Chapter 32

If there’s one thing Jacob approaches with extreme caution nowadays, it’s tracking the whereabouts of Laura Kim. It didn’t matter that he was absolutely correct when he pegged her for Roger Burke’s shooting. He couldn’t afford to ever get it wrong when it came to pointing the finger at the director.

Three of us were crowded behind the desk. Jacob scrolled through a bunch of files on his monitor. Beside him, Darla cradled a cup of jasmine tea to her chest while I hovered over his shoulder. “Here we go,” he said, “parking garage footage.” On camera, Laura strode to the best parking spot in the garage and climbed into her gleaming Lexus. There was a timestamp in the corner. “Andy left just after noon, but Laura was here for another six hours. Even if she didn’t go straight home, according to the lab, he was already dead by then.

Darla said, “And do we know where Director Kim was when Colleen Frank took a dive?”

Jacob pulled up a shot of Laura eating lunch.

It was pretty telling that he happened to have it at the ready.

“Just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate,” I said, “we’d need to consider the fact that if Laura wanted to get rid of someone—I seriously can’t even believe I’m entertaining this—she probably wouldn’t pull the trigger herself. She’s the director. She’s got agents for that.”

Darla’s wheels were turning. “You could pull all her correspondence…if you made it look like we thought she was the one at risk.”

“Or…” Jacob looked at me thoughtfully. “You could see what your new pal knows.”

I drew a blank.

Jacob said, “Isn’t that the whole reason you’ve been cozying up to Patrick Barley? To get an in with Laura?”

“If this is what an in looks like, I’d hate to be on the outs.”

Jacob warmed to his idea. “He’s got access to all of Laura’s calls, hasn’t he?”

“He’s got access to lots of things,” I agreed. Trying to question him without it coming off as an interrogation would be a challenge, but I did owe him a trip to the shooting range. It occurred to me as I texted Patrick that I was using him. I felt kind of bad about that…but not bad enough to refuse to do it.

We met up at the range after work. Patrick greeted me with, “Ready to make some paper targets feel sorry they were ever born?”

As we checked in, I was surprised to find Agent Watts was still there, looking no-nonsense and grim. In the field or on an investigation, sure, we clocked in some crazy long hours. But Watts started her day at the range well before the crack of dawn. Her job fell into the “important but not urgent” category. I couldn’t fathom why she was putting in twelve-plus hour shifts. Maybe she worked a split shift. Or maybe she was saving for a new Beretta.

“If it’s not the Fifth Precinct,” she said coolly. Probably annoyed that I hadn’t returned a single one of her emails. Or even opened them, for that matter.

“You said I needed to practice. So here I am.” I grabbed the sign-in sheet. “Which shooting stall?”

“Gallery’s full,” she said. “But I’ve got an opening in our precision analysis suite.”

Gee, that didn’t sound intimidating at all.

She led Patrick and me to the part of the building where all the expensive tech lived, the specialized gear that really separated our agency from the boys in blue. The soundproofing must’ve been phenomenally thick, but even so, distant sounds of detonations carried through to the hallway. Sometimes in my old apartment, I heard my downstairs neighbor watching movies as I made my way up the stairs. He had a thing for those old war flicks. Creepy how much the real guns sounded like something as innocuous as a TV set.

Watts led us into a long, narrow room with electronics hanging all around the single shooting stall. “This firing system will analyze your stance, and automatically suggest better foot placement. Tonight we’re working on multiple rounds. We’re not conserving ammo, here. In a life and death situation, you fire as many as it takes. Aim for the chest and keep shooting until the threat is removed.”

Patrick took in the room, and said, “The targets seem a lot closer than they do in the regular stalls.”

“Stance and accuracy go hand in hand,” Watts told him. She handed two full magazines to each of us. “This should be enough for our analysis. Just follow the automated cues.”

With that, she left the room.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” Patrick said. “I thought we’d each be in our own stalls. Now you get to see my crappy aim up close.”

“I’m the last one to throw stones.” I checked my magazine—still full—then snapped it back into place. “You want to go first, or should I?”

“You go. Maybe I can pick up some pointers.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Patrick took off his glasses and gave them a quick polish before putting his safety glasses over them. When Jacob’s cheaters were sitting on the coffee table, I noticed they distorted the objects behind them. Patrick’s didn’t. Must’ve been a different sort of prescription.

Once our hearing protection was in place too, I stepped up to the stall. As I positioned myself, I reflected that maybe the shooting range wasn’t the best spot to pick Patrick’s brain, seeing as how conversation was pretty much impossible. Instructions flashed on a readout, and I followed them. Weaver Stance, Power Point, Kneel. Multiple shots. Reload, and repeat. All around me, mechanical eyes recorded and the brains behind them quantified the precise level of shittiness in my technique.

I emptied the second magazine, same as the first, seventeen rounds, three new positions. When that was done, the instructions went dead.

I stood from the kneel I’d been instructed to assume, and jostled against Patrick. I’d been so focused, I’d forgotten he was even there. And even so, the target at the far end of the gallery didn’t look particularly impressive. I’d hit the body mass, but my precision was pretty sad. In most shooting situations, you don’t get thirty-four chances to stop your target.

I slipped off my headphones and said, “I think after all this scrutiny we deserve to treat ourselves. Did you have dinner plans?”

Patrick cocked his head like he was surprised I’d initiated off-duty contact, then shrugged and said, “I do now.”

I honestly wasn’t trying to stare, but it only took a couple seconds for me to reload, and then there was nothing else to look at but the poor target who got inadvertently kneecapped, twice, before Patrick’s wild shots finally put the paper guy out of its misery.

Afterward, I suggested deep dish pizza. Not only was it a great opportunity to indulge, since Jacob frowns on me consuming so much cholesterol in one sitting, but those things take a good forty-five minutes or more to get to the table. That would give me plenty of time to see what he knew about Laura.

“I wasn’t so sure how I felt about two sessions in one day,” Patrick said, “but I think it reinforced some of the pointers Agent Watts gave me this morning.”

Had it really been less than a day since I’d blown him off? I jammed a breadstick in my mouth to save myself from asking it out loud.

“I think I see some improvement already,” he added.

I highly doubted it. The targets in the analysis room were just closer. “How’s your other training going? Hang up on anyone lately?”

“Not today—knock on wood.” Patrick rapped on the tabletop, which I suspected was actually a plastic laminate. “But everyone’s used to doing things at the speed of Laura. It’s going to take some time before all those codes and sequences just flow out my fingers like touch-typing. Or like you pulling the trigger of your Glock. That three-shot sequence you did at the range…wow. Bang-bang-bang.”

I pushed aside a vision of Triple-Shot doing his eternal pirouette and said, “Can’t take that much credit—it’s a semi-automatic. So how is it, working with Laura?”

“Given that she sometimes needs to explain things more than once, I think she’s pretty patient.”

I might have thought so too, once. But lately it seemed like a single strike landed me on her no-call list. “Funny how busy she always seems. Back when Dreyfuss was in charge, he had all kinds of time to make my life miserable.”

“I didn’t know the guy. But I’m sure once Laura establishes herself, things will settle down.”

In fact, for someone with the highest clearance in the agency, Patrick didn’t know all that much. Too busy trying to figure out how to keep the hamster wheels running smoothly. He entertained me (marginally) with stories about his mistakes and near-misses while we waited for our pizza, and I found myself wondering how I could get him to start focusing on juicier inside information…without seeming too obvious about it.

Finally our food arrived, all gooey and cheesy, with a buttery crust and delectable puddles of cheese-grease pooling on top. My mouth was watering already. But you had to let a good deep dish settle. Otherwise the filling would just slide right out. While we were both focused on the pie, Patrick said, “I was worried.”

Didn’t sound like he was talking about the pizza. “About what?” I asked casually.

“That the only reason you cashed in our rain check was to pump me for information.” Fuck. What was my face doing? I clamped down on my expression, hard. “But the night’s half over and you didn’t so much as hint at what I thought you were going to ask. Not even close.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “After everything you’ve been through, I can’t blame you for being curious about Elaine Kleinman.”

* * *

I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles went white.

“Your therapist wasn’t named,” Patrick said. “Or, more accurately, the name was there, but blacked out. The thing is, I think there might have been more than one. The earliest reference I found, you were five. Your kindergarten teacher wanted to hold you back, said you couldn’t grasp numbers. Said they should’ve waited until your next birthday to enroll you in school. I guess that wasn’t uncommon in households with multiple foster kids to start early. Made sense to get you in school as soon as possible and get you out of the house.

“The school figured you would catch up. They checked in on you at the end of every academic year to see how you were doing—and eventually the whole number issue did hold you back—but as far as I can tell, they didn’t start really scrutinizing you until you were older.”

My God, what if the pattern Andy saw in my records was nothing more than my shitty aptitude at math? It was so tempting to think I’d freaked out over nothing.

But then I remembered the hockey ghost. And I was forced to admit that in all likelihood, my past was just as messed up as I suspected.

“So over the years, you’ve had more than one therapist,” Patrick said. “If you were ten years younger, maybe things would’ve been handled differently. By then, they knew about mediums. They wouldn’t have been so quick to label you as schizophrenic.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. He nodded gravely and said, “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. Seems like I always manage to take the roundabout route.” 

Patrick finessed a hefty slice out of the pizza—it’s no mean feat with all those tethers of melted cheese—and almost managed to land it unscathed. But at the last minute, the pizza’s traction gave way and the piece nearly slid off his plate. He course corrected, but not before a spattering of chunky tomato sauce inaugurated his bare hand.

“Agh, jeez, it’s like lava.”

I tipped some ice water onto my napkin and handed it over.

“Good thing it’s not my shooting hand,” he joked.

“So these annual psychiatric visits, they didn’t get more frequent ’til I was, what, twelve?”

“Something like that.”

The timing jibed with everything Andy posthumously told me. Only the motivation was different. In one scenario, a gaggle of proto-FPMP researchers was waiting to see when my dubious gifts would manifest. In the other, I was just a problem child who couldn’t keep his numbers straight.

I’d buy either story…which meant the veracity hinged on the storytellers. The way Andy Parsons always stared at me got under my skin, but now that I knew what it was about me that spooked him, I was more apt to forgive his scrutiny. Hard to say if my kinship with Patrick was based entirely on the new-guy bond, or if there really was something about him that I could identify with. Or maybe it was just refreshing to not be the first one to spill dinner on myself.

 Patrick snagged our waiter and asked for more napkins, then turned back to the table and considered me. He said, “I can’t imagine it was easy having these supposed authority figures telling you who you were. Even though it turned out they were completely wrong, given the power differential, the deck couldn’t have been stacked against you more.”

“Enough about me,” I said, before the conversation left me feeling sorrier for myself than I already did. “I’m not the only one who has trouble with fractions. What about you?”

I’d been hoping to turn the conversation back toward his job, to get some sense of whether Laura really was as busy as she claimed, or if she was being distant and weird. But apparently Patrick thought we were still sharing horror stories about our early therapy experiences. “Me? Well…my family over-intellectualized everything. A normal parent would’ve just taken away my Nintendo. But no. Instead of punishing me for acting up at school, they shuffled me off to a series of analysts. If I hear ‘how does that make you feel?’ one more time, I’ll lose it for sure.”

I suspect a high proportion of mental health professionals are empaths or telepaths, even if they don’t have a government certificate proclaiming their talent and level. I was just about to ask him if he thought those headshrinkers found his True Stiffness confusing, but stopped myself when I realized he’d never confided in me about his talent. It wasn’t worth letting on everything I knew about the subject for the sake of keeping the conversation flowing, even if that observation pointed to the fact that Patrick and I had a hell of a lot in common, two psychs who grew up groping their way through a world that didn’t understand them.

I said, “At least at the FPMP, we know everyone else is being put through the same psychiatric grind. Although it’s hard to imagine anyone dumb enough to screw up the mental health questions on the intake forms.”

“I know we’re not supposed to discuss it…” Patrick leaned in conspiratorially. “But, seriously, no one with half a brain would answer, Sure! It’s totally appropriate to shoot an unarmed civilian.”

“Or, Bribe? How much are we talking?”

We smiled at our own wit as we got busy with the pizza, which was now at that perfect temperature. Still oozy melted, but no longer molten enough to take the skin off the roof of your mouth. Once our smiles faded and we had some food in us, I admitted, “Frankly, I am a little worried that I won’t be able to deliver whatever it is that Laura’s expecting of me.”

“What she’s really concerned about are those Agents, Lipton and Garcia. You’re sure they’re safe?”

“I haven’t heard otherwise.”

“How is it that Agent Marks managed to hide them at such short notice?”

“He has his ways. I don’t ask—the less I know, the less likely some nosy telepath can pick it out of my head.”

“My offer still stands,” Patrick reassured me. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know.”