PsyCop 5: Camp Hell (8 page)

My heart thundered inside my ribcage. I held my breath. I fumbled in my pocket for something to write on. “Hold on.”

“I’ve got thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight….”

Damn prison and its fucking rules. I found a silver gum wrapper. I could use the back—if I had a pen. No pen. Fuck. Fuck.

“Twenty-four….”

I flashed back to Stefan’s office, all low lights and soporific beige. And then farther, to a blue and blue room that smelled like antiseptic and fear. A light shining in my eye.

“Stop counting.” The only thing that stopped me from throwing my phone on the ground and grinding it into the road salt and ice was the fact that I’d have to account for it later.

A pair of patrolmen veered around me on the way to their cruiser. I recognized the senior officer, but not the rookie. “Hey…borrow your pen?”

The officers stopped, and the older one—Monroe? Montroy—handed his pen to me.

“Okay, go.”

“Constantine Dreyfuss. He’s quite a character. He doesn’t know much about Camp Hell, but he’d be able to tell you all about who’s been keeping tabs on you lately.”

That was probably more important. I could find out more about Camp Hell from talking to Stefan. It would all be stuff I already knew, of course, but at the same time, it’d be news to me. I didn’t mention that to Burke. I couldn’t have him thinking I was grateful or anything.

I tried to hand the pen back to Montroy, but he was already heading off toward his cruiser. He gave me a, “No, keep it,” kind of wave. I couldn’t tell if he was being friendly, or he didn’t want to touch it once I’d handled it.

I looked up at the sky. It was gray on gray. Nearly March. Where it’d turn to rain on gray. Which would produce ice, and accidents, and still more ghosts.

Was the whole world eventually going to end up like LaSalle, thick with repeaters, or ghosts so busy blubbering into their own blood that they
wouldn’t
communicate with me even though they
could
?

I knuckled my eye and wondered if my Valium had come through yet, and then I noticed that the new cop, the rookie, was watching me through his sideview mirror.

Not the kind of look I get from psych groupies, like that guy in the hospital bed. And not the kind I get from the forensics techs who hate me. This was a really calm stare, like the ones I got from the mystery cops who had doubled and tripled every time I blinked when I was helping Jacob track the astral rapist at the nursing home.

I found another scrap of paper in my pocket: this one a grocery list on a sticky note that said
coffee, milk, dish soap, bread (not white), O.J.
in Jacob’s handwriting. I turned it over, pulled out my new pen and jotted down my cell number, then jogged over to the cruiser before it had a chance to pull away.

The cop who’d been watching me rolled down his window. He looked expectant. Or maybe mildly alarmed. I handed him the note. “Give that to Constantine for me, wouldja?”

• • •

I got on the beige elevator and rode to the beige twenty-third floor. I stopped off at the beige bathroom, as usual. Because, as usual, I was sweating buckets.

Good thing I hadn’t decided to deal with my panic attacks during the summer.

Stefan’s secretary was gone, and the light in the waiting room was dim. His office door was open a crack. I knocked on the doorjamb and he motioned for me to come in. Today’s vest was black moiré, and he had arm garters on his white shirtsleeves like a Wild West bank teller. His office smelled like incense and pot.

“You get high in here?”

“Not during business hours.”

He held the joint out to me and I shook my head. “All the good drugs act like psyactives for me.”

“Really?” He took a hit, then licked his finger and tamped out the joint, which he propped in an ash tray. He spoke on the exhale, in that croaky way that pot-smokers do. “So how’s the memory?”

I looked for somewhere to sit. There was the hypnosis chair. And the couch. And the chair across the desk from Stefan that would make me feel like I’d been sent to the principal’s office again. I went to the window, pried the miniblinds open with my forefinger and looked out. The windows in the skyscraper across the street glowed yellow and white. “Memory’s there. Parts of it, anyway. I was thinking about Movie Mike.”

Stefan made a Stefan-sound of disgust. The same one he’d made every time they served pork roast for dinner. Which he’d claimed was actually made of dog. “At least what happened to him didn’t happen to someone…nicer.”

“Or me or you.”

“That’s right.”

“Since we’re talking about drugs…what do you think it was that did that to him?”

Stefan stood up and walked toward me with his hands tucked behind his back. He positioned himself so that he could see through the window over my shoulder. “My guess? They pumped him full of heavy psyactives to see how far they could open up his talent, they overtaxed him and he suffered some sort of aneurysm.”

“God.”

“It could’ve just as easily happened to one of us while we were doing nitrous. It’s all one big game of Russian roulette.”

How was it I could go for years without hearing the phrase
Russian roulette
, and then have it uttered twice in the same day? I reminded myself that he was a high-level empath. Maybe he’d somehow felt the words reverberating in my high-strung brain.

“I think I had some sort of seizure once when they tried psyactives on me.”

Gurney.

Wrist restraints.

“Didn’t we all? Lord, I remember that I couldn’t tell who I was for days. I was such a mess—crying, laughing, screaming…complete meltdown. I think the orderlies drew straws to see who’d have to deal with the empaths and telepaths. They saved their special hate for us because we could see how dead they were inside.”

Stefan strolled away, hands still clasped at his back. I turned and watched him pace. He could come right out and talk about what had happened to him. Did it help?

Then again, so far I could handle all the horrors of Camp Hell that had resurfaced. It was the things I had done—or hadn’t—that really ate away at me.

“I’m really sorry.”

“For what?”

“I should have done something different…back then.”

“We do the best we can with what we’ve got, Victor. Now stop wallowing.”

I turned back toward the window and tried to determine if I was wallowing.

“Do you want to try another hypnotic regression?”

What I wanted was for someone to tell me what to do about Roger Burke. “No. Not today. I just came by to pick up that Valium.”

Stefan set a white paper pharmacy bag on the corner of his desk. I picked it up and looked at the prescription sticker. “Who’s Fernando?”

“A sweet Mexican boy who needs a new pair of shoes.”

I pulled out my wallet. “What’s that mean in English?”

“A hundred fifty will do it.”

It was steep, but I wasn’t one to argue with a month’s supply of ten-milligram tablets. I put a stack of twenties and tens on the desk and pocketed the pills. “Be sure to thank Fernando for me.”

“Oh, I will.”

He said it in the tone of voice he normally reserved for brownies.

My phone rang, and at first I thought it was the FPMP getting back to me. The sick feeling of panic in my gut told me that giving my number to that cop wasn’t the smartest thing I could’ve done. I was just mad. And since Zigler wasn’t in the loop, he couldn’t have stomped me in the foot and told me to cool off before I did something stupid.

But the phone started to vibrate, too, and I realized it was Jacob. And I felt vaguely guilty that he was calling me while I was scoring pills. But only vaguely. “I’ve got to take this,” I told Stefan. “Hello?”

“Are you still at work?”

“No. I’m at Stefan’s office. But we’re just finishing up.”

“Perfect. Carolyn and I are at the courthouse. I can pick you up.”

How coincidental. Or maybe not. They’d been in and out of court all week. I never went, myself, because “no court, no jail,” had been the only clause I insisted upon when I negotiated my contract. But Jacob and Carolyn were regulars.

I gave Jacob the address, which I suspected he already knew, and he took it down to be polite. “Be there in ten. Bye.” He used the sexy
bye
.

“That was, uh, my boyfriend.”

“You’re dating?”

“Yeah, we just bought a building, actually.”

“You’re dating seriously. Interesting.” Stefan pulled a can of air freshener from his desk drawer and doused the room, then he tucked away his ash tray. “So what’ve you got to be nervous about?”

Was I nervous? My gut was clenched and my hands felt clammy, but that was nothing new. But Stefan would know. He’d tapped me a million times before.

“What’s the worst case scenario?” he said.

I’ve never been very good at making things up, but I closed my eyes, and I thought. “That you see us together, him and me, and you think I’m a sellout for joining the force.”

“And seeing you with your lover would lead me to that conclusion because…?”

“He’s a PsyCop, too. It’s more obvious when we’re in a group.” Otherwise, I just look like a used car salesman. So I’ve been told.

“I promise, I’ll be nice. And I can’t believe you just used the word
sellout
.”

Both Jacob and Carolyn came up to get me. I would’ve thought Carolyn would stay in the car to keep it from getting towed by an overzealous truck that didn’t notice the police plates. Was she just curious, or did Jacob invite her up because he thought there’d be some conversation that required her professional opinion?

We met them out in the reception area of Stefan’s office, which smelled slightly less like air freshener and pot. “Steven Russeau,” I’d almost slipped and called him Stefan Russell, “Detectives Carolyn Brinkman and Jacob Marks.” Everyone shook hands. Jacob and Stefan stared at each other hard.

“Victor knows you from Heliotrope Station?” Carolyn asked. Or maybe stated.

“That’s right.”

She walked over to the print with the funky perspective, tilted her head and looked puzzled. “Do you have an online presence? Victor seems to think the lack of information about him on the Internet is something he should be concerned about.”

“Geez,” I said, “Your small-talk skills are worse than mine.”

“My practice has a website. Of course, my name isn’t my name. What’s your talent, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Telepath two.”

“Mm. I’ve always had a soft spot for telepaths.” He looked at Jacob. “And you?”

“NP.” That’s short for non-psychic. Giving those two initials was probably just as difficult for Jacob as spelling it all out.

“I thought you were a PsyCop.”

“I am. One Psych, one Stiff on each team.”

Stefan’s unreadable gaze lingered on Jacob. “If you say so.”

“Are you doing anything for dinner?” Jacob asked. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Now
what was he up to?

“Maybe next time. Fernando would never forgive me if I stood him up.”

“Bring him along.”

“Thanks, but no. Theater tickets.”

“Ah.”

Given that Carolyn didn’t have anything to say about that, Stefan’s excuse must have been legitimate. Then again, he didn’t actually say he
had
theater tickets. I hadn’t told him anything about Carolyn’s talent—but maybe I didn’t have to. Stefan was the strongest empath I’d ever met. Maybe he already knew.

-NINE-

Carolyn nabbed the back seat of the Crown Vic before I could take it. I briefly considered sitting in back alongside her, leaving Jacob up front by his lonesome. But that would’ve been weird.

“It’s good to see a Psych in private practice,” she said. As if the atmosphere in the car wasn’t thick enough to cut with a dull plastic knife.

“I…guess.” Stefan and I had never talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Maybe we never thought we’d make it out of Camp Hell fit for anything but Medicaid.

“I hope he takes us up on our offer,” Jacob said.

“Our offer? You mean, your offer.”

Jacob was busy navigating a packed on-ramp. He gave me a quick glance in reply. “Would you prefer I don’t get to know him?”

“I don’t care if you…that’s not the point.” I checked myself to see if I was being truthful. I was, as far as I could tell. “I just…I’m dealing with Heliotrope Station right now.”

His hand landed on my knee. “I know.”

I jiggled my opposite knee. “Look, I know you wanna be there for me…and stuff. But I….” I had no idea. I sighed, and I slumped back into the car seat.

“I don’t suppose this conversation could wait until you dropped me off,” Carolyn said.

Jacob squeezed my knee. “You shouldn’t have to face this alone. We’ve got each other.”

I snorted. “You just wanted to make sure Stefan and I didn’t pick up where we left off.”

“Of course not.”

“Yes you did,” said Carolyn, from the back seat.

Whoa. Slipping up and telling a flat-out lie, right in front of the Human Polygraph? Jacob shook his head. It served him right for bringing her along. He could’ve sprung for her to take a cab back to the Twelfth.

“Seriously? You’re worried about what I’m gonna do? That’s some nerve, after you spent all that time hanging out with Crash behind my back.”

“I’ve met Stefan now. He strikes me as a decent person. I’m not worried.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to label Stefan as a “decent person,” whatever that means. He’d just scored me under-the-table Valium. How decent could he be? But he clearly wasn’t interested in sleeping with me anymore. I suspected that’s what Jacob really meant, whether he knew it or not.

Jacob pulled up in the parking lot of the Twelfth and let Carolyn out of the car. If any of the men in blue moving among the parked cruisers were FPMP plants, I couldn’t tell. Then again, I don’t think the FPMP was watching Carolyn very hard. She was good at what she did, but her ability was so narrow and specific that it only ranked as a medium on the Richter scale of psychic ability.

The parking spot by the cannery was open, as usual. I’d need to make sure that no one knew our building wasn’t haunted any longer, at least until the snow drifts melted from the dirt patch off the alleyway that passed for our backyard.