PsyCop 5: Camp Hell (18 page)

I wondered who I saw on a regular basis that had access to a fax machine. Then I wondered if we had one at home, and recalled that I’d noticed one of those all-in-ones when I was unpacking our office. But no, that was stupid. Jacob wouldn’t go through the trouble of scanning our house for bugs, and then turn around and leak secrets about me behind my back. Unless it was some elaborate double-cross…Christ almighty. I was so sick of the whole thing that I was tempted to eat a bullet, except I knew it was a piss-poor solution that’d only leave me with no one to talk to but Doctor Chance, possibly for eternity.

“Can you look at the faxes, tell me where they’re coming from? There has to be some identification on them, even if it’s just a phone number.”

“I could. But why should I? You never helped me.”

I jammed my thumb into my eye. Ow. “There’s got to be something you want. You wouldn’t still be here if you didn’t.”

“Think you can bring down the FPMP?”

“I doubt it.”

She laughed. “Me too. At least you’re honest. Will it bring me any peace if you avenge me, if you tell someone that the FPMP grabbed me up and made sure I kept quiet about my amplifier…about you? I don’t know. It’s no fun being dead, Detective. On one hand, I’m free from my physical body and all the limitations that went with it. On the other hand, things get foggy at the strangest times, and I’m filled with urges and compulsions that make no sense. I always thought I’d be reincarnated once I was through with this life. So how do I make sense of…this?”

She had to have known that I was about the last person who had anything intelligent to say about the afterlife, but maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she was telling me because I was the only one who could listen.

“I really do have to pee,” I said. Because I had no idea how she was supposed to make sense of being dead. Once she was gone, I felt around for cold spots and I channeled white light to make sure she wasn’t lingering around invisibly, waiting for me to unzip my pants. Even with that much focus, I couldn’t tell she was gone for sure, and it took me forever to relieve myself.

“I don’t feel the cold spot no more,” Richie said when I finally emerged from the bathroom. “Do you think it went away ‘cos we were looking for it?”

I shone my flashlight at the suicide. Blam. The cold spot must’ve been Chance. “I dunno. I’m picking up a little something over here, now.”

Richie walked over and stood in the spot where the skull fragments and brains had sprayed. “Where, here? I…I don’t think I feel nothing. Do you?”

Click. Blam.

“Yeah. I get something.”

Richie’s face twisted up. “Violent? Sudden?”

“…maybe.”

He nodded. Maybe he’d needed my permission to sense the repeater. Or maybe he couldn’t feel it at all. Maybe only the ghosts with their personalities intact, spirits like Doctor Chance, registered on his afterlife radar.

Richie stuck his head out the door, and called Dreyfuss. “Okay, we’re ready.”

Dreyfuss strolled in. He’d been right outside the door the whole time. “Well? What’s the verdict?”

Richie answered him. “Sudden death. Violent.” He held his hand palm-down beside the suicide. “Gunshot, I think.” Maybe Richie really could feel it. Maybe he’d just needed me to confirm his vague impressions.

Dreyfuss looked up at me. I had my flashlight trained on him. If he thought it was spooky, being alone, in the dark, with a couple of mediums, he didn’t show it. He was the picture of nonchalance. “What do you think, Detective?”

“What he said.”

Undoubtedly, Dreyfuss knew about the suicide. I’m guessing he could tell that I was holding back. But hopefully he couldn’t figure out that now I had all those specifics, too.

Dreyfuss clapped his hands together. “Okay, then. We can’t be having cold spots wreaking havoc on our state-of-the-art HVAC system. Let’s get this mess cleaned up, shall we?”

-EIGHTEEN-

When Dreyfuss called his secretary, I had assumed he would tell her to turn the power back on. And then what? Send in the janitor? I don’t know what I thought would happen, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this.

A black guy in a khaki uniform wheeled in a cart. It was as full of boxes and bottles as a shelf in Crash’s store. But more orderly, as if they had managed to institutionalize magic. The guy in khaki lit a white candle, and handed it to Richie. Richie took it and set it next to the suicide. I noticed he had unerringly selected the cardinal points. And then I was surprised that it had taken me fifteen years to remember learning that, when Richie, with his IQ of 80, had had access to this information all this time, in his conscious memory.

Our helper lit a circle of charcoal, and Richie took it by the holder and sprinkled some frankincense on. It smelled like every other resin, but lemony. And I was surprised I remembered that, too.

Richie put the censer on the table. He set it right in the spot where the Beretta kicked back, but I didn’t say anything. The black guy knelt on one side, and Richie knelt on the other. They both folded their hands, and began to pray. Out loud.

“How can we who died to sin yet live in it? Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were indeed buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”

Seriously? That was it? That was how you are supposed to get rid of a repeater—by praying? The back of my neck prickled, and I caught Dreyfuss looking at me. He didn’t look relaxed at all, not anymore. He looked eager. Hungry.

I turned toward Richie, to have somewhere to look other than at Dreyfuss’ glittering eyes. There was a gentle glow around him that seemed like it was coming from the candles, only it wasn’t. It was too steady, too uniform.

“For if we have grown into union with Him through a death like His, we shall also be united with Him in the resurrection.”

The repeater aimed, pulled the trigger, and fired. His body jerked. But I could see the outline of the chair through him more clearly than I could before.

Richie was definitely glowing now, a soft, mellow, beautiful glow. I looked hard at his crown chakra, and when I really focused, I could see the faintest thread of white light flowing in.

“We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over Him. As to His death, He died to sin once and for all; as to His life, He lives for God.”

Was it working because Richie believed it? Or did the words have power? Or maybe a combination of both of those. Because Richie was obviously pulling on something, some sort of power, but who’s to say that lots of people wouldn’t have been able to do that, depending on the circumstance, or the level of their beliefs.

I realized that I had been pulling white light down harder than before, too. It must’ve been a reaction to seeing it flowing into Richie. I wanted some of that for myself. When I realized I had this energy tingling inside of me, I focused it outwards, and strengthened the silver condom.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The repeater was faint now, and it seemed like he was cycling more slowly. The pause was greater between the time his head exploded, and the next time he shoved the muzzle under his chin.

After maybe half an hour, the repeater grew faint, and finally disappeared. Dreyfuss spoke, so close to my ear that he startled me. “Pretty good show, huh? And you’ve got a front-row seat.”

Damn. My poker-face needed work. I shrugged.

“It’s way past lunchtime. You want a donut? I’ve got donuts in my office. I promise, they’re clean.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather leave.” And never come back.

Richie snuffed the candles in order, last to first, while his helper doused the area with a cloud of frankincense smoke.

Dreyfuss set a plain, white envelope on the conference table. “He’s a lot more confident with you around. There’s room on the team, Detective. And it’d be a win-win. You’d pick up those skills that didn’t seem to take the first time around, when you trained.”

“I have a job.”

“It doesn’t have to be full-time. I’m flexible—keep that in mind.”

I promised myself I’d do no such thing, but I picked up the envelope. It felt heavy. I tucked it into my pocket, and gave my Glock yet another reassuring pat.

Dreyfuss went about getting the power restored, and Richie approached me with a mile-wide grin on his face. “Well, Vic, what do you think?”

“The room feels clean to me. You getting that, too?”

He nodded.

I clapped him on the shoulder, almost pulling away at the last minute, but forcing myself to follow through. He was the closest thing I had to a fraternity brother, after all. “Good work, man.”

“Did I hear Dreyfuss trying to hire you?”

“I have a job….”

“’Cos that would be so neat, to work with someone I know from the old days, from Heliotrope. And you get a company car, and a big, huge Christmas bonus.”

That’s what they were telling us, but my guess is that Richie might conveniently disappear if I accepted Dreyfuss’ offer. Even though Sergeant Warwick and Betty had been reporting to the FPMP all these years, and even though I’d have to pass “Andy” in the hallway on a regular basis, I still felt a hell of a lot more comfortable at the Fifth than I could ever hope to feel at the FPMP. I patted Richie on the arm, more stiffly now, though I don’t think he noticed. “I’ll keep it in mind. Take care, all right?”

• • •

The stink of burning sage hit me on my front doorstep. I opened the door—the one that used to have the word
fuck
spray painted on it, and now had a spot that was paler than the surrounding wood where we’d scrubbed it with acetone and mineral spirits—and a burnt cloud wafted out.

A motorized whine came from the main room, followed by the sound of pounding. I hung up my coat and poked my head out of the vestibule.

A haze of sage smoke hung near the ceiling. Crash and Jacob stood on either side of a high-set window, Crash on a stepladder and Jacob on a chair. Jacob held a cordless drill, and Crash was hammering nails into the windowsill. Once the nail was sunk, I cleared my throat.

Crash and Jacob both turned and looked. Jacob was unreadable. Crash smirked and held up a nail. “Hi ho, silver.”

Well, I had asked him to protect me from the remote viewer. But I didn’t mean tonight. “Do you have a fax machine?”

“Used to. It broke. I do it all online now. Why, you need to fax something?”

I hadn’t really thought Crash was leaking information about me to Dreyfuss, but it was a relief to hear it, anyway. He glanced over my shoulder and I turned.

Carolyn came out of the kitchen with a smoking bundle of sage. Her hair was covered with a bandanna and she had a faint smudge of charcoal on her jaw. Never one to mince words like “hello,” she said, “How reliable is your information about the remote viewer?”

“Reliable. And confirmed by a second…source.”

“Seriously,” said Crash. “Do you pigs always talk like a basic-cable crime reenactment, or do you just toss the lingo around for my benefit?”

I sat on the arm of the couch, because it felt less vulnerable than sitting all the way down, and glared at each of them in turn.

“Obviously, you resent us being involved in the situation,” said Carolyn. “But if you’re being monitored, then I’m sure Crash and I are, too—even if it’s only because of our proximity to you.”

Jacob was. Crash was. Dreyfuss had hinted as much. I didn’t volunteer it. Carolyn? Undoubtedly, her too. “You’re a Psych. I’m sure you had your very own file before you even met me.”

“I’m not blaming you. I just wish you’d trust that we’ve all got the same goal.”

“Do we? What do you want to get from all this?”

“Well, I….” She stopped, frowned. “I don’t know.” She thought, and the room went so quiet that the crackle of her smudge stick made me flinch. “It doesn’t feel right that we should be followed and watched just because we’re Psychs. It’s a talent like any other talent. But I think that psychic abilities are considered to be somehow evil, at least subconsciously, by a certain segment of the population. I worry about what will happen to all of us if a spark of panic ever flares up.”

Oh. Maybe we were all on the same page. Only Carolyn was able to articulate what she saw in her worst-case scenario a hell of a lot better than I ever could.

“So, what’re you working on?” I asked.

“House blessing, protection. Wicca-fusion.”

“What about…Christian?”

All three of them stared at me so hard that I squirmed. “I thought you were agnostic,” said Jacob.

I shrugged. “I’m not really sure what I believe.”

“That’s the definition of
agnostic
to everyone but philosophy geeks,” Crash said.

Oh. “It’s just that, today, I saw this guy exorcise a repeater with some bible verses.” Of course, as soon as I volunteered that, I had to explain where I was, and why, and pretty soon I’d told the three of them everything I knew about the FPMP. Which specifically went against the contract I’d signed for Dreyfuss.

I was only slightly concerned. We now had silver nails pounded into our thresholds and windowsills, after all. And I was sure that neither Jacob, Crash or Carolyn were the fax culprits. Pretty sure.

“Chance was murdered,” Jacob sat down hard in the chair he’d been standing on, cupped his hand over his face, and squeezed his temples between his thumb and middle finger. “Shit.”

I shifted and found an interesting speck on the coffee table to look at. Giving the three of them the FPMP’s secrets was one thing; I’d also told them exactly how much I saw, right down to the glow that surrounded Richie. The Stiffs I’d worked with knew I could see and hear the dead—and even then, I usually downplayed the specifics—but I’d come clean about everything, right down to glowing Richie.

It was naïve of me to think it would feel better after I’d spilled my guts. I must’ve mistaken confession for puking. I was still ready to jump out of my own skin.