Free PsyCop .1: Inside Out by Jordan Castillo Price Page B

met: Valdez, precog, Midway area…Blaine, clairvoyant, South Loop. Those were the only two he recognized. As for everyone else? He couldn’t tell the Psychs from the Stiffs. Not by simply looking.
    Carolyn edged between a pair of bulky middle-aged guys who glanced down at her well-toned glutes as they moved to let her get at the snacks. It was subtle, not quite the type of ogle she would have gotten if she’d walked by a bunch of construction workers—but it was still noticeable. She had that effect on men. Sure, she might be able to read their minds, but as most straight men saw it, she was still a hot blonde. Jacob could hardly find fault with the detectives. They hadn’t been particularly lecherous about their staring…they just couldn’t help themselves. He himself was no better, checking out every other detective he hadn’t met, and wondering if they were a Psych or a Stiff.
    Because with something that important, it seemed like you should be able to tell just by looking. Although you usually couldn’t.
    Carolyn picked up a banana. She considered how green it was and put it back. When she then reached for a yogurt and found that it was only an empty container, she couldn’t censor the observation, “The food at these things is pathetic.”
    A young detective who’d approached from the opposite end of the table lifted a donut out of the box, scattering sugar. He peered at the small hole in the side of the dough, and said, “I know. I can’t even find one decent custard-filled—” as if it heard him complaining about it, the donut disgorged enough strawberry filling to top off an evidence bag straight down the front of his lapel. “Sonofa—” he waved the donut, scattering still more sugar, and now jelly, then dropped the half-squashed pastry in the donut box’s lid. “Swear to God, of all the fucki—” he glanced at Carolyn, “er, sorry….”
    Jacob pursed his lips to stop himself from laughing—because, come on. Such an absurd amount of red goo had squirted out of that donut, it looked like there’d been a props master off to the side pumping it out through a special rig.
    Then he recognized the detective pressing a wad of napkins into the hand of the jelly-covered detective and realized it wasn’t just any PsyCop who’d been slimed. It was Victor Bayne in the flesh—and his partner, Maurice Taylor, who Jacob had known for years, but not well enough to say more than “How’s it going?” and “Is the guy in custody?” and “How many bullet holes did they find?” And that had been ages ago, when Maurice was a regular plainclothes cop, and Jacob was still in uniform.
    Of course Jacob had heard of Taylor’s Psych, the Chicago Police Department’s only medium, but they’d never actually met.  
    He hadn’t imagined Detective Bayne would be so tall.
    Bayne reached for a bottled water, overshot, and knocked it off the table. It landed with a hard thwack between his feet and Carolyn’s, rupturing in a spray of water. “For crying out loud,” he snapped, and knelt to swab Carolyn’s shoes with the handful of napkins he should have used on his own jacket.
    “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s only water.” She sounded embarrassed.  
    If the whole “all-thumbs” act was really an excuse to grope Carolyn’s feet—and get a good look at her legs—it was a very well-executed drop. But when Bayne straightened up, he seemed too flustered to have orchestrated the maneuver. Plus, he backed away from Carolyn like he was an empath on psyactives who couldn’t bear the sting of her annoyance. He’d been in a spot to look right down her blouse. And he hadn’t taken the bait. “I’m really sor—“
    “I said it’s fine,” Carolyn snapped. “Stop apologizing.”
    Bayne mopped at the front of his blazer with the now-soggy napkins, which began to disintegrate, shred and pill. The napkin shreds stuck in the jelly. He sighed. “Hand me that other water,” he said to Jacob, who held his