Dead Waters

by Anton Strout

  Connor let out a single laugh. “You mean other than Professor Redfield drowning from the inside without any signs of struggle, forced entry, or water spilled?”

  Jane shivered and her face lost its look of anger. “Yeah, other than that.”

  She turned around, shaking off the darkness that had crossed her face, and headed back to the front door of the apartment.

  “All right,” Connor said. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  I set to work once again trying to run the psychometric histories in the room, but whether they were devoid of them or I was simply thrown by Jane’s comment about drawer space earlier and afraid to use them since the incident with the tattooist and its weird aftereffects, I wasn’t sure.

  All I knew was that my emotions were still stuck on high and it was hard enough to fight off that woman’s urges without having them mess around with my own emotions. My mind kept superimposing Jane meeting a sexy stranger while knocking on doors for the investigation.

  I tried to focus on the crime scene but it was little use. The tattooist’s jealous rage kept me haunted by thoughts of gouging my own eyes out, but without the needle of a tattoo gun at my disposal, the best I could hope for was getting a black eye from trying to use my bat instead. I fought the urge, but only barely.

  5

  Without a lingering spirit to be found, Connor was more than willing to call it a night fairly early, which meant that the two of us headed back to the Lovecraft Café. Following up on the case could wait until we broke a lead on it, but given the budget cuts, the preliminary paperwork could not.

  We headed back through the coffeehouse and behind the dark curtain that led into the theater hidden behind it. The eighties version of Clash of the Titans played on the movie screen. Laurence Olivier was chewing up the scenery as Zeus as we made our way down the right-hand aisle past the crowd of thirty or so watchers. At the back corner of the theater, I swiped a plastic keycard against a metal plate next to a door marked H.P. The door swung into the open bull pen of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs with its carved in runes ringing the tops of the walls. We headed back past the cubicle farms and doors heading off in every direction until we hit the long red curtains that sectioned off Other Division from the rest. Connor and I settled in at our partners desk, which sat in a space that was larger than the cubicles and partially walled higher. Each of us worked in silence drafting our own accounts of what we both found and didn’t find. I was almost falling asleep in one of my case folders when Connor spoke up.

  “What was that crack Jane made earlier?” Connor asked. “The one about Professor Redfield having a lot of drawer space. . . Seemed to rile you.”

  “It was nothing,” I said, feeling the tattooist’s residual anger rising up once again at the mention of it. “Let it go.” I fell back into work and silence for a few more minutes, forcing the emotions down again, but when I looked up at Connor for a second, he was watching me.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Any wedding bells in the future?”

  “Whoa,” I said, throwing my pen at him. I tried to hide the unbidden anger as it rose again, tried to play it off. “Are you proposing?”

  “Funny,” Connor said. “You know who I mean. You and Jane.”

  “Slow down,” I said, sharp. “Right now we’re just fine as is, thanks.” I fished another pen out of the D.E.A. mug on my desk and went back to my file.

  “Really?” Connor asked, skepticism thick in the single word.

  “Really,” I assured him, hoping to end the discussion.

  “Well, maybe you could try not sounding so pissed off when you say it, then,” he said.

  I looked up from my desk, sighing. I pushed the anger down. “I thought I was doing a fairly good job at hiding it. I’m that transparent, am I?”

  “Not to most people,” Connor said. “No. Probably not. But to your partner in slime? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious.”

  I swore under my breath. “Remind me to sign up for No, You Can’t Read My Poker Face when they offer it up next time.”

  Connor settled back into his chair. “Will do,” he said. “Am I detecting trouble in young hipster paradise?”

  “Something like that,” I said, attempting to dodge the question by delving back into my paperwork.

  Connor shifted a stack of case files from his in-box to right in front of him. “I’m all ears, at least for the next few hours,” he said, then looked at the rest of the stack still sitting there. “Maybe even a few more than that.”

  “Fine,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I put down my pen. “I had a little psychometric episode earlier unlike any I’ve ever had before. The two of us were helping your brother with that ghost problem they’ve been having over at the Gibson-Case Center.”

  “The tattooist?” Connor asked. I nodded. “Aidan told me about her before. Seems like he was a bit frustrated to be dealing with something he couldn’t punch, kick, or bite.”

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” I said. “Anyway, I psychometried my way into the woman’s past and. . . I don’t know. It felt different. She was all Fatal Attraction over this guy who was cheating on her and I just got caught up in her whirlwind of emotions. She was passionate, angry, outraged, all at once. . . and when I pulled out of it, I couldn’t shake her severe emotional state. I still can’t. It flared up at Professor Redfield’s apartment when Jane teased me about the drawer space.”

  “And this hasn’t happened before?” Connor asked. “The emotion of someone’s past lingering like that?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve always had trouble with using my powers,” I said. “You know that, but nothing quite like this, not since before I joined the Department and started working with you on controlling them. The emotion was so. . . raw that I couldn’t ignore it. When I first came out of the vision, I was so caught up in it still I ended up snapping at Jane.”

  “About. . . ?”

  “Something stupid,” I said, avoiding looking over at him. “A piece of furniture.”

  “All great fights are over stupid things when it comes to building a relationship,” he said.

  “Thanks, Master Yoda, but I don’t think a chest of drawers is something to get all worked up about.”

  Connor shrugged and started in on his paperwork. “Depends on the chest of drawers, I suppose.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “One second we’re fighting ghosts; the next I’m snapping at her about the dresser she liked there.”

  Connor looked up at me. “And that’s an issue . . . why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Because right now she only has a single drawer in my apartment and wants something more, I suppose.”

  “And you think this was all due to your interaction with the tattooist, kid? You sure you just don’t have commitment issues?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I know I have my issues when it comes to women. I’ve never gotten as close to someone as I have with Jane. I’m in untested waters there. Plus, you know how particular I am when it comes to antique furniture and all that. I spent years making money off of pieces here and there. Let’s face it, Connor. . . there’s an importance to assigning a piece of furniture to someone, a charge of emotional attachment that comes from taking a big step like that. Don’t you think?”

  Connor rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, I can see how her wanting more than your old underwear drawer to keep her stuff in is totally unreasonable,” he said. “Oh, wait. No, I can’t. It’s not like she asked to move in.”

  “You think she wants to move in?” I asked, a strange panic rising in my chest.

  “Did she say that?”

  “Well. . . no.”

  Connor rolled his eyes at me. “Relax.”

  “Forget it,” I said, trying to calm myself. “If you had been through all that raw pain like I had, you might stand a chance of seeing where I’m coming from.”

  I grabbed my pen and started up with my paperwork again. Compared to getting advice from Conno
r, it was almost enjoyable, and the panic fell away.

  “Tell me this, kid,” he said. “How many nights does she stay over?”

  “In a week?”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. “How many?”

  I calculated it in my head. “Five or six, I guess.”

  Connor threw up his arms. “Jesus, kid. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are living together already. If that’s the way it is, give the girl some more storage space.”

  Doubt crept into my mind. If Connor was this exasperated with me, maybe I was overreacting. “You think?”

  Connor leaned forward over his desk, lowering his voice. “Listen, I know you’re still new at relationships and all, let alone having one that works, and it hasn’t been that long. But trust me on this. As much as I frown on office romances, I like Jane, and though it pains me to say it, I think you two kind of work well together. You push her away on something as trivial as this and it’s going to build, fester. You’ll ask her to pass the creamer one morning and next thing you know, it will be smashing on the wall next to your head from her throwing it at you. Give the girl more space and man up.”

  “You’re right,” I said, finally conceding. “I hear you. I just wish I didn’t have this damn ghost’s emotional baggage sitting so deep in me. I can’t shake it.”

  “Shake what?” Jane’s voice came out of the blue from behind me. I jumped in my seat.

  “God,” I said, trying to check my nerves as best as I could. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  Jane looked at me with a curious smile. “O. . . kay,” she said. “Sorry. So, what can’t you shake?”

  I really didn’t want to reveal what Connor and I had just been talking about. There was stuff you said to your male friends that should never come to the ears of your significant other. Even I knew that.

  Connor laughed and spoke instead. “The kid was just saying he couldn’t shake this sense of dread from all the new paperwork coming our way.”

  Jane nodded and relaxed. “Tell me about it,” she said. “When I went over to Greater and Lesser Arcana, I thought they took away my desk and turned my area into a storage room, but apparently that’s just all the work piling up for me.”

  I spread my hand out over our office space. “Welcome to the club,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. She looked around, and then lowered her voice. “Do you think this Professor Redfield thing is going to take long? I don’t mind helping out the Inspectre, but I’m not part of your Other Division and Wesker will be all over me if I don’t get back to all my Arcana stuff soon.”

  “I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” Connor said. “I guess some of it depends on you. Did you bring back any good news after questioning all of the professor’s neighbors?”

  Jane’s face turned sour. “Remind me to thank Davidson for that later. I’ve got a nice cantrip I’ve been dying to try out and he’s earned a nice Pinocchio nose for a few days, if you ask me.”

  “Hell hath no fury. . .” Connor said, trailing off and shaking his finger at me. “Remember that kid.”

  I nodded but didn’t respond. If Connor was making a crack related to our previous conversation about the cuckolded tattooist, I wasn’t sure, and now was not the time to ask him. Instead, I looked up at Jane. “What did you find?”

  Jane leaned back against the wall of our sectioned-off area. “Well, for starters,” Jane said. “The neighbors are saying that the place is haunted.”

  “The whole high-rise?” I asked.

  “No, just the area by Professor Redfield’s apartment.”

  Connor gave a dismissive laugh. “Sorry to burst your investigative bubble, but I seriously doubt the place is haunted,” he said. “I didn’t sense a Casper in sight. That building is practically new. It hasn’t had enough time or tenants to get haunted.”

  Jane threw her notebook down on my desk and let out a deep sigh. “Look,” she said. “It’s bad enough that I got relegated to patrolling the halls of that high-rise. Between the ogling from the male tenants and the general reluctance of most of them to give up anything useful, it was a real blast, let me tell you. But! Please don’t belittle the messenger, okay? I questioned all of them separately and didn’t lead the conversations. Everyone gave up variations of the same story. Gorgeous lady in a blue-green dress, long dark hair past her shoulders. When they approached, she would vanish. Happy?”

  Jane turned in a huff and headed out of our space and back up the aisle toward the main bull pen. Connor got up from his desk first, grabbed his still-wet trench coat off our makeshift coatrack, and ran after her. I took longer, grabbing my own coat and gathering up my umbrella and retractable bat before heading after them. I caught up with them when I entered the café area of our cover operation and found them over by the condiment station by the curtained-off door to the theater.

  Connor held up his hands. “Sorry, Jane,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just saying that I didn’t catch a hint of anything ghostly when we were there.”

  “Maybe we need to go over the place again,” I offered. “Not that I’m looking to head back out in this weather.”

  A dark look crossed Connor’s face. “Dammit,” he said. “We can’t let it wait. The longer we put it off, the exponentially colder the trail will get. Whatever’s going on, we have to attend to it sooner than later.”

  I looked toward the front windows of the Lovecraft Café. The storm was still pouring down sheets of rain outside. “You don’t need Jane and me for that, do you? I mean, I was kinda hoping for a little bit of warmth indoors tonight.”

  “Sorry, kid,” Connor said. “Like it or not, the two of you both qualify as investigators on this case. Everybody gets to return to the scene of the crime.”

  “Great,” Jane said. “I still have to write up all the paperwork on my going door to door, but I guess that will have to wait.” She looked at me, tired. “Next time, remind me to come back with less investigation-stirring data, will you?”

  “Let’s get going, then,” Connor said. “The sooner we wrap this up for the Inspectre, the sooner we all get back to our regular office drudgery.”

  Jane gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Awesome,” she said. “Let me go tell Director Wesker I’m heading back out and grab my coat. My boss won’t be too pleased, but then again, when is he ever?”

  She gave us a quick smile before I could even agree with her, and then ran off through the black curtains that led back into the theater and our offices.

  “Making us work as a couple,” I mused. “Do I get time and a half for that or something?”

  Connor shook his head. “Not in this economy,” he said, pulling his coat on.

  “Then it sucks to be working in this economy,” I said. “And in this weather.”

  “Can’t control either,” Connor said, “but don’t sweat it, kid. You need to worry about the things you can control.”

  “Thanks for covering for me back at our desks,” I said. “When she asked about what I couldn’t shake.”

  Connor smiled. “No problem,” he said. “Don’t worry about that, either. The older you get, the more practiced you get at lying on the fly. You go through enough relationships and it just gets easier.”

  “Such a romantic,” I said. “Well, I’ve got that to look forward to, I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about the future too much,” he said, turning away from me and walking off.

  “Oh, no?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said, heading for the coffee counter. “Probably won’t live long enough.”

  6

  Professor Mason Redfield’s apartment was the way we had left it hours earlier—minus the professor’s body from the middle of his living room, of course.

  “Nice to see the regular cops can still act as a cleanup crew,” Connor said.

  “I prefer to think of them as our janitors,” I said, leaving the spot where the body had lain and heading off to a set of bookc
ases on my right.

  “Tsk-tsk,” Jane said. “Now, boys, be nice. They were perfectly fine when I was roaming the halls here.”

  “Of course they were,” I said, starting to look through the volumes of theater and film books stacked neatly along them. “You’ve got girly bits and all the stuff that guys want to be nice to.”

  Jane shrugged and fixed me with a wicked grin from across the room. “I wonder if one of them would let me have more storage space in their apartment,” she said.

  My face flushed as a jealousy far more potent than my own would have been gurgled up. “Maybe,” I said, a little tweaked that she was bringing it up in front of Connor. “You want to try your luck with one of them? Go for it.”

  Connor stepped between us and spoke before Jane had a chance to respond. “Can we please focus on the casework here?” he asked. “This is a murder scene, not The Dating Game. Show some respect for the departed professor and the Inspectre. Now focus. Do you think he’d entrust this particular investigation to just anybody?”

  “You’re right,” Jane said. “Sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I said, willing myself to calm down. The flare subsided.

  The three of us set about exploring the apartment. Despite nothing triggering my power earlier, I pressed my power into a few of the books on the shelves, bringing up nothing but a variety of images of the still-living Professor Redfield lecturing students down at New York University.

  “Anything?” Connor asked. “We need some kind of motivation for this murder.”

  “Maybe he failed the wrong film student,” I suggested.

  Connor shook his head. “Still wouldn’t explain this ghost woman in green Jane was told about,” he said.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Then maybe they’re building this place on an Indian burial ground. . . ?”

  Jane gave me a weak smile, one side of her mouth curling up all cute-like. “Let’s not get all Poltergeist now.”

  I looked back to Connor.

  He shrugged and scanned the apartment. “What she said. I wouldn’t go with Poltergeist. I’m still not picking up any displaced spirits here.”