He gave me a curt nod, smoothed his goatee a few times, and glared out the window. I worked my jaw and yawned to try to pop my eardrums. And we rode like that, uncomfortable in some way or another, all the way to the West Coast. Because, yeah, it was true that we were actually getting there a hell of a lot more quickly than we could’ve managed by our own devices.
But that didn’t mean we were crazy about the reason we were making such good time.
• • •
I’d expected California to be hotter than Chicago. It wasn’t. I expected it to be filled with tan guys carrying surfboards who said “dude” a lot. It wasn’t. I expected it to be overrun with hippies and communes and the types of people who’d shop at Sticks and Stones, if Crash’s store wasn’t tucked away in Wicker Park where they’d probably never stumble across it.
I was wrong, though. Wrong on every count. Not only were there no surfers lounging around in front of PsyTrain, there were no hippies, either. In fact, there was no one at all.
A town car with a driver so silent he could’ve been a mute dropped us off at the front door, and there we were: me, Jacob, and Constantine Dreyfuss. I’d imagined PsyTrain in the middle of a big, vacant lot, surrounded by a tasteful fence that just happened to be electrified. But it didn’t exist in a vacuum, as it had in my imagination. There were townhomes on either side of it, and a Mexican restaurant across the street. There were cars and seagulls and a bicyclist with a mirror on his helmet.
The building was three stories, just under one city-block wide, with an off-white stucco façade, terra cotta roof, and fancy black bars over the windows.
I probably should have offered that hand-job, after all. Even if the first thing I did was tear open my suitcase and dig for my Valium, I doubted anyone would stand around on the sidewalk waiting with me for the meds to kick in. Plus…my suitcase was back at O’Hare.
Dreyfuss slipped on his wraparound shades, took in the building with a sweeping look, smiled, and said, “Don’t mind me, kids. Pretend I’m not even here.”
Right.
Jacob took the lead, across the walkway, up the steps. Other than the enticing smell of carnitas, the whole street had an empty feeling of abandonment, like we’d stepped onto a movie set, and the buildings were just a bunch of painted plywood fronts, and no one really lived in any of them. Inside, a couple of beefy rent-a-cops converged on us from either side of the doorway. I slid my badge out and Jacob did the same. “Jacob Marks,” he said, “and Victor Bayne. We’re here to see Dr. Chekotah.”
Doctor, as in “an apple a day”? Or one of those guys who’s got an honorary title for staying in college too long?
The security guys didn’t seem to notice, or maybe didn’t care, that Jacob hadn’t bothered to introduce Dreyfuss. Jacob wasn’t going to let our terrifying brush with security at O’Hare shake his confidence. He got right back on that horse and used his “I’m a manly man—respect me” voice. And they did. One of them pulled out a two-way radio, buzzed, and said, “Your guests are here.”
Guests. That felt slightly festive.
“Dr. Chekotah will be right out,” the guard with the walkie-talkie said.
I took stock of the lobby while I waited. It was beige, very beige, and very empty—except for a single, large crate, big enough to pack a couple of buff strippers inside, that stood in the center of the room.
The emptiness of the room wasn’t creepy in itself. It was the vestiges of use that stood out. Well-thumbed New Age magazines sat abandoned beside empty waiting room chairs. A tall, thirsty-looking potted shrub drooped in the corner. The computers at the front desk were off, and dust clung to the dark monitors. A wall calendar with a picture of a dog in a wig and sunglasses was open to May, even though June was practically over.
I scanned the room and settled on the crate again. From the corner of my eye, I saw Con Dreyfuss watching me take in the room, and I looked up at the ceiling, so as not to appear too interested. Spanish style wrought iron hanging fixture. Cobwebs. The fine tendrils started to sway as an interior door opened and closed, and the air pressure in the room shifted ever so slightly.
A good-looking brown-skinned guy in sandals and a rumpled linen suit rounded the corner. He was maybe my age, maybe a few years younger, with high cheekbones and long black eyelashes—but his eyes beneath those eyelashes were squinty, like he hadn’t slept for a week. He cheered up when he saw us, though. “Jacob!”
“Bert.”
They strode around the huge crate and embraced like long-lost pals who’d run into each other at a block party. “You made good time,” Chekotah said. I might have been tempted to roll my eyes in Dreyfuss’
direction and say, “Yeah, we had help,” as sarcastically as I could, but Jacob’s more adult about things like that than I am, and he only nodded. “Let’s get you filled in on what’s going on.” We passed through a waiting room with a private secretary. The interior was stucco and tile, more Spanish style influence, though the furniture looked antiquey, with scrolls and flourishes, and some of the vases and hangings could’ve been Chinese. Not that I’d know a Ming vase from Ming’s Lucky Dish takeout.
The secretary didn’t bother to greet us, since he was currently occupied having a showdown with his phone. It was a multi-line unit, and though it wasn’t ringing, the buttons were all lit up and blinking like Christmas had just come early. Chekotah paused beside his desk.
“Lyle?”
The chubby secretary held up his index finger. “I keep pressing the voicemail activation button and they keep coming through.” No wonder my calls never found their way to Lisa. Chekotah sighed.
“So let them ring. I need three rooms in the instructor wing.”
Lyle rolled his eyes and made a huffy noise. He was way gay—queer enough to telegraph his sexual preference with a flick of his head.
I waited for a snap-and-twist and a singsong
what-ev-er,
but he restrained himself.
“Actually,” Jacob said, “my partner and I could double up on a room.
You remember I told you about Vic.”
Chekotah cocked his head and regarded me through a haze of fatigue, and suddenly his eyebrows shot up. “The medium.” He then looked between Jacob and me as if he was trying to picture us out of our cop-suits, maybe doing something a bit more blatantly homosexual.
“Sure, sure….” He then squinted at Dreyfuss as if trying to figure out where he fit into our relationship.
“Agent Dreyfuss should have his own room,” Jacob said.
“Agent?” Chekotah repeated with some concern.
Lyle stopped acting snippy and started acting interested, and I noticed a shift in Jacob’s expression, a minuscule tightening of the mouth that told me he was annoyed with himself for letting anything interesting slip. While I was never taught the technique in so many words, I’ve noticed the best way to get people to show their true colors in a police interview is to act as blandly neutral as possible. Pointing out that the Feds were crashing the party was decidedly splashy.
The notion that Jacob really wasn’t “Mr. Perfect” was comforting.
Chekotah wasn’t keen on making any more of a spectacle out of our arrival than he needed to. He hustled us into his office and closed the door firmly behind us.
Chekotah’s office was a mess. Lots of half-open, half-packed boxes.
It stunk of burnt sage.
“Sorry for the, uh…you can just put that on the floor, there.” Jacob, Dreyfuss and I all stared while Chekotah cleared some chairs.
Nervous, yes. Probably at the thought of having a federal agent eyeballing him.
The boxes made heavy thumps on the floor. Mostly books, though one had some pottery in it—Native American and not Chinese, I knew that much, at least.
“Redecorating?” I suggested, when it seemed obvious he wasn’t going to elaborate on the boxes.
“New office.” He moved a stack of files to a precarious spot atop a pyramid of boxes, then made his way around the desk. “It’s all a little sudden.”
No one filled in the awkward silence for him.
“Director Park resigned yesterday, so….” He fiddled with a polished obsidian paperweight.
“So now you’re in charge?” Jacob ventured. Chekotah nodded. Jacob broke into a broad smile, the type of smile that lights up a room, and extended his hand over the desktop. “Congratulations.” They shook. And just like that, the tension drained away.
Sometimes it’s not about doing things right the first time around. It’s about course-correcting when you screw up.
We sat, Jacob in the middle facing Chekotah, Dreyfuss and me off to either side. “So what’s going on?” Jacob asked. His tone wasn’t like a cop to a witness, it was one friend to another. He also didn’t have his notepad out—and I knew Jacob was an exacting note taker. I was aware of the weight of my pad in my pocket, square against my side, slightly curved from the way I always leaned it into a ridge in Zigler’s passenger door, but I figured if Jacob wasn’t scribbling, I shouldn’t either. Dreyfuss leaned back, crossed his ankles, and folded his hands in his lap, the picture of relaxation.
Chekotah ran his hand through his stark black hair. A few strands of gray showed at his temples, but only a few. “Karen went first. We didn’t think anything of it at the time, though, so we didn’t know….” He sighed, fidgeted with a pen. “She was unhappy with the program, so we just assumed she’d left. Even if we’d reported her missing, that’s what the police would have thought, too. That’s what they told us when they were here.”
“So you called them, when?”
“After Lisa was gone. She missed her afternoon class, missed dinner. I called her, and her cell was still in her room…and I just had a feeling.” I was maybe a little jealous that Dr. Chekotah had Lisa’s current cell phone number and I didn’t. But I’d need to tuck that emotion away until later and focus on his statement, especially since I wasn’t writing it down.
“It wasn’t an actual premonition—you know I’m no precog. But with Karen taking off without a word to anyone, leaving all her things, and then suddenly Lisa misses a class for the first time, then skips dinner.
It just didn’t seem right.”
Chekotah lapsed into silence, and Jacob said, “Is it possible maybe she met someone? Someone outside PsyTrain?”
“Lisa’s an adult. She can come and go as she pleases.” That sounded a little snippy to me. “When would she even meet a guy? And even if she did, why wouldn’t she wait until after her class to see him? She’s only going to be here for another month. She’s been doing her best to make the most of the training.”
Knowing firsthand how a crisis of faith could derail Lisa if it were strong enough, I wasn’t sure I necessarily agreed with him. I kept that to myself. The thing about his opinions that interested me the most were what they might reveal about him.
“So Director Park resigning,” Jacob said, “is that anything to do with Lisa and the other woman?”
Chekotah threw his arms in the air as if his ancestors might need to help him answer that one. “That. And the non-stop phone calls. And the reporters.”
“What do the reporters want?” Dreyfuss asked. His tone was good.
It made him sound like the type of guy who’d buy you a beer and commiserate with you after a hard day. He’d probably put radioactive tracers in that beer, and then stick a bug on the hem of your jacket while you weren’t looking. But you wouldn’t know it from his voice.
“Is Five Faith active in Chicago? No? Bunch of paranoid anti-Psychs.
The Bishop’s off in L.A. Meeting with the Cardinal to see if the Catholic church can officially deny any ties with them.”
“Are you being threatened?” Jacob said.
“So far, no. They’re more of a nuisance. Protests and wild accusa-tions. But they’re spreading fear, and it won’t surprise me at all when one of their rallies goes too far.”
“Do you think we could get a look at Lisa’s room?” Jacob asked.
“Sure, sure, right this way.”
My insides froze up at the thought finding Lisa right there in the middle of it—and me being the only one able to see her. I did my best to keep my face neutral, but I might have squinted as Chekotah herded us out of his new office. The secretary—Lyle?—didn’t seem to have made any leeway at all with his phone, and was in fact looking at the back as if he was seriously considering just unplugging the damn thing. Despite his frustrations with the phone, he paused to give us a good ogle as we passed by.
Doors opened an inch or two and people peered out as we walked down a long, narrow hallway to Lisa’s room in the dormitory wing of the building. I smelled the room before I really saw it. The odor of burnt sage was just as pungent there as it had been in Chekotah’s office. “Did she smudge it right before she left?” I asked. And I wondered just how much sage she’d burned.
“No…that was from this morning.”
We all trooped in. Not much to see. Twin bed, desk, laptop. No decorations, except for a photo of a grim-looking Mexican couple in a faded 1970’s green-tinged shot. A half-empty bag of Cheetos with the top rolled down and secured with a hair clip. A Netflix disc. Not particularly lived-in, other than a wad of clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then again, she was going to be leaving in a month.
“The smudging,” Jacob said. “Is it…policy?”
“Well, no. I was just….” He sighed. “I was meditating. Trying to see if I could get a handle on the situation. Any kind of insight that might help.”
“Wouldn’t a precog be better for that?” I said. It just kinda popped out. He’d said himself he wasn’t precognitive. PsyTrain was no Camp Hell, but someone there had to be at least a precog three or four.
How the heck could someone possibly disappear in a building full of psychics without one of them knowing what happened?
“No one’s turned up anything,” he said. “Obviously. Or we’d have Lisa back.” Snippy again, though I guess there wasn’t any other way to respond to my precog remark.
“And Karen,” Dreyfuss said. Maybe a little too brightly. Or maybe I was projecting.
“And Karen.”
Karen Frugali’s room was connected to Lisa’s by the shared bathroom in between. The furniture was the same, but the bed was set at a weird diagonal to the rest of the room. A red Chinese screen parti-tioned off another corner, and behind that, stacks of books four feet high stretched up the floor, teetering slightly, as if we’d just caught them slipping into a dust jacket that was a little more comfortable.