PsyCop 5: Camp Hell (17 page)

Constantine Dreyfuss didn’t leave the room while we caught up. In a way, I was glad. It’s not as if I would’ve thought he wasn’t listening in anyway. “Andy” was a nonentity.

I reached for my coffee and my phone rang—Jacob’s ring. I figured I’d let it go to voice mail, but both Richie and Dreyfuss gave me an “are you gonna get that?” look.

“I’ll just take it in the, uh….” I pointed to the lobby.

“Of course,” said Dreyfuss. He’d probably hear both my end of the conversation and Jacob’s anyway, if not at that very moment, then later on in instant replay. But I guess we were keeping up the semblance of privacy.

I went through the soundless door and snapped open my phone. “Hey.”

“Listen. I don’t like the way things have been between us lately. Can we….” Jacob sighed, his breath distorted over the receiver. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’ve run out of ideas. I just want things to be good again.”

I glanced around the lobby. It was empty, just me and the low lighting, and the giant swoop of the desk. “Me too.”

I heard phones ringing in the background. I could picture Jacob at the Twelfth, near his battered desk, or maybe the industrial, double-decker coffee pot. “When are you coming home?” he said.

“I’m not sure. Not late, I don’t think.”

“Maybe we could go somewhere. A movie.”

“Sure, whatever you want.” My environment wasn’t giving Jacob any clues as to my location. I suppose it sounded enough like a hospital, at least the quiet pocket of stillness you’d find here or there, that it didn’t prompt him to ask. I figured it wasn’t the best time to bring it up. “I’ll try to call if I’m going to be too late.”

I looked around again. Still nobody but me and the plants. And probably a giant electronic listening device—and maybe a psychic one, too. “I love you.”

Heck, I was sure they’d already heard that from me, and worse.

“You too.”

I disconnected, and stared at the phone for a second before I slipped it back into my pocket. Then I patted my gun again to assure myself that it was still there, and went back to see what Dreyfuss wanted me to do.

-SEVENTEEN-

I had to sign something before I could access the part of the building where the cold spot lived. It was only a single sheet of paper. Something about its brevity frightened me.

Signing it would bind me to complete confidentiality, the breech of which was a felony, and could be punishable by up to twenty years in federal prison. No doubt an ex-cop wouldn’t last nearly that long. Which led me to wonder what Roger Burke would say if he could see me now, staring at this thing and trying to imprint the legal jargon on my shoddy memory.

We left “Andy” in the room with the framed magazine covers and went through a door in the opposite wall. Richie schlepped along beside me as if it was no big deal to work in such a top-top-secret facility. And I noted he wore loafers now, rather than gym shoes fastened with hook-and-loop tape.

“Did you ever get a handle on your talent?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I remember it was pretty strong sometimes—but wild, almost as many misses as hits.”

I shrugged. Evidently the evasiveness I’d groomed for talking in front of Carolyn the Lie Detector was useful in more situations than just that; I couldn’t say how much Dreyfuss knew about my capabilities. I scored plenty of hits on the force. But I never gave a lot of detail as to the mechanism by which I saw the ghosts. For all anyone knew, I was sensing and extrapolating, not seeing all the dead people as if they were right there in front of me.

And that “wildness” Richie was referring to was a bunch of false impressions I’d seeded through my time at Camp Hell to make sure my level tested no higher than Five. It was easier than you’d think. Point in the wrong direction, switch the gender around, mangle the method of death, that sort of thing.

I never repeated the ghosts verbatim, either. Didn’t want anyone to know I heard specific words.

“They know more about mediumship now,” said Richie. “They say electricity can make it confusing. Like the spirits are some kind of electricity themselves.”

“Really.”

“I felt the cold spot when someone backed into the wall and accidentally turned off the lights. D’you think that’s why they used to do séances in the dark, back in old-fashioned times?”

“I dunno, Richie.” I suspected he was referring to the Victorian table-rapping phenomena. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that electricity hadn’t been around quite yet. At least, not in handy wall sockets.

Dreyfuss opened a conference room door for us, and I followed Richie in. A transparent man was seated at the table, but about one foot to the right, as if the furniture had moved, but he hadn’t. He pushed the muzzle of a Beretta under his chin and fired. The recoil threw the weapon from his hand as the back of his head exploded. He disappeared, and reappeared again, seated at the table with his head intact and his Beretta in his hand. He wedged the muzzle under his chin.

I pretended I hadn’t just seen that, and tried to figure out where to look so that I didn’t have to watch it a dozen more times while I worked on getting us out of that room.

“I was gonna bring a candle,” Richie said. He patted down the front of his sweater as if maybe he’d brought one along with him and just forgotten about it. “No windows. We won’t be able to see when Agent Dreyfuss shuts off the electricity. We should have a candle.”

“S’okay, I’ve got a flashlight.”

“Electric?”

“Uh, no. Battery operated.”

Richie smiled. “That should work. Shouldn’t it? That’s different from electricity, right?”

Crap, was it? I’d never taken any science beyond biology. “A flashlight’s never interfered with my talent.”

“I should have a flashlight.” Richie looked at Dreyfuss. “Will you get me a flashlight?”

“No problem. Go get Andy’s.”

“No, I mean, my own. I want my own agency-issued flashlight.”

Dreyfuss pointed at him and winked. “You got it, pal. No later than the end of the week.”

Richie beamed, then went back into the lobby to divest “Andy” of his cop-flashlight.

“It’s nice to see him gainfully employed,” I said quietly as the door whispered shut behind him.

“I don’t have any complaints. Except that I wish his talent were stronger. He’s maybe a high Two, a Three on a good day if we shut down the electricity to the part of the building he’s sniffing. Could you imagine how much lighter the workload would be for a Five? It’s a salaried position. Sweep the building, call it clean, and you’re done for the day.”

Pretty sweet job. Except I’d be taking Richie’s livelihood away from him. And I’d be working for a bunch of creeps. I pretended Dreyfuss hadn’t just alluded to me working for him permanently, which meant I couldn’t look at him—and I didn’t want to look a the guy repeatedly blowing his own brains out at the conference table, either. I stared at the carpet instead.

Richie swung through the door and shone a huge magnum in my eyes. “Mine’s bigger than yours. Heh-heh.”

I forced a smile.

“I guess we’re ready,” Richie said. “Turn off the power.”

Dreyfuss pressed a button on an intercom beside the door. “Laura? Cut the conference room power, please.”

“I’ll call maintenance.”

Richie positioned himself in the far corner of the room with his hand outstretched. “This wasn’t the spot, but I like to do the whole room, make sure I don’t miss anything.”

The guy with the Beretta blew his brains out again.

The lights cut out, and the magnum’s beam cut a swath through the darkness, revealing chairs, a whiteboard, the sleeve of Dreyfuss’ sweatsuit. I pulled out my pocket flashlight and cast my own beam. I kept it trained on Dreyfuss, and I wondered if they’d fault me for drawing my weapon.

Richie’d made it to the far wall. He turned around, and his flashlight beam spun. “If you wanna do the opposite side of the room, you can,” he offered.

I trooped over to the opposite corner while Dreyfuss watched me with a look of immense satisfaction on his face.

“Does he have to be here? Because it’s harder for me to work with all these people around, all these distractions.”

Richie shone his flashlight in Dreyfuss’ face. “Is that okay? It really would be better if you let us do this ourselves.”

Dreyfuss held his hands up on either side of his shoulders. “I know when I’m not wanted.” He smiled when he said that, but obviously, he wasn’t too thrilled.

His gaze lingered on me for a moment, and then he left. Richie pointed his flashlight beam directly at my eye. “Yeah, I think I used to have trouble doing this in front of other people, too. But then I got this job, and it got easier eventually.”

I decided not to tell Richie that I’d been supporting myself with my talent for a few years now. Let him feel like he was the one with all the inside information and all the good tips.

I flashed a light toward the conference table. The suicide was still there. Blam. Richie’s lights danced over the wall. “Now, this is where I felt it,” he said. “It was really cold, right here.”

Good thing Richie’s light wasn’t shining on me when I saw her. She startled me so badly that I jumped back. I aimed my flashlight beam where Richie was pointing. Yep. There she was. Doctor Chance.

Dead.

“I’m getting it again,” Richie said. “It’s definitely cold here, even colder than the time I told Dreyfuss. It must not matter that you’re here with me. Probably because you’re a medium too.”

“Maybe so.”

Doctor Chance had a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead, right where her third eye should have been. She crossed her arms over her chest, and looked around the room. She didn’t seem very happy. She also didn’t seem like a repeater.

“Richie, why don’t you come over here? I thought I felt something in the corner.”

Richie’s flashlight beam bounced over the wall, shone through the suicide—blam—and then joined mine in a spot where absolutely nothing was actually happening. “Is this it?”

“Yeah, right here. Let me move so that you can see how it feels to you.” I inched away from him, skirted my way around the suicide, and eased up to Dr. Chance. “I can see you,” I whispered, and then I cleared my throat as if I’d just been standing there, making random noises.

Doctor Chance’s eyes met mine. She smiled, in a grim sort of way. “So, they got you after all. I figured they would. You might have a few…personal problems. But you’re still the strongest medium around. Anywhere.”

I shook my head. The FPMP didn’t “get” me, I was just scoping them out. I couldn’t figure out how to say that and still make it sound like that was only clearing my throat. “Hey, Einstein, is there a bathroom around here?”

Richie aimed his flashlight beam on a door. “Sure, right there. You’re not going to do coke in there or anything, are you?”

I took a couple steps towards the door, then shone my flashlight in his face. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Oh, I mean, I don’t know. I just thought… you’re so skinny and all. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Really. It was a stupid thing to say.”

“Don’t worry about it, Richie.” I made myself smile. “I could stand to gain a pound or two. But I’m not doing coke. I’ve got three cups of coffee raging through my system. That’s all.”

I trained my flashlight beam on the bullet hole in Chance’s forehead, then swung it toward the bathroom. I almost held the door open for her, but then I realized that gesture would be totally unnecessary. Which gave me the creeps.

I tried to flick the light on, three, maybe four times. But then I realized they’d cut the power to this part of the building so that it was easier for us to see the ghosts. Creepier still.

I found the lock, locked it. I turned around, and there she was. I flinched.

“You should’ve just gone along with me,” she said. “Everything would be different now. We’d have our etheric amplifier. We’d have all the money we could ever need. Why couldn’t you set your inconsistent and totally useless values aside and help me out?”

Being dead never made anyone rational. Not if they weren’t that way in life. “How did you get here? Did you die here?”

“In the hallway, actually. I was on my way for psychiatric evaluation outside the Cook County Medical Center, when the FPMP intercepted us and brought me to their headquarters. And now, here I am. For good. What an ending.” She shook her head. “I’ll bet I could’ve recruited a medium in the psych ward, too. It would’ve set me back a few years, until I got out, at least. But it could’ve worked.”

“Look, I’m not working for these jokers. I mean, not permanently. What was I supposed to do? Tell them no?”

“Maybe you should leave the country. I’ll bet they’d take you in France.”

“The FPMP might be a federal agency, but I think they would follow me, even once I’m past the border. Especially since most mediums aren’t quite…so….” I couldn’t figure out how to say that I was the most amped-up medium I’d ever known. That wasn’t something to brag about—especially in the heart of the FPMP—not if I wanted to keep psy researchers from handling my organs.

She tilted her head, the way she used to when she studied my blood test results. “I suppose they would follow. They have the money. They have the manpower.”

“And they have remote viewers.”

“You know about that, do you?”

Oh God. So it was true.

“Whatever you’re doing to scramble them,” she said, “I think you’re on the right track. They have trouble seeing you.”

“Trouble, how?”

“How would I know? Do I look like a remote viewer to you? They seem angry all the time, frustrated. You’re hard to pin down. Now that you figured out not to say anything useful on your cell phone, they’ve got nothing to go on.”

That sounded pretty promising.

“Except those reports they’ve been getting, every couple of days.”

My stomach turned. “What reports?”

“Handwritten things. Faxed. I guess that leaves less of a paper trail for the sender than an e-mail might.” She was right. All the sender would need to do was shred whatever they’d written, and there’d be no evidence on their end, not without a subpoena of their phone records. And all that paperwork would prove was that a fax was sent, not what it contained.