PsyCop: GhosTV Part 8

"It's procedure," said the big guard. "Not you," he glanced at Jacob's badge, "Detective Marks. But him." He nodded at me.

"This way," the guard with the clipboard told me. When I moved to follow her-because what else could I do?-the dog strained toward

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me and started doing a tapdance. The click of its claws on the floor sounded like a high-powered nail gun sealing my coffin.

"Listen," I whispered to her, "I must've picked up some kind of smell in the evidence room."

She glanced at me, but didn't offer any words of encouragement.

"I'm a PsyCop too," I went on. "I've got a card. If I show you my card, can I go catch my flight?"

"Before you do anything," Jacob was saying, "let me call my sergeant and see if we can straighten this out."

I heard the big guy tell him, "It's procedure..." as the woman led me through a thick metal door into a windowless office with more doors on three sides. The walls were blue. My scalp began to p.r.i.c.kle with sweat.

Here I'd been worrying about ghosts at the airport. Who knew I'd be revisiting Camp h.e.l.l at the security station?

"Place your weapon and your cell phone in this locker," the guard told me. I didn't want to, but what else was I gonna do, shoot her and then call an ambulance? "A security specialist will meet with you in room three. Step in, remove your clothing, and place it in the marked tray."

"You're not serious."

"It's procedure."

"You can't strip-search me," I said. But a sick feeling in my gut told me they d.a.m.n well could-because of the Patriot Act, and Terror Level Orange. Because of that f.u.c.king dancing dog.

If I'd thought it would help me to fall to my knees and implore the guard, in the name of everything that's right and good-mom, baseball and apple pie-to take a few steps back and let me out of that

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d.a.m.n room...I would've done it. In half a second. But that look in her eye, flat, closed-down-I'd seen that look too many times to count on the faces of the nameless, rotating orderlies at Heliotrope Station.

Nothingpersonal,man.Justdoingmyjob.

The panic attack had Heliotrope Station all over it, no doubt, but the thought of being strip-searched threw the panic right off the charts.

The notion that had my uvula quivering and my gut clenched up like it'd just taken a sucker punch was this: I can't deal with you strangers seeing me naked.

"Non-compliance is a federal offense," the guard told me.

"I need to call my lawyer." I didn't have a lawyer, but the Fifth Precinct had one, didn't they? I'd call Sergeant Warwick, that's what I'd do.

And he'd figure it out.

"Look," she said in a hushed voice. "We're being videotaped. If you have something to declare, do it now. It'll all go faster if you start cooperating-and maybe we can even get you on the next flight."

"But I'm not not-cooperating. I don't have anything on me."

"Put your sidearm and your phone in the locker. Please." I flipped open the phone and hoped my panicky brain hadn't scrambled the location of my memory-dials.

"Detective," the guard said, "if you do that, then procedure dictates we physically restrain you. Save us-and yourself-the embarra.s.sment. The quicker we search you, the quicker you're out of here." Physically restrain? I'd thought I was panicked before, but now I actually couldn't have told you Warwick's memory dial-or my own phone number, for that matter.

My hand was shaking when I placed my phone in the locker. Great.

I'm sure that made me look totally innocent. While I wasn't so crazy

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about putting my Glock away, I knew the chances of me getting shot by security (and their "procedure") had to be less if I was unarmed.

The guard showed me to a room. My brain was in overdrive trying to find Camp h.e.l.l connections-blue wall...blue wall...blue wall-but the room smelled different, felt different, which kept me from totally losing it. I heard Stefan's voice in my head, counting me down, calm and relaxed, deep and melodic, rea.s.suring me that I was in the present, and Krimski couldn't hurt me. And I knew it was bad if I was dredging up memories of G.o.dd.a.m.n Stefan for comfort.

"A federal agent has been summoned," the guard told me, "and there won't be any female guards present."

And that was supposed to make me feel better?

f.u.c.k.

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Chapter 7.

There was a built-in bench along one wall of the windowless room, and that was it. Not even a hook to hang my clothes. Even though my shirt was stuck to my back with sweat, I left my jacket on, sat down on the bench and jammed my face between my knees. The little black motes dancing at the corners of my vision didn't subside, but they did stop swarming toward the center.

A big part of me wanted to just go along with the airport guards, because I'd survived this long by going with the flow, letting my body be incarcerated, sleep-starved and drugged, but not my mind, never my mind. What're they gonna see? A skinny naked guy. So f.u.c.king what?

That's how I tried to talk myself into complying with them. Only I wasn't twenty-three anymore. And I just couldn't do it.

Time expanded for me. I could've been sitting there for hours with my head between my knees. Days. Weeks. Only some small part of my brain, some bundle of neurons that still had a sketchy sense of temporal reality, told me it was more like minutes.

There was a tap on the door. I looked at it, baffled. Someone was knocking? Worse-it was a "shave and a haircut" knock. I stared at the st.u.r.dy metal doork.n.o.b-sure that it was just some kind of f.u.c.ked-up coincidence, that my battered brain had heard it wrong-and I waited for it.

Twobits.

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The doork.n.o.b turned.

A man in sungla.s.ses and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up let himself in. At first I figured they'd dragged some pothead out of line and accidentally stuffed him in the same room with me. Then he slid his mirrored shades down his nose, and I recognized his eyes. Con Dreyfuss, the FPMP's head honcho of the Midwest.

"I wondered if you'd actually strip or not." He plunked down on the bench beside me, dug a small bottle of water out of his pocket and offered it to me.

I stared at it like he was handing me a live snake. "Who're you supposed to be? The Unabomber?"

"Whoa. It takes a guy with major cajones to say the word 'bomb' at an airport. But both you and I know you're a lot pluckier than you let on."

"How'd you get here so fast?"

"I'd tell you...but then I'd have to kill you." He said it with a big, cheesy smile...which didn't really rea.s.sure me. "Listen, Bayne, you've had a few months to read up on exorcisms. Tell me-how's it going?"

"It's going."

"Uh-huh. I thought as much." Dreyfuss peeled off his wraparound shades and dangled them between his bent knees. "The HVAC system is still on the fritz in my office. Cold spots. I'm thinking that maybe now that you've brushed up on your medium skills, you could convince the causes of said cold spots to vamoose."

"You can't talk to them. They're repeaters."

Behind Dreyfuss' easy smile, his eyes grew hungry. I recognized that look from Jacob, who got very still the minute I started talking ghost, in hopes of not spooking me out of finishing my thought. When Dreyfuss saw I had nothing more to say, he waved the water bottle

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at me, as if maybe I'd somehow managed to not see it. I ignored it.

He shrugged, cracked the seal, and downed it in a few pulls. Then he said, "You're pretty calm, cool and collected for a guy who's about to have some stranger rooting around for drugs in his r.e.c.t.u.m."

"Haven't you heard? I'm a f.a.ggot. I get off on that kind of thing."

"I can dig it-when life hands you lemons, make lemonade." I stared at a spot on the wall.

"You know your plane's boarding right now," he said, "right?" I've never ground my molars, but I was tempted to start. I planted my elbows on my knees and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. Ahh. "What is it you want, anyway?"

"Just making sure you've got a good overview of the situation. That right now, you're stuck here in the bowels of Terminal 2-while who-knows-what is happening to your friend out in California." I stopped pressing on my eyes and glanced sideways at Dreyfuss.

When the sparklies dissipated, there he was, looking at me. Dead serious now. I said, "What do you know about Lisa?"

"Not much. The western edge of my territory is the Nebraska border, remember? But Lisa was a Chicago girl...if only for a couple of weeks."

"Look up your FPMP buddies in the company's California directory.

I'm sure they'll be happy to score some points by filling you in."

"They've got their hands full with the universities out there trying to ban telepaths from qualifying for scholarships. What do they care about a single precog who isn't even a California resident?" He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. "Especially if none of her paperwork happens to mention the fact that she's practically omniscient?" On one hand, I suspected he was just trying to scare me by

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acknowledging how powerful Lisa's little si-no actually was. On the other, it was working. "So why're you here?"

He set the empty water bottle on the seat between us, then propped his elbows on his knees, mirroring me, and laced his fingers together.

His nails looked just as chewed as they had in February. "When someone goes missing, the chance of finding them grows exponentially more improbable each and every day that pa.s.ses. Lisa's three days gone. Her roommate's been AWOL for a week."

The thing with missing adults is that unless there's some obvious clue, like a b.l.o.o.d.y candlestick in the conservatory, law enforcement needs to go with the theory that they've up and left on their own accord. Cold feet before the wedding, a secret rendezvous with an online fling, the sudden urge to see the Grand Canyon. People do all kinds of crazy s.h.i.t. Some adults are considered lower risk for ditching their lives than others. People with children. People with steady jobs.

People in loving relationships.

I had no idea what the roommate's deal was, but Lisa was single and childless, and her job status was vague.

Even worse, she'd been struggling hard with the meaning of life. That might sound existential, but for a Psych, it ranks in importance with all the other big pieces of the ident.i.ty puzzle: job, friends, home, kids, and whatever else keeps people from jumping off bridges.

Here's where most people whose loved ones are gone say, "But I know them. They wouldn't have left without telling anyone. It's just not like them."