"You got that right.”
"Terry, why are you on this project? This seems like a waste of your time.”
"Abnormal psych doesn't get more juicy than the prisoner/guard experiment.”
”Excuse me?”
"There's this classic experiment in behavioral and abnormal psychology in which you give a group of people permission to do whatever they want to another group of people—even though you tell them they are supposed to take care of the other group. You let them know that their actions have no repercussions in the outside world. Pretty soon they're doing some horrible things to each other. This is an interesting variation, because this group has no prisoners, only guards, and they've been told that what they do has power in the world, but only if the group as a whole does it. I'm writing my thesis on permission, self-justification, and psychosis based on some of this.”
"I see." I didn't, but I didn't want a deeper explanation at that point. It was ugly enough without going off on research tangents. "I'll get the monitoring information from you on Monday.”
"All right. If you want any more of these recordings you let me know." He looked aside. "I'm—uh. . I'm sorry I've been. .”
I waved him off. "Don't worry about it. I'm used to it.”
I let myself out, lingering long enough to miss the séance group as they left.
I couldn't just write off the idea that Terry had tweaked the information, but the apport pretty well put a bullet in the idea of faked effects; there's very little in the realm of paranormal research more convincing than a documented apport under proper scientific conditions—because there'd never been one. Even a professional skeptic of the class of a Houdini or a Randi would have to pause over this. I needed to clear off the last interview with Wayne Hopke and catch up to «Frankie» before I'd feel I'd completed the job, but I was convinced that Tuckman's phenomena—however impossible they seemed—were the real thing. Why they were so strong I couldn't be sure. He hadn't asked me to find that out, but I wanted to know, even if he didn't.
I wondered about the phenomena as I headed home, feeling the throbbing in my head ebb and flow with every pulse. It seemed as if the apported brooch had picked out Cara before flying into her face. It would have taken a considerable amount of power to apport the brooch in the first place, then hold it in place long enough to change its direction. Most apports just drop straight down out of the air—and according to Randi and Houdini they're faked by sleight-of-hand artists tossing things over their own shoulder behind their backs. This one had appeared, hung in one place, then twitched aside with enough force to hit a woman more than a foot away and cut her deep enough to need stitches. It seemed not only a show of power, but also a little vicious.
Cara's remark about Celia becoming cruel ran through my head. Maybe the group had somehow made their very own duppy—not just a simple poltergeist, neutral and playful like Philip, but a malicious ghost. Terry had said they'd been given permission. They'd been told they had power and perhaps somehow every piece of pettiness and bad temper had become manifest in their ghost. I was half convinced by my own argument, since most people will do more out of anger or spite than they will out of compassion or good feeling—there are always more people willing to complain than to praise, after all—but I didn't let myself buy it just yet. I needed to finish up before I could draw a conclusion. I didn't want to be like Tuckman and predetermine the solution before I'd got all the evidence.
I had to pause my maundering while I negotiated the last of the drive home. I continued my train of thought after I'd closed and locked the condo door behind myself.
I didn't like the fact that I was running parallel to a murder investigation. I imagined Solis wasn't too thrilled about my presence nearby, either. Odd bits of conversation kept pulling me closer to Mark's murder without solving anything. It annoyed me to have those few broken threads of information I could do nothing about. I wished I could just pass them all to Solis and call this thing closed. I wondered if I ought to tell him about the brooch. It was Cara's, and by her admission she'd left it at Mark's the day he'd been killed. That pretty well made her the woman who'd been in his bed, even without her confession to me, and that would interest Solis. He'd get the basic information when he interviewed the séance group—someone would mention such a startling event—but I wondered if I should mention it sooner. It might lead him to an arrest all the faster and then I wouldn't have to keep on thinking about this case.
Except that I'd seen the brooch apport and that meant Celia had taken it into the Grey. Had she taken it from Mark's apartment or from somewhere else? The uncomfortable thought stirred in my mind that a ghost so mean-tempered it would cut someone and strong enough to make a table run around a room and menace people might be able to do much worse. I had to know what the ghost's involvement with Mark's death was.
I didn't think I could get the answers from Celia and I didn't like the alternative route. I hated to ask vampires for favors, even when I was owed a few. I had no desire to mix with that bunch if I could avoid it, but I might be forced to ask Carlos for help if I was to discover how Celia was involved in Mark's death.
I didn't feel up to negotiating with anything tougher than a tub of yogurt that evening. My headache was not improving and all I wanted was to lie down for a while. I fed the ferret and watched her destroy my bookshelf while I lay on the couch gulping down aspirin with pints of water until we were both ready to sleep.
CHAPTER 17
Monday morning my headache had abated but I woke up feeling tired nonetheless and wished I had been drinking to justify feeling so hung-over—at least then I'd have felt I deserved it. My morning run seemed to be uphill all the way and the air was thick and unpleasant. The ferret demonstrated a degree of ire at being returned to her cage that is more commonly seen in goofy Japanese cartoons, so at least I went on my way chuckling at her expense.
I hung out in the PNU Psychology Department office until Denise Francisco showed up for work. She took a look at me as she ducked into her desk and dropped a large, black canvas purse on the floor with a thump.
She avoided eye contact. "Tuck isn't in yet," she said. She snatched a lumpy blue coffee mug the size of a walrus off the desktop and headed back out the door. I followed her.
"I've seen all of Dr. Tuckman that I care to for a while," I said. "I came to talk to you.”
Still thirty going on nineteen, she was wearing a short, flippy skirt over her pudgy hips with several layers of too-tight tank tops under a black denim jacket. If she hadn't been wearing cherry red Dr. Martens she would have scurried, but no one scurries in midcalf mosh boots. She whisked into another doorway that turned out to be a break room. She snatched the coffeepot off its warming plate and cursed loudly and creatively as the merest gloop of black, overboiled coffee oozed into her mug.
"Thirteen paralytic virgins and a partridge in a rutting pear tree! Who drank all the coffee already! You people suck, do you hear me? You S-U-Q-Q, suck! You couldn't give a blow job in a wind tunnel! If manners were makeup, you'd need plastic surgery first! Homeless winos put their hands on their wallets and cross to the opposite side of the street when they see you people coming!”
A voice floated out from somewhere deeper in the warren of offices: "Keep goin', Frankie. My abs need the workout.”
She bent over—almost exposing more than the stiff black net of her trendy petticoat—and scrabbled through a cabinet beneath the coffeemaker. "Goddamn it," she muttered. "They got the hazelnut." She straightened and glared at me. "Do you drink coffee?”