I’m walking down a street. It’s night. I’m humming a song, but no one can hear. Up ahead there’s a woman walking a dog.
Finally a dog.
It’s a little dog, I don’t know what kind. It’s on a leash. Running back and forth, stopping to pee, running more, jumping under the woman’s feet
She doesn’t notice me.
I catch up to her. She starts to turn to look at me, but I put a hand on her arm. She’s wearing a green T-shirt and her arm is skinny. She tries to pull away.
The dog barks at me. It runs at me, and I kick it, and the woman shouts something at me.
Then her eyes get real wide and her mouth opens and she’s about to scream—
I was going through documents for a fraud case I’d been investigating for weeks. It was dry work, boring as an afternoon stakeout, so when my phone buzzed and I saw it was Rachel I was glad for the interruption, “Hello, you have reached Tom Jurgen, Chicago’s detective of love. How may I service your needs today?”
“By shutting up and doing me a favor.”
I grinned. “What do you wish, my queen?”
“Can you find out about any murders committed last night? Specifically any women stabbed while they were out walking their dog?”
That sort of sank any desire to make more jokes. “Uh, sure. What for?”
“I’ll tell you later. Text me when you’ve got something.” She hung up.
I looked at her picture on the phone for a moment. Rachel’s my girlfriend. She has short red hair and hazelnut eyes. Plus, she’s psychic.
She’s also currently in grad school studying psychology, and for the last month she’d been assisting two days a week at the Jones-Batten Health Care Center in Des Plaines, in their mental health care unit. The assignment kept her busy, on top of her schoolwork, and honestly, I was getting sick of it. Most of the time we work next to each other in the office at home. Now it felt like we were living different lives.
But I was trying to be supportive. Rachel helps me on my cases when I need a psychic, or when I just need a gorgeous partner who knows krav maga. I owed her. And I needed a break from my fraud case anyway.
I found what she was looking for in a few minutes. I texted her: Yes. Found it, and attached one of the stories.
A few minutes later she texted back: OK.
What’s going on?
Five minutes passed. Then 10. Finally she came back with: Tonight. Busy.
I sighed, looked at her picture some more, and went back to work.
Rachel got home at 6:35. I had dinner going—bow-tie pasta with alfredo—and started setting the table while she changed. After 10 minutes she was in the kitchen with a beer, waiting impatiently for me to chop some vegetables. “What’s the holdup? I’ve got homework. And we’re having sex. Maybe. We’ll see.”
She was closing in on her degree, and the pressure was starting to get to her, especially with her new commute on top of her graphic design work. So far the cheap used car we’d bought for her to drive back and forth was holding up, but she had to keep a close eye on the oil light.
I brought dinner to the table. “How was your day?”
“Arrgh.” She groaned. “Paperwork. I mean, I do get to work with some of the patients, with supervision, but there’s always forms to fill out. Online, or on paper.” She stabbed some pasta with her fork. “And it’s kind of eerie. I mean, a lot of them are heavily medicated, but you can just feel the intensity of what’s going on inside their heads. Even if you’re not psychic.” She chewed and swallowed. “Not bad. Family recipe?”
“Somebody’s family.” I sprinkled some cheese over the sauce. “What about that murder you asked me about?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She set her fork down, took a swig of beer, and rubbed her eyes. “There’s this patient, Henry? I’m not really supposed to talk about patients, especially with my boyfriend—” She nudged my leg with her foot. “But anyway, he was telling me about a dream he had last night. He was pretty agitated, telling me about it. And I could feel something when he was going through it. Like it was more than just a dream.”
The article I’d found on a local news website was short and concise: A 24-year-old woman named Rebekah Martinez had been found stabbed to death in the Logan Square neighborhood. She’d been out walking her dog at 11:30 after a late shift at her job at a nearby convenience store. Police were pursuing “many leads.”
“What do you think it was?” I looked at her.
Rachel ate some more. “I’m not sure. Maybe he was seeing the killer? Or maybe—I don’t think he is the killer, but I don’t know.”
“What’s he in for?”
She thought for a moment. “Are you allowed to tell me details from your cases? I mean, when I’m not actively helping you?”
“Well, there is a P.I. code of ethics, for some of the organizations I’m in. I could get kicked out if I violate it. But there’s no law preventing me from talking about my cases to anyone. I mean, I don’t have legal protection like a lawyer, so the cops or the courts can make me talk about everything, unless I want to meet exciting new friends in jail.”
“I’ve got rules. Pretty strict.”
“And you’re all about following rules.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll risk it. The official diagnosis is BPD, borderline personality disorder. It’s a family referral. Legally he can leave anytime he wants, but he’s been there for three months and doesn’t show any sign of being able to leave soon. He’s got some incidents of domestic violence in his history, two previous stays at other facilities, drug addiction, childhood trauma, yada yada yada.”
“Is ‘yada, yada, yada’ a clinical term?”
“Shut up. So this morning he was telling me about this dream, and he was pretty upset about it. I could tell—it was more than just a dream. I could feel it.” Like I said, Rachel’s psychic. She can’t read minds, exactly, but she can read people and sense things. Supernatural things.
“Anyway, I thought I should check it out.” She sipped her beer. “So I called you.”
“So is there anything we should do now?”
She didn’t answer right away. We ate in silence for a few minutes until she said, “Can you find out what color shirt she was wearing?”
“I’ll check the media again, but that’s probably not especially newsworthy. I could call Anita.” Anita Sharpe, my liaison with the Chicago police, mostly for vampire cases. She doesn’t like me much, although she’ll sometimes grudgingly admit that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to supernatural doings around Chicago.
Rachel tensed. “No. Telling you is one thing. The police would definitely be a problem.”
“Yeah.” I finished my pasta. “More?”
“I’m good.” She pushed her plate forward. “I’ll clean up.”
“I got it.” I stood up. “You go study or whatever.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You just want me to have time for sex later.”
“You really are psychic. Is it working?”
“I’ll let you know.” She stood, gave me a quick kiss, and headed for the living room.
There’s a guy on the corner. He’s young, Black, with a T-shirt from some heavy metal band. He’s listening to something on headphones, and the dog is running back and forth on the leash. It’s a little dog, I think a Yorkshire, and it’s yapping and running while the guy just walks and ignores him.
I’m humming when I get in front of him. I stop. Cool shirt, I say.
He stops and looks at me, and I point at the shirt. Cool shirt! I say louder.
Oh. He smiles, tries to move out of the way.
I say Cute dog, and he nods again, not smiling so much.
His name’s Roscoe, the guy says. Come on, Roscoe.
The dog stops and looks up at me. It starts to growl.
The guy yanks at the leash. Let’s go, Roscoe. What’s the—
I’ve got the knife now. The guy doesn’t see it coming at him.
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