I sighed. I really wished I hadn’t shown up at the hospital. “I’m here because fools rush in where angels fear to tread?” I said, making it a question. “Honestly there are several agencies involved in the case and I don’t know what we’re looking for or what we’ll learn. Not yet. We’re trying to rule out everything right now, from bacterial infection to ancient aliens.”
“There aren’t really ancient aliens, are there?” she asked, her mouth and tone trying for levity when there was nothing amusing about her situation at all.
I turned my paper coffee cup in a circle on the table and said ruefully, “I hope not, but the world is so crazy it might make better sense if there were.” Dougie lifted her eyebrows at me and I grinned at her. “Sure. Ancient aliens. Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. And the chupacabra. Why not?”
She chuckled. “All of those here in Knoxville? Aren’t we lucky.”
I refrained from humming spooky music, a reaction that came from Spook School but would have been totally inappropriate. Instead I said, “Can you tell me about your daughter and granddaughters?”
“The girls are in town for a Thanksgiving vacation. My house is too small, so they stayed with Alisha, in their old bedrooms. We’re going to have Thanksgiving togeth—” She stopped, and appeared to be revising the big holiday plans. Her eyes filled with tears again, but she licked her lips, which were badly chapped, took a slow breath, and started over. “The plan was to have Thanksgiving dinner together at Alisha’s. The girls and their spouses got in yesterday evening. I saw them all over dessert, around seven last night. I went home about nine. There was a game on and the spouses had gone upstairs to watch. Alisha, Kirsten, and Sharon were still sitting at the kitchen table over a glass of wine.” Dougie was holding the cup of coffee like a lifeline, her eyes staring into a distance that was suddenly full of uncertainty.
I said, “I’m on my way to Alisha’s house. Is there anything I should know? Anything you can tell me about what was going on with them in the hours before the... event?”
“Warrant?”
“The FBI probably already has one,” I said gently. “I’ll just be there to do a little paranormal scouting around.”
“They’re in her house? Who? Alisha would hate that.”
“Probably everyone. And just a word to the wise: the house will be a shambles when they finish.”
Dougie heaved out a breath that sounded as if it had been held too long. “God. This is a nightmare.” She finished off the second cup of coffee and pushed herself away from the table. “Would you lock up when they’re done? And call me with what you find?”
“I can call. Locking up depends on what’s happening when I leave the house. But I can promise to keep you in the loop to the best of my ability and security clearance level.”
Dougie firmed her shoulders and said, “In other words, you may never know what the problem is, any more than I might.” I turned my palm up in a that’s-the-way-things-are-sometimes gesture. She rocked her head on her neck, communicating frustration and disappointment and a need to stretch or run or hitsomething. “Go do whatever you want. Just find me some answers, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
***
On the way, I called Rick and confessed that I had stopped at the hospital—with JoJo’s permission. He wasn’t happy, made some comments about me going behind his back, rodeoing again, but he ended up agreeing that I should go to Alisha’s house and “initiate a prelim eval. Occam just got there. Meet him. He has lead.”
“Okay.”
“Not justokay, Nell. This is your first case. You arenot leadon this. Understand? You have special talents that make you important to PsyLED, but you are on probationary status. You work with a team, not solo. You will run things by mebeforeyou do them. Everything. By me.”
I thought it through for a moment that stretched too long before saying, “Copy that. How’s Soul?”
Rick made ahunhnoise, followed by his own silence. “Follow orders.” He hung up.
I wasn’t sure what point I had made, but it must have been a good one.
***
The neighborhood streets had been cordoned off to the public, the residents had been evacuated, and the media was out in force at the site of what was being called a “possible viral outbreak of unknown origin.” I had to park two blocks away, but managed to snag a parking spot near Occam’s sporty car. My old Chevy C10 looked out of place, and I dug in my glove box for the small ID card to set in my window to keep from being towed, and picked up the P 2.0. By the time I opened the door, Occam was there, with a quiet “Nell, sugar. This way.”
He guided me away from the media vans and the telescopic lenses and the crowd of onlookers, between two houses, and along a back fence, to the house Rick had designated as Point A. I paused to check the GPS and knew it wasn’t Alisha’s home, and I almost followed Occam inside the one-story house, where he was already dressing in one of the antispell 3PE unis. But thehouse looked crowded and intense, full of law enforcement personnel: FBI CSI, PsyCSI, uniformed cops, plainclothes detectives, and special agents, all wanting to get a look at the scene. Car-wreck rubberneckers had nothing on law enforcement officers wanting to get in on something interesting.
But the victims of the MED had been discovered in their yards. I motioned to Occam, pointing to myself and then in a circular motion around me, saying that I’d stay outside and look around. He motioned back, bending and placing his palm flat on the ground, then stood and gave me a thumbs-down with both hands, telling me not to put my hand on the ground for a read. I laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. He tossed a uni off the porch in my general direction and disappeared inside.
With the uni draped over a shoulder and the P 2.0 under the same arm, I wandered. The lawn was uninteresting, with boring landscaping plants, recently trimmed and shaped, a fake wishing well, some half-hidden garden gnomes, and dozens of mums. There was also a floorless tent set up on the front lawn and inside were three techs, standing along the walls, each with a handheld psy-meter 1.0, each dressed in a white uni with the ugly orange stripe across the chest.
I stopped outside the door, leaned in, flipped my jacket open to show my badge and held up my ID. I said, “Hi. I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram, with PsyLED.”
I stopped. I had never identified myself that way before. The words sent an electric thrill through me, and I grinned uncontrollably, too wide, too excited. I forced my mouth to neutral, ducked my head in embarrassment, and extended the device in my hand. “I have a psy-meter 2.0. Can I do a reading?”
The responses were varied: “Holy shit, yes.” “Hi, Nell.” And “Thank God, I thought you guys would never get here. Where’s your uni?”
