Criss Cross

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Roger handed me a bottle of water from a tiny refrigerator beside his bed. I took a swallow and lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t feel anything. But it’d be too soon. And it probably wouldn’t be all that dramatic, anyhow. Just a little something to help me sleep.

  The ESPN sportscasters droned on over the squeak of sneakers on a basketball court, and I wondered where they were broadcasting basketball from in October. Was it basketball season in China? Did they even play basketball in China? The sportscasters didn’t sound Chinese. I considered opening my eyes to see who was playing but it felt like way too much effort. I drifted off to the sound of rubber soles on hardwood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My dreams were vivid, floaty, and downright pleasant. I was drinking coffee in a coffee shop full of hot young men. Crash was behind the counter with his spiked blond hair, giving me a knowing, come-hither look every time he caught my eye, and flashing the tongue stud to make sure I knew that if I consented to spend a little naked time with him, I wouldn’t be sorry. Some of the murder victims from my last case were there, too: the guy with the Scotty dog collection was yukking it up with the buff architect. At a table in the far corner, the goth boy who’d broken my heart in the mid-eighties was licking the foam from a latte off his black-painted lips in a way that sent a major rush straight to my groin.

  But best of all, Jacob was there, right across the table from me -- shirtless and unscratched. His perfectly sculpted arms and chest gleamed like he’d just come from a bodybuilding competition, and his eyes, which had seemed so pinched with fatigue and concern lately, were just deep and melty and oh-so-sexy. Jacob reached under the table and ran his fingers up my thigh. I don’t normally go in for public displays of affection, but since we were in the world’s gayest coffee house, and everyone else there seemed to have sex on the brain too, I let myself relax into Jacob’s caress.

  Something buzzed against my thigh and I did a double-take at Jacob. A vibrator? In public? My cock stiffened and I slouched lower, shocked that he’d do something so dirty where anyone could see, but turned on by it nonetheless.

  The vibrator pulsed against my leg and I caught my lower lip between my teeth. I’m not a big sex-toy aficionado, but damn, it was sexy. And Crash was right over there with that tongue stud...maybe Jacob wasn’t as uptight as Crash had thought. Maybe he just needed to be approached the right way....

  The buzzing drilled into my thigh.

  “Higher,” I told Jacob.

  The buzz pulsed again.

  I woke up to the feel of my phone going off in my pocket. My head was wooly and my tongue was, too. I looked around the room. A single reading lamp was on, and Roger’s bed was rumpled. Roger was gone. My phone vibrated again.

  I flipped it open. Lisa. “Hello?” I said, and the word came out a little slurred.

  “Vic? Oh my God, Vic, where are you?”

  I looked around at the trout wallpaper. “In the fishing room.”

  “You sound funny -- are you okay?”

  I found the idea of her asking me a yes or no question pretty amusing. “I dunno,” I said. “Am I?”

  “You’re on drugs? Yes. Okay, what kind? Wait, never mind, it doesn’t matter. Are you alone? Yes.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You’re not safe. You need to get out of there.”

  I looked up at a bad oil painting of a couple of guys casting their lines from an old, scenic bridge and wondered if it was going to fall off the wall and decapitate me. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Ask me some questions so I can figure it out.”

  “You warned me about Crash,” I said, staring down at the tent of my hard-on pressing up against my jeans. “What was I in danger of there -- a killer orgasm?”

  Lisa sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Victor, and you’re all messed up. What’s Crash? Some kind of drug?”

  “Maybe,” I said, sitting up. My head spun a little and I paused to enjoy the feeling. “Or maybe he’s a young blond man.”

  “No.”

  “Yes he is.”

  “No. He’s not the one.”

  The clipped, hushed tone of her voice was a buzzkill, but it got me to thinking. I knew another blond man who was younger than me. “Is it Roger?”

  “Yes!”

  “It can’t be. Roger’s helping me get to California so I can talk to you.”

  “No he isn’t. Victor, listen to me. Wherever you are, just get up and go. Is he nearby? Yes.”

  PsyTrain had taught Lisa how to ask her own questions. Useful, but something she probably could’ve figured out without flying across the damn country and going incommunicado. I stood up and the room dipped a little, but I had pretty good sea legs from years of chemical experimentation. I went to the door and turned the handle. Locked. I took a look at the lock. It was shiny and new. And very sturdy. “I’m locked in. Lemme find my gun.”

  My shoulder holster was draped over a desk chair beneath my jean jacket. It was empty. “Did Roger take my gun?”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes and wished the room would stop spinning. “Was that a muscle relaxant he gave me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it as mild as he said it was?”

  “No.”

  There was some background noise on Lisa’s end. I heard her cover the phone and say, “Not now, this is really important. Who? Oh my God, really?” She got back on the phone with me. “Vic, Jacob’s here.”

  I was busy staring at my empty holster. “Where, in California? How’d he get there? Are you shitting me?”

  She’d stopped listening to me, though. “Yeah, I’m on the phone with him right now. I don’t think he knows where he is.”

  “Vic,” Jacob said, taking Lisa’s phone away from her, “something’s going on. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

  A key turned in the lock, and I decided there wasn’t any more time for me to play twenty questions. “Someone’s coming, gotta go.” I flipped off my phone, stuck it in my pocket, and fell back into bed, feigning sleep. I forced myself to take slow, even breaths, and I even let my eyes flicker back and forth a little bit under my lids.

  The door to the fishing room opened. “Vic?” Roger called softly. “Are you awake?”

  I moved my eyes around under my closed lids and said nothing. The orderlies at Camp Hell usually fell for the fake R.E.M. routine. And after a long, horrible pause, it seemed like Roger did, too.

  I heard him move quietly around the room, stopping for a moment at the television armoire, and then at my jean jacket. Fabric rustled, and then the floorboards creaked softly as he approached the bed. I wished I could see through my eyelids. I wondered if some psychics actually could; heck, I’ve heard of weirder talents. Why not see-through eyelids?

  I probably would’ve flinched when he put his hand on me if not for the muscle relaxant. The pill had delayed my reaction time long enough to give me some kind of doped-up control over myself. I wondered if I was still sporting wood from my dirty dream, if he was gonna cop a feel while I was out cold. It didn’t seem like a Roger kind of thing to do, but when it was all said and done, how well did I know Roger, anyway?

  He made a little “tch” noise in his throat, whatever that meant, his hand slipped into my pocket, and he took my phone. Damn. I felt like a wuss for not trying to fight him off, springing into action and taking him by surprise, but he had both his gun and mine, and I was doped-up and slow.

  He stayed there in the room and eventually I must’ve drifted off again, thanks to the pills. I have no idea how long it was before the sound of a key in the lock woke me. I lay still with my eyes shut and listened.

  “How long has he been out?” Though it was a whisper, the female voice seemed vaguely familiar.

  “Most of the night.”

  Fabric rustled and something was set down and unzipped. “We could probably wake him up,” whispered the woman. “Or we can wait until
it’s light out. We don’t want to blow it after we’ve gotten this far.”

  Roger sighed and moved to his own bed. It creaked gently as he settled on it. “We’ve waited this long. What’s another couple of hours?”

  I personally wished they’d just wake me up and get on with whatever they had in mind. Since they thought I was asleep I had to just lay there and wonder what the fuck was going on. I had no idea if I normally shifted and rolled around in my sleep, and if so, how much. So I had to be perfectly still for what seemed like forever to the sound of quiet footsteps, the gentle rustle of paper and the occasional sigh.

  Eventually I couldn’t take the not knowing anymore and I rolled onto my side and opened my eyes. Roger was there, propped in his bed, watching me intently. “Hey, Vic,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

  Like I could kill someone, except someone had taken my gun. “I dunno,” I lied. “Okay.”

  “Detective Bayne?” said the female voice, and I turned and found Doctor Chance standing at the foot of my bed. She wasn’t wearing the hippie-chick ensemble she’d had on at the clinic -- instead she wore a black knit suit, casual but smart, cut to just cover something at her waist that looked suspiciously like a gun belt. I wondered if maybe she was a Fed.

  “Doctor Chance?” I said, doing my best to sound bewildered. I was actually a little surprised to see her, but I tried to make it look like I hadn’t realized anyone was there besides me and Roger.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Do you mind if I take your vitals?”

  I sat up. “Why? Am I sick?”

  She pulled a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff out of a bag. She handled them confidently enough that I assumed she actually was a doctor -- but what if she wasn’t? If only I’d been born with the ‘si-no’ instead of a direct line to the afterlife, I’d know.

  “Just checking to make sure you haven’t had an adverse reaction to the new meds.”

  “No, they’re fine,” I said, as she velcroed the cuff onto my biceps. “But they don’t work anywhere near as well as the Auracel.”

  She nodded and stuck a digital thermometer in my mouth, pumped up the cuff so tightly it hurt, then let some air out in a slow hiss. “That’s to be expected. They function differently than your old medication.”

  She shone a penlight into each of my eyes. “Everything’s normal,” she told me, and I swallowed back a laugh. “Now, listen. You might feel a little lightheaded, but what I have to tell you is very important: we’ve got access to some new medication that will alter your ability to communicate with the dead. If you work with us, I think we can get your hypersensitivity under control.”

  That part of the plan sounded fine, until she opened a small case that contained a dozen pre-filled syringes. My heart pounded. It’s not a fear of needles or anything. It's just more Camp Hell baggage. “What’s that?”

  “The latest in anti-psyactives,” she said, swabbing the crook of my arm with an antiseptic wipe. She flicked the syringe a couple of times, then looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “You do want to get your visions under control, don’t you?”

  “I think half an Auracel would do the trick. Maybe we could adjust my dose....”

  Roger stood behind her, his hand resting on his holstered gun. He didn’t look like his normal, cheerful self, and I doubted he was going to offer to go get me some Starbucks.

  “Detective,” said Chance. “This is the cutting edge of current Psy research. You’re lucky to be a part of it.”

  Oh God. Cutting edge. Just like Camp Hell, back in the day. My breathing went shallow and rapid and I tensed up to spring.

  “Hold him,” Chance said, her voice bland.

  Roger was airborne in less than a second. His forearm snapped my jaw shut and wedged under my chin, his hard, muscled body pinned mine, his upper thigh drove into my groin and his other arm held mine out to the side with its white, vulnerable undersurface extended. I struggled to move -- knee-jerk reaction, I guess, since I’d still be drugged and locked in a room even if I managed to throw Roger. Not that my stunted flailing even budged him

  “Just a pinprick,” Chance said. There was a sting on my inner elbow and then warmth spread through my arm.

  My panic died away immediately and I went limp. A rush of well-being stole over me and I had to admit that Chance’s new miracle drug wasn’t half bad.

  “That’s better,” said Chance, and Roger climbed off me. “To get a baseline, I’m going to need to ask you some questions.”

  She started firing them off, grilling me about the type of contact I had with the dead, the frequency and intensity, and my ability to pull information from them that they might not want to part with.

  I answered her as best I could, but the overwhelming feeling of good cheer coursing through my veins was far more interesting to me than Chance. Would I get access to this wonderdrug if I helped them test it out? Would it eventually be available in some kind of syrup or pill so I didn’t have to poke holes in my arm?

  “Let’s move on to your level of control,” she said. “If you tell a spirit to do something, does it generally comply?”

  “I dunno. No, not really. They’re kinda stupid, can’t usually tell you much other than the way they died.” My headrush ebbed a little, and it occurred to me that I felt an awful lot like I did when I was celebrating with a fresh batch of Seconal.

  Chance looked at her watch. “How’s the medication? Shall we try a supporting dose?”

  I don’t think it was actually a question. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, but not long, maybe ten minutes since Roger had bodyslammed me. He held me again -- just my arm this time -- and she shot a little more juice into me. There was the warmth, and the wonderful, wonderful high.

  “Try to recall a time when you successfully encouraged a dead subject to talk about something other than its own passing.”

  “A guy in a coffee shop...I used him as a witness.” I laughed. “Don’t tell anyone, it’s off the record.”

  “And so you would say that you might possess the ability to command dead subjects, maybe with more training?”

  I pressed the back of my head into the headboard and rode the wave of contentment that had taken hold of me. It felt so much like Seconal that it made me wonder if it was laced with barbiturates. Yeah, that made sense. Barbiturates were a drug group that I could understand.

  “Detective?”

  “Depends on the dead.”

  “How so?”

  “I think this guy wanted to talk to me because he just liked to talk. Probably was the sort of guy who never shut up when he was alive.”

  A word popped into my head: Amytal. Seconal’s close cousin. Also known as truth serum. Not that it actually makes anyone tell the truth; confessions taken with the aid of Amytal aren’t admissible in court. But it keeps the subject in happy, la-la, everybody’s-my-friend land. I’d have to concede that I was currently visiting that very spot.

  “Detective Bayne?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your assessment of the amount of personality retained by the deceased?”

  I thought about it. “They always seem more like the living when they’re fresh.”

  Chance nodded. “It might have to do with the degradation of their signal over time.”

  “Signal?”

  There was a rap on the door. Roger left his post at my bedside and opened it. The guy with the crew cut who’d let us in the night before stuck his head inside. “There’s a deputy here,” he said quietly. I’ll try not to let him upstairs, but there’s only so much I can do. If I tell him to go get a search warrant he’ll be suspicious.”

  “I’ll handle it,” said Roger.

  “He thinks I’ve got a honeymooning couple here. He wanted to see both of you.”

  Chance looked at me. “How’re you doing on that medication, Detective?”

  “Fine,” I said. My voice sounded a little distant.

  She pulled out another syringe and shot it into me
without even bothering to ask Roger to hold me down. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the headrush.

  “He’ll be sedated for at least fifteen minutes. Longer, if he falls asleep,” she said. “Let’s go.” They left the room and locked the door behind them.

  I sat up. Did they really think I was out for the count? I felt loose-limbed and high, sure. But my years of self-medicating with Seconal must’ve built up some kind of tolerance. And here I’d thought the quality of the pills had been going down.