PsyCop 4: Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

surface to hear my conversation.”
    “So which time were you lying—when you said I’m nowhere on the Internet, or when you bragged about finding out my test scores?”
    “I’m probably lots of things, but I’m no liar. Ask Carolyn.”
    “Either I’m online, or I’m not.”
    “The actual words—in a password-protected Usenet group, I might add—were ‘a certain Chicago medium tested out at fifth level.’”
    “A certain Chicago medium.”
    “That’s right.”
    “What makes you even think that means me?”
    “Do you know any other certified mediums in Chicago? Let alone Class Five?”
    “I’m going,” I said, and hung up before he could plant any more ideas into my head about unbuckling his buckles and bending him over. I had enough uncomfortable thoughts to keep me occupied for a good, long time.

-THREE-
    I searched the Web for signs of myself until the Seconal made the letters on the screen start to blur together. I’d found plenty of stuff about Jacob and Carolyn. The Chicago Tribune database was full of articles that mentioned them in conjunction with the crimes they’d solved—assaults and rapes.
    Crash? Totally searchable, if you knew his whole name—which I did, thanks to Miss Mattie, the guardian angel who watched over him. Curtis Ash. Plenty of hits on him. His store, Sticks and Stones, had a website that made it look a lot bigger than it really was in person.
    He had a presence in the Wicker Park Chamber of Commerce. His telephone number even popped up.
    Nothing about Maurice Taylor except an old article in the Chicago Defender about a convoluted embezzling scam he’d exposed before he became a PsyCop.
    And me, with all those murders that would have ended up in the cold case file without me and my wonderful “gift”?
    Nothing.
    By the time Jacob got home around three in the morning, I was so dead to the world that the front door didn’t even wake me. I sleep deeply on reds, even one pill, and Jacob had to shake me to bring me around. Unfamiliar couch, unfamiliar room, and all my clothes were still on, even my sneakers. “Come to bed,” he said.
    We made our way upstairs to the narrow lofted area that held a small bedroom, an even smaller bedroom, and a bathroom that must have been modeled after something in an RV. Jacob’s bedroom furniture fit in the largest of the small bedrooms—barely. Maybe the bed wouldn’t have looked quite so displaced if I’d bothered to put some sheets on it, but it hadn’t occurred to me to make the bed.
    The mattress sat there in the middle of the room, naked and shiny, and a hell of a lot less inviting than the couch. Jacob opened a couple of boxes while I stood there in my Seconal daze and rubbed my eyes. He threw a handful of pillows and blankets toward the middle of the bed and started to strip out of his suit.
    I looked for sheets. There were none. The pillows were all bare, with the words “King – Deluxe – Firm” printed on them, over and over, until the letters formed a meaningless pattern. I moved the pillows toward the head of the bed and shook out the comforter. I couldn’t tell the long side from the short side, and I kept rotating it around, trying to figure out which way it was supposed to go, while Jacob hung up his suit and tucked his gun and holster into the bedside table.
    “Forget it,” said Jacob. “I’ve got to try and sleep.” 

    Try? Not to have a Yoda moment or anything, but I’d never known Jacob to “try” and sleep. It was something he just did. Expansively. Deeply. Even loudly, those nights when he snored. What did he mean by “try?”
    “You want a Seconal?”
    Jacob shook his head. “I’ve got to get up in three hours.” I left my clothes in a mound on the floor and climbed into bed. The mattress was slippery without a sheet to cover it up. I wondered why people even bothered with sheets, but I figured there had to be a reason, and it was just the Seconal thinking for me and enjoying the Teflon