“Um…not that I’d try it, but what would happen if someone did that routine on you?” Miss Mattie smiled wide like I’d told a hilarious joke. “That won’t work on me, chil’. I done seen God already.”
She walked to the end of the aisle and turned. I followed her. The next aisle was empty.
Damn it. I refrained from saying that out loud. Miss Mattie’s not too keen on swearing.
I looked over the top shelf and saw Crash and Lisa staring at me from beside the counter. Crash had put on a faded “Cramps” T-shirt over a long-sleeved thermal top that was frayed at the cuffs. They were each holding a cup of coffee. I walked up to them and tried to act natural, though I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my arms, or worse, with my face.
“I never saw you do that,” said Lisa.
I shrugged. “Sure you did. You just watched me chase that ghost across a parking lot.” There was a cup of coffee with cream on the countertop which I assumed was mine. I sipped it. It had cooled to drinking temperature already. How long had I been talking to Miss Mattie? Even with cream, the coffee was strong enough to sour my stomach. I slugged it down anyway.
No one seemed to know what to say. Crash tapped a Camel Light out of his pack and lit up. “Did you get what you came for? I can’t stand around shooting the shit all day. The shelves won’t stock themselves.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” I turned toward the door.
“Thank you,” Lisa told Crash. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
“Take care, chica. When the vibes get too thick, step away.” I glanced over my shoulder. They were hugging.
I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door for Lisa. As she stepped into the hall, Crash grabbed my arm. An ugly twinge raced up toward my shoulder, but I hardly felt it. His closeness bowled me over. The tattoos were even hotter in person than they’d been on the video, and the green hair, well…I’d always been a sucker for green hair. He put his mouth next to my ear. “You owe me, pig. And not just the $4.59 for the High John in your pocket.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Thanks for taking such good care of Jacob for me.” I figured if he was going to start keeping score, I should put a few tick marks in my column.
Crash smiled. His smile wasn’t any more comforting than Jacob’s. I used to have a hard time imagining the two of them as a couple, Jacob in his Italian suits and Crash in his shredded jeans and tattoos. But they seemed equally ruthless. And hot. “You’re pissed off that Jacob talks to me, I’m pissed off that Miss Mattie talks to you. I guess that makes us even.”
He let go of my arm. “You’ll want to put some ice on that,” he told me. Then he shoved me into the hall, closed the door, and threw the deadbolt.
-FOURTEEN-
Lisa and I hit a gyros stand, then stopped off at The Clinic to make sure my arm wasn’t broken. They said it was a mild sprain and all it needed was an ice pack. Naturally.
I refilled my prescription for Auracel while I was there, and even got them to throw in some samples of Neurozamine on the condition that I wouldn’t take both of them together. Given that the result would’ve been projectile vomiting, I could reassure them with confidence that I would not.
Then we headed back to Rosewood. Lisa might have been done for the day, but I wasn’t.
If someone had slapped a box of High John the Conqueror bath salts in my hand on Monday morning and told me to fill up a tub and soak in all of God’s love, and peace and happiness and joy to the world, I could have. But it was Friday, and I’d moved into a building that was the height of modernity…in the eighties. I had a shower. That was it.
No bathtub.
“What’re you doing?” asked Lisa.
“I’m using a prop. Okay?” I’d torn open the box of High John with my teeth and immediately regretted it. The outside of the box tasted the way incense smelled, or like a greasy Indian restaurant, or both.
I held open my pocket and shook the box over it. Small round pellets bounced off my black overcoat. They looked exactly like the sidewalk salt on the ground.
“I don’t think that’s how you….”
“It’s fine.”
I squinted up at the pale gray sky. I imagined a light. Then I imagined God, up there on his throne. I thought of George Burns in Oh God, and then I told myself that was stupid, and probably disrespectful, too. If God did exist, the last thing I wanted to do was diss him.
Then I imagined someone kind of like Santa Claus, but without the red suit, of course.
Everyone knows God wears robes.
“Do you see something?”
The image of the robed Santa disappeared. “I would if you could keep quiet for ten seconds.”
“Sorry.”
I decided to let God be mysterious. I imagined him somewhere up there behind a cloud.
But God’s light—I had a hard time thinking of it as “God’s love,” so His light would have to be good enough—cut a path right down from heaven and beaned me straight between the eyes. I staggered a little.
Lisa took me by the good elbow and steadied me.
I couldn’t just imagine the light and then let it go. That’s what my problem had been when I’d done the white balloon. I’d made the balloon and then assumed that I was finished, that it had substance—maybe not physical substance, but that once I’d created it, it existed outside of me.
I took this realization away from my talks with Lisa and Miss Mattie: my mistake had been in thinking that once I’d created something out there in the realm of spirit, it was done.
Miss Mattie’s image of light shining down from Heaven, bouncing off my pineal gland and smacking a ghost in the head helped me to see it as something more like a fire hose. The power needed to keep flowing for the white balloon to do its trick.
It didn’t hurt if I started out by filling up my reservoir. I sucked in a bunch of power. Or at least I imagined that I did.
I blinked a few times and looked around. My head spun. It felt like I’d gotten a quick whiff of poppers. “Okay,” I said. “I’m gonna find this ghost.” And if I found Jacob instead? Maybe we could maul each other in a broom closet. Because
“God’s love” seemed to be giving me a boner, too. I suspected that wasn’t supposed to happen.
Lisa flashed her badge at the nurses’ station, but Crash was right, we both looked like cops now, especially together. Lisa’s badge hardly needed to clear her pocket. I only noticed this out of the corner of my eye. Mostly, I was looking for ghosts.
The lobby was clear. We went toward the cafeteria, past the row of chairs where Lisa and I had talked the night before. Clear. The cafeteria was full of old people. If there was a ghost in there, he was solid enough to pass for living.
“He’s not on this floor,” said Lisa.
I stopped and glared at her. I felt my white light falter. Wait, had I really, or was it my imagination?
“What?” she asked.
“You need to quit it. I’m figuring something out here.” Lisa nodded. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll stop.”
I’ll admit, though, that I moved a lot faster knowing the homeless guy wouldn’t be found on level one. I was just curious to see if I could spot any other ghosts with my hyped-up senses. I couldn’t. In fact, I was pretty sure the place was clean.
That didn’t make any sense at all. Even department stores have their invisible mascots.
“No ghosts on this floor,” I confirmed, and Lisa scribbled it down on her pad as if her si-no hadn’t already told her. “Let’s have a look upstairs.” We hadn’t been on the second floor yet. It felt different than the third, even when it was deserted, with most of the residents downstairs in the cafeteria. “Excuse me,” I said to the nurse on duty at the second-floor station, a bulky Caucasian guy of about twenty-five who could probably kick your ass if you decided to joke about his chosen profession. “Are the floors here…different from one another?”
He nodded. “Sure. This one’s ambulatory patients. West Wing’s the luc
id ones, East Wing Alzheimer’s and dementia. I make sure they don’t wander.”
“Huh.” I looked up. I couldn’t see the third floor, of course, but I could visualize it. Maybe Lisa was right. Maybe I was visual. “Upstairs?”
“Wheelchairs, bed-bound.”
“Okay, thanks.”
We strolled down the “ambulatory” hall. The rooms seemed to have more life in them than the rooms upstairs, probably because the residents could move around enough to hang stuff on the walls, photos and cards and pictures they’d cut out of magazines, flowers and cheesy printed signs with overused expressions on them. “Is that important?” said Lisa.
“That Irene’s in the bed-bound ward?”
“I’m not sure.”
Lisa made some notes while I stood and looked around.
I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, but it was gone. I went to that room.
It was a double room, with only one name in the sign holder next to the door. One bed was rumpled, with magazines and knick-knacks piled up on the bedside table, and the other bed was stripped bare. I stood in the doorway for a couple of minutes and stared.
And I realized that I could still feel that connection of white light to my third eye. It was a little less heady, which was too bad, but it lingered even if I was only concentrating on it, say, five percent. I thought about the rock salt pellets in my pockets and I could definitely feel the link.
I went back to the desk. “Did someone just die in that room?” The linebacker-nurse looked at the open doorway. “No, Mr. Barnhardt had a stroke. He’s upstairs now. Three-twenty, I think.”
“Bedridden?”
“Wheelchair.”
Lisa and I rode the slow elevator to three. “You see a connection?” she said.
“I dunno. I thought I saw something in that room, but it was gone when I got there.” Lisa scribbled on her pad.
The elevator opened on three and we got off. Jacob and Carolyn were in the third floor lobby with one of the nurses. Carolyn and the nurse sat in a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs, facing one another, and Jacob stood behind Carolyn with a pad and pen, his dark eyes boring holes into the poor nurse while Carolyn did her polygraph thing. All three of them looked up at Lisa and me. The nurse’s eyelashes were damp.
The full weight of Jacob’s stare fell on me and I took a step back. Even though I couldn’t see it, it was as if his gaze had substance, like the white balloon. I tapped the cord of white light that connected my forehead to the universe and got my equilibrium back.
“Vic,” said Lisa, and I realized I’d been standing there in the elevator doorway, gaping.
I stepped out of the elevator, but I couldn’t stop watching Jacob. This idea came to me that maybe being a Stiff wasn’t merely a lack of psychic ability. Maybe it was something else, like the opposite end of a magnet, something all the Psy-experts didn’t have the equipment to measure yet. Jacob’s eyes narrowed. I could feel him staring, actually feel it.
Damn. I’d been half-hard from the whole white light thing and the look he gave me was causing me some serious distraction.
“Jacob,” Carolyn snapped. The spell, if you want to call it that, was broken.
He redirected his attention to her. “I have some questions for Detective Bayne.”
“No, you don’t.”
He smiled.
I felt like I had ants crawling up my arms.
I rubbed my neck, and flinched when my palm touched the bandage and made the mostly-healed bite mark beneath it flare up. “Wait a sec,” I said. I was about to find my balls and contradict Carolyn, insist that Jacob did actually need to talk to me. And by talk, I meant talk. Not jerk each other off in the broom closet. Because I suspected that if I told Jacob about the white light and the flicker at the corner of my eye and the empty bed and the way I felt like I was buzzing all over, he’d get it, and he’d be able to figure out what it all meant.
I took a couple more steps toward them. The prickling intensified, and the hairs on my arms and legs stood on end. I looked down the bed-bound hall, and at the end was a figure in black. The homeless guy.
I ran.
My arm throbbed. I didn’t care. He spun around and headed for the stairwell. “Stop,” I called, “police.” Twelve years on the force had formed some habits that were hard to shake. But then I remembered what Miss Mattie told me, and I imagined that bright white light surging into my head.
The ghost ran through the stairwell door. I almost did too, but luckily I remembered myself long enough to skid to a stop and open it, first. I saw a flash of his tattered black coat above me on the stairs to the roof, and I flung a big, solid white balloon at him for all I was worth. “I said, stop.”
I saw the balloon, saw it. And inside it, the homeless guy turned to me and stared. I sucked power into my head and fed it into the balloon. I was supposed to say something about the Sword of Saint-Somebody, but I figured it wouldn’t be very effective if I couldn’t remember her name. “Go into the light,” I told him.
He did a double-take. “Leave me be, jackass.”
My balloon flickered. That wasn’t the reaction I’d been looking for.
“I will not let you terrorize Irene. Now go to the light.”
“What the hell you talkin’ ‘bout? I’ll go to the light when I’m damn well ready. You hear me? Right now, I got a job to do, and I’m gon’ do it.” He spread his arms wide, and instead of just shattering my white balloon like he had in the alleyway, he gathered it up and he pulled.
I felt it.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to avoid revisiting my gyros. The whole fire hose connection to white light and God’s love? Totally gone. My white balloon disintegrated, and the homeless guy turned around and ran up the stairs without a sound.
The stairwell door banged open and Jacob filled the doorway. He didn’t say a word, just scanned the area. “He’s gone,” I said. I massaged the place on my arm where I was supposed to have an ice pack, and then wished I hadn’t.
Jacob turned to me. “You all right? You look a little green around the gills.” I sat down on the steps to the roof. “Yeah. Gimme a minute.” I put my head between my knees and hoped the sparkles would go away.
Lisa and Carolyn crowded onto the landing with us. “Vic, that’s not him,” said Lisa.
She’d already used all of her si-no s for the day, damn it, but I was in no shape to point that out.
“He needs to go,” said Carolyn, and I realized she was talking about me. “Victor’s done chasing ghosts for the day. Jacob, you’re staying. Lisa, take him home, put him to bed.” No, that wasn’t what I needed. My power wasn’t like theirs; it didn’t tap me out. It was only that stupid white balloon I’d been trying to do, that’s all. The homeless guy pulled on my balloon…I kept that part to myself. There was no way I could make it sound even remotely coherent.
“I’m fine. I just need a cup of coffee….”
“She’s right,” said Jacob. “You can come back in the morning.” I tried to determine whether or not I was going to black out. I’m pretty good at knowing which way things are going to tip, which probably means that I’ve experimented too much with other peoples’ prescriptions. There’d been a dull roar in my ears while Jacob and Carolyn squared off, but it was starting to ebb. I’d probably stay conscious if I didn’t stand up too fast.
“Seriously.” I looked up into the tight cluster of bodies on the landing, “I’ll lay down in 304 for a few minutes and everything’ll be….”
There were four people there. Not three.
The fourth man was wearing a tuxedo. And if that wasn’t enough to make him stick out, he was see-through.
“He’s blacking out,” said Carolyn. “Get a nurse.” Lisa took off. Tuxedo Man shimmered as she passed through his arm and shoulder.
“Who’re you?” I asked him. His pale eyes went wide as he realized that I could see him, and my instincts told me he was going to bolt. Quick as I could, I pul
led a white stream of
“God’s love” down to my forehead, then shot it out at him. It was a good balloon—I saw it. But he sailed right through it, and through the wall.
“Freeze,” I barked out, and took off after him. I meant to, anyway. Until everything went black.
-FIFTEEN-
There was a penlight shining in my left eye. “Sir? Can you tell me your name, sir? Can you tell me what day it is?”
“Detective Victor Bayne, Fifth Precinct. It’s Friday the twenty-third.” Since Zigler fills out all the reports, I don’t normally know what the date is, so I was lucky that Sunday was my birthday and I could count backwards by two. “I’m fine, I don’t have brain damage.” As far as I knew, anyway. I waved the nurse away. “Look, it’s a Psych thing. You don’t need to do this. Really.”
“Don’t try to sit up,” said Jacob. He squeezed my hand.
Wait a minute. He was holding my hand? Cripes. I hoped the nurse just thought that was par for the course for PsyCops. Or something. Back in the bathroom, Carolyn had been right. If Jacob and I were going to work together, we might as well put rainbow bumper stickers on our cars and go ahead with a big, gay housewarming, because he was no good at hiding it.
“I need to talk to Detective Marks,” I said. “Alone.” I didn’t know if calling Jacob by his last name would make us seem like less of an item, but it was worth a shot.
“I’ll page Doctor Phillips,” said the nurse, but Carolyn took her into the hall, I’m guessing to explain about my particular medical situation: that since the time Doctor Chance used me for a little on-the-side drug testing, I could only go to one certain place and be seen by an entire freakin’ committee.
“Jacob.” I pulled his face down toward me, since I didn’t want to risk blacking out again, and keeping my head down was my best bet. “You’ve gotta be more careful.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. I know how you feel about me. You don’t have to prove it by holding my hand.”
PsyCop 4: Secrets Page 13