PsyCop 6: GhosTV (18 page)

“Did you want to come down for lunch in the staff dining room? You and Jacob?”

Jacob looked to Dreyfuss and said quietly, “What about you? You want in?”

“Nah, I’ve got a fetish for white bread and pudding cups. Plus I’ve got a phone call or thirty to make. Enjoy your carob and sprouts.” Katrina/Faun was a wall of chatter I tuned out from the moment we left our room to the instant we walked through the dining room door and found everyone staring at us. The staff lounge was quite a bit smaller than the cafeteria where we’d cooled our heels waiting for the rooms to be shuffled when we’d first arrived. Not small and cozy, though. Small and opulent.

We made the rounds of introductions. A telepath, an empath, a bookkeeper, two precogs (one specializing in dreamwork), and holy crap—a bona fide telekinetic. Everyone was an instructor, except the bookkeeper. Although I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for a Psych to learn how to balance his checkbook.

A member of the kitchen staff took our order. It was kind of like being at a fancy wedding; we had a choice of vegetarian souvlaki or salmon. Here I’d thought Dreyfuss was being a smartass when he’d made his carob and sprouts comment. I went for the salmon. And I wondered exactly how familiar Con Dreyfuss was with PsyTrain.

“We weren’t clear,” Jacob said, smoothing the napkin over his lap, “what Karen Frugali was studying.”

“Mediumship,” said the dream coach, but Katrina/Faun corrected her with, “Light worker skills,” before she’d even finished the last syl-lable of the word.

I took a drink of water and tried to size up the dream coach without being too obvious. She was younger than the rest of the staff, maybe thirty, with dyed red hair in a rockabilly ponytail and Marilyn Monroe eyeliner. There were a few extra pounds on her that she carried mostly in her midsection, though her plunging neckline and a heavy-duty pushup bra would draw the eyes of any straight man well away from her muffin top.

Everyone else at PsyTrain was in the forty-and-up granola demograph-ic. Maybe dream girl wouldn’t mind talking to a couple of PsyCops from Chicago.

If we could ever figure out how to see her without Faun butting in.

“I’ll bet you were surprised to find your old friend from Heliotrope Station here,” Faun said to me.

Jacob caught my eye and quirked his eyebrow ever so slightly. I might not have said it out loud, and he might not be a telepath, but he seemed to hear
Which friend would that be?
loud and clear.

“I would never have pictured you as a cop,” she said, “but, you know, I think it suits you pretty well. You look good. You look happy.”

“Thanks.”

The kitchen guy wheeled out the tray of lunches. The salmon looked too fancy for institutional food, more at par with something Jacob would have cooked up at home as a way of saying,
I’m sorry I stood
you up at that party where all my friends were flexing so hard you
could barely fit in the room with their delts.

“I wonder sometimes,” she droned on, “how my life would have been different if I would have accepted that PsyCop job.” If…what? Wait a minute.

“At the time it seemed like so much money, you know? Enough to tempt even you. We were all surprised you’d left Ste—” she cut her eyes to Jacob, then started the sentence over. “I mean, you just didn’t strike any of us as a cop. You know?”

I stuffed some salmon into my mouth. It was okay. A bit on the dry side.

“But obviously it agrees with you. Really, you look terrific.” She slid her gaze to Jacob again as if she thought he was a pretty good catch, too. Or maybe just to imply that the decoy bed wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Thanks.”

“It makes sense to put someone who’s not quite so sensitive out there in the field where they’re vulnerable to all the negative energy that comes with the job. Accidents, killings and whatnot….” Whatnot? What the fuck was
whatnot
? “Just homicide,” I said. “I’m a homicide detective. Not a beat cop.” I was starting to get testy, and it carried in my voice. The bookkeeper and the empath were murmur-ing to each other, and Jacob was trying to catch my eye and give me a “calm down” look.

The dream coach leaned across the gap between her table and mine and said, “You don’t think anyone’s been murdered. Do you?” I chewed a hunk of flesh with a small, flexible bone inside, clipped the bone in half with my incisors, and swallowed it.

“We have no evidence of that,” Jacob said smoothly.
Yet
. That was unspoken.

“Of course not,” Katrina/Faun said. “Think about the combined talent of everyone in this room. Sensitive empaths and telepaths and precogs. If someone, one of us, met a violent end…we’d know. I’m sure of it.”

Bert Chekotah stepped into the room and Katrina’s gaze swung to him. Her eyes went wide and glittery with awe, and she smiled as if the mere sight of him transported her to a blissful plane.

Chekotah, on the other hand, just looked frazzled. Sure, his bone structure was still model-perfect, but his eyes were bloodshot, his hair was parted funny as if he’d washed it and let it dry without combing it, and his linen suit was more rumpled than the last time I’d seen it. “What would we know?” he asked.

Katrina hopped up and got him a glass of water with a lemon slice in it from the beverage cart. “Don’t worry about it now. Drink—you’ve been staying up ’til all hours. You’re fatigued and dehydrated. Have some food. Let it go for a few minutes and let your subconscious work through your problems.”

He dropped into the last empty chair—next to me—shook out a cloth napkin and let it fall across his lap. “I heard you sat in on one of our classes,” he said as he dug into the basket of stone-ground whole grain rolls. “You’re welcome to, of course. But how does that bring you any closer to finding Lisa?”

“We can’t discuss an ongoing investigation,” I said. It sounded funny coming from me, since it was usually Zig who was the mouthpiece.

“Sorry,” Jacob said. He managed to make himself sound sincere. I suspected that as strange as it was for me to be sans-Zigler, it must be a refreshing change of pace for Jacob to be partnered with someone who didn’t flinch every time he lied.

Jacob made small talk while we finished our salmon, and I tried to get a feel for the personalities—but I can’t say I was cut out for the task. When she wasn’t raiding the bread basket, Katrina talked over everyone else. They let her, though I couldn’t tell if that was because telling her to shut up was useless, or if they were treading lightly around her because she was Chekotah’s personal cheering section.

I did notice the dream coach leaned away from the other teachers when they spoke—if they could get a word in edgewise around Katrina—and that she even crossed her arms a time or two. Not a member of the love-in, that one.

Once Chekotah finished his veggie-topped mound of meat substitute, the kitchen guy rolled out a cart of desserts, which was exciting for a few seconds, until I realized it was mostly fruit. When he rolled up to me, I spied some cookies that had been well-hidden between the mango cups and the slightly green bananas. Chocolate chip. Nice.

I grabbed one and took a big bite. It had the wheaty dog biscuit taste of something that was way too healthy. Even the chocolate seemed gritty…and then I remembered Dreyfuss’ parting words. “Is this carob?” I managed around a mouthful of abrasive roughage.

The kitchen guy nodded. “You want another one for later?”

“No thanks.” Would anyone believe I was on a diet? Doubtful. “I’m watching my gluten.”

He wrapped one in a napkin and handed it to me, beaming. “It’s made with brown rice and spelt. Today’s your lucky day.” Right.

I washed down my mouthful of minimally-processed twigs with all of my water, and as I drained half of Jacob’s glass too, my phone rang.

I pulled it from my pocket and checked the caller. Crash. The Psych staff was regarding me with varying levels of annoyance for being gauche enough to let my phone ring at mealtime, except for the dream coach, who thought it was funny, and Chekotah, who looked too wrung-out to care. I let Crash leave me a message and set the phone to vibrate.

The teachers began pulling napkins off laps, draining herbal teas, and pushing away from the table. Quarter after one, almost time for afternoon classes to begin. My phone vibrated against the outside of my thigh. I ignored it, and stood to intercept the dream coach before she got away. “Listen, uh….”

“Debbie.”

“Debbie. Do you have a few minutes?”

“We’ll have to talk on my way to class.”

I glanced at Jacob, who gave me a small nod as if to say we’d cover more ground if we split up, so I tagged along to Debbie’s classroom.

She walked fast for a girl, especially a girl in retro tango heels, and when we got to the elevator, I saw she was breathing fast. She jabbed the “close door” button for all she was worth, and then we were alone.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“I just wanted to talk to you without the Stepford Hippies listening in. Lisa talked about you a lot. I want to help you, any way I can. She was one of my favorite students: smart, focused, and totally genuine.

It is
not
like her to just up and leave without saying anything.”

“What makes you think the administration shouldn’t be in the loop?”

“The Katrina-and-Bert thing was gag-worthy enough before he stepped into the Director position…but now?” She curled her lip. “Now she’s acting like she’s the Assistant Director, just ’cos she’s doing him.” I hadn’t even realized that Faun and Chekotah were an official “thing,” though in retrospect, the signs were pretty obvious. Not only had I glossed over it because it didn’t have anything to do with finding Lisa, but more likely, I hadn’t wanted to envision Faun Windsong “doing” anybody.

“Lisa was studying, uh…what do you call your technique?”

“Sleep Paths.” She rolled her eyes. “I wanted to call it ‘Dream Analysis,’ but I guess it didn’t test well in the over-45-with-too-much-money crowd.”

“So what happens when you dream? Do you uh…go somewhere?” She narrowed her eyes. “You are a Psych, aren’t you? Lisa was pretty slim on the specifics, but she let it slip once that you were really good at what you do.”

“I guess I’m not up on all the vocabulary.” Either because I didn’t want to pay attention, or because I couldn’t. The thought of not being able to learn anything even if I should choose to apply myself made the spelt I’d consumed do a nauseous flip in my stomach.

The elevator stopped on the second floor, and Debbie jammed the “close door” button in with her thumb and held it. “Dreaming happens in your brain. It’s a bunch of neurons firing—electricity.”

“What’s the difference between dreaming and astral projection?”

“I’ve never gone astral myself, but the current theory is a part of you does actually travel when you’re projecting. Probably some kind of wave or particle we don’t have the equipment to measure. Think about radios—they emit electromagnetic waves, and a hundred miles away, someone turns a dial and gets to hear that asshat Don Imus on the way to work. Projecting’s kind of like that, but your body is like a radio station, the world is your airwaves, and the rest of the astral plane is your car stereo.”

I dry-swallowed, and not just because jagged bits of spelt were stuck in my throat. Debbie’s explanation made total sense, not just to my head, but to my gut. “You’re a great teacher.” She tried to quell a smile. “That’s what Lisa said, too.”

“What do you know about—”

An alarm cut me off before I could ask her what the hell she might think my page full of
no no no
was all about.

“Damn it.” She released the close door button and the elevator doors creaked open. A couple of forty-something women in muted earth-tone clothing stared into the elevator car.

They eyed me—the tall guy in the suit—with no little amount of skepticism. “Are you okay, Professor March?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said, in a tone a lot sassier than the one she used with me. We filed out of the elevator and the newbie Psychs trooped in. Debbie gave them an ironic salute as the elevator doors slid shut to cut off their concerned looks. We walked down a hall filled with students on their way to classes.

“Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked her. “Maybe that Mexican restaurant across the street. I’ll buy you a margarita.”

“Can I take a rain check? I need to get to class.”

“Okay.”

“You want to sit in?”

“No, I uh…I would.” I actually wanted to. Weird. I’d been in class all morning, but I’d be interested to hear what was on Debbie’s lesson plan. Unfortunately, I didn’t think deciphering that dream where my teeth crumbled would help my investigation any. “Can’t you skip out?

Give ’em a reading assignment and have someone write their names on the blackboard if they talk while you’re gone?”

“Are you kidding me? One of them would go running to Katrina bitching about how I’d deprived them of the full value of their tuition.” She checked her watch. “They’ve determined my time is worth something like ten dollars a minute—and I’m almost late as it is.” She strode into the thick of the crowd. I spotted one or two goth-wannabes and a smattering of Earth mothers, but most of the crowd was a typical mix of people like you’d see waiting in line at the DMV.

It was possible that Debbie’s being in a hurry could work to my advantage. A lot of times when you interview a subject, they give you all kinds of ridiculous details, thinking they’ll add up to something like they do in a Sherlock Holmes book. Usually it turns out the first thing someone thinks is closer to the truth. Unless you count the zombie employment agency. I doubt that was first on anyone’s list.

“Listen…real quick…what do you think is going on?” She paused in the hallway, as students streamed around her and filtered into classrooms. Weighing her answer. Which meant she knew something—she just wasn’t sure how she wanted to say it.

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re gonna leave me hanging? Just like that?” She began to turn, but paused again in the doorway to her classroom.

It was a lot like Faun Windsong’s classroom, in that there were no desks, no world maps, no bulletin boards with construction paper turkeys made from handprints on it. Just a bunch of weird chairs, a watercooler and a whiteboard. And a dozen annoyed students all glancing at their watches then looking back at Debbie.