PsyCop 4: Secrets

by Jordan Castillo Price

  The head got to the bottom of the door seam and then sank right through the floor. I stared down at the spot where it had disappeared.

  “What was that?” said Lisa. “You saw a ghost? Yes.”

  “Don’t do the si-no on me,” I told her. “Save it for Jacob.”

  -ELEVEN-

  The elevator doors whooshed open on the third floor and the nurse at the desk quickly looked away when I made eye contact with her. Someone must have told her I was a medium, maybe the patrolmen. “Male or female?” said Lisa. She didn’t seem to notice or care what sort of impression we made, which was probably good, given what she was wearing.

  She also seemed convinced that the Elevator Ghost was significant.

  “Male,” I said. “African-American. Medium complexion, gray hair. Between sixty and sev-enty. Five ten, average build. Dark clothes, kind of dirty. He looked like a homeless guy.” We passed the desk and went down the hall. The two officers stood outside 304, looking a lot less relaxed then they had the first time we’d seen them. There wasn’t a coffee cup in sight.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. He only looked at me. I guess…he wasn’t a repeater. Because there was definite awareness and eye contact.”

  “You should try to find him, talk to him. Maybe he saw something that the video cameras didn’t pick up.” The officers stood back without a word as we opened the door.

  “Oh, okay, I’ll just look him up in the dead directory.” Inside the room, Carolyn and Jacob were seated in front of the laptop at an angle where both of them could see it. They looked up as we came through the door. Jacob tried to look as if he wasn’t completely fascinated by the tail end of our conversation, and failed miserably. It was a very slightly raised eyebrow, but by now I could read his cop-faces pretty well.

  I dropped the subject. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to hide it from Jacob. It’s just that the predatory side of him was starting to trip my self-preservation mechanism.

  Jacob looked at me for a moment, and then switched his attention to Lisa. “Do you need anything? Coffee? Water?” I couldn’t tell if he was still being a gentleman or if he was trying to butter up Lisa for an extra si-no. I’d told her Jacob would play by the rules, but he probably wasn’t above trying to bend them.

  “I’m fine. Ask.”

  Carolyn stood up and crossed her arms at the waist, cupping her opposite elbows. “Was Irene raped Monday night?” she asked.

  Lisa almost blurted something out, but then she stopped herself. Her eyebrows knit. Then she looked confused.

  Carolyn and Jacob both leaned forward.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then that question doesn’t count,” said Jacob.

  “Hold on,” I said. “It sure as hell does. The answer might not be definite, but it’s still an answer. It means that it’s both, or neither, or totally subjective. Am I right?” Lisa nodded mutely.

  “You probably got more from that answer than you would have for either a yes or a no,” I insisted. I did my best to act indignant.

  “All right,” said Carolyn, “fine. But we’ll need more time to figure out our other two questions. We’d only banked on a yes or a no.”

  “Come on,” I told Lisa. I grabbed her by the elbow. “We’ll take a walk.” On our way back out, I noticed the officers had positioned themselves slightly farther away from the door to 304.

  “We could have stayed there,” said Lisa.

  “The two of them were gonna start bouncing questions back and forth. You mean to tell me that you wouldn’t be sitting there answering them in your head? And don’t think that Jacob isn’t reading every last look on your face.”

  We passed the desk and the elevators and walked up another wing. The hallway was lined with people in wheelchairs. Several of the residents had been parked outside their rooms to allow them to socialize a little before bedtime.

  Or not, depending on the resident. I caught one of the eyes of the wheelchair guy I’d seen in the elevator and looked away, fast. His head was tilted back, and if he was even able to perceive what he was looking at, he couldn’t have been doing anything more interesting than counting the ceiling tiles.

  I picked up speed to get by him fast. Not that I thought he’d turn Special Olympics and start wheeling himself after me. He just gave me some serious creeps.

  The sound of multiple televisions playing mingled through the half-open doors, and two old ladies parked outside their rooms, one black and one indeterminately-complexioned and very wrinkled, watched Lisa and me like a couple of vultures as we walked by. The black lady reached out for Lisa. “What’s going on with Irene?” she whispered.

  Lisa stopped walking. “Nothing yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  Lisa nodded.

  The other woman said a long string of something in Spanish, and Lisa smiled at her and answered back. Something about women cops, from the few words that jumped out at me. Lisa switched back to English. “Anybody ever see ghosts around here? Any stories about part of the building that’s haunted?”

  “You think a ghost did it?” chuckled the black woman. Her laugh turned into a rattling cough. She pulled a wad of tissue out of the sleeve of her pink velour robe and covered her mouth with it.

  Lisa went on when she was done coughing. “We need to look at every possible angle.”

  “¡Ai!” said the Hispanic lady, long and low as if it were a secret.

  “Being thorough? Are you sure that’s the only reason you ask?” said the black one. “Because Irene says she can see spirits.”

  I’d been eager to brush off the old women and keep on walking—I’m always uncomfortable around people in wheelchairs because I’m worried they’ll catch me staring at their feet, and thanks to the guy with the prominent wrist bones, I was now visualizing myself in their places—but at the mention of Irene’s spirits, I froze in my tracks.

  “Do you think she really sees them,” I asked, “or is she…you know.”

  “Crazy?” offered the Hispanic lady.

  “Senile?” said the black lady. “I don’t know. I don’t talk to Irene.”

  “No,” said Lisa. “Neither.”

  I looked at her with exaggerated patience. “Three a day?” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “But it saves so much….”

  My phone rang—Jacob’s ring tone. “We’re ready,” was all he said. I think he knew it sounded melodramatic, and yeah, sexy too. I think he was too shameless to care.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I said to the old women in the wheelchairs. “Duty calls.” Sheesh. Spending so much time with Jacob was definitely rubbing off on me if I was willing to say things as shamelessly cheesy as he did.

  “Irene’s a medium,” said Lisa as we power-walked back to 304.

  “You’re still doing it?” I said. Lisa’s talent fascinated me, don’t get me wrong. But I was starting to see why the si-no had Lisa feeling spooked. Maybe it was more like my talent than I’d realized, something without an on/off switch. If Lisa didn’t stick to her guns and limit her answers, every cop who had access to her was going to treat her like some kind of omniscient, precognitive tickertape machine. We passed the nurses’ station and rounded the corner. Jacob stood outside the door of room 304 with the patrolmen on either side of him. He had a sultry half-smile on his face. The officers looked terrified, but not of him.

  I managed to keep myself from saying “boo” as we followed Jacob into the room.

  “All right,” said Carolyn, once Jacob had shut the door behind us. “Here goes. Is the attacker human?”

  “Yes.”

  Carolyn and Jacob looked at each other. They’d probably worked out three final questions for the day, depending on whether Lisa’s second answer turned out to be yes, no, or maybe. I wondered if I should tell them that Irene had access to another whole set of social contacts, or if I should let them finish up so we could all go home.

  Carolyn opened her m
outh to ask another question, but Jacob cut her off. “Is it an energy vampire?”

  “No.”

  Jacob’s face fell. He looked down at his notepad as if it had managed to betray him.

  Carolyn turned on him.“That was not the question we agreed to.” I decided Lisa and I needed to be somewhere else, and fast. “Okay.” I grabbed Lisa by the upper arm. “It’s late. We’re leaving.” I hustled her out into the hall before Carolyn cried foul and demanded some consolation si-nos.

  “Should we go talk to those ladies down the hall?” Lisa said as I propelled her toward the elevators. “Should we talk to Irene?”

  “Whose case is this?” I asked her.

  I jabbed the elevator’s down-button.

  Lisa sighed. “I only want to help.”

  “We will. But I’ve been up since seven and it’s time to call it a night. They have a camera on Irene, and now they’ve got two patrolmen watching her. We’ll do better on a full night of sleep.”

  The elevator opened up and a nurse with tightly permed hair squeezed past us, silent on her rubbery white shoes. We got in and turned toward the front. Lisa pushed the 1-button.

  “What does that mean? You’re coming back tomorrow?” The doors stood open as I considered. “First I’ll talk to Jacob. It’s not my case, it’s his.

  And if he says yes, he wants our help, I’ll check with Zigler and see if we have anything urgent going on at the Fifth.”

  The doors finally closed and I felt the elevator start to move.

  “Jacob will say yes,” said Lisa.

  “Stop doing the—”

  “I didn’t. I swear. I’m judging by the way he kissed you when you showed up.” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was smiling. “He can’t keep his eyes off you.

  Whenever you’re in the room….”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s weird.”

  The doors opened on the first floor and we headed out into the vestibule full of plastic plants and the saltiest two steps in Chicago. I realized that I’d already forgotten about the homeless guy’s head and looked back over my shoulder to make sure I hadn’t stepped on it, but the only sentient thing I saw was the nurse at the information desk whispering on her cell phone.

  On the way home, Lisa and I stopped at a big-box store that was open until eleven so that she could grab a couple of outfits and a pair of shoes. Lisa was as picky about shopping for clothes as I am, which meant that nothing would probably fit her very well, but we were out of that store within twenty minutes. That was fine by me. I’d never been in the ladies’ section before, and I didn’t realize that “cleanup in Aisle Six” involved a repeater with a bullet hole in her face.

  Once we got out of there, we hit a fast food drive through and scored five extra-large fries.

  Lisa made me promise not to tell anyone. I found the idea of anybody caring whether or not I lived on fries to be ridiculous and couldn’t see why she’d think it was embarrassing, but I agreed just to make her feel better.

  Jacob’s car was in front of the cannery when we got back. I pulled up behind it, relieved that he hadn’t felt the need to stop off anywhere before he came home. He’d even had time to shovel the walk, which meant he’d left Rosewood shortly after we had.

  I said goodnight to Lisa and went right up to the bedroom. Jacob was reading in bed, some tattered Stephen King paperback that looked about ready to disintegrate, with nothing on but a pair of plaid flannel lounge pants. His feet were bare.

  I stared at those sexy bare feet of his and recalled that I was pissed off at him. Or I had been, a few hours ago—before Irene and the green gelatin and the head in the elevator.

  Maybe everything else that’d happened that night had crowded my anger out. Or maybe the emotion had flared hot and sputtered out as soon as I’d vented it.

  I looked up at Jacob’s face and saw he’d pressed the open book against his chest to mark his page. He watched me watching him over the top.

  “You lied to me all week,” I reminded him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Did he look sorry? He was all big-eyed and sincere—but maybe too sincere. I’m sure he knew how hot he was and how much he could get away with. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to handle talking about anything that had to do with a hospital or a clinic. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  I hung my shoulder holster off the dresser drawer knob, then sat on the edge of the bed and untied my shoes. I really, really wanted to fight, but how could I when I’d thought the same thing? Blind rage was the sole reason I’d made it past Rosewood’s front doors. If I’d thought about it at all I probably would’ve just waited to ambush Jacob in the parking lot.

  “I only saw one ghost there,” I told him. “Not that I did a thorough sweep or anything.”

  “Scary?”

  “Yeah. But maybe that had more to do with the stuff he walked through than anything else. He was one of those really solid ones who look like they’re alive.” The blankets rustled behind me as Jacob settled himself. His book clunked to the floor.

  “Tell me,” he said. I realized his voice was a little too quiet, like he was straining to be casual about it. But no, of course it was no casual thing. Ghost stories at bedtime were the stuff of wet dreams for him.

  I glanced back at him. He’d rolled onto his side and inched toward the center of the gigantic bed. His head was propped up on one fist and he was all ears. Well, probably something else, too, but I didn’t look there. There wouldn’t have been any definition in those flannel pajama bottoms, anyway.

  “Well, let’s see. It was an older black guy. He probably wasn’t too pretty in life. His clothes were all ragged and his hair was in dreads. He came at me fast and gave me this look.” I took another peek at Jacob. He was so focused on me that he wouldn’t have noticed if the roof caved in. I stripped off my shirt, pants and socks and left them wadded on the floor. It wasn’t exactly balmy in the room, so I pulled the comforter up over both of us after I got into bed. I rolled onto my side and mirrored Jacob’s position, facing him. I stared into his eyes. I’d caught him in a lie. Maybe he wasn’t so much smarter than me. Or maybe I wasn’t nearly as stupid as I’d thought.

  I slipped a hand between his thighs. It felt hot between his legs, and the flannel was soft, a nice contrast to the boulder-like musculature of Jacob’s quads. “You know what was really weird?” I said, and I totally milked it, baiting him for all I was worth.

  I swear, he was so jazzed that his pupils looked blown. “What?” I dragged my hand higher until my thumb grazed his balls. Jacob gasped, but his eyes were still trained on mine.

  “This guy….” I rocked my thumb against Jacob’s sack and felt his nuts shift. “I dunno. Do I really wanna tell you?”

  Jacob’s breathing went shallow, and he was trying so hard to hold still, to give nothing away, that he trembled a little bit. I’d hit a nerve.

  I stopped teasing with my thumb and held his balls. Jacob bent his top knee, planted his foot on the mattress, and spread his legs. I rolled his balls together gently, felt the flannel grow taut as Jacob’s cock stiffened. “Think you can handle it,” I said, “knowing this freak’s wandering around on your case?”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  The realization that he was actually vulnerable, actually needy, hit me like a ton of bricks.

  I’d always figured that Jacob didn’t need anything. He wanted things, sure. But what Jacob wanted, Jacob got. He walked up to it and took it. The thing is, all the confidence, all the charm in the world, would never make him psychic. He could take a handful of psyactives, wash them down with Jack Daniels and turn the GhosTV up to eleven and he still wouldn’t see anything. And there I was, taunting him about it.

  He deserved it. He’d been lying to me all week.

  “Strip,” I told Jacob. He kicked off his pajama bottoms in no time flat. I pushed his hip and he rolled onto his back. He stared at me with a look that was intense, even for him. I got between his legs and left my boxers on.
I was dog-tired and not even that aroused—not physically, anyway—but I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off Jacob, to see how much I could make him need me.

  I ran my thumb from the base of his cock to the underside of the head, and his breath caught. “I was with Lisa in the elevators when I saw this guy,” I said. I wrapped my fingers around Jacob’s cock and started pumping it.

  His breath went shaky. He was way too turned on to only be responding to the way I was touching him. I’d hardly even given him a few pulls. I licked the first two fingers of my left hand and then slid them under Jacob’s balls to wet his hole. His eyes almost rolled back in his head, but he didn’t let them. He was too set on watching me talk ghost.

  “He came at us fast, right as the elevator doors shut. I thought he was real, but the doors kept on closing, ‘til he was nothing but a head. A fucking head. Right there in front of us.”

  Jacob’s hips jumped. His cock was totally stiff, and his ass begged for something to fuck it. Holy shit. This was why Jacob got off on watching me get fucked. I could get used to being begged.

  I wet my fingers again and pressed them in. Jacob broke eye contact because he couldn’t keep from squeezing his eyelids shut, his face twisted in a hot sex-grimace. And his ass.

  Fuck. His ass. He’s so tight and hot inside, and I could feel every pull I gave to his cock twitching through to his ass. He held his breath. He was already close.

  “I still hadn’t read him as ghost, you know? It all happened in maybe a second. But then the head moved. It slid down the seam of the doors, and I thought for sure some homeless fuck had just decapitated himself in front of me.” Jacob groaned. He flexed his hips and pressed his stiff cock into my hand harder, faster, while his ass pulled at my fingers. I buried them down to the last knuckles.

  “As the elevator went up, his head kept sliding down.” I folded my body over Jacob’s hips while I finger-fucked him and jacked him off. The blankets covered both us completely, but enough light shone through that we could read each others’ expressions. Jacob looked like he was ready to shoot. His eyes were wide, cheeks flushed, and mouth open as he struggled to get enough air.