And now…the cannery was starting to take on the soft edges of nostalgia.
Jacob stopped scrabbling for the books splayed across the carpet. He left the tall tales of spies and serial killers and stalkers on the floor, and reached for my face instead. “You have a beard.”
I tilted my cheek into his palm. It was probably weird of me to miss his hand…and I didn’t care. I wanted to reassure him I wouldn’t be much longer, but how could I? Now that I saw him, really saw him, my reasons for even attempting this assignment came flooding back. I had to raise my own security clearance—I had to fight my own battles and find my own answers. Because if I didn’t, Jacob would.
The last thing he needed was to get himself charged with a felony.
Yeah, I wanted to reassure him. But what I said was, “You need to stop coming to Boystown.”
“I didn’t think—” He looked at the bookshelves as if he’d only just now realized where he was. He cleared his throat and started over. “Obviously, I didn’t think. I’m running on habit—I come here every other Thursday after they rotate the stock.”
Cleghorn actually did something other than bag patrol? That was news to me, but it seemed Jacob was telling the truth. As liars go, Jacob’s as smooth as they come, thanks to the years he’d spent partnered with the Human Polygraph. But even he had his tells. A particular set of his shoulders. The hint of a smile in his eyes. A certain tone he’d take that would imply, What I’m saying is so obvious, how could you even dream of questioning it?
He wasn’t doing any of that now.
I’d normally have a mock heart attack over him admitting he’d made a mistake, but how could I tease him about it while we were both aching and raw and exposed?
“The cannery feels so empty,” Jacob said. “I’m just knocking around in that huge space, not knowing what to do with myself. Even though we’re both happy enough to do our own thing when we’re home together—even though I could go a couple hours without even seeing you—I guess I’m just attached to knowing you’re around.”
And on the flip side, I was stuck sidling through a claustrophobic townhouse knowing that Jacob wasn’t. I thought about that big lug constantly. Every time my fingers itched to send him a text. Every time I noticed Bly was only like him in the most superficial ways. Every time I caught myself rolling my eyes over something and planning to tell him about it “later,” then feeling like later would never come. The empty place in my life where Jacob should have been followed me like a habit demon on an ectoplasmic tether.
I looked at Jacob, really looked. A few new grays glinted at his temples and the bridge of his nose was bracketed by red indents from the reading glasses. Had the two weeks we’d been apart occurred in some kind of space/time distortion, or had he accidentally destroyed a magical portrait he kept stashed under the mattress? Or had I simply not looked at him lately—or, at least, not actually seen him?
I thought I’d missed him before. I hadn’t realized how much deeper that longing could cut.
I put my hand over his and pressed it against my cheek. “I want to go home with you, Jacob. More than anything. But we can’t be doing this. If we get caught together, all the time I’ve spent playing house will be for nothing.”
“If that’s the case,” someone said, and Jacob and I flew apart—him to his feet, me flailing against a piercing charley horse, “then you might want to wrap things up.” Sylvester fucking Hale. “The breadwinner cometh.”
I can count the times on one hand I’ve gone off half-cocked—my very survival has depended on me keeping a tight lid on my real emotions—but something in that snide comment slipped right through the chink in my armor and poked me directly in the ego. I shoved off the nearest bookshelf to pry myself up out of my crouch. My knees popped, and romance novels with chesty hunks on the cover tumbled to the floor, but I stepped over them and made a lunge for Hale. “Listen, old man.” I jabbed him in the chest with my forefinger, hard. “This is a private conversation. So mind your own business.”
Hale’s eyes went wide and he fell back a step while I gesticulated like a crazy person. He probably had a few choice words for me, too. But whatever they might’ve been, I’ll never know. Because as my arm completed its sweep, my wedding band leapt out of my pocket and fell to the floor. We watched in baffled silence as it bounced once, then rolled lazily across the flattened shag carpet—directly in front of Hale’s wingtips. He thumped his cane down in its path, and with a gentle collision, the ring tipped over and lay still.
I didn’t even remember taking it off.
I fell into the world’s most graceless Triangle Pose and made a grab for the wedding band. As I did, I caught sight of Bly facing off with Cleghorn at the front of the shop. “What bag?”
I snatched the ring off the floor, stomped up to the register, and caught Bly by the sleeve. I wanted so badly to turn around, give Jacob one final look that told him I was sorry, and I missed him so much it literally hurt, and being apart from him was hell. And it damn near broke my heart, but I refused to do anything more to compromise the investigation. Instead, I gave Bly’s arm a tug and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, that’s where I know this guy from,” Cleghorn chimed in. “He’s your husband. Say, Victor, if you’ve got a minute, I found a few more copies of Zeitgeist Journal for you to sign. They’re only mildewed in the corners—”
He kept on talking as I dragged Bly straight out the door.
“You okay?” Bly whispered. “What happened?”
“Fucking Hale.” I took a few ground-eating strides toward the townhouse, but Bly looped his arm through mine and pulled me down a side street.
“I’ve got the car—it’s right over there. We’ll take a breath and regroup.”
It was probably telling that I had a hard time recognizing “our” car unless it was pointed out to me. I slid into the heated leather seat—the car was infinitely nicer than either mine or Jacob’s—and said, “Well, I’ve blown it with Hale. All this work, all this training, all this time—all for nothing.”
27
I wasn’t cheating on my husband with Jacob. Because I’d seen Jacob just a handful of times since I’d taken this damn assignment, and at no time did our contact go beyond a simple touch—above the belt, at that. Plus, Bly and I weren’t even married.
Even so, Hale’s knowing smirk left me feeling like a creep with something to be legitimately defensive about.
Given that I was having so much trouble separating my real identity from the charade, you’d think I would be more convincing. But there’s no way Hale could possibly be buying me as anything other than an undercover agent now—and a shitty one, at that. I had no opinion on anything intellectual, I’d made a huge scene in a bookstore where a real writer would’ve been on his best behavior, and I’d practically assaulted the old man I was supposed to rope in.
I felt lousy enough to guess with some confidence that Bly wasn’t tinkering in my head. The sun was down. He drove us home—no repeaters along that particular stretch—and went about nuking his awful dinner. Despite all the time we’d been spending together lately, I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’d become very close. Empaths might be the psychic equivalent of a big, emotional rug-burn, but Bly kept his wounds well concealed under the mother of all scabs.
I opened the fridge and considered the pre-packaged meals—bland chicken or bland fish—but even though they were puny, I didn’t feel like I could choke one down past the knot of failure in my throat. At one time, I would’ve taken comfort in the fact that I was the only guy for the job. But this wasn’t the Fifth Precinct, and I wasn’t the only one keyed in to the great beyond. If another undercover gig for a medium came up, why bother sending me when they could deploy someone as competent as Darla? Once an alarm on the fridge door started complaining, I gave up without picking out a food, shut the door and said, “You know Laura better than I do. Will I tank my career if I pull the plug on this assignment?”
“Why would you do that?
You never struck me as a quitter.”
He hadn’t seen how many half-finished Sudoku books I’d dumped in the recycle bin the last time I got the urge to clear out the magazine rack. “No sense in wasting any more time or resources. Hale’s never gonna talk to me now.”
“Look, tonight was uncomfortable and you let your surprise get the best of you, but put it in perspective. Your cover’s not blown. No one’s got a gun to their head. And it’s a good opportunity to regroup and try a new tactic.” He tapped something into his phone that arrived on mine with a ding. “Don’t throw in the towel until you read this.”
Luckily, the folks who pen tradecraft papers aren’t trying to show off their vocabulary like the schmoes in Zeitgeist Journal. They tend to be law enforcement types who came up writing reports where the words didn’t need to be fancy, just accurate. The article Bly sent me was all about vulnerability. Not dealing with the actual feeling of it, but how to project the facsimile to make the subject feel like they had something over on you. Criminals are always up for a little emotional blackmail. And sympathetic subjects feel safer when they think you’ve shared an important secret. Even inadvertently.
I’m not sure which category Hale fit in, if any: friend or foe. And I’m not sure his reactions would be anywhere near typical. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I blew this assignment, I might never get another chance.
By the time I was done reading, I realized I was clammy from all my catastrophizing.
Normally, I’d just march next door as my sweaty self, but there were only certain ways in which I could afford to offend Hale’s sensibilities. While he might relish watching me grovel, I doubted he wanted to stew in my flop sweat. It wouldn’t require a full shower and re-gooping. A quick wipedown would suffice. I headed upstairs to grab a clean shirt, formulating what a cheater who just got busted would plausibly tell his neighbor…and when I opened my closet door, it hit me.
The smell of decomp.
My conscious brain was working so hard on the puzzle of what to say to Hale, it must’ve left all my inert gray matter free to forge some new connections. Every time the telltale whiff of rot was in evidence, I’d been on the third floor where Amelia Griggs died. More specifically, though, I’d been monkeying around in the closet. I looked down. The carpet under my feet was a different berber than rest of the room. It hadn’t been replaced.
Although it was a heck of a lot better than the stinky ghost theory, the thought that my wardrobe had been marinating in the molecules of decomposed human remains was hardly comforting. I grabbed armloads of the stay-at-home douchebag’s outfits and pitched them out into the home gym, wondering if I’d even be able to get into the jeans if I dared wash them in hot water. Maybe I’d just use a lot of soap.
The douchebag’s wardrobe was all casual wear. Skinny jeans, overpriced T-shirts, sweaters. Enough clothes to fill the whole closet, just in case anyone was snooping—too many for one load of wash. I realized I should probably just pick out a couple days’ worth of stuff and leave the rest for the morning.
Clothes were everywhere. The floor. The elliptical. The hallway. And all the way in the back of the closet, high up on a shelf that anyone shorter might’ve missed, another baseball cap was tucked away. It was even dumber than the one I’d been wearing all this time, textured black leather, so stiff it looked more like a cast iron pot.
I couldn’t think of any fashion choice that would possibly make me seem more vulnerable in front of Hale. I pulled it down off the shelf, but something else came along for the ride. It looked like a squashed toupee, until I crouched as far as my jeans would allow to take a better look at it…and I saw the paws. And the long incisors. And the unmistakable tail.
Apparently the Humane Society had missed something. Or the exterminator.
I wouldn’t be wearing that cap anytime soon. Still, the dead rat might be a good way to extend my conversation with Hale.
I called my fake husband upstairs and showed him the collapsed carcass. Once he was through shuddering, he said, “It’s better than the idea of living with the stink of human remains.” And even though I’d been working homicide ever since I got my detective’s badge, I had to agree.
“Is this a plausible inroad to Hale?” I wondered.
“Anything makes a good inroad if you can figure out how to sell it.”
Since I was such a lousy actor, I had to get over there while my shock was still fresh. Aside from my pits—and maybe the crack of my ass—it’s my hair that suffers the most when I break out in a horrible case of nervous perspiration. Now, between the goop and the hat-head, I frankly couldn’t tell. I was all hopped up and ready to rope my target in, so I settled for a quick swab with a washcloth, pulled on a slouchy sweater from the clothes hamper, and headed next door to have an urgent discussion about the rat mummy I’d just found in my brand new townhouse. If that wasn’t vulnerable, I didn’t know what was.
Hopefully, my target wouldn’t be able resist bonding over a dead rodent.
I hammered on his front door, bursting with eagerness to forge a connection—and my phone recording from my pocket. As my handlers were constantly reminding me, this wasn’t police work. And I didn’t need a subpoena to record him in my capacity as an FPMP agent filling out an evaluation. The shadows shifted behind the pebbled glass when he came to answer my knock. When he opened the door, I greeted him with, “We need to talk.”
I half-expected him to beg off yet again, but instead he just arched a pointy eyebrow and stepped aside to let me in. I scuffed the slush off the bottoms of my gym shoes but didn’t take them off—I had a douchey reputation to uphold—and tossed my red parka onto one of his armchairs.
Hale had changed into his smoking jacket and slippers, but I didn’t apologize for bothering him so late. Actually, I had the distinct feeling he’d been expecting me. The living room had been tidied since the last glimpse I’d had of it. No dirty dishes. No empty soda cans. No bedding on the sofa other than the orange crocheted afghan, which might have been a garment and not a blanket.
As I passed the stairwell, I took a deep breath to check for decomp, but no, the house just smelled like old man. I flopped down on one of the chairs, a musty, antique thing that creaked under my weight. You’ll never believe what I just found was right on the tip of my tongue…but then I realized I was in the perfect position to steer the conversation toward the supernatural.
Because what if the douchebag hadn’t found that dead rat?
And what if he was convinced the unwanted presence he sensed in his third floor home gym was none other than the townhouse’s late owner?
“You’re gonna think I’m crazy,” I said, and he didn’t jump to contradict me. “But something’s not right upstairs.”
Hale crossed his arms and pursed his lips. “Go on.”
Showtime.
I pushed all thoughts of carrotish stage fright aside and said, “It all started when we moved in….”
While Hale regarded me with a skeptical raised eyebrow, I launched into a tale of quiet sounds in the middle of the night, like someone dragging their fingernails across the walls. Of small items moved just an inch to the right or left. Of sudden chills, and the unshakable sensation that I just wasn’t alone. And most of all, the elusive smell of rot.
Hale might very well regard me with ambivalence, but who can resist a good ghost story? I’m not one to embellish my narrative. If anything, I minimize. So it felt surprisingly freeing to really lay it on thick. As I spun my tale of creeping horror, he stopped hovering between me and the door like he was two seconds away from kicking me out, and instead settled himself on the sofa to drink it all in.
And that’s when I played the vulnerability card.
“Stuck in that house all day…trapped, alone….” I shuddered—a risk of overkill, but I think he bought it. His gaze softened to focus on the triangle of my eyes and mouth, and he nodded a few times, then uncrossed his arms. Hesitantly, I said, “You probably thin
k I’m nuts.”
“Not at all.”
He leaned in. And that was when I knew I had him.
I don’t normally memorize every clinical diagnostic that comes down the pike, but the Clinical Pre-Assessment for Mediumship paper had a special place in my heart, since a lot of the content originated with me. I couldn’t take sole credit, since it wouldn’t sound anywhere near as good without Darla’s input. And, for safety reasons, it didn’t even have my name on it. But it was my first official contribution to the field of Psychic Studies—the first where I was anything more than an unwitting, redacted subject—and I was modestly proud of the thing.
Section C, Part 1: Visual Perception
I glanced to either side like I was double-checking no one would overhear my big secret. “Sometimes I think I see something. Out of the corner of my eye. But when I look….”
Hale nodded solemnly—not as if he was agreeing with me, though. More like he found my distress intriguing. Okay. Maybe he wasn’t visual.
Section C, Part 4: Auditory Confirmation
“And then there’s the noises. Not just the little scratchy sounds, either. More like…voices. Distant voices.”
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t hear voices.” Hale fluttered a wrinkled hand. “I’m sure they’re just someone’s television set. The walls are disgracefully thin.”
It struck me as more of an attempt to comfort me than a denial. He had something to say. I just needed to make him feel safe enough to say it. Too much insistence on my part would be the diagnostic equivalent of leading the witness. But it felt like he was just about to spill the beans.
Section C, Part 8: Kinesthetic Sensitivity
“It’s like…I dunno.” I chafed my upper arms and gave it one more shot. “Do you ever just get the feeling you’re being watched?”
Hale considered me for a long moment, then settled back against the sofa cushions and said, “Let me tell you a little story.”
Jackpot.
Murder House Page 17