Jacob’s lips lingered for a moment, then his hands gave my shoulders a squeeze and he pulled away, reaching for the shampoo. “I could’ve given you a ride.”.
I felt guilty for not having asked him, but it was just far too gay to have my boyfriend dropping me off at the precinct. “It’s your day off.” I turned to face him, since it felt too weaselly to lie with my back to him. He seemed fine, concentrating on soaping up his hair.
I rinsed off and slipped out of the shower, and found a week-old towel in the hamper. I left the clean one for Jacob. He climbed out a minute later, water beaded on his olive skin, muscles rippling...with red scratches criss-crossing his thighs.
“What’s that?”
He glanced down. “Don’t you remember your own handiwork?”
I squinted at the marks. They looked almost as if they’d been made deliberately, like Xs. “Um. No.”
He grinned and dried himself off lazily, flexing for me all the while. “Right before you jerked off last night, you got a little rough.”
I did? I stared at his thighs. They were just scratches. But still. It really didn’t seem like something I’d do, even buzzed. I considered kissing them as some sort of penance, but if I knelt down in front of him on the bathroom floor I’d be asking for a big naked porno scene for Roger to stumble into. I shuddered at the thought.
Which was weird. Roger wasn’t bad looking, and a threesome should have been interesting fantasy fodder. I watched Jacob watching me as he dried off. Maybe I was falling in love. I shrugged and finger-combed my hair, dropped my towel on the floor, and went to find a clean shirt.
Chapter Three
Roger had stopped at Starbucks on the way to pick me up. He’d even put cream in my coffee. I wanted to be leery of him for being so nice to me, but I chalked it up to his enthusiasm at landing such a prestigious job. Being a PsyCop didn’t pay as well as private psychic work, but then there wasn’t any call for Stiffs in private work, either. Maybe he was making better money than he had in Buffalo. Or maybe he was a Psych groupie like Jacob. Hard to say until I got to know him a little better.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye while he drove and tried to get a bead on him, but he was difficult to peg. A regular guy. Probably straight. “So,” I said. “Are you, uh, married or anything?” Smooth. Really smooth.
He probably could’ve put me in my place by responding, “Why, are you? I guess not. The whole station knows you’ve been shacked up with Detective Marks from the Twelfth since Detective Taylor retired.” But, of course, he didn’t.
Nope. Roger was the picture of mildly interested surprise. “No, not married. Not seeing anyone.” He smiled. “I mean, I just moved here from Buffalo last week.”
“Right,” I said, wondering how far a straight guy would pursue it.
“You?” he asked.
“Me? Uh, no. Mediums aren’t exactly marriage material.” Class-five mediums like me, anyway.
“That’s a common misperception,” Roger said. “In fact, Psychs are just as likely to be married as Non-Psychs, and they have a significantly lower divorce rate.”
I considered telling him that the divorce rate was so low because the psychics’ spouses probably killed themselves to get away, but I didn’t know if he’d appreciate my sense of humor. Not that I even knew if I’d be kidding or not.
Thankfully, I don’t live far from the precinct, and we were there before Roger could tell me any more fascinating facts about being psychic.
We reported to Sergeant Warwick’s office for the day’s assignment. I let Roger lead the way since I was the cause of our lateness. I figured he’d be more difficult to ream out than me, given his cheerful demeanor. Warwick looked up from the files on his desk and motioned for us to sit. No threats, no accusations, no nothing. I made a mental note to use the Roger-goes-first tactic the next time I screwed up.
“Since this is Detective Burke’s first day with you in the field,” Warwick said, “I’m starting you off with a cold case.”
I felt something unclench inside me. Cold cases were a walk on the beach. Maurice and I would grab a box of donuts and take a leisurely drive from scene to scene, me staring out into space and him working on his grocery list. I’d never gotten a hit from a cold case. I’m not really sure why, given the persistence of murder victims. Most likely I was looking in the wrong spots.
Of course, if Lisa had still been my partner, we could’ve used her precognizant ability to figure out where to focus our energies. Ever since Lisa was a little girl she’s played this ‘si-no’ game, where she could answer any yes or no question correctly. To say the ‘si-no’ would save us a little legwork would be the understatement of the year. We could figure out which scenes still contained any clues before we’d even left the precinct. Hell, we could figure out if the spirit was even lingering around at all, or if going out to look for it would be an exercise in futility.
But, departmental policies being what they were, Lisa and I would never be partners again. I gathered the files from Warwick and stomped out of his office more sulkily than I’d meant to, but dammit, I thought the policy of pairing a Psych and a Stiff, no matter what the circumstances, was shortsighted and just plain stubborn. The theory is that Psychics’ energies are complimented by the total sixth-sensory void of a certified Non-Psych, or NP. And while Maurice had been my partner, that had seemed to make a lot of sense.
In retrospect, I think I just got along with Maurice.
I threw myself into the seat at my desk and flipped open the first file. The case involved a child-killer, Terry Lawrence, who’d confessed to a slew of murders and then recanted his confession, saying the police promised him they’d push for an insanity plea if he’d just help them clean house a little by fessing up to a few more missing children. The body of one eight-year-old girl had been found, but five others had never surfaced. Lawrence’s thirty-year sentence was coming up for parole, and the state was hoping that PsyCops could shed some light on the validity of Lawrence’s earlier confessions.
“Where would the spirits be most likely to be found?” Roger asked.
“Where they died, or where they were buried, especially if it was a hide-the-body situation. They get testy when they’re not planted right.”
Roger took a file from the desk and scanned it. “Since we don’t know where they’re buried, I’m guessing we need to look at Lawrence’s residence.”
I shrugged and tried not to let my shitty mood leak out all over Roger. He was a nice enough guy, but he was no Maurice. And he was certainly no Lisa.
Roger seemed unfazed as he did a little typing on his computer. I stared down at another missing child’s file and pretended to read. I took a long pull of my coffee. At least the coffee was good.
“Lawrence had a Bungalow on Argyle near California.”
I pinpointed the area in my mind. “Two blocks from the East River Park.”
“That’s the place.”
If I were Lawrence, I would’ve dropped the bodies in the river. No doubt the officers working the case had thought of that, even in the 70’s. I flipped open the file, and yes, they’d dragged the river as soon as they’d fingered Lawrence as their man. But it’d probably been too late.
I remembered the gape-mouthed face rising up out of the Calumet and shuddered.
Roger’s keys were clicking away. He hadn’t noticed. “There’s a strip mall where the bungalow used to be,” he said. “Looks like it’s either a gyros place or a cell phone dealer now.”
I gulped the rest of my coffee, which had been getting cold anyway, and felt it churn around with my stomach acids. I dropped the cup into the wastebasket. “Let’s go and have a look,” I sighed.
We pulled up to the cell phone store and found it didn’t even open until three. Athens Gyros next door was an uninspired strip mall greasy spoon with a stained acoustic drop ceiling and paneling that dated back to whenever Lawrence’s house had been razed. There was a klatch of old ladies nursing diner coffee
toward the front of the restaurant, a dark-skinned guy of indeterminate ethnicity reading a paper against one wall, and toward the counter, a mother who looked to be about twelve years old trying to make her squalling kid drink some soda.
“Let’s not flash our badges,” I told Roger. “Not yet, since we’re not investigating anyone here, or even this building. We’ll just get...lunch.”
It was early enough in the day that the oil in the deep fryer was probably still fresh, so I ordered an extra large curly fry and a couple of Polish sausages. I tacked on a coffee, since I’m a sucker for diner coffee. Roger went with a Greekburger, a side salad, and a lemonade. The salad was a little suspicious, but at least he was eating red meat; he probably wasn’t some kind of health nut. Did straight guys eat salads? Maurice never had one unless his wife made it. That was about the extent of my knowledge of the eating habits of the heterosexual world.
We slid into an orange plastic booth, me with my coffee and him with his lemonade, and tried to look like something other than cops. I’m usually pretty good at that, since I’m such a slob. And I suppose Roger could’ve passed for a businessman in his perfectly fitted suit.
Roger stared at me hard as I sipped my coffee, and not a come-on type of stare, either. God. He expected me to be tuning in my pineal gland even as I waited for my lunch. I wondered how explicitly I’d need to tell him to relax.
I excused myself and went to the bathroom to gather my thoughts and take a piss. The tile was brown, the countertops were orange, and the old light fixtures cast a weird, yellowish illumination on everything. I aimed at the pink urinal cake and peed, focusing on the wall when my piss looked orange in the sickly light. I stared up at some cobwebs in the ceiling corner and thought it would be in my best interest to just lie to Roger and say that it took me quite a while to attune myself to new situations. PsyCops are like marathon runners. They’ve got to pace themselves. The rookies have to deal with it or else they burn out.
Not that he was all that young. I was guessing early thirties. But I was also guessing that he was out to prove something on his first run as a PsyCop. Yeah, lying was the ticket.
Two big Polishes and a steaming platter of fries were waiting for me at the table. Roger hadn’t started eating yet, out of some sense of etiquette, I guess. I quelled the urge to roll my eyes. Maurice would’ve had a hunk of curly fry on his lapel by now.
I sat down and gulped half my coffee, hoping the sixty-something Greek guy who’d taken our order would come around with refills soon. In fact, I was betting on it, since the old ladies looked like they’d been settled into their booth for quite some time and they still had something to sip.
I stuck a fry in my mouth, burned my tongue, and switched to a Polish instead. It was almost as hot, but there was at least a bun to buffer my tongue. I ate about half of that, leaning over the table so that the mustard and diced onion landed on the tray rather than my sportcoat, and then finished off the rest of my coffee.
I was full already.
Huh.
I hadn’t had any breakfast and had hardly touched the fries. Two Polishes with fries should have been about right.
Roger worked on his salad in a quiet, methodical way. I finished my first Polish, then went up to the counter for a glass of water to help me keep the thing down. I almost asked the guy to come around for a refill on my coffee while I was at it, but a rumble in my gut told me to give the coffee a rest.
I walked back to the booth with my red tumbler of water and slid in, my gaze focused inward. “What is it?” Roger asked in a hushed voice. “Do you see anything?”
Oh, that again. I shushed him. “It takes time,” I lied.
Roger dutifully clammed up while I figured how many coffees I’d had so far. Two. Okay, the Starbucks was a grande, so maybe it’d counted as a double, or even a triple. So the cup at the diner would make four.
Shouldn’t have been a problem. I’m a cop. Coffee runs through my veins. I wondered if I could convince Roger to let me run into a grocery store to get some antacids without him tagging along to see what I was buying. I didn’t know him well enough to let him see me laid low by a few cups of coffee.
It probably wasn’t even the coffee. Maybe it was food poisoning. I tried to remember what I’d had for dinner the night before and came up blank. Lunch, then. I thought back.
Crap, I’d slept through lunch and dinner on an Auracel/Seconal cocktail. And I’d had a donut for breakfast. Could I get food poisoning from a donut? It seemed unlikely, and yet I had felt queasy in the boat.
I glanced up at Roger and he was staring at me like I had the moon landing playing in my eyes. “Anything?” he whispered.
I finally did roll my eyes at his ridiculous persistence -- I just couldn’t quell it -- and then I saw a little girl with a page boy haircut in an atrocious plaid dress standing beside Roger, facing me from across the table. The back of the booth practically bisected her from left to right, and her head and shoulders poked out over the top.
I tried to recall if she’d been one of the files I’d scanned earlier, but it was too hard to tell. The photos I’d had were school pictures, kids against garish seventies backgrounds with freakishly fake smiles plastered on and their hair slicked into strange shapes that didn’t even resemble actual hair.
I looked harder at the little girl ghost and there was something off about her. Most ghosts are off in some way, which is why people are scared of them. I looked harder at the girl. Her eyes were too intense, piercing, almost. And her neck looked mottled. When I realized what I was looking at were finger marks, she reached out toward me as if she wanted to hold my hand.
That was different. Usually they talk. I wondered if maybe she’d been a deaf-mute in life.
I hadn’t actually expected to feel her touching me, since all the ghosts I’d ever seen were totally noncorporeal. But her fingers were clammy and dead against the back of my hand. A wave of revulsion swept over me and I fought to keep my lunch from coming up. I jerked my arm away, then ran my fingers through my hair in an attempt to cover up the gesture. I had no desire to try talking to her, and even less desire to explain my reasoning to eager Roger. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Roger calmly. “There’s nothing to see.”
The kid’s ghost followed us, but I walked fast, slamming the car door and hoping Roger would get a move on, too. I pressed my thumb into my forehead, but then thought better of it. Some Psychs do that to stimulate their crown chakra; mine was plenty hyper on its own.
Roger fastened his seat belt and started the engine. The little girl ghost stood in the parking spot we’d just backed out of with her thin arms reaching toward the car. “Where to next?” asked Roger. “The park?”
I nodded, wondering how I could get him to stop off so that I could get something for my stomach. I racked my brain in an attempt to find something innocuous to purchase, but couldn’t think of a single thing I needed. Maybe water. The human body’s made up of something like ninety-nine percent water. Water was a perfectly normal thing to need, right?
“Hey,” I said as we neared a teeming supermarket. “I need to stop here a second.”
I must’ve sounded casual, since Roger turned on his blinker and pulled into the lot without any questions. “I’ll just be in and out,” I said, opening my door as he passed by the entrance while his car was still moving so he’d have wait for me rather than park and follow. “Need anything?”
He looked a little perplexed at my sudden burst of motion, but he didn’t challenge me. “Nope,” he said. “I’m good.”
Thank God. I jogged through the automatic doors and swerved around a woman who seemed to have twenty or thirty kids in tow. At least six, anyway, and most of them howling. But none of them were trying to put their hands on me, and that was good enough for me.
I trailed along behind them until I felt grounded enough to move on to the drug aisle. I picked up a few rolls of antacids, the small ones that you can hide in your pockets. I remembered a time when I
hid more interesting things than antacids in my pockets and I felt sorry for myself. Then I grabbed a water from a refrigerated unit at the end of a checkout line, and rejoined Roger in the car.
“Thirsty,” I said, toasting him with the water. And then I drank it so I wouldn’t have to talk to him while he drove the rest of the way to the park.
I was thankful that the East River looked nothing like the Calumet. It was deep and rushing, and its surface started about twenty feet below street level. Not the type of slow, shallow river in which a guy would bob around in a rowboat.
It occurred to me that if I just hurried up and talked to a dead kid and found out where it was buried, we could go back to the Fifth. Heck, maybe I could even go back home. I turned off my phone so it wouldn’t disturb me and started looking in earnest.
We hiked up to the guardrail at the edge of the river and looked down. Someone had drunk a twelve pack of Busch Light and dumped all the cans and even the cardboard box onto the riverbank below. If the river had been higher the litter probably would’ve floated away by now, but instead it just sat there in the dirt, an unsightly reminder that most people suck.
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