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  The music was peppier this time, but more importantly, the binaural sounds behind it were different. Higher in pitch. A more rapid pulse. Cautiously, I eased up the volume, leery about anything that might loosen my grasp on what little white light remained. But the Perky Planet music didn’t make me drowsy.

  In fact, it might have even perked me up.

  My inner skeptic told me it was all in my head. But the same could be said about the psychic edge I was trying to achieve, so even if it was just a placebo, it didn’t really matter. Something on the screen was pulsing. I touched it, and my brain guy shot a laser beam at the spot, which made Perky Planet hop around. Did the music change? If so, it was subtle. Another spot. I shot it. And soon I realized where I was supposed to shoot without the tutorial pulses telling me where to stick my finger. Several minutes went by where I poked and prodded the purple planet creature while he got bigger and bulgier. There was no score—not a numeric score, at least—but it seemed like I was making progress. At least until the planet exploded in a fit of giggles, the binaural pulses faded, and the app bumped me back to the home screen.

  “Vic?” Jacob said. “Are you interruptible?”

  I glanced up and found all three of them staring at me. I thumbed the app shut, hoping no one got “toddler video game” from the way I was jabbing the screen. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “What do you think of splitting into teams and re-canvasing the last known areas Kick was found? Carolyn and I will check back with the witnesses the cops talked to, see if any of them ‘remembered’ new information, and you and Zigler try to find any witnesses a non-medium would have missed.”

  I was flooded with relief over the prospect of being paired up with Zigler again. Carolyn scared me, for obvious reasons, but you’d think I would jump at the chance to work side by side with Jacob. Personally, fine. But professionally? He could be a lot to handle.

  Like…a lot.

  Zigler flipped open his notepad and said, “The party where Reginald scored his drugs took place in a storage facility on Lincoln. Start there?”

  Contrary to popular belief, Jacob’s ego isn’t impenetrable, so I did my best not to sound too excited. “Sure. Oh, and guys? Don’t lean too hard on the pharmacist while we’re gone. I know she’d be the obvious one…but my gut’s telling me she passed Carolyn’s first test for a reason.”

  Climbing into the passenger seat of Zig’s Impala felt like coming home…except the part where I had to fumble around for the seat latch and crank it back three clicks to keep my knees out of my ears. And thankfully, neither of us felt the need for idle chitchat.

  All in all, my day was really looking up.

  Lincoln Avenue is a diagonal artery that cuts through the Ravenswood neighborhood in a baffling mélange of old and new in a hodgepodge mixture of businesses and apartment buildings. The Lok-Tite storage facility, all forty thousand square feet of it, was on a particularly seedy block that developers hadn’t quite managed to encroach on…yet.

  While we waited for someone to let us in to the party space, we poked through the hallways. They were dark, thanks to the smashed-out lights no one had taken it upon themselves to replace. The perfect spot to turn tricks or deal drugs—if you didn’t mind getting shot while you were trying to transact business.

  I pulled down white light and felt that telltale headiness. Not the hard-edged, panicky suckdown that makes my head throb and my eyeballs bleed. Just the locked-and-loaded feeling of being psychically ready, should some dead guy try getting frisky. “Flashlight?” Zigler asked.

  Awww. He remembered to check with me first. I scanned the dim hallway for ghostly movement, then gave him my approval. “Fire it up. That pile of trash drifted up against the wall is prime habitat for rodents.”

  As the flashlight flickered to life, a distant electronic whine resolved itself into a thread of feedback…that then thundered into a choppy series of power chords.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Another rave? At this hour? I checked my watch—not even noon.

  Zigler and I found the stairs and headed up to the source of the music just as the song petered to a halt. There was a click of drumsticks counting down, a squeal of feedback, and then the same song started again. “A band rehearsing,” Zigler yelled over the noise. “Probably cheaper to rent storage than actual rehearsal space.”

  Probably so. Because a real rehearsal space would’ve had some soundproofing.

  The band wasn’t too worried about disturbing the lockers full of furniture from people’s deceased family members, all the stuff folks might not want to part with, but didn’t have the mental energy to sort through. The door to the band’s locker was propped open with a rickety box fan blowing in air.

  Inside the eight-by-twelve space, three pimply twentysomethings were getting their metal on, shirtless, and most likely jobless. They all had short hair, but they swung their heads as if they had something meaningful to twirl. When Zigler pushed open the door, he caught the drummer’s eye and the rhythm faltered. The guitarist screeched to a halt and yelled, “Dammit, Kyle!” But the bass player already realized they had company—and he was more concerned with trying to hide the conspicuous roach-filled ashtray.

  When the guitarist finally noticed us, he announced, “We’re not breaking any rules. This is our storage space. We pay rent. And there’s nothing in the contract that says we can’t jam here.”

  “Calm down, Metallica,” I said. “We’re not here about the noise.”

  The bass player edged the ashtray under a set list on the floor. I restrained myself from rolling my eyes.

  Zigler flashed his badge, introduced himself, and said, “We’re investigating a party that took place two weekends ago.”

  “The rave?” Defensive Guitar Guy said. “As if we’d have anything to do with that kind of techno-crap noise.”

  We both stared at him. His amplifier gave off a steady, low-pitched drone. Hopefully there was nothing binaural in the sound. I checked my white light. Seemed normal.

  The drummer cleared his throat and piped in, “Stylistically, electronic trance has totally different roots from rock and metal.”

  Says the guy who can’t hold a steady rhythm for more than thirty seconds. “So,” I said, “were any of you here that night or not? Keep in mind that we have access to surveillance footage, and if we find out you’re massaging the truth, we can stick you in an interrogation room a lot smaller than this until your memory jibes with the evidence.”

  Guy three said, “We didn’t jam that day, but I swung by to re-string my bass. And then I stopped down for a beer.”

  “Dude,” the guitarist muttered in disgust.

  “What? They had a keg.”

  I focused on the bass player. He had the sallow look of someone who’d get winded standing up from the couch. Either he was trying to grow a mustache, or he hadn’t quite learned to shave. “Approximately what time were you here? Did anyone try to sell you drugs?”

  He nudged the set list a few inches to the right.

  “Not weed,” I clarified. “No one gives a rat’s ass about weed. I’m talking about Kick.”

  The guy didn’t seem like he believed us—as if this whole thing were an elaborate attempt to bust him over a mostly-smoked blunt—but at least he didn’t deny all knowledge of the drug in question. “No way would I even think about touching Kick. That shit’ll mess you up.”

  The know-it-all drummer piped in. “Besides, unless you’re psychic, you’d get a better high from some antihistamines and a shot of Jack.”

  I ignored him and said to the bassist, “But you were at the party. If you have any idea who was holding, where they scored….”

  “No. No idea.”

  “Or we could bust you for the weed.”

  “What weed? There’s no weed here.” He reflexively backed up a step and kicked over the ashtray. The roach rolled out, along with a scattering of seeds. “That’s not mine. It was here when I got here. Do you have a search warrant? Oh my g
od. My mother’s gonna kill me.”

  “Sir?” Zigler prompted. “What can you tell us about the Kick?”

  “I dunno—these suburban chicks were pooling their money to buy it. Like a dare. ’Cause everyone knows it’s a really harsh buzz. But it was late and everything else had dried up. Plus, it’s kind of a badge of honor to say you’ve done it at least once.”

  What the hell—would it be a badge of honor to step in front of a speeding bus, too? “Who was selling it? Did they say?”

  “Some guy.”

  Deadpan, Zigler said, “Can you be more specific?”

  “Some middle-aged guy. And, for real…that’s all I know.”

  We took the band’s contact info in case we had any follow up questions. They were practically shitting themselves over the thought that we’d darken their doorstep again. It might’ve been fun to ask them a few more random questions just to watch them squirm, but I got a text that the building manager was waiting for us downstairs where the rave had taken place, so we cut the band loose and headed down to meet him.

  In the basement. Hooray.

  As we jogged down a dark staircase covered in graffiti, Zigler said, “You’ve changed.”

  “Have I?”

  “The way you jumped right in to question those kids. It was…different.”

  “Different bad?”

  “Just different.”

  I wondered what was to blame for the shift—three months of intensive training at the FPMP, my fortieth birthday, or the fact that at some point in the future, I might actually get married. Any one of those things would leave a mark. Added together, it was no wonder Zig noticed something was up.

  The manager was waiting at the foot of the stairwell. He was a sinewy Caucasian guy, late sixties-early seventies, who reeked of generic cigarettes—and his entire demeanor declared he was way too old for this shit. “Whatever happened here, I’m not responsible.” We both gave him a bland look, and he said, “They signed waivers.”

  Zigler pulled out his notepad and told me, “I can take the statement while you have a look around.”

  Given that we were in a basement, I’d rather not. But I supposed if there were any ghosts around, I could hardly expect Zig to find them. I opened up the top of my head and called down white light—and this time, I imagined I could hear the strobing sound of the Mood Blaster app while I did it. It was nothing at all like being on psyactives—I wasn’t supercharged or anything—but I did feel normal. Normal for me, anyhow.

  The lowest level of the storage facility was actually pretty similar to the cannery’s basement, minus all of Jacob’s exercise equipment, plus a lot of gang tags and other, more creative, X-rated graffiti. It spanned the whole building, with brick walls, concrete floors, and steel columns holding the weight of the structure. No doubt everything was crawling with asbestos.

  As I noted with little pleasure that the corner spray-painted Pee Here had actually been used as a makeshift urinal, I nearly dropped my phone into a puddle of piss when a familiar voice said, “So I checked around, like you wanted.”

  I spun around. No visual. “Jackie?”

  “About that Kick. Some white guy’s pushing it.”

  I’m not sure what startled me more. That she actually remembered the last thing I asked her to find out, that it corroborated the statement of another witness, or that she even recognized me to begin with. I wondered how she’d even managed to find me, but diagonal streets are weird. It took me a second to realize I was actually within a couple blocks of my old apartment.

  “That’s all?” I said softly. “No other description?”

  “Just an old white guy. Like you.”

  Nice.

  “If you could get a description of him, that would be great. Height, hair color, that sort of thing.”

  “Sure. I can try.”

  At the presence of a ghost, my internal valve had automatically surged open. It might be tempting to get complacent around Jackie, given that she and I had a lot of history together. But that episode the other night, the one where she was stuck in prostitute mode, served as a stark reminder that she wasn’t just some benign invisible friend. Not only was she unreliable. She was dead.

  I didn’t get a full-blown headache from expending my psychic resources into funneling down white light, but I did get a precursor—a sensitivity, like something was about to start hurting. The fact that I currently sported a bloody eyeball—no wonder that bass player seemed nervous—had me clamping down on a mental regulator valve. Jackie’s threat level was moderately low. While I couldn’t see her, I had known her for years, and she’d never tried any possession bullshit. Plus, her lucidity level was currently as high as I could expect.

  Now that I looked at it that way, I couldn’t help but wonder. “Say, Jackie, I’m curious. Why are you here?”

  “You tell me to find out about Kick for you, then you wonder why I’m here?” She laughed. “You be trippin’!”

  And with that, I felt a palpable shift of energy. “Jackie?” I whispered…though I suspected she was already gone.

  I rejoined Zigler, who finished up with the manager, then double-checked to see if I had any questions for the guy, which I didn’t. Back at the car, he said, “You saw something.” A statement, not a question.

  “Not exactly….”

  Back when Zig and I worked together, I might’ve left it at that. But he was right. My time at the FPMP had changed me. “Actually, I don’t usually see this particular ghost. I hear her.” I relayed what Jackie said to Zigler while his eyes darted to the back seat. “She’s not here. She wouldn’t be able to resist putting her two cents in if she was.”

  “She’s like an informant, then? An undead informant?”

  “Not undead, that makes her sound like—” I almost said a zombie. But I know better than to joke about zombies with Zigler. “Just dead, I guess.” No doubt he was already ruing the fact that he’d been paired up with me for the day, and not Carolyn.

  Maybe if I could humanize Jackie somehow, it would make the fact that she was helping me out a little more palatable. “I’m wondering, since Jackie probably died in the Fifth Precinct, maybe you can dig up a little more information on her.” The more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. I gave Zigler a description of her murder. In some cities, that and a first name might be enough to locate someone on the database. But this is Chicago. Homicide is the city’s biggest amateur sport.

  Zigler took down what I knew. Luckily I’d seen her that one time I was on psyactives when Roger Burke had been drugging my coffee, so I could give a physical description—because who’s to say Jackie was even her real name? For that matter, it was possible the john who shanked her managed to toss her in a dumpster and walk away scot-free, so there might not be anything more than a disappearance on record, if that.

  How depressing.

  For old time’s sake, we stopped for lunch at a taqueria on Western Ave where we’d hashed through a murder or two, back in the day. The salsa was worse than I remembered, but at least the guacamole was still decent. We didn’t chat—we ate. It was the same rhythm we had as a PsyCop team, ingesting a big spread of food while we digested the facts we’d just put together. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to go on yet, since there happen to be more than a few middle-aged white guys in Chicago.

  Once he’d plowed through the last of his burrito, Zigler apparently felt the need to sum up the morning. “Working with you is nothing like working with Carolyn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She won’t eat anywhere without a salad bar.”

  I texted Jacob to see if there was anywhere else he wanted me to stop, and he asked us to come back to The Clinic and help chitchat with the staff. I’d thought I was pretty satisfied after my enchilada plate—especially after all the chips I’d consumed—but I realized I wouldn’t say no to a little break room dessert.

  When we got there, I didn’t see Bertelli lurking around, so I crossed the re
d line in a blatant violation of all the ridiculous papers I’d signed in search of some baked goods. Gina had mentioned rhubarb was in season, and I was interested to see how the nurses would use it to show off their baking prowess. Unfortunately, in that break room, you snooze, you lose. Whatever dessert had graced the communal table was long gone. But I did find a familiar pharmacist sitting there, with her elbows planted among the tantalizing crumbs and a sour look on her face. Probably not because she’d missed out on the goodies, either.

  “What are you doing up here?” I asked. “It’s not your usual break time.”

  “Audit.”

  But I’d been gone for several hours. “Do they usually last this long?”

  “No, more like fifteen minutes, half an hour at the most. This is the second audit of the day. I have work to do, and this throws everything off. And I can’t stay late past a certain time without wading through a bunch of red tape.”

  I glanced at the floor. Different kind of tape. But no less annoying.

  “What’s Bertelli’s deal?”

  Erin gave a humorless laugh. “Probably worried the whole Kick epidemic will somehow bite him in the ass.” She glanced up to see if I’d be shocked at her candor. When I wasn’t, she went on. “It’s not logical. I have no idea what he thinks he’s going to find in my pharmacy. My numbers always add up. And the psyactive component of Kick has been out of production for years. I get it—we distribute Psych pharmaceuticals. We’re the obvious place to look. But checking and re-checking the same stock isn’t gonna make something appear that simply isn’t there.”

  No, it wouldn’t. And with everything going on, I doubted Bertelli could afford to waste his time on a fruitless task any more than Erin wanted to sit in the break room after the free goodies were all gone.

  Which led me to wonder if Bertelli was doing more than just auditing.