Spook Squad (6 page)

“Not short. Just a trim.”

It was probably for the best that I didn’t use her as a sounding board to go off on the value of police work. All she’d ever wanted to be was a cop, and now she was a PsyTrain dropout living in a tent in her ex-partner’s living room.

The door shut behind Lisa, and I was left on my own to ponder the weight of my decisions, the meaning of life, the big stack of mail on the floor, and the single Seconal pill. I could practically feel it sliding down my throat, but if Dreyfuss was doling them out one at a time, I knew better than to swallow it and leave myself without. Instead, I dug through Jacob’s stash of vitamins until I found some enzymes that came in capsule form. I unscrewed the capsule, tipped the powder down the drain, and blew the remaining enzyme dust out of the empty halves. Then I opened the red over a sheet of tin foil and split the powder between the two capsules with a butter knife, careful to capture every last bit of powder. I swallowed the adulterated vitamin to ensure no one else took it upon themselves to eat a strange pill they found on the kitchen counter. Not that either of the people I lived with would actually do that. Not after Lisa’s first and only Auracel incident, anyway.

The relaxed euphoria didn’t set in immediately, but knowing it would soon was enough to take the edge off. While I waited for the barbs to kick in, I decided I might as well have a look at the car catalog to weigh in on my preferences early, so we didn’t end up with a big brown sedan with a shiny new tracking device in it parked out front once Jacob reached his one-year FPMP anniversary. There’d be no way around the tracking device, of course. I suspected they were already in our phones anyhow. But the thought of riding around in a brown car was depressing.

Since the goofy puzzle was still monopolizing the dining room table, I took the catalog pile to the couch, kicked off my shoes, propped my feet on the coffee table and began flipping through the stack. As I was thumbing through to the Lexus catalog, I spotted a magazine sticking out from behind it, a thin wisp of a periodical called Inner Eye that caters to Psychs and psychic wannabes. Usually I just throw it on the pile in Jacob’s office—not only is it addressed to him, but I’ve always found it to be bone dry, mostly filler and conjecture. The current issue’s headline stopped me in my tracks, though.
Murderer Walks Free.
And then I got hung up on the cover photo—because I knew that fuckhead.

It was the human scum who’d pummeled his girlfriend to death with a dog dish.

One of the pages tore as I jerked it open to find the lead article. It was eight pages long. I read it through fast—once, twice—and then slow, lingering over the phrases “convicted with psychic-gathered evidence” and “judge with a record of anti-psychic bias” and “acquittal.” And just for good measure, “victim’s family is devastated.”

I was reading through for maybe the twelfth time when Jacob got home. He led with, “What’s this I heard about you coming back to the FPMP tomorrow? All you owed Dreyfuss was an exorcism, right? He didn’t talk you into anything else. Did he?” He sat down beside me. “Vic?”

While I did register that he was speaking to me, I was currently occupied with the fact that my reality had just tilted on its axis. Not because of anything supernatural, either.

Once Jacob realized how livid I was, he did try to talk me down, but he was subtle about it. He’d actually ratcheted down my pissed-offedness significantly by the time Lisa came home. I realized, vaguely, that her hair looked nice, loose around her shoulders. But mostly I was as devastated as the victim’s family. Because I hand the system a murder scene swimming with evidence and a perp so obviously guilty his own mother would convict him—and he’s acquitted?

“The last case I worked on,” I said to Lisa, “guy’s truck covered in blood evidence. Does he get convicted?”

“I don’t know. That’s the future, it hasn’t happened yet.”

“But is there a chance he’ll get off? The sí-no must be able to see that.”

“Maybe there’s a chance, but there’s usually some kind of chance for anything you can think of. You’ll go crazy wondering about every possible way it can turn out.”

“A good chance?”

No answer. I didn’t need to do any wondering to piss myself off all over again, that was for sure. “Why bother?” I snapped. “Why bother bringing in these lowlifes at all if the only consequence is a few months in lockup while they wait for their acquittals?”

“You can’t think about it that way,” Jacob said. “You did your part. You’re not responsible for what happened after that.”

Holy shit. “I never said I was—although you’ve got to admit, the fact that I gathered the evidence with my ability did seem to be the deciding factor.”

They tried to convince me it was a fluke, that the system needed people who cared, people like me. That the use of PsyCops’ testimonies was so new and so radical it had a long way to go, but it would never gain legitimacy unless judges and juries got used to admitting psychic evidence. Maybe it was true, and someone had to be the poor schlub whose work was systematically destroyed just to allow the idiots in the courtroom to begin reaching outside their comfort zone. But did that someone really need to be me?

*
 
*
 
*

Going back to working on my jigsaw puzzle didn’t feel worthwhile, not in comparison to the puzzle of my life that needed sorting through. I couldn’t see flipping on the TV, either. Prime time features bad guys who get what they deserve in the long run, and my cynicism cup would surely runneth over if I had to bear witness to fictional karma in action. So what was left to do? Jacob put food in front of me and I ate it, but I didn’t taste a thing. And then I swallowed the remaining half of my Seconal and headed upstairs, ignoring all the well-meaning inquiries as to whether I was okay. I could have told them tomorrow was another day, or it would all come out in the wash, or he who laughs last, laughs best—but I’ve never been much for platitudes, and I figured my inner circle wasn’t either.

I was staring at the pressed metal ceiling, counting the number of diamonds across (twenty-four and a half, same as always) when Jacob joined me. He lay on his side, facing me, with his elbow planted and his head propped on his fist. “I’d be pissed off too,” he said.

“Forensics found a fragment of the dish stuck to a bloody fucking hair under the baseboard,” I said. “How can anyone with a brain manage an acquittal out of that—just because I told them where to look?”

Jacob didn’t bother answering. We both knew it was bullshit.

“So how do they treat the evidence you find for the Feds?” I asked. Then I realized I had no idea what he actually did with himself once he left the cannery. For all I knew he was a glorified bodyguard, or, God forbid, a pencil-pusher. “Assuming you’re an investigator.”

“I am.”

I counted to twenty-four and a half, then flipped onto my side to face him. I’d figured him to be bubbling over with eagerness to sell me on his spiffy new job, so the reticence seemed telling…though I don’t know what, exactly, it told me.
 

He searched my eyes, and said, “I can’t really say how they’ll treat my evidence. I haven’t found anything.”

“In two months?” He would have put away at least a few scumbag rapists by now if he was still on the force. “Couldn’t you ask Lisa a few questions to move things along?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“She can’t see anything. It’s like the signal is blocked.”

Although Jacob wasn’t the only True Stiff in the world, that seemed pretty damn inconvenient. “At some point you give up, tuck away the file and start something new, right? How much longer does Dreyfuss expect you to dig?”

Jacob shrugged. He seemed awfully unconcerned to me, given that he cares enough about everything for everybody. Some small part of me must have been wondering why he wasn’t more frustrated about his lack of results, because I almost missed it when a sinew in his jaw shifted.
 

And then I realized his nonchalance was all a front.

I tested the waters with, “Maybe all that matters to you is keeping an eye on the FPMP.”

He clenched his jaw again.

Maybe not.

“I could talk to Lisa for you,” I suggested. “She might sí-no with me a little longer—”

“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with the FPMP,” he said, and he was right. I didn’t. “So don’t worry about it. It’s my problem.”

Of course, by saying that, he basically ensured that I’d worry about it. Plus, picking at the edges of Jacob’s investigation was infinitely more appealing than contemplating the futility of my own job. “Maybe the sí-no could point you at someone who’d be able to help you.”

“We’ve hashed through it already. It’s not working. Not for this.”

“Then maybe they need to let it go and let you move on to something fresh. Some things take time to unravel.”

Jacob rolled over and showed me the back of his head.
 

I kept talking. “They’ll shift the investigation to the back burner eventually, right?”

“Not anytime soon.”

“It just seems like such a waste.”

Since I wasn’t letting it go, Jacob sighed and rolled to face me again. “The agency’s whole mission is to keep Psychs from getting picked off. And here an ex-FPMP Stiff was gunned down on a crowded street in broad daylight.”

How had that managed to evade the news? And the water cooler talk? “Recently?”

“Last February.”

Whatever I’d had for dinner churned in my stomach as my body put together what Jacob was saying before my brain did. “Here, in Chicago?” I asked stupidly.

“Right in front of the Metropolitan Correctional Center.”

Maybe my brain had been searching its databases for the appropriate film clip. It played that delightful bit of memory now: the gray drizzle, the traffic, the SUV sideview that nailed me in the shoulder. The gunfire, the panic, the churn of the crowd. The red hole in Roger Burke’s forehead.

It also played the pantomime his spirit did before it got sucked into hell—the one where he’d implicated Dreyfuss’ secretary in the shooting.

Jacob had been watching me for a good long while before he said, “The statement you gave the investigators was pretty straightforward. You didn’t mention seeing anything other than the physical.”

And because I hadn’t been willing to go into Roger’s ghost-charades, I hadn’t mentioned seeing Laura at the scene, either. I groaned into a sitting position and scrubbed at my face with my hands. One Seconal was totally not cutting it. “You’re working on a case for two months where I was an eye witness, and you tell me now?”

“I was hoping you weren’t directly involved.”

“Well, I didn’t shoot him.”

Jacob kept his tone deliberately bland. “We recovered the bullet. It was a 9mm round, but not from a Glock. A Glock’s firing pin leaves a square impression, which eliminates your service weapon.”

Jeez. Good thing I only had one gun to my name.

“Is there a reason I should have run it by you?” he asked. Smoothly. Calmly.
 

As if I didn’t see right through him like a decade-old repeater. “What does Lisa say?”

“That you know more than you put in the deposition.” Fantastic. They had actually discussed this already—although Jacob could have presumed as much with no help at all from the sí-no. Then he added, “But not that you know who pulled the trigger.”

Hold on a minute.
 

Didn’t I?

Chapter 6

“Laura Kim?” Jacob almost laughed, but then his expression hung, not quite smiling, as a dozen emotions played across his face, all of them some subtle flavor of confusion and disbelief. “You’re joking. Right?”

“You know me better than that.”

“But…” Jacob’s mouth worked. I’d never seen him so gobsmacked. “Laura
Kim
?”

“Was she there on some other official business?”

“I had no idea she was there at all. Are you sure it was her?”

Yes, I am able to tell one Asian person from another. I answered with a look.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I was just at the firing range with her—she picks bull’s eye targets instead of human-shaped outlines. That’s how uncomfortable she is with shooting at a human being.”

Too bad he hadn’t known…maybe he could have grabbed one of her casings. I read the thought on his expression, and just as quickly I saw him counter it. Snagging a casing wouldn’t do any good, since he didn’t have any casings from the scene in evidence, only a slug. He’d need a slug for comparison, and the bullets that pierced the bull’s eye targets last night would be sunk deep in ballistic rubber mulch. Good luck finding it among five tons of additional used lead.

“She’s the nicest person you’d ever meet, Vic. A real sweetheart. I can’t believe she’d…you
saw
it?”

“Not directly. Burke’s ghost told me it was her.”

“You talked to the…? My God, that’s huge. What did it say?”

“Nothing—he was a good twenty yards away.” There was no sugar-coating it, I supposed. “But he gestured to me. He made Chinese-eyes. And a gun-shooting motion. And then he disappeared.”

“She’s Korean,” Jacob murmured. “Not Chinese.”

He wanted more, I could tell. A plausible reason, for instance. A more likely suspect. Something that could potentially make sense. We both searched for inspiration in the tin ceiling, and finally I said, “He could have been lying. He’d love to make a fool out of me.”

“Isn’t it your theory that naming the killer is usually the whole reason a murder victim sticks around? If that’s the case, why would he go against the flow just for the sake of pointing you in the wrong direction—especially if he wasn’t going to be around to revel in the fallout?”

I’d never been able to pin down Roger Burke while he was alive, so I wasn’t exactly shocked that I couldn’t make heads or tails of him now that he was dead. Since the most definitive answer we could possibly get was right downstairs, I figured I might as well go see what the sí-no thought of our predicament.

The overhead lights were off, but a reading lamp was glowing inside the tent, throwing Lisa’s silhouette against the blue nylon. Her hair was still softly loose. I caught a snatch of conversation, and then a pause—talking on her phone, judging by the tilt of her head and the angle of her arm. Low laughter. More talk. Spanish, I realized as I cleared the bottom step. Which was good. Because it would be creepy to stand outside her tent and eavesdrop.