PsyCop: GhosTV Part 6

43.

I looked down at the barbell and counted up the metal discs. Over a hundred and fifty pounds on one end alone. I stared at it stupidly as I realized he bench-pressed two of me. On a regular basis.

The dumbbells, then. There they were, colorful and rubberized, stacked on their una.s.suming metal pyramid. The weights were printed ever so helpfully on the ends. I took the second-smallest weight, a green 12-pounder, and wondered what to do with it. I tried a curl and thought, seriously, is this how guys get buff?

I put it back before I hurt myself.

The clear course of action was to ask Jacob for advice. So naturally I wanted to do that least of all. Did I think he would look down at me, think I was a wimp because I couldn't press and squat and lift what he could? He already knew that. Heck, he thought I couldn't even handle him sitting on my lap.

Maybe I thought he'd push me harder than I was ready to go. That's what trainers did, wasn't it? Though Jacob was so notorious for cutting me slack, I couldn't really fathom him telling me to drop and give him fifty. Not unless we were naked, and role-playing, and he'd only make me do about ten before he spread me open and showed me who was boss.

I visited that pleasant daydream for a few seconds, then turned and headed upstairs. I suspected what I was really scared of was that as disgusted as I was with my scrawniness, I didn't have the motivation to do anything about it. It was bad enough Jacob had to live with the protruding hipbones. He didn't need my personality flaws highlighted, too.

My laptop was still open to the latest miracle piece of plastic, so I decided to see if there might be a legitimate-looking site that would tell me how to use something we already owned. I grabbed a banana and a fresh cup of coffee, and I started poking around for dumbbell workouts. I quickly saw they were now called free weights. Fine. Free

44.

weights, then. I found a simple routine, went to print it out, and got a message that my printer was out of ink.

Why did everything always need to be so complicated?

Sure, I could go to the store, buy ink, come back, try to install it and find I'd somehow managed to get the wrong cartridge-but was it worth it? Who was to say I wouldn't try the workout once and then give up?

Who was to say Jacob even wanted me any bigger-besides Barbara, of course?

It seemed like a shame to go through all that effort for nothing. If there were only some way I could know for sure if Jacob even wanted me to beef up. Without asking him, of course, because he'd only say I was great just the way I was. That's what boyfriends are supposed to say-that's just the way the world works.

However...I did know someone who could tell me for sure.

Even as I thought it, I felt petty. My ex-partner, Lisa Gutierrez, was teetering on the verge of locking herself in a room and using her si-no talent to solve every crime in every precinct known to man, and then probably a few that hadn't even been committed yet. Did I deserve to use her to find out whether or not Jacob wanted a little something more to hold onto?

The thing was, we were friends, Lisa and me. And whether or not she used the si-no to come by her answer, I'd bet she'd be able to give me some good advice. I opened my email and typed: Hey Lis What's going on with you...how had summer been treating you, I bet its nice in C.A.

I was thinking about weight training...what do you think Jacob would think about it...I can't always tell if hes just saying what I want to hear.

45.

You missed vinyl wrist restraint day with some muscle bound guy named Sando, lucky you...I bet you were meditating at the time.

Keep in touch, Vic p.s. call me sometime There. That didn't sound too desperate. And if her answer didn't sound like a si-no to me, I could always figure out a way to get Carolyn to ask Jacob for me.

I grabbed another cup of coffee and set out to find three exercises I could get started with that were so simple I could memorize them without printing them out, when I saw I had new mail.

My heart raced. Lisa must have been sitting at her computer and done it then and there. Si? No.

Briefly, very briefly, it occurred to me to not look at her answer-because if it was no, Jacob didn't need me to step up the fitness regime, then I'd be missing out on a perfectly good opportunity to increase my strength and endurance-and I'd also squander the chance at a potential hobby, which would be a shame. I'd finally admitted that I had no idea how to play Sudoku.

And if she said yes, then no doubt I'd feel like c.r.a.p, and I wouldn't be able to tell Jacob about it either since there'd be nothing he could say that would make me feel better.

I thought both of those things, for maybe half a second. But I'd asked, and if she had an answer for me, then I owed it to her to see it.

I pulled up my email and saw the message I'd just sent, with this in the header: 550 user lmgutierrez23, quota exceeded 550 ... Can't create output: Error 0

46.

My first thought was that I'd typed it wrong, but no, she was in my address book and the emails always went through before. Besides, when I looked at the message, it didn't say it was an invalid address.

It said the quota was exceeded.

On a Q-mail account? Those things hold like a million messages.

I memory-dialed Jacob, who picked up after two rings. "Hey, it's me," I said. "You busy?"

"Not for you. What's up?"

"An email bounced back from Lisa. Don't you think that's weird?"

"I don't know." He considered. "Maybe her account was full of spam so she created a new one."

"The account was still there, but it was full. A Q-mail account."

"Huh. But remember when my mother got the digital camera and she sent me a hundred megs of photos because she didn't know how to work the settings? It might be something like that."

"When was the last time you actually heard from her?" I scrolled down. "Lisa, I mean. Not your mother. Because now I'm looking, and I see she didn't answer my last two emails. So it's been a week. No, two."

He gave a short sigh. "Okay. I'll check tonight when I get home." I was in the bas.e.m.e.nt attempting a lateral raise when the sound of the front door slamming nearly sent me through the ceiling. My gun was in the bedroom. I glanced down at the fifteen-pound freeweight in my hand. It would have to do. I crept up the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs soundlessly and poked my head out, only to hear Jacob's familiar footfalls on the stairs to the loft. "Vic? You home?" A sick surge coursed through me as I realized I wasn't experiencing a home invasion. Only my adrenaline level needed to catch up. "Here."

47.

Jacob turned on the stairs with his tie half-off, looking like a male stripper who'd gotten the address to the bachelorette party wrong.

Then he scowled, which diminished the stripper-like quality. Slightly.

"What were you doing in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

I could hardly drop the weight behind me and hope it bounced quietly down the stairs, especially since it would probably take out half a dozen of them. "I, uh...." I shrugged.

"Were you working out?"

Busted. "I was bored."

Jacob backtracked, got over the shock of seeing me with a dumbbell in my hand, slipped his tie the rest of the way off and dropped it over the back of the couch. "I took half a day. I couldn't stop thinking about Lisa."

It had been two and a half weeks since she'd emailed Jacob.

"You can level with me," I told him. "If she gave you her phone number and not me, I won't be mad."

"Me? What makes you think she'd trust me over you? I was the one who couldn't stop asking for si-nos."

We both looked at each other hard, and then I said, "Carolyn." While Jacob set to tracking her down, I called Sticks and Stones. "Hey, do you have Lisa's number?"

"Nope. I got an email address, the same one you have."

"The Q-mail? It's bouncing. The message says it's full."

"Must be a glitch. Those things never fill up."

"That's what I said. What if something's wrong?"

48.

"You're the detective. Do something about it." I wished I was there in person so I could smack him upside the head with my phone. "You're sure you don't have a phone number."

"Are you calling me a liar? I already told you. No. I have an email.

That's all I have."

"Okay, okay." I cast around for some other idea. "So...do you have any kind of feeling about it?"

"Don't be an a.s.s. I'm not a precog any more than you are." I hung up with Crash. Jacob had his phone pinned in the crook of his shoulder and was busy going through his wallet. I watched, torn between curiosity and dread, while he pulled out a business card. He looked up as if he'd sensed my eyes on him. "Carolyn doesn't have her number either. I've got one more idea, and it's a long shot." I stared harder.

He dialed.

He waited. I waited. He fiddled with the card. And finally, when I'd decided his long shot wasn't going to pay off, someone picked up.

"Hi, this is Detective Jacob Marks. I'm not sure if you remember me, but last fall you performed an exor-"

A raised voice on the other end of the line cut him off. Talking. A lot.

"That's actually why I-"

More talking. I couldn't make out the words, but I caught the tone, all right. Urgent.

"Hold on," Jacob said. "The Santa Barbara police are-? Uh huh. No, they're not part of the PsyCop program. It doesn't necessarily say anything about their procedures...it could be that a referendum wasn't approved to spend the-right, they're probably not trained to keep psychic evidence uncontaminated."

49.

What? h.e.l.l, even I wasn't trained in keeping psychic evidence uncontaminated. I did my best to apply the procedures I learned for mundane crime scene evidence, but ultimately, I winged it.

"What have they done so far? Searched the-uh huh. Did they remove anything?"

Psychic evidence. I wasn't even sure what const.i.tuted "psychic evidence." It would depend on the Psych, wouldn't it? For me, it meant ghosts. For Carolyn, statements. For Lisa...well, anything was fair game, with the si-no. Which would be a pretty d.a.m.n threatening realization for a criminal.

My stomach was doing an unpleasant churny thing.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

Lisa missing? A very unpleasant churny thing.

"Hold on." Jacob thumbed the mute b.u.t.ton and asked me, "Do you know anyone named Karen Frugali?" I shook my head. He unmuted the phone. "And how long has she been gone?" He listened, then cut his eyes to me. "I'm not positive my partner will be willing to fly out there and take a look...but I'll ask."

They said their goodbyes while I wondered if I might throw up, and once Jacob hit the disconnect b.u.t.ton, I said, "If something's going on with Lisa, you bet your sweet a.s.s I want to go take a look." He gave me a wry look, and said, "I was counting on it."

50.