Chapter 3

The notion that someone was capable of taking a polygraph without feeling utterly violated was certainly food for thought, but it didn’t make me any less apprehensive when the tester wrapped a harness around my chest and diaphragm to monitor my respiration. The chest restraints weren’t the only ones. A tight band went around my left arm, and yes, I knew full well it was a blood pressure cuff and not a restraint, but try telling that to my racing heart. Sensors were clipped to the fingertips of my other hand. And even my feet rested on some sort of device. To measure what? I had no idea.

The tester clicked around her screen for a few seconds, then said “Is your blood pressure normally…?”

I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. It didn’t work. Already, sweat was dampening the back of my shirt.

“This really is routine,” she said. “Just breathe, and we’ll have a conversation, and you answer yes or no. Right now we’re getting a baseline. That’s all.”

So she said, and so my rational mind might have believed. But the rest of me was screaming Camp Hell.

“Let’s start with an easy one: Is your name Victor Bayne?”

Yes. At least, I thought it was. Wasn’t it? When I thought back to everyone I knew whose name had been changed, however, I couldn’t be all that sure. “As far as I know,” I said.

“Don’t overthink it.”

“You can see me overthinking it on the monitor?”

“A yes or no response is all I need.”

“Okay. Uh…yes?”

 “Right. Let’s keep going. You’re thirty-nine years old?

Was I? Or were my records falsified? “I think so.”

“Yes or no.”

“Yes,” I said glumly.

“Okay, great. You’re doing just fine.” I didn’t need to be a telepath to know she’d just told a whopper of a white lie. “Again, we’re just getting a baseline. And…is today Wednesday?”

“Yes.” Luckily, I answered before I could spin out some weird fantasy in which even the day of the week was questionable.

“And at your last position you were a police detective?”

Was I? Or was I some sort of sick puppet, just going through the motions of collaring people who would later be released?

“Victor? Yes or no.”

“Yes.” My heart was pounding.

So that was just the baseline, and the questioning went on. The sorts of things I would expect: had I ever accepted a bribe, falsified a report, lied under oath…which I probably would have, but thanks to the fact that I’d never needed to testify, I hadn’t been faced with that temptation. I would have lied in a red hot minute to protect my own secrets, but thankfully the yes-or-no responses didn’t require me to elaborate. 

“Okay great, you’re doing just fine.” She seriously thought I believed that? Maybe she was the one who needed to be hooked up to the polygraph. “Now we’ll move on to your friends and associates.”

Standard operating procedure in any interrogation. She gave my address and asked if I lived there. I said I did.

“And do you live there alone?”

My heart stuttered as fourteen years of dodging questions about my love life came crashing down. “No.”

“I show Agent Marks also resides at this address. Is that the case?”

“Yes.” 

“Anyone else at this address?”

“No.”

It might have been the yes-or-no nature of the questions that she didn’t delve into the nature of our relationship, but, honestly, she didn’t really need to, did she? Two single adult men living together…. My apprehension turned to a queasy but unexpected relief. Because while the Fifth Precinct had been blissfully unaware of my sexuality—either that, or they were trying very hard to pretend they had no idea—here at the FPMP, I was out from day one. No Bikini Inspector T-shirts here. I supposed I could thank Jacob for paving the way and volunteering that info a few months ago. And while the stubborn part of me might have liked to do things in my own way and my own time, the majority of me was profoundly relieved.

She went on to see if I was affiliated with any sort of group, from church to civic organizations to softball teams, but no. Other than work and home, I didn’t have much of a life. There was no family to pump me for information about. As for friends, she touched on Maurice and Zigler, but must not have been privy to Crash, which was just as well. The less info the FPMP had on him, the better.

After a good hour and a half, she’d exhausted her questions, and I’d exhausted my adrenaline. I felt nauseated, worn out, and clammy, and I was thankful when my inquisitor checked her computer and said, “Okay, we’re done here. I’ve activated the magnetic strip on your new ID. Wear it clipped to your chest, and use it to access any secure areas of the building. Or we have lanyards, would you like a lanyard? No? And here’s a license for your wallet when you’re in the field. Report to the range for a marksmanship test the day after tomorrow on your way to HQ and…hold on a sec, I also have a message for you to stop by room 302 before you sign out tonight. Then that should be it for the day.”

Good. Because back at the cannery, there was a long hot shower with my name all over it. And maybe my throat itched for a Seconal, but that clamoring urge would need to be ignored, since I’d made sure there were no Reds to be had. Not because I was worried I’d be polygraphed over my illegal drug use (and seriously, thank God they only asked about the Auracel) but because I didn’t care for the idea of anyone being able to use that dependence to manipulate me. 

As I swiped myself in and out of various areas where, before, as a consultant, I’d required a babysitter, I reflected that other than the polygraph, my first day in the official employ of the FPMP hadn’t really been all that bad. No one had puffed up and tried to out-macho me. No one had cowered away from me because of my talent. No one had even crossed themselves while muttering Spook Squad. Heck, the director herself had even claimed the two of us had a “rapport,” which was something I’d never bothered striving for with anyone.

But maybe here…I could.

Maybe I hadn’t tanked the polygraph. Why else would they have given me the IDs? And why else would they be waiting for me at the range to come shoot things?

Third floor. I turned down the wrong hall, found myself in an empty meeting room, scanned briefly for unwelcome nonphysical visitors, then turned around, backtracked, and worked my way toward 302. 

Being somewhere that my coworkers didn’t merely tolerate my talent, but admire it, would take some getting used to. The tradeoff was steep, though: an utter lack of privacy. While I did see the logic in keeping tabs on me to make sure an opportune spirit hadn’t stepped in, and my mind was still my own, that didn’t mean I had to like it. But since all my deepest secrets were already splayed open for everyone to see, things would be fine going forward just as long as I kept my nose clean and didn’t invite further scrutiny from….

Internal Affairs.

I stared dumbly at the placard above the magnetic reader while my stomach bottomed out and a new sheen of perspiration erupted on my forehead. Internal Affairs Suite: 300-310. Ten whole rooms to torture and interrogate anyone pathetic enough to fail their polygraph on their first day on the job. As my vision started to tunnel, the door opened and a pair of women in dark suits strode through in the midst of a conversation.

“…but when my husband tried to get him to turn down the TV….” She trailed off, glanced at the keycard in my hand, then stepped aside to hold the door open. “Were you going in?”

Everything is totally normal. “Sure. Thanks.” I hurried through before they could ask why I was drowning in sweat. I found myself in a normal-looking hall and not a dungeon, but I wasn’t about to underestimate the damage that can be done in a normal-looking room. I suddenly regretted not reading my intake forms more carefully. Yes, I’d agreed to let the FPMP monitor me, but what other rights had I ceded? Could they detain me? Reprogram me? Lobotomize me?

When the door to room 302 opened, I nearly jumped out of my skin. And then I realized the man behind it was Jacob.

“They got you too?” I said.

He gave me a look I knew all too well—I saw it whenever I said something that made no sense whatsoever outside my own mind—and then he said, “That depends what you mean by they.”

I tapped the words Internal Affairs on the placard.

Jacob cut his eyes to the words, then back to me. “Let’s not have this discussion in the hall.”

“What difference does it make?” I whispered urgently. “This whole place is bugged. And monitored. And crawling with telepaths. And to top it all off there’s a whole suite of Men in Black with the sole task of invading every last corner of my…um….”

Room 302 was not home to any sort of torture chamber. It was just an office with a broad wooden desk, some filing cabinets, and a computer—beside which was a framed photo. Of Jacob. And me. Looking somewhat stiff in front of his parents’ kitschy Thanksgiving decorations.

As the realization dawned on me that this was Jacob’s office, Jacob’s job, he handed me a wad of tissues to mop the sweat off my face and said, “The sooner you accept that there is no them anymore, the easier it’ll be.”

“Wait—you’re IA? Since when?”

“Since Dreyfuss found out Burke’s murder weapon was FPMP issue. What did you think the Oversight Division was—and, logically, what other department would handle that investigation? You’re acting as if I’ve kept it a secret from you all this…are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to claim to be fine, but I doubted anyone would believe that. He pulled out a chair for me, but instead of sitting, I circled around it. “This was a huge mistake.”

“What was?”

“All of it.” I backed myself against the wall to ward off any potential threat, and scrubbed at my face with my hands. My hairline was even damper than my palms.

Jacob perched on the edge of his desk, calmly projecting both authority and empathy. “It’s just your nerves talking. You didn’t make the decision to come here lightly—we both know it—so don’t jump to any conclusions. Give it some time. Then whatever doesn’t work itself out, whatever concerns you have, we’ll figure out how to deal with them.”

He was good; I almost bought it. But I recognize the tone he takes to defuse a situation that’s about to go nuclear, and he was using that tone on me. “You know what it is?” I said. “I got cocky. Working here as an advisor, dealing with Dreyfuss, I thought I knew the lay of the land. But he’s gone now, jumped ship. And Laura might’ve been privy to all his machinations, but when it comes right down to it, she can’t protect me. I’m too vulnerable here. To think otherwise was pure hubris.”

“We need another signal. One for when I want to kiss you.”

The fact that he was suggesting an expansion of our repertoire without touching the back of my arm meant no one was listening in on us…as far as he knew. At the moment, anyhow. But watching? Great, another reason to feel like my whole life was on display. “Listen,” Jacob said. “you’ve got this. You do.”

“But?”

Jacob sighed. “But the reason I asked HR to send you down was that something came up and I need to stay late. If there was any wiggle room at all….”

I waved away his big-eyed concern-face. “No, I get it. We’ve never had the type of job we can just walk away from when it’s inconvenient, neither of us. I’m a big boy, I’ll manage.”

 He tossed me his keys. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” I peeled myself off the wall and headed for the door. “Bad enough I’ve got you inventing new hand signals. I’d be really miffed if my presence here reflected badly on you.”

As I made my way back to the cannery, Jacob’s car felt disconcertingly empty without him in it. After my first official day as Agent Bayne, I was a jumble of emotions. Sorting them through might’ve been the adult thing to do, but I was perfectly happy to sweep all my racing thoughts under the carpet where they belonged.

Falling asleep isn’t usually an issue for me—it’s staying asleep that’s the tricky part. But I was still laying there counting ceiling tiles around midnight when Jacob finally got home. He came upstairs, hung up his suit, and climbed into bed beside me.

When I didn’t roll over and ignore him, he reached across me and turned on the reading lamp so we could have the chat we’d both avoided, face to face. I whispered, “I thought I knew what to expect at the FPMP, but now it’s obvious I should’ve looked a little bit harder before I leapt.”

“You’ll figure out the job. But I need to know that we’re okay. I didn’t realize we should’ve had a bigger talk about my position until I saw the look in your eyes.”

“You know I trust you, right?” I pressed my palm over his heart, stroked his chest hair against the grain, then smoothed it back down. “But I’m not the same person I was at Camp Hell, or the police academy, or even at the Fifth Precinct. If you’re IA, your clearance level must be…. Anyway, I have no idea what’s in my permanent record, but whatever it is, I don’t want you mucking through it before I’ve even had a chance to see it myself.”

“I wouldn’t—I can’t. Everything we do in Oversight is under the microscope. We can’t just investigate our coworkers for kicks. If I wanted to pull up the history of someone’s records, I’d need a damn good reason.”

That was a relief. I was mollified. Somewhat. “Change sucks. And even though the Fifth Precinct was basically a sham, at least I knew what to expect there. At the FPMP, everything I thought I knew is being turned upside down.”

“You know me.” Jacob pulled me against him more firmly. “And I know the score. I guarantee that once you learn the ropes, everything will click, and you’ll be happy there.”

Happy? That seemed awfully ambitious. Awkwardly useful, though? I supposed that would be a step up.