10
Cope
Cope couldn’t tell if he was jittery from the five cups of coffee he’d had to drink that morning or because of the situation with West Strickland, Jude, and the rest of the cold case team. He supposed it was a mix of both.
The rest of the evening had gone well after Everly spoke with Alice Strickland and the detectives agreed to look into her murder.
Cope had gotten a text from Jude saying he and Ronan were being given the case to work and had been given provisional badges from the Cambridge Police Department.
At the very least, this case would keep Jude so busy that he wouldn’t have time to worry or give in to anxiety over the future of the cold case unit in Salem.
Apparently worrying and being riddled with anxiety was Cope’s job.
He hadn’t slept well last night, while Jude had been out cold the second his head hit the pillow.
Cope had tossed and turned and grabbed about two hours of broken sleep before he gave up the ghost—metaphorically— and got into the shower.
Now, Cope sat in his office with a bad case of the jitters hoping the caffeine would wear off before his next client reading. A knock on his office door pulled Cope out of his head. “Come in, Carson.”
“Hey.” Carson popped into the room, checked the hallway, and shut the door behind him.
Obviously Cope wasn’t the only one supercharged on coffee. “What’s up?”
“Jonas Crawford, that’s what’s up.”
“Fuck me blue, don’t tell me he’s here.” The absolute last thing Cope needed was a visit from Crawford. He’d rather have a root canal minus the Novocain, get audited by the IRS, and fly on a plane filled with screaming babies, all at the same time, rather than having to see Jonas Crawford again.
Carson shook his head. He ran to the door and peeked out into the hallway again. “You’re not going to believe this,” he whispered. “but one of Crawford’s free reading clients is here.” Carson looked positively giddy.
Cope wasn’t going to fall for anything to do with Crawford. “How do we know this person really saw him? How do we know she’s not a spy sent from Crawford to wreak havoc on us?”
“She said that she could be sued just for coming into the shop, thanks to the non-disclosure agreement Crawford asked her to sign.”
“He made clients sign an NDA?” What the hell kind of psychic was this man? “What the actual fuck?”
“Wait, it gets better.” Carson’s eyes glowed.
“How the hell could this possibly get better?” Cope supposed Crawford packing and getting out of town would be better, but he wasn’t going to count on that happening any time soon.
“She came into the office in disguise.” Carson reminded Cope of a little kid at Christmas.
“What kind of disguise? Like a wig and a long trench coat?” Visions of I Love Lucy reruns danced through his mind.
Carson shook his head. “Come with me, you’ve got to see this for yourself. I’ve stashed her in Ten’s reading room because it’s the biggest.” He opened the door and peeked into the hallway once again, motioning Cope to follow him.
Cope felt like he was in some sort of deranged spy movie with Carson checking for enemies around every corner. When they reached Ten’s reading room, Carson knocked on the door in a strange pattern.
“What’s the password?” Ten whispered loudly from the other side of the closed door.
“Jurassic Park,” Carson said.
Ten opened the door and stuck his head into the hall. He looked both ways before opening the door.
What Cope saw took his breath away. He blinked several times to make sure he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing and not having a hallucination courtesy of the five cups of coffee.
Sitting at the far end of Ten’s table was a T-Rex.
“Hi, I’m Cope and you are?” He was ninety percent certain he was being punked.
Jude or maybe Ronan had sent this guy in costume to brighten his day.
The only things missing were the T-Rex’s song and the box of chocolates Jude usually sent along with this sort of thing.
“Is he safe to speak with?” a scared-sounding woman asked from inside the costume.
“Yes, Christie, Cope is one of us. Anything you reveal to him will never leave this room,” Carson assured her.
“Okay.” The T-rex stood up. Its giant, grinning face bobbled as the woman reached behind herself to unzip the suit. Seconds later, Cope was faced with a young dark-haired woman who looked absolutely terrified. “I’m Christie St. Thomas.”
“Hi, Christie.” Cope took a seat at the opposite end of the table. He didn’t want to spook the young woman. “Carson told me that you had a free session yesterday with-”
“Don’t say his name!” Carson half-shouted, making Christie jump.
“Sure,” Cope agreed, thinking this entire situation was banana crackers. “You met with the new psychic who was offering free readings yesterday.”
“Yes. I thought it would be fun. I’ve been seeing my boyfriend, Hank, for six months now and I was dying to know if he was going to pop the question.”
“What was his answer?” Cope could see that Hank was planning a grand gesture for the fall. She would say yes and they’d marry on New Year’s Eve on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean.
“He skipped over my question altogether and asked me about my mother.”
“Your mother?” Cope was stunned that Crawford, with all of his gifts, hadn’t been able to give Christie a simple yes or no answer.
“You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you.
I hardly believe it myself.” Christie shook her head.
“This man started bombarding me with questions about my mother and our estrangement. I felt I had to give him the answers and when I was speaking to him, all I could see in my mind was a magician pulling a string of handkerchiefs out of his pocket. Each of the hankies represented another piece of information he was pulling from my head.” Christie paused.
“Here’s the craziest part of all. I found myself wanting to tell him every last detail about my mother.
I was enjoying telling this total stranger about our troubled relationship. ”
What Cope had felt yesterday had been the real deal. Crawford had been trying to compel him into giving over the Devereaux death spell. Thankfully, he’d been strong enough to resist Crawford’s pull.
“You believe me, right?” Christie looked from Ten to Carson to Cope.
“Something similar happened to us yesterday,” Cope confirmed.
“The reason that I came here today was because my mother called me this morning with a crazy story about how someone showed up at her house last night ringing the doorbell repeatedly around 11:30 P.M. Mom didn’t answer the door, which seemed to make the caller ring the bell even harder.
My mother was so scared that she hid in the closet and called the police.
When they arrived minutes later, the person ringing the doorbell was gone. ”
Cope had never heard a crazier or more terrifying story in his life. Judging by the looks on Carson and Ten’s faces, neither had they. “What do you think happened?”
“I think that nutjob psychic had someone show up at my mother’s house last night.
” Christie teared up. She dashed the back of her hands against her wet eyes.
“My mother was a drunk and used to beat me when I was a kid. I was taken away from her when I was ten and was raised by an aunt. Even though I’m in my twenties, I still haven’t forgiven her for what she put me through. ”
“Rage and grief have no time limit,” Ten said gently. “You’re allowed to feel any way you like about your mother.”
“Thank you, Tennyson.” Christie reached for a tissue from the box on the table and dabbed her damp eyes.
“I could tell that the psychic was getting off on hearing about what my mother had done, you know, like the way a serial killer gets off on his victim’s fear.
This is going to sound completely out of left field, but I think he was the one ringing my mother’s doorbell last night. ”
Cope had been thinking the same thing. “Why would he do that?”
Ten shook his head.
“When I met him yesterday, I felt hit by a burst of emotion. Almost like a concussive wave like with an explosion. I felt a deep-seated need for revenge and one phrase echoed in my brain.”
“What was it?” Cope asked. He hadn’t felt anything of the kind, just a deep sense of foreboding, like he was in way over his head.
“Vengeance is mine,” Carson and Ten said at the same time.
“Deuteronomy 32:35. The rest of the passage is, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.’” Cope couldn’t believe the Sunday School classes his father insisted he attended were finally paying off.
“It’s talking about how God will be the one to avenge wrongs, but it almost seems as though the psychic is taking God’s role for himself.
” Cope knew what he was saying sounded crazy, absolutely banana crackers, as a matter of fact, but it felt like the right answer, somehow.
“Whoever’s heard of a psychic who comes after people who have wronged their clients? ”
“Not just an avenging psychic, but one who has the power to compel his clients to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets,” Ten said.
“And then uses them to what?” Carson asked. “What did your mother think was going to happen if she opened the door?”
“She thought the person ringing the bell was a sex pervert. I thought it was a version of Ding Dong Ditch, but you don’t usually ring the doorbell again and again like the person did last night. What do you think he wanted?”
“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Cope asked.
“My mother is terrified this person is going to come back again tonight.” Christie dabbed at her wet eyes again. “Is that what’s going to happen? Is this person going to come back again? Or maybe be lying in wait for her when she gets home from her night of Bingo?”
Cope had no idea what was going to happen. “I don’t know. Ten, what do you think?”
He shook his head.
“The reason I came to you is because I thought you could help me. What the hell do I do? I might be angry with my mother, but I don’t want some amped up sex pervert hurting and killing her.” Christie’s pleading eyes locked on Cope.
“Can you afford to go to a hotel tonight?” It was the only solution Cope could think of.
Christie nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Get your mother and do that for the night. Tell her she needs to skip Bingo.” It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing Cope could think to suggest. “My and Ten’s husbands are members of the Salem Police Department. We’ll speak with them and get back to you later today.”
“Okay,” Christie took a deep breath. “I’ll do that and wait for your call.” She stood and began zipping up the back of her T-rex costume.
“One last thing,” Cope began, “why did he have you sign a non-disclosure agreement?”
“I didn’t think to ask. I wanted the reading with him so badly that I did what he asked and signed the paper.”
“Did you read the document?” Cope asked. He had a very bad feeling about this.
Christie shook her head. “Like I said, I just wanted to know if Hank was going to propose.”
“He is,” Ten confirmed. “Do you have a copy of the document you signed?”
“No. I asked but he made up some excuse not to give it to me. I really fucked up. Didn’t I?” Christie looked on the verge of sobbing again.
“We’re going to figure this out.” Ten stood up and escorted Christie to the door and out into the shop.
“Sweet Jesus, Cope. Christie could have signed anything. The document could be forfeiting her soul or giving all her worldly possessions to this man. It’s like I can hear Rumpelstiltskin in my head telling the miller’s daughter that she would owe him her first born child if she couldn’t guess his name. ”
“That sort of thing isn’t legally binding,” Cope said. “There’s no way it could be enforced. Whatever she signed might not be legally binding, but I’m guessing its psychically binding.”
“Oh, God.” Carson’s mouth hung open. “Putting her up in a hotel isn’t going to help. He’s going to be able to find her wherever she goes.”
“And the payment for the free reading is whatever damage this maniac causes Christie’s mother,” Cope concluded. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Carson shook his head. “I have no idea.”
Cope didn’t either, but one thing was for certain, Christie’s mother was in very serious danger, which led Cope to realize an even bigger problem.
“In the pictures we saw on social media yesterday, the line to see Crawford stretched down the street. If he compelled all of those clients to reveal their deepest darkest desires for revenge, then there are more people in danger than Christie’s mother. ”
“I think it’s time to call Jude now.”
“Me too.” Cope grabbed his phone and tried to figure out how the hell he was going to explain this story to his husband.