Free PsyCop 5: Camp Hell by Jordan Castillo Price

was one of them.”
    I felt a cold jab somewhere behind my sternum. It would explain how he knew all that he knew about Camp Hell. About me. “What’s it stand for?”
    “The Federal Psychic Monitoring Program. They don’t have a website or an ad in the Yellow Pages, but they exist. I’ll even do you one better, since you’re such a skeptic, and I’m dying to get out of this fucking metal box. I’ll give you a name.”
    My heart thundered inside my ribcage. I held my breath. I fumbled in my pocket for something to write on. “Hold on.”
    “I’ve got thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight….”
    Damn prison and its fucking rules. I found a silver gum wrapper. I could use the back—if I had a pen. No pen. Fuck. Fuck.
    “Twenty-four….”
    I flashed back to Stefan’s office, all low lights and soporific beige. And then farther, to a blue and blue room that smelled like antiseptic and fear. A light shining in my eye.
    “Stop counting.” The only thing that stopped me from throwing my phone on the ground and grinding it into the road salt and ice was the fact that I’d have to account for it later.
    A pair of patrolmen veered around me on the way to their cruiser. I recognized the senior officer, but not the rookie. “Hey…borrow your pen?”
    The officers stopped, and the older one—Monroe? Montroy—handed his pen to me.
    “Okay, go.”
    “Constantine Dreyfuss. He’s quite a character. He doesn’t know much about Camp Hell, but he’d be able to tell you all about who’s been keeping tabs on you lately.”
    That was probably more important. I could find out more about Camp Hell from talking to Stefan. It would all be stuff I already knew, of course, but at the same time, it’d be news to me. I didn’t mention that to Burke. I couldn’t have him thinking I was grateful or anything.
    I tried to hand the pen back to Montroy, but he was already heading off toward his cruiser. He gave me a, “No, keep it,” kind of wave. I couldn’t tell if he was being friendly, or he didn’t want to touch it once I’d handled it.
    I looked up at the sky. It was gray on gray. Nearly March. Where it’d turn to rain on gray. Which would produce ice, and accidents, and still more ghosts.
    Was the whole world eventually going to end up like LaSalle, thick with repeaters, or ghosts so busy blubbering into their own blood that they
wouldn’t
communicate with me even though they
could
?
    I knuckled my eye and wondered if my Valium had come through yet, and then I noticed that the new cop, the rookie, was watching me through his sideview mirror.
    Not the kind of look I get from psych groupies, like that guy in the hospital bed. And not the kind I get from the forensics techs who hate me. This was a really calm stare, like the ones I got from the mystery cops who had doubled and tripled every time I blinked when I was helping Jacob track the astral rapist at the nursing home.
    I found another scrap of paper in my pocket: this one a grocery list on a sticky note that said
coffee, milk, dish soap, bread (not white), O.J.
in Jacob’s handwriting. I turned it over, pulled out my new pen and jotted down my cell number, then jogged over to the cruiser before it had a chance to pull away.
    The cop who’d been watching me rolled down his window. He looked expectant. Or maybe mildly alarmed. I handed him the note. “Give that to Constantine for me, wouldja?”
     
    • • •
     
    I got on the beige elevator and rode to the beige twenty-third floor. I stopped off at the beige bathroom, as usual. Because, as usual, I was sweating buckets.
    Good thing I hadn’t decided to deal with my panic attacks during the summer.
    Stefan’s secretary was gone, and the light in the waiting room was dim. His office door was open a crack. I knocked on the doorjamb and he motioned for me to come in. Today’s vest was black moiré, and he had arm garters on his white shirtsleeves like a Wild West bank teller. His office smelled like incense