Chapter Twelve
THERE’S A RHYTHM to the way my workday normally starts. I swipe my badge, nod to the security guy, and ride the elevator up in silence, counting ceiling tiles or watching the floor indicator light up—whichever seems more pressing that day.
I like unlocking the office door and finding things exactly where I left them, with two spotless desks facing one another.
Carl’s mug on the coaster. His desktop without so much as a single sticky note stuck to the monitor.
My desk empty except for a closed laptop, a charging cable and my favorite pen.
We don’t talk much. We don’t need to. Carl likes his order, and I like mine. And I guess, in our own ways, we’re content with the status quo.
So when I walked in that morning and found a teetering pile of manila folders on my desk, I actually stopped and checked the nameplate to make sure the room still belonged to me.
Then I remembered: Carl’s on leave. And I brought this on myself.
Jacob didn’t appear to notice as he veered around me, parked himself in Carl’s spot, and logged in. He made no move whatsoever to shift the pile of paperwork to his desk. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge its existence.
What was I supposed to say—I generally let Carl do all the heavy lifting? Hardly. I pulled my chair out, peeled a random file off the top of the stack, and flipped it open.
Might as well start somewhere, I figured. But then I noticed Jacob, absorbed in his monitor, had made no move to grab the next file. “Your investigative skills might come in handy,” I remarked.
Jacob gave a small flinch. “Sorry, for what?”
I cut my eyes meaningfully to the pile. “The ‘woman in the bedroom’. The one whose staring made Boswell come to the attention of the FPMP.” AKA, the subject of our whole investigation, which I valiantly refrained from pointing out.
Jacob grabbed a file, and we got to reading.
I settled in to start chewing through reports.
But unlike Carl, Jacob likes to process his thoughts out loud.
“Ghosts fade, right? The apartments were built in the thirties, nothing was there prior, and Records found no recorded murders in the last century, so there’s probably nothing old. ”
No. Not like the raft of ancient dead I dredged up when I was drugged with experimental psyactives.
Jacob went on. “Boswell was only there for a short while. So, a conversation with the previous tenant—” he checked the file. “Zachary Sledge. That’s our best bet. See what he has to say about the place.”
If Sledge wasn’t a medium, likely nothing much.
Still, he was the next logical step, since that we might be dealing with a weird glare or a drafty window.
(I didn’t really believe that, given the repeater at the bus stop.
But I had to rule it out.) I went to grab my mobile exorcism kit from the supply closet, just in case.
It’s what Carl would have done, and Jacob showed no signs of taking the initiative.
Jacob watched me unlock the closet door and said, almost offhand, “You don’t need me to tag along while you’re interviewing the former tenant, do you?”
I paused with my hand on the kit. “A second set of ears never hurts.”
“But there’s all this paperwork to go through. I figured, divide and conquer.”
Hard to argue with that. Jacob was the one who’d be more likely to spot the needle in the haystack if there happened to be one waiting there to stick us. Plus, let’s face it. I would rather be out there actually doing something than sitting around reading reports. But…so would he.
I slid him a look. He was helpfully thumbing through files.
A home-cooked dinner and an impromptu BJ were hardly enough to ping my suspicions. Offering to stay behind and catch up on the paperwork, though? Definitely not Jacob’s style.
“Okay, what gives?” I asked. He glanced up from his files, all innocence. “Since when do you turn down fieldwork to push paper?”
“I’m just trying to help you resolve the case.”
“Uh huh.”
“Unless you thought you’d need backup to go and talk to…” he crooked his head to double check Sledge’s file. “A mailman.”
The possibility that Zachary Sledge had noticed something unusual in the apartment was slim at best. According to his file, he was an NP—government workers are tested for ability, even at the post office.
But though I had no expectations he’d give me anything worthwhile, I was still accustomed to having another set of eyes and ears.
Even if those eyes and ears were Carl’s, and I was pretty sure they were judging me.
I checked Sledge’s route. It wasn’t far from his old apartment. Maybe I could swing by again and give it one more look…with help from Mood Blaster. And the scientist who’d invented it. “You’re staying put? Fine. I’ll see if Evelyn wants to ride shotgun.”
I hoisted the kit bag onto my shoulder and went to grab Sledge’s file…only to find Jacob’s steepled fingers pinning the manila folder to the desk. “Did you want me to come along? It’s your investigation—just say the word.”
I didn’t know what the hell I wanted. Dare I say it was a return of my old partner, Carl?
At least I knew when Carl was annoyed…which was pretty much, always.
But as for Jacob, whenever we butted heads, he was uncannily good at making me feel like I was somehow in the wrong without ever coming right out and saying so.
“Stay at the office and read your files. If anyone can spot a wonky pattern, it’s you. ”
I tracked down Evelyn in the yoga studio.
She and Bethany were both barefoot, curled up on opposite ends of a tasteful beige sofa, sipping tea.
I’m told the FPMP tea is as good as its coffee, though it tastes like lawn clippings to me.
But the women seemed to be enjoying it. And they both seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
“How are your hamstrings feeling?” Bethany asked. “The extra session didn’t aggravate any old issues, did it?”
“My legs are fine, thanks.”
Evelyn laughed easily. “More than I can say. Hopefully it’s a good kind of ouch.”
“Actually, I’m here with a non-yoga-related request,” I said. “I was hoping to borrow Evelyn.”
“If Bethany doesn’t mind,” she said.
“Not at all.” Bethany stood gracefully—she did everything gracefully—and gathered her long dark hair into a quick knot at the nape of her neck. “I have plenty of work to keep me busy.”
As Evelyn and I headed toward the elevators, I decided that maybe I didn’t miss Carl so much after all.
Mood Blaster had always been a bit of a black box for me.
I had no idea what was going on under the hood—I’d just found a routine that seemed to work and stuck to it.
Hopefully Evelyn could reverse engineer all the new changes and help me find my old standby again.
That, or whatever dumb emoji was passing for it nowadays.
Evelyn might not be Carl, but I suspected she’d be reasonably good backup. Especially since I was only off to interview a mailman. But as we turned into the elevator bay that would lead us to the parking garage, I nearly collided with Jacob.
“Oh, I did catch you after all,” he said. “I had a quick look at the info from Records. It’s nowhere near as dense as it looks. Figured I might as well join you.”
His change of heart was no big shock. Jacob likes paperwork about as much as I like pretentious green tea.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Evelyn said. “I’d hate to be redundant, and if Agent Bayne doesn’t need me, I can review the data I’ve gathered while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
I’d hardly call her “redundant.” But since she was so eager to get back to her duties, I’d be a real jerk if I insisted she come along.
Especially just for the sake of explaining an app to me that should’ve been simple enough for a child.
Besides, before I could protest, she was halfway down the hall.
“Way to scare off the scientist,” I told Jacob.
His eyebrows shot up in alarm. “I just thought the three of us—maybe it’s not too late to convince her.”
“Relax,” I sighed. “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to pick her brain before she heads back to DC.”
We climbed into Jacob’s car and rode to Sledge’s route in silence.
It wasn’t that I was annoyed with him—it was the vehicle being bugged.
Agent Garcia assures us this isn’t so, but Agent Garcia isn’t privy to the entirety of the FPMP organization.
We try not say anything of import in the car.
Or within hearing distance of our phones.
Or anywhere other than directly in each other’s ears after a sweaty bout of between-the-sheets action…
which we’re told is where most surveillance operatives tune out.
Unfortunately, given that we were a boring married couple, it would probably raise suspicion if we pulled over to engage in some heavy petting.
So I pointed out a parking spot near a work crew busy jackhammering up some concrete.
As we walked toward Sledge’s route, they provided me the cover to say, “I know what you were trying to do back there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jacob asked, wounded.
“You’re stalking Evelyn.”
Jacob’s expression froze.
Hah, I so had his number. “You want to get your hand on the SPECs. You figure that if they help me tune in the etheric, that maybe they’ll do the same for you.
And like any good scientist, Evelyn would be delighted to double-check any results she gets from me on a control subject.
What better control subject than a certified Stiff? ”
There was a pause in the jackhammering. When it resumed, Jacob said, “You can’t blame me for being curious.”
“I know. But, Jacob, she’s National. And as much as we might like her, at the end of the day, we can’t risk you ending up on their radar.”
Jacob agreed. Grudgingly. But he did agree.
As the sound of construction faded behind us, our intel on Sledge proved good. His boxy mailtruck was within two blocks of where we expected it to be, and the man himself was just emerging from a courtyard across the street.
Sledge was easy to spot, what with the uniform, the bundle of mail in his hand and the bag slung over his shoulder.
But if I didn’t have it in black and white that the guy was a real-life mail carrier, I would’ve figured he was en route to a strip-o-gram.
His tan was natural, I supposed, but he wore it like he’d paid big bucks to have it sprayed on.
His blue-gray polo shirt was so tight he’d fit in at a rave, with the sleeves rolled up to approximate a tank top—in October, no less.
And the uniform shorts with the stripe down the side hugged his glutes in a way that left nothing to the imagination.
“Someone’s a big fan of the leg press,” I remarked.
Jacob gave me a startled look.
“What?” I asked. “Did I get the machine wrong?”
“No,” he said carefully.
“See? I do listen to all those dull stories about your adventures at the gym. Now let’s find out if your bro over there remembers much about his last rental.”
We caught up with the studly mailman half a block later. “Zachary Sledge?” I called out. He paused and stiffened. I put on my bored voice. “We just need a minute.”
By the time he turned around, we were already flashing our badges. His expression was blank, but no one’s ever glad to be approached by a pair of credential wielding so-and-so’s unless they’ve just called 911. “It’s about your apartment on George Street,” I clarified.
His expression morphed into an easy, bored half-smile. He irritated me already. “Sure. What about it?”
“We’re currently looking into some statements about the property. You lived there for two years, correct?”
“That’s right.”
Obviously, I couldn’t ask him if he felt anyone staring at him in the bedroom.
One thing I’ve learned—both from my time on the force and from watching our field team interview potential psychs—is that you can’t bias your subject.
Even asking if he’d noticed “anything” would make Sledge think there was something there worth noticing. “So…how’d you like the place?”
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “It was close to work.”
“Okay.”
“Parking wasn’t bad.”
“Right.” I had the impression, based on pretty much nothing, that he was deliberately sidestepping the question. “But the apartment itself? Inside.”
“What can I say? Four walls and a roof. It was an apartment.”
“You lived here alone?”
“Just me.”
“And you slept in the bedroom?”
“Where else would I sleep?”
“Just ticking off all the boxes,” I said blandly as I took in Sledge’s overall demeanor.
He wasn’t doing anything particularly challenging, but I still suspected he was getting his jollies by not answering.
Overly muscled d-bags liked nothing more than to flout authority.
Either that, or he simply hadn’t noticed anything.
Or maybe there was nothing there to notice. According to Sledge, the rent wasn’t bad, the neighbors were forgettable, and all of the appliances worked.
I was about to bring the useless interview to a close when Jacob asked, “So why did you leave?”
Sledge’s inscrutable eyes slid to Jacob, sizing him up. “Moved in with my girlfriend.”
I almost asked for her contact info, just to underscore to Sledge who the authority figure was here. But this wasn’t a murder investigation. Besides. No doubt the Records department could get me a big manilla file on her, if I truly needed it.
Sledge accepted my card with a shadow of a smirk, and Jacob and I headed back to the car. “Did you expect him to see anything?” Jacob ventured.
“No,” I admitted.
But I hadn’t thought he’d be so damn smug about it.