Cynthia walked up now, and Nick would not be surprised if she had been standing in the hallway the entire time listening in. “They have a few questions for you, Cyn. Holler if there’s a problem.”
She nodded, mouth set firm. He knew she would not be put off by them, but the nerves were still there. “I will.”
Nick started to step around her, but Agent Carpenter stepped up to the door. “Thanks again, Mr. Anderson. We’re sorry to have interrupted your day like this.”
He sensed what she wanted even before her hand began to extend, and he gave her a fleeting smile before ducking around Cynthia and heading for the coffeepot. Not yet, Ms. Carpenter. You and I both know what you want to find out, and now is not a good time.
Chapter 9
After a fruitless twenty minutes’ worth of questioning that had Jackie ready to arrest the lot of them, she drove them back toward the city. Evening traffic had congested the roadways, but, thankfully, she and Laurel were going in the opposite direction. Some semblance of proper color had finally returned to Laurel’s face.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Laurel nodded again. “I’m fine, really. It just threw me for a loop, is all. Totally unexpected. I’m not even sure how to describe it.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “The barfing spoke volumes.”
Laurel gave her a halfhearted laugh. “Sorry about that. Not good for the image, I know.”
“Screw the image. I was worried I’d have to call nine-one-one.”
“I’ll be okay, Jackie. A little sleep, and I’ll be good to go.”
“I’ll take you home.”
Laurel nodded, and they drove in silence for a few moments.
“So what does it mean? That it’s so overwhelming as to make you sick?”
“I honestly have no clue,” Laurel said. “Normally, when I try to contact the other side, it takes a lot of concentration and effort to just get a peep out of the spirit world. But when I touched Ms. Fontaine, it was like someone kicked open the door and bowled me over.”
“Then this whole ghost-hunting thing they claim? It’s not just a front or scam for something?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t go that far, but I would say there’s a whole truckload of psychic power in that office back there. If anyone could claim to be able to track down ghosts, that girl could do it.”
“What about Anderson?”
“Maybe. I tried to shake his hand before we left, but he avoided touching me like I had the plague.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Why would he want to avoid that?”
“Keep his power a secret? I don’t know. That kind of thing gets out to the public, and he’d have the tabloids all over him.”
Jackie nodded. “True enough. The bastard was avoiding everything though. He was doing his damnedest to appease us and get us the hell out.”
“Worked pretty well, too,” Laurel said with a chuckle. “We don’t have much more than what we came with. Very… persuasive man.”
Jackie jumped on the gas and sped around a slower-moving car before cutting back in and braking for a sharp turn onto the freeway ramp. “It’s those fucking eyes. I want to know what kind of trick he was pulling to do that.”
“I’d guess it has something to do with that power they have, or maybe it’s just because he was kinda hot.”
Jackie snorted. “Did you see the saddle above his desk? Damn cowboy wannabes. I can’t stand them. This case is heading right into the Twilight Zone, isn’t it?”
“I’m pretty sure they know something they aren’t telling us, and the cowboy schtick was real, guarantee it.”
“Ha! Pretty sure? I’ll bet you a box of Annabelle’s finest that they are hip deep in this shit. Anderson had some connection to that penny, I’m positive. Maybe Denny or Hauser can dig up something on that. I don’t like cowboys.”
Laurel sighed and sank back farther into the seat. “Maybe. We don’t have much to go on with them. The connection to that old murder case is flimsy. And you do too like cowboys. Haven’t you seen, like, every Eastwood Western ever made?”
“We work with flimsy all the time, Laur. Flimsy Bullshit Investigations. That’s us. I want to find out what he knows though. He knows something and doesn’t want to say. If there’s no direct involvement, why not tell us? Whom or what are they protecting?”
Her eyes were closed. “All good questions, grasshopper. You must meditate upon them and seek enlightenment.”
“Who’s Grasshopper?”
Laurel smiled. “Never mind. Just get me home. I really need to sleep this off, and admit it-you have a disturbing attraction to cowboys.”
She laughed. “Eastwood kicked ass and, like any good man, didn’t talk much.”
“Mr. Anderson didn’t say much either, smart-ass.”
After dropping Laurel off at her cute little bungalow house, Jackie headed back downtown and pulled into Marly’s, a local bar not far from headquarters, frequented by much of the building’s staff. A shot or two would chill her nerves and set her mind on track to see if any of the pieces were fitting together in a way she hadn’t noticed yet.
In her usual booth in the corner at one end of the bar, Jackie picked up the last fry from her basket and swirled it around in the dregs of the remaining ketchup. The crowd at Marly’s had hit the dinnertime peak. It was noisy, dim, and bustling, and she wished her timing had been better. She liked it far better when the place was half empty and you could hear the jukebox. Billie Holiday was singing, and only every third word could be heard.
More importantly, you could run a tab with Marly, and he didn’t believe water had a place in his bar other than for washing dishes. The drinks were strong. Jackie washed down her last fry with the last of her beer, setting the pint glass next to the pair of empty shot glasses Shelly had brought earlier. Shelly was a smart waitress. She never let more than two empties sit on your table. After a while you tended to forget exactly how many you had drank. Jackie could not remember. Six shots? Or was it just four? If it had been six, she would have to wait a bit before leaving. Sadly, the warmth of the tequila had not worked its wonders in untangling the day’s events, leaving her muddled and annoyed.
Across the room-through the tangled web of eaters, those meandering with drinks from the bar to their table, and a light haze of smoke in the dim lighting-some of the FBI guys were gathered at a table. Jackie had watched them come in, and, fortunately, they had not noticed her. She had moved to the other side of her booth so her back was more to them. The last thing she wanted was to get called over and asked about the case or to sit and listen to them comment on the body parts of every woman walking to the bar. Besides, Pernetti had joined them, and she just could not stand the prick. How did his wife put up with him? He was a pig with a capital P.
Worse, the nagging feeling about this case was not getting burned away with the wave of alcohol. Ghosts, psychics, and twelve-year-olds getting drained of blood had her stomach crawling. They’d had one case five years earlier where Jackie had witnessed enough to make her believe Laurel’s psychic weirdness was not bullshit. The case would not have been solved without her, and nothing brought about feelings of ineffectualness like the supernatural. There were no rules, no structure, no FBI training on handling that kind of strange, and this one was strange enough to freak Laurel out. Jackie hoped to hell it was just a normal psycho siphoning off people’s blood.
The image of Archie would not go away. She could see the boy running away from his fighting and screaming parents, wanting something he could never have there. It struck far deeper than Jackie wanted to admit, and the tequila was failing to trickle down that far.
Where the hell was Shelly? She wanted one more for the road, and the girl had obviously decided she had had enough. The ticket lay facedown on the edge of the table. The bitch had slipped it in at some point in the last twenty minutes. Damn stealth waitress.
Jackie picked up the check and made her way to the bar. Definitely needed one more for the road. Maybe she would just walk back over to headquarters and go through that info on the cowboy again.