I popped the top on the Tylenol and gave him a curious sideways glance. “No. I’ve had worse. Sergeant Sunshine hits like a girl.”
He looked like he wanted to give a snort of his own, then he offered matter-of-factly, “Well, he’ll have time to grow into a woman now. He’s in lockup, and there his ass will stay until I say differently. I don’t tolerate abuse from my men.”
“Yeah, it’s only the upstanding blackmail you go for.” Ignoring the water, I dry-swallowed a nonrecommended dose of the painkiller. “When do we get this show on the road?”
“And he only punched you the once? What restraint.” He rubbed a hand over a suddenly tired face. Judging by the lines in his face, Hector had skipped more than last night’s sleep. He looked years older than his age, with a weariness that only comes from many sleepless nights. “It won’t be long. Leave your gloves on. I want the results of this experiment to be immaculate. We don’t have time for anything less, not now.” Allgood was wearing a lab coat, too, and I was beginning to think he came by it honestly.
“What are you, Allgood?” I demanded abruptly. “A scientist? A soldier? What the hell are you?”
“Why can’t I be both?” he responded with faint amusement. He stood, fished around in one coat pocket, and tossed me two pudding cups and a plastic spoon. “Here, breakfast. It’s all we have time for.” Then he added with mocking humor, “And it’s soft.”
So much for sympathy. I gave an internal grumble. My stomach echoed that grumble, and I peeled the plastic film from the top of the first cup and went to work. Chocolate caramel. Not bad. By the time I polished both of them off, my “peers” had arrived. In one big group, they must’ve been bused in. Bright-eyed and chipper, I’d have bet they all had more than a pudding cup for breakfast. And if I thought their eyes were bright, I only had to take a good look at their clothes. Jesus Christ. I slumped down lower in the chair.
My people, joy.
Yeah, I’d admit to playing to the crowd. It was part of the gig. But there was a line I drew. These guys played cat’s cradle with that line, and they did it while wearing velvet robes and rhinestone-studded turbans. Although, to be completely honest, there were a few who went in the other direction. They dressed like college professors or Matrix extras. Dark suits, turtlenecks, a discreet diamond-accented watch. Hell, one guy even had a TV show. It was local to New York, but I caught it occasionally on cable and laughed myself sick. New York… Allgood had indeed cast his net far and wide. I wondered what story he’d told them-the same one he’d tried to spin in my office? A nice, safe, academic study of psychic phenomena? Didn’t those guys see the fence, the guards? I snorted into my empty pudding cup. Psychic, my ass. They didn’t even qualify as mildly observant.
“Jackson, sugar, is that you?”
I rolled my eyes upward to see a familiar face. “Madame,” I said easily. “I’m surprised to see you here. Funny how fast five to ten flies.”
The round face hardened as mascara-ringed eyes narrowed to venomous slits. “Always the sweet talker, aren’t you, Eye?”
I raised the unopened water bottle in her direction. “A toast. Accused but never convicted. You give us all something to shoot for, Joyce.”
Joyce Ann Tingle, otherwise known as Madame Maya Eilish, was self-proclaimed queen of Atlanta. Hell, she all but ruled the tristate area. She was as adept at dodging charges as she was at robbing her clients blind. Not content simply to deal the cards or gaze blankly into a crystal ball, she sold spells and curse removals. Two thousand was the going rate for the latter. Pretty good money to wave a chicken feather in your general direction. And then there was the rumor that she’d had a rival’s shop burned down-while he was in it. A canny businesswoman, indeed. A seared lump in the burn unit doesn’t provide much in the way of competition.
With a sweep of silk muumuu, she waddled off and left me to my devices. Here was hoping I had an untorched shop left to go home to… that is, if I survived this. The rest of the “psychics” milled about before finally settling into chairs scattered throughout the room. Before us, they were assembling cubicles; back to back, there were eight total. Apparently, this was going to be the assembly line of paranormal testing. In and out and moving on to the next self-made Nostradamus. And that was precisely how it went. Four at a time, the guinea pigs were shuffled down one at a time to individual carpeted boxes, where whitecoats waited for them in opposite cubicles. The shared wall prevented any visual cues to the psychics, and from the flat drone of the voices asking the questions, audio cues weren’t exactly flying fast and loose, either. With nothing but the backs of interchangeable inquisitioners to look at and unable to make out their low mutter, I let my lids fall and indulged in a short snooze. It didn’t seem long, but when a hand at my shoulder shook me awake, more than two-thirds of the clairvoyant crowd was gone. Lucky them.
“Your turn.”
I looked up at Hector and pasted a grin on my aching face. “Ready to be dazzled?” I hoped it would be by my amazing talent for utter and complete bullshit. Lying to prove I wasn’t psychic-it had to be a first in this group.
Raising eyebrows, he gave the deadpan answer, “Always.” When I was up and moving, he added, “Third cubicle, take a seat.”
As I walked, I pictured how it would go in my head, how I hoped it would. I wasn’t smug or stupid enough to think it was going to be a piece of cake. Allgood was many things, a son of a bitch chief among them, but gullible he was not. I had one chance, and it was a damn slim one. Then I saw what waited for me in the cubicle, and that chance instantly evaporated. The equipment that had looked so familiar
… up close, it clicked. I recognized it from countless TV shows and movies. It was a lie detector. A damn lie detector. I froze with one hand resting on the back of the cheap plastic chair. Was I screwed? Let us count the ways.
“Sit down, Mr. Eye. I’ll hook you up personally.” At my elbow, my own private shark watched with an inscrutable gaze.
Outmaneuvered, I wasn’t used to it, and I didn’t like it. Then again, I doubted Hector much cared what I did or did not like. I felt my eyes go flat and distant, and then… I sat. What else was left to me? I was painted into a corner there was no getting out of. At his order, I took my gloves off while he pulled on his own pair, latex surgical ones. My movement revealed the tattoo on my palm. Allgood noticed it instantly. “Unusual.” He leaned in for a closer look. “Appropriate, though, for the All Seeing Eye.”
It was a tattoo of a wide-open eye taking up nearly the entire surface of the palm. I flexed my hand and said mockingly, “It’s cheaper than a billboard.”
“There’s no denying that. You seem to have advertising down to an art.” He shook his head and Velcroed a probe to my index finger. “Is there a reason it’s blue?”
Yeah, there was a reason. And that very reason meant the question wasn’t my favorite one. It was the kind that Abby had long learned to avoid and that Glory had already lived through the answer to. Tess was gone, but I carried her with me every day, etched on my skin. But I wasn’t hooked up to the polygraph yet, was I? Charlie’s brother could choke on his idle curiosity.
“No. No reason. And also, Hector, none of your goddamn business.”
“Fair enough,” he said, without offense. He looped a blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm and finally finished up with a strap around my chest. Pulse, blood pressure, and respiration, pinned down six ways from Sunday. It was common knowledge that this type of thing wasn’t foolproof, and an amoral bastard like me had no qualms about lying, but I’d seen enough of Allgood already to know he’d make the damn machine all but sit up and sing. Thanks, Glory, I thought with resignation. Now both of us are out of luck.
When Allgood finished with me, he said aloud, “Begin.”
From the other side, my unseen questioner started. He went through a list of basic questions, the usual drill for setting up a baseline of responses, I was guessing. Is your name blah blah? Do you have a sister named… on and on. At least they weren’t too personal. They could’ve been much worse. Hector was bound to know my past. He was a man who did his homework, and it was all in the public domain. Certainly it was to someone as connected as he seemed to be, and maybe to just about anyone else. After all, the shooting had been declared self-defense. It was part of my Child Protective Services record, not a criminal one that would’ve been sealed when I turned eighteen.
And then there were the newspapers. They’d had a field day. It was front-page news: White Trash Massacre! That’d been the local down-home paper. They didn’t hold much to journalistic ethics.
They even took pictures of the bloody porch of the house after the bodies were removed.
Bastards.
