PsyCop: GhosTV Part 13

"I don't mean it in that way."

Oh. I was still experiencing some residual queasiness, but that was more from my flight in the Learjet-and my proximity to Dreyfuss- than from my current state of medication. The last Auracel I'd taken, back at the amus.e.m.e.nt park, was long gone from my system. I looked around to see if a hippy ghost in tie-dye might have been lingering on the sheet set, camouflaged by the barrage of color. Nothing there but the pillow. "Other than your standard crosswalk-repeaters at the major intersections, I haven't seen any dead since we got off that plane."

"I was concerned, since this used to be a TB hospital-"

"And they run a Psych training facility here? Cripes. Was the local Indian burial ground unavailable or what?"

"Bert says it's clean."

"Bert the Director-who you happen to be on a first name basis with.

Since when?"

Jacob swung himself over the garish bed so he could talk to me face-to-face without leaning around the crate. "Remember I told you a shaman helped me out when Hugo Cooper was sticking to me after his execution?"

"Yeah?"

"That's him. Bert Chekotah."

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My drug-deprived brain struggled with the image of the attractive guy in the gray linen suit shaking an eagle feather over Jacob. Shouldn't he have been wearing beads? And pelts? And buckskin chaps? Maybe I was thinking of the Village People. The knowledge that he and Jacob knew each other in a professional context was comforting to me- surprisingly so-since Chekotah was young, and good-looking, and undoubtedly more athletic than me. I hadn't realized that the idea of Jacob bartering his way into PsyTrain with s.e.xual favors was even a thought I'd been entertaining.

"Vic?"

"Uh...right. The shaman. Yeah, I remember." Of course the word shaman set me to wondering about that other talent Chekotah had mentioned when we'd asked what Karen Frugali was, since I wasn't particularly clear on what either of those talents actually were. I was about to ask Jacob what sort of talent he thought either of those words meant, in terms I could understand, when Dreyfuss' voice rang out from the bathroom.

"Knock knock!"

I flinched, and whispered, "Maybe we can push that crate in front of the bathroom door when we go to sleep."

Jacob leaned over the foot of the bed and opened the door. There Dreyfuss was, framed in the doorway, holding a toothbrush. "If you take it into your head to dip this in the toilet, just remember. You never know when you might be on Candid Camera."

"Just make sure it gets my good side when I'm using the facilities," Jacob said. He said it cop-faced, which I took to mean that he wasn't trying to convey any actual mirth.

Dreyfuss hung his cheerful purple toothbrush from a holder on the wall. "Your bags were already loaded on the commercial flight by the time I got to O'Hare, otherwise I would've had my men on it-but like I said, you need anything, just say the word. I'll put in a call."

96.

I glanced at the crate, but either Dreyfuss didn't notice, or he was taking his sweet time about mentioning it just to p.i.s.s me off.

Dreyfuss pulled the scrunchie from his hair, tucked it in his pocket, and gave his temples a quick rub. His hair spread over his shoulders in a bunch of corkscrew curls. "I guess if no one needs anything from me, I'll turn in for the night so I can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning."

Jacob cleared his throat. I looked at him. He indicated the crate with his eyes.

I supposed if Dreyfuss wasn't going to volunteer what it was all about, it really was my responsibility to ask. I just hated that he was making me do it. I almost prefaced it with a long-suffering sigh, but managed to curb it. "What about this thing?"

"I told you at the airport I'd make it worth your while. What, you didn't believe me? Don't you always come away from our negotia-tions with a little something extra for your troubles?"

"What is it?" Jacob asked.

"I'd tell you..." he turned toward the door to his room, "...but then it would spoil the surprise. The combination is Detective Bayne's birthday."

"But there's no room to-" I tried to say, but Dreyfuss talked right over me.

"I've got some phone calls to make before I hit the hay. I'll leave you two to plan out your investigation. You're the detectives, after all. I'm just a glorified paper-pusher."

He closed the bathroom door, which left Jacob and me alone with the crate. Would a normal person be excited? Would they start dreaming up what sort of luxury item or major appliance might be lurking inside to bribe them into accepting that the FPMP was not so bad after

97.

all...so long as you didn't value your personal privacy. Hard to say.

Sometimes I could manage a pretty good approximation of a normal person's reaction-but now wasn't one of those times.

"I don't want it," I said.

Jacob pressed himself against my back, which at first I took for him trying to move me out of the way. Not that there was anywhere for me to go; I was trapped, with a mattress on either side and a monster crate in front of me. Then his hands slid around my stomach and he pulled me back against him, this wall of warm solidity, and I felt myself sag into him before I'd even consciously decided it was okay to relax.

d.a.m.n, he felt good.

"Look first, before you decide."

"But that's the thing." My voice sounded tired, even to me. "If I look, I'm gonna want it."

"You don't know that."

"No. I do. I'm sure of it." I felt Jacob's forehead press against the back of my skull. His breath was warm through my hair. I drew the strength to put words to my thoughts from the feel of him breathing me. "You saw the big pretzel. You know how he manipulates people." It was wide open for Jacob to try to ratchet down my anxiety by saying something like, "You can fit one h.e.l.l of a pretzel in that thing," but he didn't take the bait. Instead, he thought for a moment, and he said, "You're better off knowing than not knowing. You need to be able to weigh all your choices so you know what you're getting into, so you can go in with your eyes open."

"I don't want to owe him anything."

"He never said you would, did he?"

98.

"So far, just an exorcism-but I'm sure there's wiggle room for him to tack some extras onto my bill somewhere down the line. I wish he'd just be straight with me. There are too many angles to this thing. Too many ways it can turn out bad."

He held me for several long moments, and then he said, "There's got to be some reason he s.h.i.+pped it all the way to California."

"There's a reason he does everything. That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"Look." Jacob turned me around so that we were facing each other, with a displaced dresser to one side and the crate on the other, and a mattress behind each of us. "After Heliotrope Station, the thought of anyone recruiting you for your talent makes you shut down. I get it. But what about the Fifth Precinct? That turned out okay, otherwise you never would've stuck with it this long."

"Maybe I don't want to screw that up."

He worked my forearm through the sleeve of my jacket with his thumb. "Then you need to look. Because hiding your head in the sand isn't helping anything."

I glanced at the crate. The gunmetal gray plastic was pebbled with texture, with a few sc.r.a.pes showing on one of the sides right around doork.n.o.b-height. The corners and edges were chased with metal, and the whole thing had a strap around it that closed with a barrel lock.

I tried to picture myself opening it up, but I'd gotten myself worked up to the point of imagining a one-way ticket back to Camp h.e.l.l, or somewhere worse. Somewhere they weren't just trying out random meds to see what would happen to Psychs' brains. Somewhere they d.a.m.n well knew...and they used them to manipulate us like a bunch of drugged-out puppets. "I can't."

He kissed me. It was gentle, something I felt more in his goatee

99.

tickling my upper lip and my chin than on my mouth, and he said softly, "Then I am."

He turned, keeping one hand anch.o.r.ed on my arm, and thumbed the barrels to 0-2-2-3. The lock clicked open.

"So...you actually do know when my birthday is," I said. And there, it was me trying to cut the tension, not him.

"Of course I do. I'd just lost track and the date snuck up on me." He glanced down at the open lock. "Are you doing this with me?" I couldn't. I shook my head.

"Are you going to stop me?"

Was I? It didn't feel like it. I was paralyzed. I gave my head another curt shake that could be interpreted as a no.

Jacob popped a couple of clasps, top and side, and gave the crate a wiggle. It stayed shut. He ran his fingers along the closed seam, found a clasp on the bottom he'd missed the first time around, and snapped it open.

A dark crack appeared. The front of the crate separated. It didn't open on a hinge like a door; it pulled off like the lid of a big s...o...b..x standing on its side. Before I could see anything, Jacob demanded, "What the...?" as if the case could talk back to him.

And given some of the things I'd seen over the last few years, I really hoped it couldn't.

"It's a TV set," he said. "An old one."

I half-heard that last part over a great whoos.h.i.+ng in my ears, because the apathy and avoidance I'd so carefully maintained over the mammoth crate came cras.h.i.+ng down like a thrill ride at the amus.e.m.e.nt park, and my heart was pounding so hard I felt like my blood was going to burst through my veins and squirt out my ears. The lid was

100.

blocking my view. I took it from Jacob a lot more calmly than I felt, and held it there to one side of me while I looked.

I'd been expecting the GhosTV.

I was wrong.

101.

Chapter 12.

The TV set inside the crate was decades older than the GhosTV I knew.

It was a seventies model in a more elaborate wooden console, with sparkly brown fabric covering the panel that hid the speakers.

Even though it was definitely not the set from the motel room in Missouri, my heart kept on pounding as if it knew something I hadn't quite admitted yet. Like it remembered that even though the original GhosTV was in an evidence locker in St. Louis, Roger Burke and his cronies had cobbled together more than one GhosTV. And it was pretty sure I was currently looking at one of those "extras."

"Help me unpack it," I said. My voice was so thick with emotion that it startled Jacob.

"Is this...?"

"Not the one from St. Louis." I took a careful breath and let it out.

"But I think it might be one of the others."

"You hold the crate. I'll get the set out."

Fleetingly, I toyed with the idea of ruing my lack of athleticism-but everything's got limits, and the desire to wallow in my self esteem issues couldn't hold a candle to the thought that I could very well be in the presence of a genuine GhosTV-without a gun to my head or a shot of sodium amytal wending its way through my veins. Besides, holding the crate turned out to take a good amount of actual effort.