Spook Squad (38 page)

“I figured if I was pumped up on psyactives, the TV would give me an edge.”

Jacob said, “Her too, though. Right? The TV effects everyone in the range of its signal. You’ll be stronger in its signal, but so will she.”

I hadn’t considered that. Plus, the GhosTV was Jennifer Chance’s baby. She’d probably get more out of it than I did. Hoping to hone myself into a more precision tool, I turned to Bly. “Maybe you could take the edge off me. Y’know…so I don’t panic.”

“If the ghost phlegm didn’t panic you, I can’t imagine what would.”

“Look, I know it’s a mess in here.” I pointed to my head. “Help a guy out.”

“A certain level of anxiety is par for the course, Detective. For all of us. It keeps us from getting splattered like a bug on a windshield. If it ain’t broke, I’m not gonna fix it.”

And to think I’d been worried about him tinkering around inside my skull. Here he wouldn’t even do it with an engraved invitation.

Dreyfuss’ thumbs had been flying over his smartphone. He said, “Evacuation’s underway, except for a couple of sturdy telepaths who can keep tabs on each other while they get the tuner in place. So the big question is, where do I tell them to put it?”

Surely one part of the building would hold a tactical advantage for us over another. I’d toured the whole place and it was fresh in my mind. We could set up in the boardroom. It was big enough to ensure we weren’t tripping over each other, and I knew Jennifer Chance had access to the location since I’d seen her there before. But wouldn’t it seem awfully suspicious for the four of us to be sitting in the boardroom in the lambent glow of the GhosTV static? Maybe we could set up in Dreyfuss’ office among the repeaters, pretend we were doing something with the TV that was totally unrelated to Chance, then shove her through the veil when she came to check up on her cherished invention.

Great plan—provided we had access to the veil from Dreyfuss’ office.

“This veil thing,” I said to Jacob, hoping he could glean some insight from our conversation with Chekotah. “That’s where we need to set up the ambush.”

“Is it in a fixed physical position, or does it move around?”

Had me there. I turned my hands up empty.

“Maybe the veil is more of a concept than a temporal location,” he surmised. “I think what you really need to worry about is the silver cord.”

I glanced at Dreyfuss’ busy thumbs as if I might see a psychic scar where the goopy jellyfish tethers had been attached, but there was nothing there. Nothing I could see without psychic enhancement, anyway. Could Jennifer Chance be tethered to one of her GhosTVs, and if so, which one? Or had she attached to Dr. K to keep him from winning her Nobel? Those possibilities were worth checking into, but it made sense to try the obvious solution first: Chance’s killer. “Before all the Lexuses leave the hive,” I said, “have your trigger-man stay behind.”

Dreyfuss looked up from his phone. “My what?”

Here I thought the Regional Director and I understood each other. Now he was making me spell it all out. “Whichever agent shot Dr. Chance, they should stay. They’re the most likely anchor.”

He looked at me so funny I almost thought he was going to admit to being the shooter. So I was totally unprepared when what actually came out of his mouth was, “There is no ‘trigger man.’ Jennifer Chance killed herself.”

He was lying—he must have been. People who shot themselves didn’t leave neat holes in their own foreheads.

Unless the entry wound had been solely for my benefit.
 

“How?” I asked.

“Suffocated.” Dreyfuss gave an entirely humorless laugh. “I put her in the world’s safest room, and she turned away from the cameras, covered her nose and mouth with the plastic wrap from her fucking sandwich, laid down on her hands and died.”

Something you believe to be true is revealed as false.
Evidently that damn tarot card was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

“No wonder you had me pegged for a ruthless sociopath,” Dreyfuss said. “First Jennifer Chance makes it look like I sent my ex-wife to gun down Roger Burke, then she tells you I had her executed.”

Well, there was the spying and the threat of strip-search, too. But he hadn’t been exaggerating when he told me not to take the spying personally because we were all on Candid Camera. The investigation of Laura was proof of that. I could only hope he wouldn’t have actually let TSA shine a light up my rectum. I might never feel chummy with Con Dreyfuss, but I desperately wanted to believe we were both on the same side.

“Although,” Dreyfuss said, “come to think of it, it’s possible I bear some responsibility for her death, in a roundabout kind of way. I was trying to get her to spill the location of the final TV, and I told her that I was going to find out from Roger Burke anyway once I got him out of prison, so she might as well tell me herself and start banking some favors. It didn’t occur to me she wanted to keep that last TV to herself so badly she was willing to kill herself to do it.” He pondered a ragged cuticle, but didn’t bite it off. “Here’s what I don’t understand. If you thought I had Dr. Chance shot, didn’t you wonder what happened to the bullet wound?”

“Not really.” She’d done a realistic job with her post-mortem special effects. Probably had first-hand information on what the hole would look like, being an MD and all. “She wore it loud and proud. I could hardly miss it.”

Dreyfuss eyebrows shot up. “I’m not talking about her ghost, Detective. I’m talking about her corpse.”

Chapter 33

My breath streamed from me in a visible cloud—not because I was hot on the trail of a ghost, but because the temperature was a chilly fourteen degrees in Cold Storage. Fatigue, overwhelm, a gut feeling of aversion, or sheer stupidity…I may never know what to chalk up my negligence to. Now I was kicking myself for bailing when Dr. K tried to show it to me. A stainless steel wall held telltale cubbies, most with serial numbers on the front, and each with its own dual lock, part manual and part digital. I was surprised there was no thumbprint reader and retinal scan. Maybe that stuff’s just in the movies. One door stood open. Dreyfuss stepped up to it, planted his feet, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, and turned to me. “Anybody home in there?”

I forced myself up to the vault and peered in. It was empty. “I take it you’re not talking about the body.”

“I had it moved to the warming area. It’s probably not quite ready—it takes half a week to thaw a twenty-pound turkey, so you can hardly expect a human being to melt in a few hours. But I figured we might need it, so I got the ball rolling. Just in case.”
 

Although my gut was churning with dread, and although I was fighting back an impending puke reflex, what I said was, “Show me.”

Dreyfuss keycarded us all through to yet another workroom. Cripes, how much important stuff had I missed on my initial survey? Unlike the rest of the lab, which was filled with stainless steel work surfaces and laminate cabinets covered in labels, this room crinkled with plastic. Floors, ceilings, carts and countertops, everything in it was covered in a disposable clear film. Plastic even hung from the ceiling in the center of the room, forming a hermetically sealed column. The change in air pressure when we opened the door caused the plastic column to flex as if it was breathing. This film was heavier than the rest, thick enough to appear translucent rather than clear, but despite the occlusion, my eyes sketched out the contents soon enough. A tank, maybe six feet long, filled with greenish fluid, resting on a waist-high table. And inside that tank, a body.

Dreyfuss handed out surgical gloves and masks, then slid a mask over his own face. “The lab’s trying to keep as much bacteria off the body as possible. And the repeated freezing and thawing’s not doing it any favors either. You can work through the gloves, right? Or should we make an exception for our star medium?”

Gloves were fine, but my hands went tacky the second I snapped them on. A bead of sweat rolled down my temple, and I realized that in contrast to the chilly morgue, the workroom was sauna-warm. I blotted my forehead with my sleeve, then grabbed my salt and my Florida Water from my pockets and slipped out of my overcoat—not much better—and my jacket, too. Before I could wonder what to do with them, Bly took them from me and hung them on plastic-covered hooks beside the door. “They’re no protection against a ghost anyway,” he said. “Might as well minimize your distractions.”

That was one way of looking at it, though I felt skinny and vulnerable in my shirtsleeves, which clung to me where they were starting to wick sweat. It should have felt intrusive, that he intuited my apprehension. It didn’t. Instead, it made me feel less alone.

“Do you need anything else?” Dreyfuss asked. “I’ve got Carl standing by in case you change your mind.”

Nothing against Carl, but he’d been trained by Richie—and Richie’s traditional prayer methodology was so foreign to me that I worried Carl’s presence might be more of a liability than an asset. Plus, given how territorial he is, I didn’t want to catch hell for dipping into his metaphysical supplies. No, Jacob had the candles and Bly had the incense, and I had my trusty pocket kit, though it felt woefully small in the plastic cavern of the workroom. But I’d been feeding it white light all day, and if that wasn’t enough, then all the salt in Utah wouldn’t help me. “I’m ready. Just as soon as the horse pills kick in.”

“Any minute now,” Dreyfuss said. He checked his phone, then added, “It’s been fun, Detective. If we come out of this alive and intact, the drinks are on me.”

“Hold on a second. You’re not staying?”

“Unfortunately, my services are required elsewhere. Washington’s heading over here for another round of snatch n’ grab—and now they’re after her body.” It only made sense for her to try and keep the object that anchored her among the living as far away from me as possible. Who was the poor Psych she’d borrowed a body from to make the call—and was she still hiding inside it or not? “Lisa and I turned the problem upside down,” Dreyfuss said, “and there was no way to stop the government thugs from crashing our party. But if anyone can stall them long enough for you to evacuate the ghost before they can grab the body…it’s me.”

Although it wasn’t as if Con Dreyfuss would be able to do anything against a spirit, even taking his psychic ability into account, I was dismayed that he had to leave. “But it all works out,” I said, “since you’ll live to see tomorrow.”

“I used to wonder if Lisa would ever lie to me about that when push came to shove, y’know, to make me feel better.” I imagined that beneath the surgical mask there was a wry twist to his mouth. “Evidently not.”

The door whispered shut behind Dreyfuss, then locked with a firm click. Jacob began stalking the perimeter like a caged beast, relentlessly scanning the surroundings as if he was worried he’d miss an important tactical advantage. Bly did a shoulder roll and glanced nervously around the room. “It’s funny, the things you don’t notice ’til they’re gone,” he said. “I’ve never been in the lab while it was empty. It doesn’t feel right.”

Jacob said, “Then you’ll feel it when Chance gets here.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t even realize it was a separate thing until I saw it turn to jelly. I just…I don’t know.”

“We’re fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine. She’s not here.” Yet. I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted her to make an appearance or not, though I supposed a showdown in the time and place of our choosing was preferable to the big ugly surprise we’d found at Richie’s house. I shifted my stance, and a cramp seized my calf muscle. When I screwed up my face in pain, my jaw cramped too. “I forgot how much this hurts.”

“It hurts?” Bly asked. I actually felt sorry for him.

“There’s discomfort,” Jacob said. Red veins ghosted his temples. They grew clearer, more pronounced, as I focused on them. I looked to Bly. Around his mask, thin-skin. Checked my own fingers. Tracers. And the parts where my subtle bodies weren’t quite lined up with my physical, I realized, felt a lot less crampy than the limbs I was using to stand on. I was scared to shift my awareness to those bodies, though, for fear of coming apart.

“Jesus.” Bly rolled his shoulders again.

“Are you picking up on anything?” I asked in hopes of distracting him from the very painful “discomfort.”

“I’m not sure….”

“I have no idea what it would feel like to be empathic,” I told him. “So however she registered back there in the kitchen—anger, desperation, obsession—look for that. ’Cos I guarantee everyone else is just plain scared.”

Bly turned his focus outward, went still for a moment, then said, “No. I don’t feel her.”

“Okay, then. Jacob, fire up the candles and incense.”

He seemed relieved to have a task, something he could do other than standing around and dreading the ghost’s arrival. The cardinal points had been marked on the plastic with grease pencil prior to our arrival, so in no time flat, Jacob had a candle burning at each point. There were no pyrotechnics this time around, not like the hospital basement. No drop in temperature or change in pressure. Just another reminder that this ghost was whole different enchilada.

In the course of my police work, salting repeaters had become pretty routine. I saw now I’d let myself get soft by considering anything having to do with the spirit world routine. Fine. If I wasn’t following a pattern, I’d be considering my every move, therefore I’d be less likely to get sloppy. I sent a haze of white light outward, feeling for the glow of the candles, the smoke of the myrrh. The room shone brighter, not as if the lights were turned up, but as if a special lens had slid across my vision that made all the plasticky highlights shine brighter. I squinted into the sparkle-vision and cast my gaze around the room.

“How can you be so calm?” Bly asked me. I think he meant it rhetorically. I figured it was best to treat it as if he did. I held up a gloved finger for silence, I gathered myself, and I parted the thick plastic sheeting.

Her blotchy, grayish forehead was clear. No bullet hole. None. Sonofabitch. Maybe on some level I’d still believed Con was conning me. But no amount of makeup could hide a bullet wound, not from this distance. It hadn’t been Dreyfuss manipulating me—it was Jennifer Chance. Even from beyond the grave. It didn’t seem fair. While Lydia had trouble making cigarettes appear, Chance’s ghost was capable of generating special effects. I guess a lifetime of studying subtle bodies had its perks.