PsyCop .1: Inside Out (2 page)

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s only water.” She sounded embarrassed.
 

If the whole “all-thumbs” act was really an excuse to grope Carolyn’s feet—and get a good look at her legs—it was a very well-executed drop. But when Bayne straightened up, he seemed too flustered to have orchestrated the maneuver. Plus, he backed away from Carolyn like he was an empath on psyactives who couldn’t bear the sting of her annoyance. He’d been in a spot to look right down her blouse. And he hadn’t taken the bait. “I’m really sor—“

“I said it’s fine,” Carolyn snapped. “Stop apologizing.”

Bayne mopped at the front of his blazer with the now-soggy napkins, which began to disintegrate, shred and pill. The napkin shreds stuck in the jelly. He sighed. “Hand me that other water,” he said to Jacob, who held his tie against his abs to stop it from dragging through a splatter of jelly as he reached past the green bananas for a bottle of tepid water. “Thanks.” Bayne took it without making eye contact, then turned back to Taylor and said, “Now I’m gonna be sticky all day, unless we stop at SaverPlus.”

Taylor handed him a larger pile of napkins, and made a noise in reply that didn’t sound like either a yes or a no. Jacob supposed it sounded sympathetic. Maybe a repertoire of ambiguous noises would help him navigate his Carolyn conversations, though he supposed if his ability to make such noises hadn’t developed by now, his chance of spontaneously picking it up was pretty slim.

 
Before Jacob could say hello to Taylor in hopes of striking up a conversation with him and, by extension, his mysterious but sticky PsyCop partner, a florid guy in a pinstripe suit told everyone to grab a donut and find their seat, since admin wanted to make sure there was enough time for Q&A after the PowerPoint was done.

All the seats with a good view of the door were taken, as Carolyn had predicted. So were the seats by the dubious snacks. Jacob chose one that would normally have gone empty in a room full of cops, the chair that left his back to the door as an irresistible target for any axe-wielding mass murderer who might have slipped by every other cop in the precinct and headed straight for the conference room because their uncanny crazy-guy sense told them there were still a few squashed donuts left.

It just so happened to be the chair across the table from Taylor and Bayne.

The lights went low and a laptop projector with a loud fan flicked on. A piece of clip art appeared on the screen of a man with rays shooting out of his head. Someone really should have come up with some better psychic clip art by now. “The rights and responsibilities of a PsyCop are as close to those of the rest of the force as we can make them. But let’s face it. You’re playing by a different set of rules.” The title Psychic Evidence and the Court System swooshed in over the stock art.

Jacob had hoped the presentation would be a bit less dry. A new psych talent, maybe. Or a twist on the old methodology. Or a roster of all the city’s PsyCops—with precincts. And phone numbers. Because wouldn’t it make sense to share intelligence among themselves? Working with a telepath was nothing like working with an empath, for instance. All Jacob had needed to do with his old partner, Warren, was keep himself on an even keel to make sure his own inner dialog wasn’t read. What might it be like to work with a precog? Or a telekinetic?

Or a medium?

Across the table, Bayne kept fussing over his jacket without even pretending to pay attention to the PowerPoint. Taylor settled back in his chair, sighed, and shut his eyes. Jacob recalled Maurice had never been much of a go-getter. How he’d ended up landing one of the coveted PsyCop positions, Jacob had no idea. Maybe he knew somebody.

Light from the projector glinted off Taylor’s wedding band as he got comfortable by folding his hands over his stomach. Jacob’s eyes went to Bayne’s left hand. No ring. Not that it meant anything; plenty of cops didn’t wear a band on duty. They caught on things like gloves and fences, and could result in some pretty nasty injuries. Everyone on the force knew someone who knew someone who’d lost a finger to an unfortunate wedding band incident.

Although Carolyn wore her ring. She’d said flat-out that it was the uniforms’ job to vault over a chain link fence in pursuit of a suspect, not hers. And she’d said it right in front of Sergeant Owens, who likely would have preferred she phrase it with a little more tact.

Jacob scanned the opposite side of the table. The precog Valdez had been looking at him, but looked away before he could read anything into the glance other than casual curiosity. Bayne’s hand came down on the table. Jacob’s eyes went to it again.

No ring.

And he’d passed up the opportunity for a high-angle view of Carolyn’s cleavage.

What if…?

While he didn’t strike Jacob as gay, neither had Keith. Not on duty. It wasn’t until Jacob spotted Keith on the leg press at his gym, a primarily gay gym—glistening with sweat, in a flimsy tank top that was more armhole than fabric—that Jacob realized he wasn’t the only gay cop at his precinct.

But Bayne was probably straight. To hope otherwise would just be wishful thinking on Jacob’s part. He probably just had Keith on his mind, was all, since Carolyn had just asked about him in the car. And the
jazz flautist,
whatever his name was. And Carolyn’s new hairdresser with the neck tattoo—as well as her question about what his “type” was. As far as Jacob knew, he didn’t have a type. He just knew it when someone rubbed him wrong. Like the jazz flautist.

Bayne scowled at his blazer and picked bits of napkin from his lapel, flicking them onto the floor. Jacob knew he shouldn’t stare. If he got caught, it’d come off as some kind of macho challenge he’d never intended. Even if Bayne might be gay—or at least single, and open-minded enough to experiment—Carolyn was right. It wasn’t safe to date someone on the force. Look what happened with Keith.

The speaker stretched a convoluted explanation on the importance of recording sixth-sensory impressions, no matter how bizarre they might seem, into a mind numbing half hour when five minutes would have sufficed. One of the PsyCops from the Rush Street then asked it if was absolutely necessary for her to capture more than one form of documentation, and pointed out that if she was expected to do more work than her NP colleagues, she saw it as a form of discrimination.

The room turned bluish as the PowerPoint slide changed, and Jacob looked up to find Valdez now staring at Detective Bayne. The precog looked at Jacob again, gave a little flinch, and looked away.

Weird.

Taylor’s pager went off as the presenter answered her question by repeating a few lines from the presentation that were dull enough the first time around, and the PsyCops from the Fifth Precinct slipped out of the room, leaving two empty coffee cups, a greenish banana peel, and a few rolled flecks of damp napkin behind. Jacob stared at the spot where Victor Bayne had been sitting, wondering if his seat was still warm.

Bad idea. It’s not like he’s even gay.

But his bad-boy scowl had ignited all sorts of urges within Jacob, where the jazz flautist’s tepid half-smile had definitely not.

A few more questions, then a mandatory evaluation form which nobody filled out with many details, and the PsyCops began filing out in twos and fours. Jacob stood to intercept Valdez as he passed the remains of the donuts. “Jacob Marks,” he said, offering his hand. They’d been introduced before, maybe two years ago, so he figured it couldn’t hurt to remind him. “Twelfth Precinct.”

“Oscar Valdez.” He shook Jacob’s hand, but released it quickly. He looked Jacob in the eye, then looked up at the ceiling, then down at a spot on Jacob’s chest.
 

Jacob glanced down to see if maybe he’d been jellied and hadn’t realized it. Nope. “Carolyn’s the telepath of our team.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve seen her before. Must be…interesting…spending so much time with someone who can read your mind. A partner like that, they’d know you inside out.”

What an odd thing to say. Especially coming from a precog. “It’s not exactly—”

“Anyway, gotta run. Good to meet you.”

Carolyn approached, holding a green banana she looked none too thrilled with. “He just took off like I insulted his mother,” Jacob told her. “Doesn’t anyone network at these things?”

She steered him toward the door with a subtle shift of her shoulder. “Of course not. We’re Psychs. We’re too awkward to mingle. Especially with each other.”

Jacob held the door for her, and she slipped through and walked briskly toward his car. While Psychs did tend to be incredibly awkward, Jacob was an NP, so he didn’t count; someone should want to talk to him. They got in the car. Jacob fit the key into the ignition, but instead of starting the engine, he said, “I think Valdez saw something…about me. And I think it spooked him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He wouldn’t look me in the eye. If he saw me winning the lottery or something, I don’t think he would’ve acted so funny. What if he saw me…getting hurt…in the line of duty. What if he saw me getting killed?”

Carolyn thought about it. Most partners would have blithely insisted that everything would be perfectly fine. But instead she said, “I can track him down and ask him. But before I do, you’ll need to decide. If he saw something bad, and there was no way to prevent it—do you really want to know?”

Jacob considered. If Valdez had seen him meet his maker, chances were he didn’t know exactly when the dire deed would occur. A month. A week. A year? It seemed like an awfully inexact amount of time to sustain a high level of panic. Ideally, Jacob would envision himself living every day as if it were his last day on earth. He’d write a big check to the local food bank. He’d skip the gym for just a night and sit on his roof to watch the sunset. And he’d tell all his loved ones how much they meant to him.
 

But those were things you couldn’t really do every single day, or else you’d end up broke and flabby. And your family would think you’d finally started to crack under the pressure of the job.

“How accurate is Valdez?” he asked.

“Hit or miss. I think he’s level three.”

Jacob started the car and stared down at the steering wheel, working his jaw.

Carolyn went on. “Don’t you think he would have said something if he’d seen you getting injured? I’ll bet it’s something else that he wouldn’t feel professionally obligated to disclose.”

“Like what?”

“Something personal, maybe. What was going through your mind during the meeting? Did you think about Neil? Because maybe you’re right, and Neil’s not really a good match for you. And maybe Valdez picked up on something as simple as that.”

Jacob frowned. “How…specific do you think his precog skills are? Like, vague feeling? Or full-on homoerotic imagery?”

“Please tell me you weren’t thinking gay thoughts at work in a room full of certified Psychs.”

“
Gay thoughts?
”

“Jacob….”

“Should I have borrowed a straight brain before I showed up at the meeting?”

“That sounded a lot worse than I meant it. You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, he did. The middle aged guys who’d been ogling Carolyn’s glutes were probably fine thinking whatever it was they thought, even in the company of precogs and empaths, because people thought things like that about the opposite gender all the time. But given the way Keith had been railroaded out of their precinct…Jacob probably would have been better off not entertaining an extended analysis of the reason Detective Bayne hadn’t snuck a peek down Carolyn’s blouse while he had the chance.

“It wasn’t racy. I was just wondering if maybe Victor Bayne—”

“The skinny guy who just doused himself in
jelly
?”

Jacob pulled out of the lot and headed back toward the Seventh. “That was pretty wild. It was like…a dozen donuts’ worth of jelly inside.”
 

He gave an amused sniff, and Carolyn echoed it, then said, “He never says anything at those meetings. That’s the first time he’s ever spoken to me. I don’t think he’s married or anything…but he doesn’t seem….”

“What?”

“Well…I just think that if he was gay, he wouldn’t have been wearing that awful sportcoat.”

Cliché. But true.

“Besides,” she went on, “I thought we established that it was a very bad idea for you to date guys at work.”

“He’s in a totally different precinct.”

“Jacob. Remember Keith.”

He sighed. “Okay. You’re right. And he’s probably straight anyway.”

“You’re dangerous when you’re single,” Carolyn said as she held up her phone and snapped a quick photo of his profile. “I’ll see if Crash wants me to give you his number.”

-end-

About the Author

Jordan Castillo Price writes and produces the PsyCop novels from her home in rural Wisconsin. She has endured many a dry PowerPoint presentation in her time.

About this Story

Since the PsyCop books are getting longer (meaning: more time-intensive to write and produce) I thought it would be fun to write a little something for PsyCop readers to enjoy while they wait for book 7. Wave of
ReviewsbyJessewave.com
posted a PsyCop flash fic writing prompt challenge in which the story prompts needed to adhere to the following stipulations:

1. A single sentence

2.
 
Twenty words or less

3. Contain either a color, an odor, or an object smaller than a breadbox

The prompt I chose is from Emalie: The first time Jacob noticed Vic, he was covered in red.

This story is a good companion to the other Jacob short, The Stroke of Midnight. Because the PsyCop series is so much about Vic’s subjective view of reality, the facets of Jacob’s personality we usually see are missing all the places where Vic’s got blinders on. In the Jacob shorts, I can hint that yes, he does have a history and a life apart from Vic. I wonder if one of the themes I like exploring in the Jacob stories are how alike he and Vic actually are, because no doubt they usually seem like opposites. In Vic’s eyes, they are. And yet, with both of them being on the force, even if they each approach their duties from a different perspective, it seems to me that each understands where the other is coming from. Plus I’ve also hinted that it was their jobs, more than their personalities, that caused the failure of their previous relationships. Not only that, but while it might be rewarding to pursue a relationship with another cop, that the consequences of that relationship could also be serious enough (Keith getting railroaded out of the Twelfth Precinct) to make it a risky proposition.