Chapter 11

I’d only been away from the Fifth Precinct for a few days, but funny how sometimes a few days can feel like a lifetime. New gun, new suit, new sense of purpose…who knows what it was that my old coworkers noticed? Not sure, but maybe it was a combination of all of the above. No one sniggered or sneered when I walked by. Not even that jackass, Raleigh.

And Sergeant Warwick? He actually stopped typing when I walked into the room. “I take it this ain’t a social call,” he said. “What’s important enough to merit a face-to-face meeting?”

“Andy Parsons. What can you tell me about him?”

Other than the fact that his neck gets blotchy when he’s mad, Warwick doesn’t have many tells. But I did see him steeling himself with an extra careful breath. “I think you’ll find out more about Parsons from his actual employer.”

“Probably. But I’m asking you.”

He made eye contact, and held it. Maybe it was easier because he was no longer my boss, but I doubted that was the whole reason. All these years, I’d been intimidated by Warwick, and guys like him can smell fear. I wasn’t willing to back down anymore, and he knew it.

“Nothing much to tell,” he admitted. “Kept to himself—I figured he didn’t want anyone to know he was with the feds.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“He worked here how long, and there’s not a damn thing you can tell me about him?”

“Look, smartass, anyone the FPMP told me to hire, I hired. And I did my best not to pay ’em any attention.”

“Anyone? There were more?”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Who?” I demanded.

“I signed away any right to tell you myself. Who can you trust over there, do you even know? If you’ve got questions, go ask your new boss.”

“It’s Jeff Raleigh, isn’t it? I always knew there was something hinky about him—”

“Not Raleigh. They’re all gone now. Why have federal agents waste their time snooping around a precinct where there aren’t any PsyCops?”

Damn.

I’d wasted half my morning at the Fifth and had nothing to show for it, other than the realization that my stint as a public servant had never been a very good fit. And there’d been an edge to Warwick, too. Not because I’d interrupted anything, and not because, for once, I’d stood my ground and said what was on my mind. I was driving past that slippery entrance to the FPMP parking lot when it finally occurred to me that Warwick seemed put out that he no longer had a medium on staff.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the guy missed me. Still, it was interesting to consider he wasn’t just relieved I was gone.

* * *

Back at headquarters, once I was finally parked and settled, I found a text from Patrick asking me to check in with him. Aside from the fact that I’d been there over a dozen times and still had difficulty finding the damn lot, the FPMP building was starting to feel less disconcerting. Not exactly familiar, but no less strange than the Fifth Precinct that morning. I found Patrick at the helm with a spread of various notebooks and manuals covered in sticky tabs. The guy knew how to power-study.

“Hey, Vic! How’s it going?”

“Fine.” I realized how curt that sounded and decided to try being a little bit more approachable. “Uh…you?”

 “Haven’t hung up on anyone yet, but I guess the day’s still young. So, speaking of phones….” He rifled through a few drawers, then said, “Always the last place you look,” pulled something out and set it on the counter. “Director Kim wants to make sure your technology is up to speed.”

Well, that’s never a good sign. I stared at the matte black box like there was a bomb inside, and Patrick made a go-ahead motion. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the unboxing.”

“Right.” I could tell by the waxy, velvety feel of the paper alone that whatever was inside would be way too fancy for me. It was sealed not with tape or glue, but a pretentious little circular plastic tab. I picked it open with my thumbnail and slid the box open. The jewel inside glinted elegantly, black on black, awkwardly broad and impossibly slim.

“Sweet,” Patrick said reverently. “That’s next year’s model. So, if anyone randomly offers you a big wad of cash for your phone, they’re probably a corporate spy. Do your best to resist, ha ha. Awesome camera, water resistant, shatterproof case, automatic cloud backup, and of course a custom in-house app so the Director can always get ahold of you.” All that and a handy tracking chip too. “Did you want to switch your SIM card, or should I?”

Since I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what that entailed, I dropped my chintzy flip-phone on the desk and said, “Be my guest.”

Patrick pulled out a set of very small screwdrivers and set to work. “I’ll transfer your data—oh wow, that was quick. The new storage capacity will blow you away. It’ll eat through battery life, though, so here’s a wall charger, a car charger, and a couple of backup batteries. But you might not need them if you charge it every night.”

Great. One more thing for me to forget. “Better safe than sorry.”

Patrick might have been newer than me at the FPMP, but he had a natural bent for technology. “Want help getting the facial recognition up and running?”

He was kidding. Right? I stared at him and waited for the har-har-har, but it didn’t come. “Uh…sure.”

He pressed a few things and handed the phone back to me. “Here ya go. Front facing camera is on. Just follow the cues on the screen while the phone learns your, um…you really want to try and look natural while it’s….”

The phone beeped its completion.

“You were kinda scowling there,” Patrick said.

A big “test” button appeared. I gave it a jab. The camera captured my scowl and the home screen appeared. “Looks good enough to me.”

“O…kay. Now just import your contacts and you’ll be all set.”

I gave Patrick the same look that unlocked my phone.

“Here, I got it.” He held out his hand and I passed the thing to him yet again. He poked around for a few seconds and said, “Director Kim is out of date already. That’s my number now.” He changed the name to Patrick and gave it back. “But don’t worry, anything you send my way is still encrypted and secure.”

 Which I took to mean that anyone with the right clearance could copy it directly to my permanent record. It was phenomenally naive to think all my personal correspondence wasn’t already there. In defiance, I pulled up Jacob’s contact and composed a text informing him I wanted to suck his cock. Autocorrect changed it to “I want to duck out,” which, eerily, sounded a lot more like me.

“And check out the productivity app on your home screen,” Patrick said. “It’ll really help you focus.” 

A small laugh escaped me. I poked the icon to give it an obligatory glance, and a setup routine popped up. I gave it a few more jabs to try to close it, but it was fixated on importing my nonexistent calendar. I groaned and shoved the phone into Patrick’s hand again, and seriously considered asking him to switch everything back to my flip phone. “I don’t have time for this. One of our agents is dead.”

“See, that’s the thing. You’re in reactive mode. And that’s when critical stuff slips through the cracks.” He turned the phone toward me and showed me a simple grid. “Think about tasks as four quadrants. Urgent, not urgent. Important, not important. It’s easy enough to disregard tasks that have no urgency, and clearly don’t matter. Urgent stuff that isn’t really important can be delegated, or skipped entirely. Urgent, important things are impossible to ignore. But it’s the important, ongoing stuff that tends to fall by the wayside, and they’re the tasks that make the biggest impact.” He tapped the intersection between important and not urgent. “Have undiscovered mediums been roaming the halls of the FPMP for years? Apparently so. But even though there’s no obvious urgency attached to screening for them, you’d better believe that solving this issue would be the best way to impress Director Kim.”

* * *

My relationship with Laura Kim was unusual, to say the least. I’d befriended her when she was a glorified secretary. Now she was my boss. She didn’t intimidate me, not like Warwick had, but boy oh boy, was I eager to please her. This desire to prove myself was disturbing. I’d spent my life balking at authority. Now I was filled with the urge to win her over.

It made me profoundly uncomfortable.

If I had any hope of uncovering the FPMP’s mediums, I’d need to be a team player, and that meant making nice with Darla. I’d invite her input, be professional, and let any nasty digs roll off my back. I was prepared to bring my friendliest self to the office when I opened the door and discovered the botanical fairy had visited since the last time I’d seen the place. And she’d been busy.

Big plants in pots lurked in each corner. Dangly plants hung in front of the windows. And random smaller plants were tucked into the bookshelves and cluttering up the filing cabinets.

 To say I’m not a fan of plants is putting it mildly. They’re living creatures, they move and change and grow. Bad enough. And then you forget to water them, and they crap down leaves, turn brown, wither, and die. I fought down the urge to exclaim, what the hell? and instead, cautiously said, “So…plants.”

Darla shot me a look from her fancy standing desk. “Numerous studies have shown that the presence of live plants improves air quality, which in turn augments problem-solving and productivity.”

Great. She had Science behind her. “Okay, but don’t they take up a lot of room? I mean, there’s something to be said for minimalism and focus.”

“What do you care?” she said scornfully. “You’re never here.”

I looked to Carl for help. “You spend more time in this office than anyone. What do you think?” 

Carl seemed surprised anyone had bothered to ask his opinion. I doubted Richie ever did. He took a look around, considered the lush foliage, then said, “Well, I suppose they do spruce up the place.”

Said the guy who had nothing on his desk but a framed copy of the Serenity Prayer. Then again, if I had worked any amount of time with Richie, I’d need just as much moral support to deal with the things I couldn’t change…without strangling them.

So, I was outnumbered. Fine. Once it was just the two of us again, he could be in charge of watering the damn things.

“How’s the mediumship testing coming along?” I asked Darla.

Somehow, I managed to choose the wrong words, or timing, or inflection, because the question pissed her off. “So that’s how it works around here? You take off and leave me to do all the work, then traipse back in and demand a progress report?”

“Who’s traipsing? I just asked.”

She rolled her eyes, turned to the big touchscreen, and called up a video shot of the haunted office. An agent stood in the corner, walked to the far wall, turned, and walked back. “If we have the subject wear a sensor—that’s the dot taped to her shoulder, right there—then the computer can create a map of her motions.” She tapped a few links, and the picture faded to a wireframe map with a red line trailing through it. “These are a lot easier to watch—especially since we can speed them up, overlay them, and graph their common points. But, to be honest, I’m not sure this will tell us much. I walked the course myself and my pattern looks a lot like Agent Malcolm’s.” 

“Hold on, you walked back and forth through the room? Knowing it was full of repeaters?”

“That’s what you call those things, repeaters?” She frowned. “I’ve always thought of them as echoes. Like skipping CDs.”

I nodded. It felt weird to talk about it. Even with someone who hated me. “Or an endless film loop.”

“Why should they stop me from doing my job? Sure, they’re distracting—and the loud ones can get annoying. But it’s not as if they pose any sort of threat.”

I rolled my shoulders to try to calm the gooseflesh prickling across my back. “You sure about that? What if they tried to…?” I waited for her to finish my thought for me. She didn’t. “Y’know,” I said. “Mess you up.”

“They can’t. There’s no consciousness to an echo—it’s nothing more than trapped energy bouncing around.” As she thought the idea through, she grew more and more intense. “Would an untrained medium be spooked into avoiding them? Maybe. But someone like me? I can tell the difference. Mistaking an echo for one of the dead is like thinking you can stop someone from running away by stepping on their shadow.” 

By the time the knock interrupted her, she was practically ranting. She turned to glare at the door. Carl, unfazed, got up and answered it. He turned to me and said, “Agent Bly for you.”

“Send him in,” I sighed.

Back in his previous life as John Wembly, Jack Bly was a big, soft guy with an unruly mop of hair and a paper PsyCop card tucked behind his detective’s badge. Now, he was a shaven-headed wall of solid FPMP muscle. He didn’t enjoy pumping iron, not like Jacob did. His workout routine was mandatory—either hit the gym, or be redacted for real when his mysterious past caught up with him. 

Generally, I’m not into gym rats, so Bly is nothing like my type. But his fitness regimen was definitely earning him some appreciation from Darla. When he walked in, her mood did such a pronounced 180 that I practically got whiplash.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked. But before I could try, she strode over, thrust out her hand, and said, “I’m Agent Daniels from the Indianapolis office. But you can call me Darla.”

In movies, when a car crash is ready to erupt in a giant orange ball of flame, the action slows down so you can see the explosion in all its glorious detail. When their hands met, I could swear that cinematic slow-mo was happening to me. If Bly didn’t duck out of the way, he’d end up scorched and crispy. Were I a braver man, I’d dive between them, wailing, “Nooo….” But I was paralyzed. Mute. And all I could do was brace for the shock of the blast.

“Jack Bly,” he said easily. “I should mention, I’m a high-level empath.”

Darla fluttered her eyelashes. “And I should mention I’m married. But I appreciate the candor.”

I experienced the sort of lurch you get when you mis-count going down the stairs and hit the floor one step earlier than you expect…but there was no explosion. Hell, not even a hint of smoke. “You’re married?” I blurted out.

“If I thought you had any interest in my actual life,” she replied, “I would have told you.”

Bly said, “I was hoping you could spare Agent Bayne. We need his input on our current investigation.”

“Makes no difference to me,” Darla said, with a pronounced undertone of he’s useless here anyway…and entirely overrated.