PsyCop .1: Inside Out Read online

  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, a
n 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.

  It was also fun to glimpse Maurice back in the day when he was still a Vic-whisperer.

  Recommended Reads

  Zero Hour

  Ernest just turned thirty. It’s time for retirement, freedom from the tedious drudgery of his job as a data clerk. Time to explore parts of the city he’s never seen before, and hopefully meet some people other than his Deacon or his health monitor. And at the end of the month? Time to die.

  Will runs the counter at the historic coffee shop, and when he talks, he sounds just like an old-time data feed. He’s nothing like anyone Ernest has ever met—which isn’t saying much—but still, something about him simply doesn’t parse. (Novel, mid-2011)

  Featuring cover art by the illustrious PL Nunn

  Beautiful • Mysterious • Bizarre

  fiction by Jordan Castillo Price

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