open before she’d even put the car in park.

  Rosewood Court Retirement Community was low to the ground, only two steps above sidewalk level, and both of them salted so white and crusty that it would be impossible for even a single ice crystal to form.

  I stormed up the steps—both of them—and smacked my palm on the automatic door that wouldn’t open fast enough for me. Lisa’d caught up to me again by the time they slid open. There was a vestibule full of gigantic plastic plants and then yet another door, probably just as slow, to ensure that no one in the building would ever have to feel a draft.

  “Vic, you look like a crazy person. You wanna get thrown out?” By who? The skinny, middle-aged black lady with bad hair extensions behind the front desk? I’d like to see her try.

  “Sir,” she said in a bored monotone as I strode in. “Can I help you, sir?” I pulled my badge out and held it up. “Detective Bayne, Detective Gutierrez. We’re here to see Detective Marks.”

  A flicker of actual interest registered in the receptionist’s eyes. “Third floor, Detective.” And if she noticed that Lisa was dressed in a mishmash of men’s sweats, she didn’t so much as blink over it.

  I didn’t see any stairs, so I punched the elevator button. The doors whooshed open immediately, and a nurse got out. She pushed a shriveled-up old guy in a wheelchair in front of her. I looked at him and then looked away as fast as I could, but the mental image stuck in my head. His neck bent at a weird angle, and his hands folded into themselves on his lap so that the most prominent thing about them were his bony, protruding wrists.

  I noticed his eyes, too, probably because they were the same color as mine, a bright, light blue. One of them looked straight ahead, the other one off to the side. Jesus. Hopefully someone would take pity on me and shoot me if I ever got like that.

  The chair stuck on the transition from the elevator to the carpet, and the nurse had to rock the thing free. I did my best not to crawl out of my own skin while this happened. She rocked, and sighed, and rocked, and finally the wheelchair cleared the edge of the elevator and she wheeled the old guy away. The elevator door tried to close but I blocked it by flicking my hand over the sensor in the door. I dragged Lisa into the elevator and the doors creaked shut, popped back open again as if to say “Gotcha!” and then closed for real.

  “Whatever you think Jacob did….” Lisa began.

  “You don’t want to be in the middle of this.”

  “If only I hadn’t….”

  “It would’ve added up eventually. It was just a matter of time.” The doors opened on three and I stepped up to a desk that looked exactly like the one on the first floor, only this one had a chunky white woman behind it with hair bleached lemon yellow. “Detective Marks?” I asked her.

  I didn’t need to flash my badge. I guess my tone was enough for this one. “Down the hall, Room 304.” She pointed.

  There were a couple of patrolmen standing outside 304, each with one hand on his hip and the other holding a tiny Styrofoam cup of coffee. Good thing I wasn’t a mass murderer with a death wish charging at them; they’d have holes in their foreheads before they could even draw their weapons.

  They saw me coming at the last second. One of the officers moved to intercept, but the other one jostled him out of the way, and whispered, “Spook Squad,” so loud that no one could miss it unless their hearing aid battery was dead. They both cringed away as if they were afraid my psychic ability might rub off on them, and I went through the door. Just think how repulsed they’d be if they knew I was queer, too.

  The room had a couple of hospital beds in it, both of them tightly made and covered with stacks of papers and notes. Carolyn sat at a small laminate desk where she scowled at a laptop while Jacob paced back and forth in the aisle between the beds like it was feeding time in the big cat house at Lincoln Park Zoo. Jacob stopped mid-pace and looked at me, puzzled.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  His eyes cut to the doorway, where the guys in uniform lingered, hands loose at their sides. I wasn’t sure where their coffee had gone, but obviously they were expecting to see some action.

  Carolyn closed the laptop and stood. “I’ll just….”

  “No,” said Jacob quickly. “Stay.” He looked at Lisa. “You too. Close the door.”

  “If you think this’ll be any prettier just because Carolyn and Lisa are here—” Jacob held his hand up like he was directing traffic. “Vic, calm down.” Carolyn edged along the wall toward Lisa. “No, really, I can see the two of you have a few things to say in private.”

  “You’re staying,” Jacob said. It was an order.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lisa.

  “Tell me,” said Jacob, his voice smooth as velvet, “what you think is going on.”

  “I think you’ve been hitting Sticks and Stones after work and using the gym as a convenient place to shower. That way it wouldn’t be a lie if you said you were there. Plus it would wash away the smell of the incense.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Carolyn.

  Jacob looked at me hard. I’d pretty much nailed everything except the obvious. My voice got pretty creepy when I was straining to keep quiet enough that the officers on the other side of the pressboard door didn’t hear me. “So we just moved in together an
d you’re already sneaking out to fuck Crash? I thought you were the one who broke it off with him because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him. I needed to talk. That’s all.” I stared at Jacob. He stared back. And Lisa and Carolyn wanted to be anywhere else so bad that it was palpable, and me not even an empath. “Carolyn?” I prompted.

  “True,” she said. “And Jacob, this is entirely inappropriate.”

  “What,” I said to Jacob, “you can’t talk to me?”

  “Of course I can. It’s not about you, Vic.”

  “It’s not you, it’s me? That’s what you say when you wanna cut someone loose.” Jacob grabbed me by the front of my overcoat. “I just bought a house with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Damn, it felt hot being pulled against him like that, and I hated that I thought that. Of all places. Not now, I told myself. Not now.

  “I go and talk to Crash because he’s an empath. That’s all.” I imagined Crash with his hand to his belly, feeling things as other people spoke, but it was difficult to stop there. I’d seen the video. I knew that underneath that hand, underneath that shirt, there was a flat, muscled stomach covered with tattoos—the word Mattie, some scrollwork that peeked out from the top of his boxers—and as I visualized that, it was easy enough to imagine how that stomach would feel rippling beneath my fingertips as we moved together. Damn it. Maybe I was the one who needed to worry about cheating, not Jacob.

  Still. “You lied to me.”

  “I know. It was wrong. But after I’d gone through my whole day with Crash, I just couldn’t go over it again. If I told you that I’d gone to talk to him, you’d want to know why. Then you’d want to know about the case. You’re a cop, of course you’d want to know. And talking about it once was all I could stand.”

  Jacob worked the front of my coat as he spoke, and his face was close to mine, his voice low and hypnotic. I would have been putty in his hands if Lisa and Carolyn weren’t there.

  But cops outside the door? They actually made the whole thing a little bit hotter. Getting off without either of them knowing—that would be the challenge.