Spook Squad (27 page)

It was just about a year ago, I realized, that we’d blundered into the world’s most hideous basement scene together, a room full of animated corpses on gurneys flapping around like dying fish. All the elements of my worst fears were there: basements, medical equipment, confinement and ghosts. Yet, somehow, the scene hit Zig twice as hard. He wasn’t inured to the horror like I was. Maybe, had he seen the ghosts moving the bodies, the trapped spirits clumsily tethered to their former shells, it might have been slightly less terrifying.

Or maybe not.

In the past year, Zig seemed to have aged at least five. His salt-and-pepper mustache was mostly gray now. His sagging skin had a gray undertone, too. Here he was, dealing with supernatural stuff that scared him shitless. Now, on top of it, the collars he made were going free thanks to some slick lawyers and the average NP’s distrust of Psychs. He looked ragged and depleted. He looked miserable.

I was about to suggest he apply for a transfer—but then I wondered if that was even possible. PsyCops don’t have anywhere lateral to move. The only way out for them was retirement. That wasn’t a one-way ticket on the disappearance express, was it? Jacob retired, and now he was in his glory as a federal agent. As far as I knew, Maurice was fine. Earlier in the week, he’d emailed me some photos of him and his wife surrounded by a buffet full of shrimp on a Caribbean cruise. “Maybe it’s time to look at retiring,” I said, as neutrally as I could.

“No way I could swing it, no way. Not until Robbie’s through with undergrad.”

“How long is that?”

“He’s a high school junior now. Six more years…assuming he gets his Bachelor’s in four. Which he’d better.”

Shit. With Zig aging in dog years, six years from now he’d be a mummy. He’d almost quit last winter and I talked him out of it—I’m guessing that was before he got his first college-level tuition bill for his oldest kid. I was about to suggest he go ahead and take a medical leave to get himself together, if that was what he needed…but then I thought better of it. Maybe he was smart to keep the chinks in his armor from showing. For all I knew, it was some vulnerability of Wembly’s that got him disappeared.

“Look, I’m sorry I blew your story with Nancy. But from now on, you can tell me what’s really going on, y’know? Who am I to judge?”

He nodded, staring at his knees. “I just need to wrap my head around some things. That’s all.”

“I get it, Zig. I really do.” I stood up and handed him the note I’d been holding all this time. “But if you can spare the mental energy while you’re soul-searching, it would help us both out if you dug up a little something on a missing PsyCop.”

*
 
*
 
*

Waiting for Lisa to come home was driving me nuts, and my edginess was driving Jacob nuts, so he holed up in his office while I cleaned the rest of the cannery very loudly. Every now and then I’d pause in my stomping and banging to consider texting something that might lure Lisa back home, but then I’d remind myself who she was with. Any coaxing on my part would be a big red flag inviting Dreyfuss to turn his psychic attention our way. So I mopped the floors. And I slammed the kitchen cabinets. And I bided my time.
 

I was beginning to think Lisa might not come home at all when finally she rolled in around eleven, carrying one of those styrofoam clamshell doggie bags. I’d sat down fast in front of my puzzle, hoping to appear as if I’d been too riveted by the topless men in bowlers to go to bed. But just as surely as I’d figured out which thing on the hardware shelf was a tape measure, she took one look at me and knew I’d been waiting up for her. Thanks, sí-no.

“Why are you mad?” she said.

“I’m not.” She’d know I sure as hell was, and yet I denied it on principle. “I just wanted to…” I sighed and knuckled my dry eyes. “Lisa, I really need your help.”

She put away her leftovers, then came and sat down beside me. “It’s hard, you know? I can tell you don’t approve.”

“Forget it—you don’t need my approval. I’m not your father.” We both sat with that statement for a while. Lisa’s dad was a beat cop who’d died in the line of service when she was a teenager. No wonder she was a magnet for older guys.

“But you are my friend,” she said.

I stared at her hand on the table. She was wearing nail polish, iridescent purple, and she’s not a nail polish girl. It was a slick professional job, too—no doubt she and Dreyfuss had hit the nail salon together, since they were joined at the hip. “If he ever turned you against me—”

“Why would he? Victor, he likes you.” She watched me until I met her eye, then said, “Yeah, you get on his nerves, but he likes you anyway.”

It pained me to think it, but maybe on some level, Agent Smartass and I were too much alike. Maybe I could trust him…if only he weren’t so cagey about Detective Wembly. “Can you answer me a sí-no?”

“What is it?”

“There’s a missing PsyCop named Wembly.” I almost asked if Dreyfuss had him erased…and then I reminded myself that I was talking about her boyfriend. Also, that I should probably establish a baseline first. “Is he dead?”

Her expression went somber. “No.” We sat there together beside the stupid puzzle and watched one another, and finally she said, “He’s okay.”

“Did Dreyfuss tell you to say that?” I blurted out. Her eyebrows shot up. I realized I’d just crossed a line, and I tried to backpedal. “He almost had me strip-searched, you know. You can’t blame me for wondering.”

She stood abruptly. “It’s late. We’re both tired. I’m going to bed.”

“This guy Wembly is gone, Lisa. A PsyCop who disappeared. Dreyfuss knows what happened to him, right? Maybe you won’t answer me, but I’ll bet the sí-no planted the answer in your head anyway. Just saying, if Dreyfuss had something to do with it, you’d be better off knowing. Don’t go into this with blinders on. If Dreyfuss is disappearing PsyCops, you need to know.”

It was a desperate attempt—but I figured it was the only shot I had. She’d be up at the crack of dawn doing Pilates or Zumba with the guy, and he’d brainwash her into telling me whatever it was he wanted me to hear. But instead of swinging around and proclaiming yes or no, she shook her head sadly and said, “I’m not getting between you two. If the PsyCop is okay, then drop it.”

Chapter 23

Now that Jacob’s weekends actually fall on the weekend, he could potentially begin sleeping in. He never does, though. With only one lifespan of waking time and infinite bad guys to outsmart, he’d feel too guilty for indulging in an excessive amount of sleep as often as two days a week. I’m not one for lingering in bed either, though my reason is less purpose-driven than Jacob’s. Even when I’ve been slumbering in the tender arms of Seconal, it’s my natural edginess that peels my eyelids open, usually before Jacob wakes up. Which was why I was surprised to find his side of the bed empty and cool.

Sometimes he gets ambitious and makes a big breakfast, but unfortunately, I didn’t smell anything cooking. I sat up, fuzzy, thinking about Dreyfuss asking me if I needed uppers to pry my eyes open. Anxiety handled the wakeup call…but lately it was taking more than a few of those caffeine shots to lift the fog. Now
there
was a vicious cycle I had no intention of riding. No, all I needed to do was cut back, divvy up the capsules into halves like I had before, and be really firm with myself about limiting my dose. Just think how long they’d last if I was really consistent. My dealer might even be able to score more before I ran out.
 

I staggered into the hallway to go mainline said caffeine when I heard the clack of a keyboard coming from Jacob’s office. I took a detour, and found him working away at his desk. Strangely enough, though, not at his computer. His monitor was pushed back and his keyboard shoved aside while he typed on a crappy laptop.

“Dare I ask?” I said.

He docked his MP3 player, fired up some 80’s college-rock, and motioned for me to come close. When I was in range, he dragged me down onto his lap. The office chair groaned in complaint, but hopefully it would hold us for a few minutes if we didn’t start doing anything too rambunctious. He locked his arms around my middle, then whispered against the nape of my neck, “Laura Kim’s apartment building runs surveillance on the lobby. The files are a common format—same types of files you’d download from a porn site and watch on any computer.”

That would explain the lobby footage playing on the laptop’s low-resolution screen in front of us. I recognized the date in the corner, that fateful day last February. The time signature beside it ticked by at double speed. He’d borrowed the files, rather than sifting through them in the FPMP archives. It seemed like a smart move, though I suspected if he got caught taking home the extra credit, there’d be hell to pay. That’s why he was using an untraceable computer. I grabbed a plain plastic bag off the mountain of unread periodicals on the desk and fished out the receipt from a 24-hour pawn shop. One used laptop, paid in cash, purchased two hours ago. Guess I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping.

A figure blurred by, and Jacob reached around me and hit a key. The footage reversed. He watched again at half speed. It was a man carrying groceries. He hit another key, and the footage sped to double time. The time signature hit 14:00:00. “You’ve been watching since she got home?” I whispered.

His affirmative nod nudged the back of my head. “Eleven thirty. Consistent with her testimony.”

I settled back against his chest and watched the footage with a sick sort of fascination. Nothing moved but the time stamp in the corner, yet I was totally engrossed. Jacob’s fingertips toyed at the lower edge of my sternum, but the weight of his focus remained on the screen. A few minutes later, another blur passed, which turned out to be the mail carrier, first coming, then going. And then a blue-haired old lady. And a black guy. And then…Jacob’s breath caught.

Five hours after Laura Kim went home for the day to crawl into bed and nurse her debilitating migraine, there she was, heading back out again.

*
 
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*

After carefully picking through the footage, we determined Laura was not at her apartment at the time of Burke’s shooting. Jacob would need to figure out where she’d been heading. We spent the morning brainstorming angles for him to pursue. Luckily she’d left her car at work. Cab receipts might tell Jacob where she went, if the cab companies still had them at this point, and were willing to divulge them without a subpoena. But he’d need to make that request from the FPMP, not the cannery, if he wanted a chance at getting his hands on the goods.

We’d done all we could from home, but of course it killed Jacob that he couldn’t do more. While he worked out his frustration at the gym, I headed to Wicker Park to pick up Crash for our monthly sage smudging. I wasn’t sure how well the smudging ritual blocked Dreyfuss’ prying eyes, but especially now, it seemed like we should keep up our defenses. Plus it was a good reason to slip Crash a hundred bucks.

Instead of double-parking and calling him to come downstairs like I usually do when I pick him up, I found a spot and regular-parked. It was doubtful Miss Mattie would know what had happened to Detective Wembly, since she kept her focus directed on Crash. She did understand how the world of spirit worked, though. While she might frame everything in terms of God’s love, maybe she could help me understand if it was possible to coax back a repeater’s spirit and question it.

And if I could master that trick, maybe I could drag Roger Burke out of hell…and maybe I could force him to give me some straight answers, too. I was so focused on my mission, I nearly collided with an older woman in the vestibule as she exited the boarded-up palm reader shop. “’Scuse me,” I mumbled, and flattened myself against the mailbox bank so she could pass me.

Instead, she paused and looked me up and down. She was pushing seventy, with long gray hair and deep creases in her skin. She looked like a quintessential Brothers Grimm witch, at least from the neck up. But her Blackhawks jersey and stylishly distressed designer jeans ruined the Hansel and Gretel illusion. “Can I bum a cigarette?” she said, raspy-voiced.

“Sorry. I don’t smoke.” I pointed to the palm reader’s door “Are you the, uh…?”

“Lydia.”

“Vic.” She nodded, but didn’t offer to shake hands. I suggested, “Maybe Crash can spare one.”

“He quit…a few months ago.”
 

While I tried to tell myself I hadn’t noticed he’d quit because his shop is always full of traces of lingering incense and burnt sage, I felt profoundly oblivious anyway. In an effort to appear more observant, I inclined my head toward the plywood. “Did they ever catch the guys who did the break-in?”

“Are you kidding? Those cops are a bunch of useless jerks. All they care about is giving out parking tickets.” She considered me while I did my best to look un-cop-like, and then she said, “I normally charge seventy dollars for a reading. But for ten bucks, I’ll pull a card for you.”

And normally I would take a pass, but with the break-in and the lack of insurance, I felt bad for her. One card suited me just fine. Lydia would get her nicotine fix, and I’d only be delayed for a few minutes.
 

She ducked back inside without inviting me in, but I did catch a glimpse. Broken glass glittered along the baseboards, and a hole was punched through the drywall opposite the door, right in the center of a jumble of distorted blackletter gang initials. Robbery had a motive I could understand. But knocking a hole in the old lady’s wall and then tagging it was adding insult to injury.

She came back out with a tarot deck and began shuffling the second she had both hands free. The cards were manufactured with rounded corners, but even so, those rounded edges were further blunted by age and use, and the backs of the cards were matte, the coating worn off by thousands of shuffles. She handled them with the confidence of a blackjack dealer. “Don’t touch the deck,” she said. “Just point.” She fanned the cards.

I pointed randomly. She nudged the fan with her thumb and a card poked out. “That one? Are you sure?”