Chapter 30

I made my way back to headquarters with a heavy heart, dismayed by everything I’d managed to block out all these years. Now that the clog holding back my memories had been cleared, they continued to trickle through. Mama’s weird attempts at vegetarian cooking. (No one ate the lima bean casserole. Not even her.) Harold giving me a stilted talk about the birds and bees, a least two years too late. Charles and me playing “why are you hitting yourself?” Okay, Charles playing and me trying not to cry. He might still be around—in fact, he shouldn’t be too hard to find—but he was probably still a dick.

Dr. Kleinman was the key. I was sure of it. I was no closer to finding the next medium, but damn it, I had to see Laura. Whether it put me on her shit list or not. “Call Laura Kim,” I told my phone, and the line rang. And as I did my best to figure out how to throw myself upon Laura Kim’s mercy, a distinctly non-Laura voice answered. Patrick. “Hey, Vic. How can I help?”

“Oh. Uh, hey. I was looking for Laura.”

“Everything’s routed through me. Sorry. I’ll buzz her for you.”

“Okay. Thanks. So, should I wait? Or…?”

“Yep,” he said, “just hold a sec.” I stood there awkwardly to the distant sound of many buttons being pressed in an elaborate sequence. “Can I let her know what this is in regard to?”

“The investigation.” When I’d started knuckling my eye, I didn’t know. I forced my free hand into my pocket. It brushed my holster through my jacket, and when it did, I realized that while I was out bothering the new resident of my old house, I’d been scheduled to visit the range. With Patrick. “Sonofa…. This morning—cripes—something came up and I totally spaced.”

“No biggie,” he said, but clearly there was something weird between us now.

“Really. I…it was…I was looking forward to it, y’know? I’ve just got a lot going on.”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine. I can imagine how crazy it must be with so much on your plate. But Agent Watts isn’t too thrilled with you, if you know what I mean.”

“Great. Like she needs another reason to think I’m lame.”

On his end, more buttons clicked. “Sorry,” he said eventually. “I can’t do any better for you with Laura than next week’s meeting, the one that’s already on the books. But I’m sure I’ll talk with her before the end of the day. I can put in a good word for you. What did you need?”

I hesitated briefly. Airing my ugly past felt too intimate, like being naked. Something I’d only do either with someone I trusted with my life, or a total stranger. Anything in between was just too damn awkward. But Patrick was the one with the access. So I asked.

“There’s a therapist I saw when I was a kid, Elaine Kleinman. Current contact info. If not that, anything you can find out about her, especially in the eighties, nineties. Where she worked. Who else she was seeing. What her practice entailed. And good luck—I don’t know if that’s even her real name.”

“Kleinman. Got it. I’ll see what I can find. In the meanwhile, if you can put me in touch with Agents Garcia and Lipton, that’d be great. They’ll want to get started on their expense reports sooner rather than later.”

“Okay. I’ll let Jacob know.”

“Oh! Never mind, I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble.” Heck, it was the least I could do after standing him up at the range.

* * *

“Text Jacob that Patrick needs contact info on Lipton and Garcia.”

“Patrick needs Con tagged info on Lip Tonne and Gar. See ya. Send?”

“Sure.” I paused at the door to my office and checked the screen. “Uh…crap, wait, no.”

The whoosh sounded.

“Can I take it back?”

“Sorry, I’m not familiar with that. Should I check the App Store?”

“I think you’ve done enough already.”

First thing I noticed when I stepped into my office was that when Carl was peering through his reading glasses with his head canted a certain way, he looked an awful lot like Harold. The second was that the wall opposite the window—the perfectly good white wall—was now covered in corkboard. And little slips and scraps of paper were scattered across the board. It wasn’t like one of those big, impressive planning walls you see on television crime dramas. There weren’t maps or bits of string linking pieces of info. But it had the potential to turn into something like that once Darla had more time to stick things to the wall.

“Really?” I said. “You can’t do this on the jumbotron?”

Darla paused at her treadmill desk and gave me a look. But before she could make a remark about how it really shouldn’t matter since I was never there, and besides, someone’s got to make headway in Project Medium, the massive monitor lit up with Laura Kim’s face. It towered down over us as if we were a colony of single-celled organisms that lived in her watch. “Good, you’re all there. We’ve recovered Andy Parsons’ vehicle. I’m sending you the location. I want all three of you over there ASAP to see if you can find…him.”

The thought that he might have left a ghost behind freaked her out. And yet…maybe she was starting to see that it would be awfully convenient if that ghost could tell us what we needed to know.

Carl grabbed a plain black briefcase that I suspected held something a lot more arcane than file folders, and the three of us headed for my car. Carl climbed into the backseat with his exorcism kit and Darla rode shotgun. As she sat, she picked a candy wrapper off the seat with no little disgust. “How old are you, five?”

“That’s not mine.”

She flattened the wrapper across her knee. Black licorice. As if anyone under ninety-nine actually enjoys that. 

“They had this in the candy machine at Camp Hell. The only one who ever bought it was….” She gasped. “Are you still with Stefan?”

I nearly sideswiped a dump truck.

“I’m not with him.”

Darla turned to me in dismay, at least as far as her seatbelt would allow. “And your car smells like patchouli. Holy shit, you are.”

“I saw him yesterday. But it’s not like that.”

Behind us, Carl pointedly cleared his throat.

Darla ignored both our discomfort and plowed on. “Are you insane—seriously insane? You’ve got this amazing boyfriend and you go sneaking around with a creep like Stefan?”

“It’s not like that.”

We pulled up to the vehicle, in a parking lot behind an industrial warehouse where an abandoned car could easily go unnoticed for ages. The hubcaps had been pried off. The hood ornament, too. The FPMP was treating it like a crime scene. A ring of Lexuses surrounded the area, and men in black overcoats and dark sunglasses stood guard. But cops in their bulletproof vests and checkerboard hats were conspicuously absent. The FPMP’s jurisdiction ran deep.

The lot hadn’t been plowed, but it was open enough that snow had drifted, and the wind left behind organic trails that were easy to navigate. I pulled up my dented blue Ford behind the herd of dark Lexuses and began walking toward Andy’s car. Darla struggled along behind me in her heels. After that last remark of hers, I felt zero sympathy.

An agent came forward and introduced himself—apparently they’d been expecting me. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there was no way of identifying the vehicle without checking the VIN.” The snow in front was bumper-high. The prints around it were fresh. “Not only are the plates missing, but the locator chip was dug out.”

“Show me,” I said.

As we trudged around to the passenger side, I sucked down white light, and took in the scene with all my senses. I couldn’t quell the sinking feeling that there wouldn’t be anything nonphysical to find. Because if Andy’s ghost was there, it would have accosted me well before the agent who was showing me where the tracker should have been. Passenger side heating vent. I made a mental note to check mine later.

“If there’s anything you need,” the agent said, “let me know. Otherwise, we’ll give you space to do your investigation.”

It was a far cry from the cops all blanching and staring and making snotty remarks when I showed up. That’s for sure.

The black-suited agents made for the perimeter. Darla took a cursory look around the vehicle, then said, “Stefan can’t work his spell on you from a distance, y’know. Just say no.”

“Why does everyone presume I have no will of my own?” I snapped.

Darla made an oh, please face.

“I’m not into him. Hell, I’m frankly a little bit scared of him.”

“And you should be.”

“When we were together, though, it was because that’s what I wanted. Because we were a couple of angry kids with something to prove, and each of us saw something in the other. That’s it. No one was working ‘a spell.’ No psychic abilities needed. But that was ages ago, practically half a lifetime. The only reason I have anything to do with him now is because he’s the only one—”

I turned away.

“The only one, what?” Darla said carefully.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yeah. I am. Because you called bullshit when I said I couldn’t remember my first ghost. And I can’t—because the memories were pulled out of my fucking head by some goddamn hypnotist. But you think I’m just being an asshole. You, of all people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a small voice.

“You know what they did to us. You were there too.”

She turned away. In the tinted Lexus window, I saw her face twist like she was struggling to keep from crying. “I know. I thought I was the one who had it bad. Those orderlies—any reason they could find to brush up against my tits or ass….” She shuddered. “But one day they were dragging me to the lab and I passed you in the hall. You were strapped to a gurney. Shaking all over. Like Movie Mike, before the wheelchair.”

My vision tunneled a little. “Psyactives.”

“You know the really messed up part? Ninety-nine percent of me was relieved it was you and not me. But some small part of me…it was jealous. You never guessed anything right—you never even tried. I was the one with the most hits. So why were they all so fascinated with you?”

I sagged against the vehicle. Contaminated the scene. But my breathing had gone shallow and rapid and I couldn’t find it within myself to care. “Believe me. You were better off.”

She took a breath, dabbed the corner of each eye with a fingertip, turned back toward me and squared her shoulders. “How long ago were you hypnotized?”

“Twenty-five years. Give or take.”

Carl said, “The FPMP didn’t exist. It was founded just after the Ganzfeld Experiment went public.”

“It happened,” I insisted.

He held up one hand in placation. “And I believe you. I’m just saying, it wasn’t the Program. The timing’s all wrong.”

 “Maybe in name.” And maybe he had some ulterior motive for wanting me to think so. “But they have access to my records. For all I know, it’s the same folks running the show with new titles—or new names. They’re always so goddamn keen on renaming people. Darla, I’ve got to know what happened to me, and I’m getting nowhere fast on my own. If anyone can help me, it’s you. You’re brilliant and creative, and that’s rare enough. But more important than that—even though we got off on the wrong foot and never saw eye to eye, I trust you.”

“You do?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “Then why didn’t you just tell me you were gay?” Crap, I hadn’t realized we’d be digging all the way down to pick at the original scab. “I mean, you should’ve known I’d be cool about it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m pan, but I’ve dated a few women, too.”

My mouth worked a few times, but no decent excuse came to mind.

Thankfully, she was willing to answer her own question. “I guess times were different then.”

I said, “It’s never easy to know how anyone will react.” Which was technically true. No need to get into the fact that I was positive any rejection from me would definitely not have been well-received. “But I can’t tell you what a huge relief it is to know we’re good with each other now.”

And that…was the truth.

“Darla, we need to figure out who got to Andy. I’m persona non grata with Laura Kim and I’ve got to get back in her good graces if I ever want to figure out what kind of buried secrets the Program’s been keeping from me.”

She assessed the abandoned coupe, stepping carefully in the bald areas left by the drifting snow. “Fine. So why don’t you just ask your victim?”

My hackles rose as if she was baiting me, mocking my mediumship, the single thing I was actually any good at. But I had nothing to be defensive about. Darla’s talent worked differently from mine—she didn’t get visuals. She really was just wondering. “He’s not here. I’d need to find him first.”

She turned to me and looked me up and down. “I didn’t mean to ask him directly—not like the agent in the stairwell. I’m talking about long-distance.” She must’ve been able to read the ‘huh?’ on my face, because she added, “You’ve never…? Wow.”

“You can actually do that? Talk to them after they’ve moved on?”

“How is it that you can’t, yet you’re so strong you can actually see them when they’re earthbound? Our focus must be phenomenally different. Takes all kinds, I guess. So let’s use it to our advantage…but not here. I’m freezing my ass off.” She glanced around and scoped out our surroundings. Beyond the abandoned parking lot was a stand of weed trees and a few dilapidated postwar homes. On the street corner, a shabby steeple rose above the naked trees. Darla pointed to the old church, and said, “Perfect.”