PsyCop 4: Secrets (4 page)

I looked for sheets. There were none. The pillows were all bare, with the words “King – Deluxe – Firm” printed on them, over and over, until the letters formed a meaningless pattern. I moved the pillows toward the head of the bed and shook out the comforter. I couldn’t tell the long side from the short side, and I kept rotating it around, trying to figure out which way it was supposed to go, while Jacob hung up his suit and tucked his gun and holster into the bedside table.

“Forget it,” said Jacob. “I’ve got to try and sleep.” 

Try? Not to have a Yoda moment or anything, but I’d never known Jacob to “try” and sleep. It was something he just did. Expansively. Deeply. Even loudly, those nights when he snored. What did he mean by “try?”

“You want a Seconal?”

Jacob shook his head. “I’ve got to get up in three hours.” I left my clothes in a mound on the floor and climbed into bed. The mattress was slippery without a sheet to cover it up. I wondered why people even bothered with sheets, but I figured there had to be a reason, and it was just the Seconal thinking for me and enjoying the Teflon experience. I slid toward the middle of the mattress and pressed myself against Jacob’s side. “Want me to suck you off?” I asked. I figured that I always slept like a baby after a good blow job.

Jacob rolled to face me and pulled me against his chest. He kissed the side of my head through my hair, and said, “I’ll take a rain check.” Which was good, since I was already halfway to dreamland.

Q

I woke up puzzled, and a tin ceiling embossed with stylized flowers came into focus.

Weird. I sat up and looked at Jacob’s side of the bed. It was empty. Sunlight filtered in through a small, high window above the headboard. The headboard was made of actual wood, wood that hadn’t been ground up and molded into a big, pressboard shape.

Jacob was gone and I was alone with a whole day stretching out in front of me. We’d both put in for a few days off to get the cannery in order. But we both try not to hang too much hope on our time off, since PsyCops, unlike regular detectives, could be called back to the precinct at any time. The fact that it could have been either of us on the receiving end of that phone call didn’t make it any easier for the one who was stuck at home, staring at mountains of cardboard boxes.

Maybe they needed me at the Fifth—some matter that wasn’t life or death, but something I could help out with, all the same. Something I could do.

I found my cell phone in the wad of stuff on the floor and called work.

A pleasant female voice answered. “Fifth Precinct. Sergeant Warwick’s office.”

“Hi Betty, it’s Vic.”

“Detective Bayne! Are you all moved in to your new house?” Betty was practically bubbling over with enthusiasm, so I figured I should do my best not to sound as pessimistic as I felt. “Yeah, everything made it in one piece. Even got my computer hooked up.”

I spent two hours searching for myself on it, and apparently I don’t exist. I didn’t say it. It wasn’t as if Betty could’ve known about it. She was just the secretary.

“I’ve got a card for you to fill out with your change of address,” she said. “Do you want me to take down all the information now so that you just have to sign it when you come in Thursday?”

“Uh, no. I’ll, uh…fill it out myself. So Warwick’s not gonna call me in today?”

“Not unless there’s an emergency, no. You enjoy your time off. And let us all know what we should bring to your housewarming party.”

I forgot how to breathe. “My what?”

“It’s your first home, isn’t it? You’ve got to let us all see. We’re all so excited for you.” Who the heck was this “all” she kept referring to? Betty was the only one at the station who was even civil to me, other than Sergeant Warwick and my partner, Bob Zigler. And neither Warwick nor Zig had ever expressed a desire to spend any time with me outside of work.

“It’s, um…I dunno. I have all this unpacking to do.”

“If you make a list of things you need, I’ll keep track of it for you so that we all know what to get you for housewarming gifts. You wouldn’t want to end up with two blenders or two crock pots.”

“No,” I said dully. “No sense in having two of everything.”

“Allrighty then, Detective. Don’t work too hard. And remember to stretch before you lift anything heavy.”

“Yeah. Uh, thanks. Bye.”

I disconnected and stared down at the phone. Was Betty serious about this housewarming thing? It sounded like it. I wasn’t about to invite my co-workers to my house. I was living with a man. I ran my fingers through my hair and stared at the phone some more. I could always set up the futon in the smaller bedroom and pretend it was mine. But come on—

who’d buy that I’d suddenly moved in with a “roommate” at my age? Besides, we had that bedroom earmarked as an office, and we’d left the futon for the Goodwill truck.

I stepped out of the real bedroom and stared over the railing at the disaster below. The floor was covered in boxes, with a bunch of really dinky white furniture shoved against one wall, and Jacob’s big, majestic pieces placed randomly throughout the room.

I clutched at the railing and closed my eyes. It was all too much: the move, my Internet-nonexistence, and now this fucking housewarming party.

I decided to unpack. Not because I was planning a get-together, but because I figured it was a logical thing to do since I’d just moved. Even though I had no intention of opening my house up to the rest of the precinct, my conversation with Betty kept on drifting
 
through my head as I opened boxes, stared at their contents, and realized that unless it belonged in the kitchen or bathroom, I had no idea where to put anything.

Did I need a fake bedroom? It seemed like a real waste, since although the loft was big, it didn’t have many separate rooms. It could be a guest room. But who would stay over—Jacob’s parents? Maybe. Or Lisa, if she ever spoke to me again. And since I hadn’t heard from Lisa since she changed her phone number on me, I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

I carried the box with Jacob’s computer stuff upstairs, realized that there was no way to hook it up to the Internet up there, and brought it all back down. I considered stowing all my furniture in the basement. But since that would involve
me
going down into the
basement
, I decided against it.

I stared at the mess all around me and felt useless. I rummaged through some coat pockets, a briefcase and a duffel bag, and located a few stashes of Auracel and Seconal and a stray tab of Valium. I considered calling it an early, early night with the help of my prescription friends, but I decided it was really too pathetic for me to go to bed before it was even dark out.

I went into the kitchen, opened up my laptop and signed in.

The virus definitions didn’t start downloading. Amazing. I wondered if I’d broken it the night before. And then a little box popped up.

Ash Man:
hey psy-pig - what r u wearing?

Huh? I stared at the box.

Ash Man:
cat got ur tongue - or is mr perfect right there?

Crash had figured out yet another way to insinuate himself into my life. Great. I put the cursor in the box, typed something back and hit enter.

LETS69:
what did you do to my computer…is it ok…i’m not on any search engines…either is maurice hardly

What the fuck was “LETS69” supposed to be? Was that me? Cute, real cute.

Ash Man:
doesnt ur comp work faster now? i can cum over if ur still having trouble

LETS69:
don’t come over

Ash Man:
ok lets just cyber then - i promise it doesnt count as cheating -

what r u wearing???

I closed the laptop’s lid. It didn’t make that annoying beep again like it had the previous night. Not bad.

I made myself a sandwich, ate it, and considered making another. My cell phone rang.

Good thing I have caller ID. Otherwise, I would have said something stupid, like, “Quit bugging me.” Because if Crash was desperate enough to try to have cyber sex, no doubt he’d be persistent enough to try phone sex, too.

It wasn’t Crash on the line. It was Carolyn.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Vic? Is Jacob around? He’s not answering his cell.” I looked around the room as if he would just appear there. He didn’t. “He’s not with you?”

“We left fifteen minutes ago. Are you at home? I don’t have the number for your land line.”

The carbonless form was sitting right where on the countertop, just where I’d left it. One corner of it had gotten wet and then dried wrinkly, with the ink smudged in a snowflake pattern. I read the land line number to Carolyn, and thought about writing it down somewhere for myself. But then, I didn’t see a pen anywhere, and promptly forgot.

“Tell Jacob to call me. He’s not feeling very good about this case.” Could anybody feel good about a case in an old folks’ home? “What’s going on? Anything I can help you with?”

“You know I can’t discuss the particulars with you.”

“Are you serious? You and what’s-his-name don’t talk about your investigations?”

“Doug. No.”

Jacob and I talked about our cases all the time. We weren’t supposed to, technically, but come on. We’re both PsyCops. Maybe that’s why Carolyn never discussed business at home. Her husband was a high school teacher or something.

“Say, Carolyn, Jacob and I don’t
have
to have a housewarming party, do we?”

“I guess not. Why?”

“I never owned a house before. I don’t know how these things are done.”

“Oh. Well…don’t you want to get all kinds of free stuff?” I sighed. “Never mind.” I wanted to ask her about Camp Hell. How could I do that if I couldn’t even explain to her about a stupid housewarming party?

“Okay, then. When you see Jacob….” Carolyn was obviously trying to wrap up the conversation, so I just came right out and asked.

“Do you ever search yourself on the Internet? Because I’m not on there. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“No, I don’t search myself.”

She’d only answered one of my questions. Which must have meant that she didn’t want to answer the other one. She couldn’t lie, so not answering was her only option. I bet she knew something.

“Jacob knew I couldn’t be looked up, didn’t he? I’ll bet he searched me before we even started dating. He’s thorough like that. He would have tried.”

“I’m going now, Vic. Goodbye.”

I was right. Jacob had tried to search me. He knew I didn’t exist electronically. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned it?

I decided to brave the laptop again, and lo and behold, no more love notes from Crash appeared. Maybe he was busy with a customer. Or maybe he’d taken an afternoon break for Oprah. He claims he turns on the show for Miss Mattie, but he was so religious about tuning in that I assumed he was hooked on it, too. I figured out how to shut the instant message program off. I hoped it would be enough. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to unin-stall it, if things came to that.

I did some searches on how to search for people, but every time I thought I was getting somewhere, I’d hit a screen that asked for a credit card number to go any farther.

I wouldn’t mind paying $14.95 if I knew it wasn’t a scam, but we get bulletins all the time at the Fifth about don’t click this, don’t put your information into that. I glared at the laptop. I heard about five-year-olds who surfed the Net. So why couldn’t I figure it out?

I flipped open my cell phone and hit memory dial eight.

The phone rang five times. I thought it would go to voice mail, but then my partner answered. My work partner. “Zigler.”

“Oh, uh…hey, Zig. I was wondering if you could point me to a legitimate people-finding site. I’m trying to look up an old friend.”

“You know their full name, don’t you? Just have Betty skip-trace ‘em.” It hadn’t occurred to me to use the station’s resources. “I can do that?”

“Sure. She runs ‘em all the time.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause. “Anything else?”

“You ever try to search the Internet for Heliotrope Station?” Zig didn’t answer me for a long time, but I heard him breathing through his nose. “It’s not there,” he said eventually.

“You knew? Cripes, was anyone gonna tell me?”

“Vic….”

“What’s next? Are people gonna say I made it up? Maybe it’s like
Manchurian Candidate
, and my memories are all switched. What was really going on was that I lounged around and ate loads of starchy cafeteria food for two years while everyone else had to go to work and pay their taxes to support my luxury lifestyle. And all that scary shit I remember? A figment of my imagination. Never happened.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Zig said. He hung up.

I’d always thought people who suspected the government was monitoring their cell phone conversations were just paranoid. The fact that Camp Hell had been wiped from history was making paranoia seem like good common sense.

I took a shower and nuked a frozen burrito, burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and determined that I was unable to lift Jacob’s TV and unable to find mine. I’d run out of ways to do nothing, and had made up my mind to drive to Zigler’s house and wring some answers out of him in person when Jacob came home. It was past eight, nearly three hours after I’d spoken with Carolyn.

“Hey. Carolyn was looking for you. Where’ve you been?”

“At the gym.”

For me, going to the gym ranks right up there with getting my teeth cleaned. To each his own, I guess. And I’ve got no complaints about the results. He was wearing his suit and overcoat, so I figured he’d showered there. My hair would’ve had icicles hanging off, but his towel-dried in a minute flat. “Are you hungry?”

“No, I ate.” He pulled out his cell and hit Carolyn’s memory dial. “Yeah. Uh-huh. The gym.” He wove through a couple of stacks of boxes and headed toward the stairs. I felt vaguely bad for being such a lousy unpacker. I’d had the whole day to work on it and I’d achieved pretty much nothing. “No, I don’t think she’s delusional. Listen, I know it sounds far-fetched, but it could just be a matter of semantics.” It sounded complicated. I wondered what he meant. I followed him upstairs so I could hear some more.