I turned some dials up. The numbers on the LCDs increased, but nothing happened, at least that I could tell. I turned them down.
A big black guy in a turn of the century butler’s uniform appeared beside me. He reached for me and I backed away.
A thin girl with Mary Crawford hair in a floor-length nightgown appeared to my right. She reached toward me too.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, but it didn’t look like she heard. I began to back off from both of them but decided I should probably peek over my shoulder first to make sure I wasn’t headed for anything creepier.
Doctor Morganstern stood behind me. “Holy shit,” I cried. How did he get to Missouri? Had he ever really been in Japan? “You’re in on it too?”
He pointed at the TV guts. “Turn the second dial up a little,” he said. “You’ll filter out the older ones.”
The little girl was trying to grab my arm, but the farther I got from her, the farther I’d be from the TV. The room was small enough that she’d grab me eventually, and if not her, the black guy would. I grabbed the second knob and turned it the opposite way, and she seemed to dissolve. The butler grew very faint.
“Not so much,” said a faraway voice. I turned around and Doctor Morganstern was almost as transparent as the butler.
“You’re dead?”
He pointed at the console, and I turned the knob down just a little. Morganstern grew more substantial. But so did the butler, who got his hand around my wrist.
I felt resistance, and then a little give as his hand slipped inside my forearm. “Holy fucking God,” I yelped, and pulled my arm away. “Don’t you dare get in me.”
“Try the other dials,” said Morganstern.
“Which one?” I demanded, wondering if wrapping myself in tin foil would help, since supposedly everything was made of particles and electrons. Not that I had any tin foil.
I twisted another knob and the butler got really solid. I imagined a white bubble around him -- my very lame method of shielding, on par with hopscotch and pixie sticks. The ghost seemed puzzled by it for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for me to spin down the second knob before he used me for a human condom. He grew faint.
I turned back to Morganstern. He was solid enough. “My God,” I said. “You stuck around just to help me?”
“Not exactly.” He looked somewhat abashed. “I’m following Roger Burke.”
I shook my head, trying to get used to the idea that someone I knew -- and knew pretty well -- had died. “Isn’t there some kind of light you’re supposed to go toward?”
“You were wrong, back there in the car. Sometimes people do have one more message, one more task to complete, before they can move on.”
“But why...?”
“Put it back together,” said Morganstern, pointing at the TV. “They’re coming.”
“Shit.” I snapped the TV up and closed the bureau, then flopped down on the bed. If Chance took my pulse again, I’d be fucked. My heart was pounding double-time.
“Detective,” said Chance as she came through the door, Roger hot on her heels. “How are those meds doing?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. I think I’m good for now.”
“They want you to go along with them,” said Morganstern, “but they’re terrified that you won’t. They were just going to pay you off at first, but Roger got a look at that bank balance you never touch and decided that money wasn’t a viable incentive.”
Roger’d been stealing my mail. Great, just great. I did my best to relax and look out-of-it. If I could pull off a decent fake stupor, I’d have plenty of time to be pissed off later, once I gave them the slip.
Chance pulled up a chair. There was no discussion of moving me, so I figured they’d gotten rid of the deputy easily enough. “Let’s talk about the increase in spirit activity you’ve been experiencing.”
“Okay.”
“It’s those pills she gave you,” said Morganstern. “They’re psyactives, and they’re opening your power up so that it runs both ways. You’ve been shining like a beacon to the dead.” He pointed a ghostly finger at Roger. “This one’s been slipping them into your coffee until Chance found an opportunity to just give you the pills and trick you into taking them. And they fed you that line about your liver so you wouldn’t counteract the drug with your Auracel.”
My liver was okay? The Hallelujah Chorus started to play in my head.
“We’d like to do some tests with you,” said Chance, talking at the same time as Morganstern. “See if it’s possible for you to command the spirits once they’re in visual range.”
“They want to get you to use spirits to blackmail people,” said Morganstern. “They’ll tell you it’s to fine-tune that new drug, or that electronic technology. But once you’re part of their inner circle, they’ll want more funding. Lots of it.”
“I hate tests,” I groaned.
The lock tumbled and the guy with the crewcut came back into the room. “That deputy’s back, and now he’s got three more with him. We should abort.”
Chance looked hard at me. “Out of the question.” She brushed my hair back from my forehead in an eerily tender fashion.
“Go along with her,” said Morganstern, “or Burke will murder you. Like he did me.”
Oh. So that was why he was following Roger. Morganstern had never struck me as a particularly vengeful man, but then again, I only knew him as my doctor. Not the dead husband of a widowed woman, or the dead father who wouldn’t walk his daughter down the aisle. Dead people are pretty big on grudges.
Chance’s hand lingered at my temple. “Detective Bayne is perfect for our project. You want to be part of this groundbreaking Psy research,” she said to me, “don’t you?”
Morganstern seemed to know what he was talking about, and I struggled to figure out how to play along without seeming as if aliens had landed and turned me into a pod person. I gave Chance a vacant grin, doing my best to look like an oblivious, doped-up fool. “You’re the one with the meds.”
The tension left the room as if I’d found the magical switch. I couldn’t be bribed with money, since no amount of money ever brought me peace. But it was entirely plausible that I could be bought with drugs. Morganstern smiled and nodded; I must’ve been convincing.
Chance smiled, too. “I’m going to have Roger drive you to another safehouse while I talk to the deputies. I’ll do everything I can to keep you comfortable, Detective. You and I have got a lot of work to do together.”
Chance left with Crewcut Guy while Roger turned to gather our bags.
“Do something,” said Morganstern.
I did a palms-up gesture at him. What was I supposed to do? The Amytal had started to wear off, but come on. I was no match for Roger, especially unarmed.
“Mister Bayne, you’ve got to get him while you’re alone.
Roger shrugged his blazer on, and stuffed my jacket in a bag. He disappeared into the bathroom. “He’d kick my ass,” I whispered. “What do you expect me to do?”
Morganstern looked down at the remaining syringes by the side of the bed. “Amytal. Inject it into an artery and you’ll subdue him immediately.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Sure -- I’ll just find an artery. And I’ll ask him real nice to hold still while I do it.”
Roger came back into the main room with a damp washcloth, wiping our prints off all the surfaces.
“It’s the only way,” said Morganstern.
I gave him my best “yeah, right” look.
“If you can’t do it, then let me.”
I swallowed hard and slid a syringe into my pocket while Roger’s back was turned. I’d relied on Morganstern in life, but I wasn’t sure he was entirely trustworthy in death. What if he didn’t want to leave me once he got under my skin? Would he march around inside my body forever, leaving my friends to wonder when I’d taken to wearing sweater vests?
And what if a shot of Amytal to the artery would kill Roger? Without Carolyn or Lisa to back me up, I had no way of knowing if Morganstern was using me for revenge.
Roger threw the washcloth into the bathroom, snapped up the case of syringes, and drew his gun. “C’mon, Bayne. Time to go.”
I stood and the room dipped -- I guess I was still woozier than I’d thought. Morganstern hovered beside me, saying, “You’ve got to subdue him. It’s the only way.”
Roger got a shoulder under my armpit to help me to the door, and I fumbled between us to try and palm the syringe in my pocket. My hand brushed against his hip and he cringed. “Touch me again and I’ll blow your hand off, faggot,” he growled, hustling me toward the door.
It wasn’t the threat that did it; it was the realization that Roger would just as soon shoot me as not, regardless of how integral I was to their precious operation. Because I was queer.
“Okay,” I whispered. Roger would think I was talking to him, but it was really aimed at Morganstern. I did my best to relax.
I felt Morganstern entering, like the sickening rush of an unfamiliar drug. He came through somewhere in my core and extended himself into my extremities, arms and legs, fingers and toes. I felt numb and disconnected as Morganstern settled in. And then my body surged into action.
My hand whipped the syringe out and flicked the protective cap off with my thumb, holding it as easily as I might have held a pencil, or a gun. I stuck the needle into Roger’s neck and plunged in one smooth motion. Roger raised his gun and started to pull the trigger -- and then collapsed with his double-action semi-automatic just another small squeeze from putting a hole in my forehead.
I made to reach for Roger’s gun but I couldn’t move. This was seven colors of weird.
“Get the gun,” I tried to say, and I guess Morganstern understood. I picked up the semi-automatic and felt myself jerked toward the door before I could even see if Roger was still breathing. My body jogged to the end of the hall and down a back staircase I hadn’t known about, heading unerringly toward a way out.
Morganstern stopped me at the back door, twisted the knob a few times, and then tried harder.
“It’s locked,” I thought. “The more you rattle it, the worse you’re making things.”
The room lurched and I was myself again, with a semi-transparent Morganstern standing beside me. “Can’t you kick the door in?” he demanded. “Or shoot the lock out?”
“You watch too many cop shows,” I told him, noting that my mouth worked again. I raised a hand and that worked, too. I pulled the curtains aside on the back hall window. It was barred.
I would have to shoot the lock out, after all -- though I doubted it would be as neat or efficient as they make it out to be in the movies. I tore down a curtain and wrapped my arm and hand to give it some kind of protection from the spray of wood and metal I was about to cause, took aim at the lock at the best angle I could figure, and squeezed.
The gun popped and there was a clatter of metal. There were also shouts and running footsteps. “Drop the gun and put your hands above your head,” someone shouted.
I didn’t think it was Crewcut Guy, but I didn’t know for sure. I spun around to face the voice and found a pair of men in sheriff’s khakis pounding down the hallway toward me, weapons drawn. I started to put my gun up, but then I hesitated. What if Chance had an inside man there, too? They’d infiltrated my precinct and my clinic -- why not the sheriff’s department where they’d planted the safe house?
“Drop the gun,” the deputy barked, the hall behind him filling with more bodies.
Someone farther back in the mob that’d crowded into the building called out, “That’s all right -- that’s my partner”.
Maurice pushed his way to the front and my hand fell to my side, heavy. The deputies stood down. Maurice smiled and held a hand out to me. “C’mon, Victor,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”