Free PsyCop 2: Criss Cross by Jordan Castillo Price

coffee,” Jacob remarked.
     
    I was about to snap back that I certainly wasn’t being wooed when I noticed he was grinning. I calmed down. “Yeah, that’s Roger.”
     
    Jacob glanced at Carolyn in the rearview. “You’ll have to talk to him and ask if he’s maneuvering to steal Vic away from me.”
     
    “That’s really ethical,” she said.
     
    I rolled my eyes and concentrated on my coffee. It was good, really good, a bitter, earthy taste that spread through my mouth despite the liberal helping of half & half Roger had added. If I could be bought with coffee, that’d be the right kind.
     
    “I think we should stop by Crash’s,” Carolyn said, and the smile on Jacob’s face died.
     
    “We need to talk about it first,” he said.
     
    “We are talking about it -- right now. Vic, I have a friend who’s an empathic healer. Maybe you’ll get better results from him than from Western, pharmaceutical-based medicine. I think you’re trying to treat the metaphysical with the physical.”
     
    And the physical wasn’t even available to me anymore. Not the physical Auracel, at least. I only had a few pills left and my prescription was history, so I’d have to give it up whether I agreed with Doctor Chance or not.
     
    “I dunno,” I said. Jacob didn’t seem too keen on the faith healer, and I trusted his judgment. “It’s kinda physical, too.” Jacob looked at me sharply, and I wondered how to avoid talking about what the Auracel was doing to my liver without actually lying, since Carolyn would know. “My meds aren’t working out.”
     
    “His techniques work on the physical, too. It’s just a different approach.”
     
    Typically I’d scoff at anyone calling themselves a healer. If they had real talent, they’d have been scooped up by the pharmaceutical companies, or the government, or some big TV star like Oprah. And if they didn’t have real talent, why would I get my hopes up?
     
    But Carolyn was real, and this guy was a friend of hers. And maybe if he could get my liver set right, Chance would let me have my Auracel again. “I guess,” I said.
     
    Jacob pulled onto the highway and said nothing, but the way he glared at the car in front of us, I thought laser beams were gonna shoot out of his eyes.
     
    I didn’t feel like getting into an argument in front of the Human Polygraph so I concentrated on my coffee. Still good. I sipped and sipped until it was gone, and then I mourned the fact that I had to wait until tomorrow to have any more.
     
    Jacob exited the highway in a neighborhood that had once been Mexican, had then been infiltrated by art school students, and now held an uneasy mixture of poor people and yuppies. We passed a crowded grocery store, a packed arcade, and a tire shop whose entire front was covered in shiny hubcaps.
     
    “There’s nowhere to park,” Jacob said, and I jumped at the sound of his voice.
     
    We were in front of a Laundromat marked “Lavanderia” when the traffic started to creep. The figure of a Hispanic man coalesced in front of the business, arms crossed over his chest in a defiant stance. He uncrossed his arms and reached toward the car, and I could see the outline of the bricks behind him through his body. Another Hispanic guy with a scraggly mustache appeared beside him, same posture. And another beside him, barely a teenager. And then a big, round Mexican woman with gigantic permed hair. All of their hands grasped at me like they were doing the wave.
     
    “Never anywhere to park,” Jacob muttered.
     
    Another group of reaching ghosts waited for us at the intersection. The only time I’d ever seen so many at once was at a blind turn where a whole van load of tourists had bought it. Jacob’s head snapped around as he looked at me, still glaring. “What?”
     
    “Nothing,” I said, and then wondered if Carolyn would be morally obliged to pipe in and say that I was lying. Although maybe I was so transparent she didn’t need to.