PsyCop 4: Secrets

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “Every time I talk about this case,” said Jacob, “I can see her in my mind’s eye, scared and confused. She’s a helpless old woman.” If Jacob was trying to make me feel like an ass for being jealous, he was doing a good job. “I need to put a stop to this.”

  “Not just you,” I said. “You’re part of a team. Other people are working this case, too.” I watched the tendons flex in his jaw as he mulled that over. His grip on the front of my coat slackened and then he sighed, and pressed his forehead into mine. “I’m worried what I’ll do when we find him,” he whispered.

  Uh oh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never killed anybody.” His voice was low, so low. “But I think I could.” It must have been pure adrenaline I was feeling. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to tear off Jacob’s clothes or break free and high-tail it to the nearest exit. Maybe it actually was better if he told this kind of stuff to Crash instead.

  “Come on, Jacob,” said Carolyn. “We want the rapist in prison, not you. Besides, I don’t want to train another NP. I like you. You’re intimidating.” Jacob cupped my cheek with his palm and ran his thumb along my cheekbone. His eyes were so dark and intense, and he stared at me so hard that I’d swear he was trying to forge a telepathic connection. Did I understand? Hell, I don’t know. I could see Jacob keeping his visits with Crash from me for the sake of peace and quiet in the cannery, especially since he was tired and short-fused. But could I see him taking it any further, sleeping with Crash for the sake of—what? Old times? Convenience? Blowing off steam? No, that didn’t seem like Jacob to me. He was way too focused on me to risk what we had together for a little action on the side. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Carolyn had confirmed the two of them were only talking. Jacob hadn’t been double-dipping. He’d just conveniently omitted a hell of a lot of details when he came home every night.

  “Carolyn’s right,” I said, because I wasn’t thrilled that he’d been sneaking around, but I was relieved as hell that he hadn’t taken back up with Crash wherever they’d left off. “I don’t think you could stomach the prison food.”

  Jacob rocked his forehead against mine. I couldn’t focus on his eyes—he was too close. But his breathing, that was starting to fill up my whole awareness. It’d gone deep and rough, like it did when he was about to nail me to the nearest convenient surface.

  “Look, guys….” said Carolyn.

  Jacob crushed his mouth against mine, forced his tongue between my lips. He slipped his free hand around my back and pulled me against him. And there it was: a new kink. I thought it was really fucking hot for him to maul me at work. Exhibitionism. You’re never too old to learn.

  “Oh, come on,” Carolyn whined. “When I want to see that, I’ll rent Brokeback Mountain.”

  “Shh,” said Lisa, “the men outside.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “They’re listening,” Lisa told her. “But they didn’t hear what you just said.” Jacob’s tongue swept over mine, and his hand clutched hard at the side of my face. Fuck my face…. Oh, shit, that would be so fucking hot. I was starting to get hard. I told my body to knock it off, but in a way I dug it.

  Jacob pulled back so that we could see eye to eye, and he was breathing so deep that his nostrils flared. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest against mine. “I am here for you,” I told him.

  He searched my eyes.

  “Come to me first,” I said.

  Jacob nodded. He eased his hand from my back, and reluctantly, I let myself take a step away. “So Lisa’s doing the si-no again?” he said.

  I glanced over at her. She’d set herself up for it by asking si-no s out loud while we sucked face. “It’s not indefinite,” I said. “It taps her out. Just a few. She’ll say when.” Not the most elegant way to hedge about it, but it would buy Lisa the ability to put on the brakes when she saw fit.

  Carolyn probably knew there was something fishy about the parameters I’d set, and heck, Jacob too. But there was enough wiggle room in what I’d said that Carolyn couldn’t just blurt out, “Lie.”

  Jacob dragged his fingers down my cheek and neck, over my shoulder, and along my upper arm. He grabbed me by the arm and turned me toward the girls. “Let me show you something,” he said. He steered me over to the laptop, raised the screen and hit a key.

  A small window popped up. I thought it was a still picture at first, a shot of a room pretty much the same as the one we were in, but then the bed shifted, and I made out the shape of a person beneath the blankets. She was gray all over, gray blanket, gray hair, ashen skin. The low-res image and the chameleon-like coloring had almost hidden her, but once she’d moved, I could see her.

  “That’s Irene,” said Jacob.

  A specific mental image of the poor old broad getting raped didn’t come to mind—thank God—but the notion that it could happen at all was enough to turn my stomach. I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “What can I do to help?”

  “There’ve got to be plenty of witnesses around that we haven’t been able to tap,” said Jacob. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  “Jacob! Do you even realize…?” Carolyn sputtered. I looked around, startled. Beneath the door, I could see the shadows of shoes shifting as the patrolmen anticipated getting in on our conversation. “You marginalize all of us when you expect us to turn it on and off like machines. We’re people. Have you considered what it would cost him to open himself up to this place?”

  Everyone in the room but Carolyn was holding their breath. She’d spouted off about Psych-rights plenty of times, but I’d never seen her go all Abbie Hoffman on Jacob. Then again, he had just forced her to stick around so she could stem a potentially ugly scene between the two of us. I don’t think she’d ever signed up to referee lovers’ quarrels.

  “It’s all right,” I said. I wasn’t sure if that was true or not. I’d been so focused on wringing a confession out of Jacob that I hadn’t noticed a single ghost since Lisa opened his gym bag.

  “It is not all right. He’s coercing you.”

  “It’s, uh…no, it’s…really, I’ll be the first one to bail when the ectoplasm flies.” Carolyn looked daggers at Jacob. He didn’t seem all that concerned. Maybe I was project-ing, but I think he might have even been suppressing a smile. “It’s up to you,” she said finally, and then looked at Lisa. “Aren’t you glad you got sucked into this whole mess?” Lisa was speechless, her eyes big and round.

  Carolyn did a double-take as if she was seeing Lisa for the very first time. “My God. What are you wearing?”

  -TEN-

  It was seven o’clock and none of us had eaten dinner yet, so my stint at gathering psychic evidence at Rosewood began in the dining hall. The residents had all finished eating an hour before, but the kitchen was happy to make up some plates for us. Given the contents of those plates, we weren’t necessarily thrilled to be on the receiving end, but I guess it was the thought that counted.

  “So what’s the deal with the si-no?” Carolyn said. “Because potentially we could question it until we solved this thing.”

  Lisa moved a runny mass of reconstituted mashed potatoes around her plate with the side of her fork. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Can’t,” said Carolyn, “or won’t?”

  Before Lisa answered I stood up abruptly, and everyone looked at me. “Lis? Let’s talk in the hall for a second.”

  “Are you coaching her?” said Carolyn.

  It was useless to lie about it, so I did my best to look entitled. I drew myself up to my full height, even though it didn’t make me look anywhere near as imposing as Jacob, and looked down my nose at her. “Yes. I am.”

  Lisa followed me out of the cafeteria, casting meek glances back at the table the whole time. “Okay, look.” I sat her down on a molded plastic chair that connected to a whole line of them, a dozen in all, along the hall window. I crouched down in front of her, which put me just below eye-level. “You came to me saying that you cou
ldn’t do the si-no anymore, I supported your decision, and what did you turn around and do?”

  “The si-no,” she mumbled.

  “That’s right, the si-no. I could’ve asked you if Jacob was sleeping with Crash, but I came over here and got it out of him, instead. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s starting to look like maybe the si-no really isn’t the answer to everything.” Lisa covered her face with her hands so she didn’t have to look at me. “Why is it so confusing?”

  I rested my elbows on my knees. “Well, shit, everything’s confusing. First I was gay, then I was schizophrenic, and then I wasn’t schizophrenic at all and the dead people had been real all along. You’ve got your whole woman…cop…minority thing going on. As if that’s not enough, you’re a precog. Here’s all I know: if you really want to set some limits on the si-no, I will back you up. I promise.”

  Lisa lowered her hands. Her chin trembled.

  “Cripes, don’t start crying,” I said. “Were you really ever a cop?” She cracked a smile. “You know I was.”

  “That won’t change just because your Psych secret’s out of the bag. How many questions are you comfortable answering? Ten? Twenty?”

  “It feels fake to pick a number out of the air and say that’s all I can do.”

  “I get that. But if you start making an exception for every worthy cause, you’ll burn yourself out. I don’t have a long chat with every ghost I see, then hunt down their families and make sure they all know where the silverware is buried. I can’t do it. There aren’t enough hours in the day. So pick a number, arbitrary or not, and for Christ’s sake, stick to it.” Lisa chewed on her lower lip and thought. “How about three?” Wow. That seemed pretty strict. “It’s up to you.”

  She nodded. “Three. That way it’ll be like three wishes.” I stood and offered her a hand up. She took it and gave it an extra squeeze before she let go. The contact felt…natural. “How are you going to break it to them?” I nodded toward the cafeteria. “You’ve got to be careful how you word it.”

  “I think if I say, ‘I will answer three si-nos’ that it wouldn’t be a lie. The lying would only come in if I said that was all I could do.”

  “Okay, that sounds like it’ll work. It’s the questions you don’t plan for that’ll bite you in the ass, though. You need a catch-all way to redirect Carolyn. Think of it now before she puts you on the spot.”

  “I could shrug.”

  “Good plan.” She could also answer a question with a question, but I figured I’d save that tactic for myself. Even though it was painfully obvious what we were doing, it still seemed a little more natural if we didn’t both hedge in the exact same way.

  Jacob and Carolyn both watched us thread around the tables and make our way back to where we’d been sitting. “Here’s the deal,” I said, my eye on Carolyn. “You’re all for Psych rights. So you have to respect Lisa’s limits.”

  Carolyn glared down at her food. She’d mounded it into four distinct quadrants: greenish, brownish, orange and beige. “I wasn’t exploiting her. I only asked her how much she could do.”

  Given that Carolyn couldn’t lie, I’d have to take that at face value. I looked at Jacob. He’d planted his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. He looked more like our arch-nemesis than my boyfriend. “What are those limits, exactly?” he asked.

  “Three,” Lisa said quickly. Too quickly. Jacob didn’t usually make her nervous, but she’d never been under his microscope before.

  “How often?”

  “Three a day.”

  “And a day begins, when?”

  “Holy crap, Jacob,” I broke in, “she’s on our side.” He smiled…like a shark. “I was only making sure I understood the ground rules.” Carolyn stifled the word, “Right,” and turned it into a cough.

  I said, “The day begins when she wakes up and ends when she goes to bed. And naps don’t count.” I looked at Lisa. Her eyes were gigantic. “Does that sound okay to you?” She nodded.

  Jacob stood and made eye contact with each of us, still smiling. If he was disappointed that she’d cut him off at three, he sure didn’t look it.

  Then again, what if I had three si-nos at my disposal each and every day? I could be a Super PsyCop. The thought of that made me queasy.

  “Carolyn and I would appreciate it if you two would stick around for another hour or so,” he said. “We need to determine the best use of our questions.”

  “Is that all right with you?” I asked Lisa.

  She nodded again. She must not have trusted herself to speak.

  “We’ll go talk to Irene and meet you in 304 after you’re done eating,” said Jacob. He pulled out Carolyn’s chair for her as she stood, the motion so smooth that I almost didn’t realize I’d only seen it performed in black and white movies.

  Carolyn looked as if she was accustomed to such treatment. She also looked vaguely worried. But then again, she usually did. Lisa and I didn’t say a word, hardly even dared to breathe, until they’d both left the room. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Maybe three was too much. Maybe I should have said one.”

  Maybe she shouldn’t have even come back to Chicago. I’ll bet that’s what she was really thinking. “You told them you’d do three. Try it, and see how it feels.”

  “Okay,” she said, “you’re right. I’ll try.”

  I dug into the meat loaf, which was cold and somewhat softer than I would have hoped, but other than that, wasn’t too bad. Lisa ate her soggy green beans and looked slightly more worried than Carolyn had. “You gonna eat your dessert?” I asked. She shook her head and slid her green gelatin over to me.

  The cafeteria coffee was too sour and cooked-down, even for me, and was probably decaffeinated, besides. I took a slug, winced, and decided to leave the rest of it for the garbage can. Lisa sipped the miniature cup of room-temperature tap water she’d been given. I wished I’d opted for the fruit punch, but it was too late now. The cafeteria ladies had gone home.

  “I’m nervous,” said Lisa.

  No shit. I mean, crap. I figured I should attempt to make her feel better. “Three words, yes or no. How hard can it be?”

  “They’re gonna have more than three questions.”

  “Yeah, but I can tell that Jacob’s going to play by your rules. He might ‘accidentally’ wake you up a minute after midnight—and when he does, a question might happen to spring to mind—but he’ll follow the letter of the law. You can tell just by looking at him that he sees it as a challenge.”

  “Do you think we can head upstairs and get it over with?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Actually, I didn’t really know, but the longer I sat there, the closer I was to trying another sip of that decaf. I stood up and wondered if I was supposed to walk around and pull Lisa’s chair out for her, but she was on her feet and bussing her own tray before I even had my own chair pushed in.

  We passed a TV room on the way to the elevator with a handful of residents talking to each other so loudly that I doubted any of them actually heard the show, even though the volume was cranked so high that the sound had distorted. Some reality show was playing, with a bunch of twenty-somethings running around on a beach. I couldn’t say which show, as I’d never jumped on the reality TV bandwagon. I stuck my head into the doorway to see if anyone looked guilty. Nobody did. Nobody looked dead, either. Strange. I would’ve thought there’d be more ghosts in a place where people came to die.

  I punched the elevator button and watched Lisa mutter to herself as we waited for the car.

  “Did you always do the si-no twenty-four hours a day?” She looked sheepish. “Kind of. But I guess I wasn’t aware of it. Now that I’m working with PsyTrain on subjects like psychology and philosophy, talking to counselors about the na-ture of subjectivity, I’m always thinking about it.” We got on the elevator and turned toward the front. The door stayed open. The elevators were on long timers so they didn’t shut on someone’s wheelchair. “In other words, everything was fine ‘til you s
tarted monkeying with it.”

  “Something like that. What’s with these doors?” Lisa flashed her palm over the door slot a few times to try and trip a sensor.

  “Stop it. You’ll make them stay open longer. You move your lips now when you do it—

  you’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

  Lisa scowled at me. “Don’t be mean.”

  “I’m not. I’m just telling you. If I can see it, that means Jacob can, too. Maybe you should chew some gum.”

  “It’ll pull out my fillings. Isn’t there a door closer on this thing? That button that looks like two triangles and a stick?”

  I stared at the panel. It was pretty simple. B-1-2-3. “I guess not.” The doors shifted and began to ease shut. “Finally,” said Lisa. Maybe she wanted to answer her si-nos and get going, so she could eat something that didn’t turn into mush if you pressed your fork against it too hard. We both watched the doors slide shut expectantly.

  There was maybe a foot of space left between them when the homeless guy darted up.

  He was quick, for his age. Stuck his head in the elevator so fast that I flinched back. The elevator doors must have caught him on the shoulders because he didn’t come in any farther. Just his head. I waited for the doors to pop back open and then sit that way for another minute and a half while the guy got in.

  Except the doors didn’t stop. They closed.

  I shielded my face with my hands. I wasn’t sure which way the blood spray from a crushed head would go, but I didn’t want it to hit me in the eye.

  “Vic?”

  At first I thought the head was sliding down the door seam, but then I realized the elevator was rising. I looked at the head. It looked back at me. So solid! Its skin was the color of my cooked-down decaf. The pupils of the eyes were bluish with the beginning haze of cata-racts, and the whites around them were yellowed. The hair was clumpy with dreadlocks, gray like steel wool, and the skin of its cheeks and eyelids was speckled with skin tags.