Page 17 of Power of the Mind
“Wow. Got stuck way back there, huh? All the way in love? It’s kind of soon for that, don’t you think? We aren’t even dating. Hell, you’ve never once fucked me in a bed.”
“Tallus,” I barked.
More laughter. “It’s too easy. Okay, I’m shutting up. Your turn, D. Don’t leave me hanging.” But before I could speak, he added, “PS, spoiler alert. If you did ask me out on a date, I’d say yes.”
I choked and sputtered and forgot what I was about to say. The fucker did that on purpose. All my carefully constructed sentences flew out the window. When I managed to make words, they were the wrong ones.
Without couth or a filter, without careful editing, I sputtered the wrong string of information. Or rather, the perfect string of information to make Tallus’s investigative boner spring to life.
“She’s a fucking scam artist. Nothing more. She’s been in trouble with the cops since the seventies. Extortion, fraud, witchcraft, identity theft, you name it. The list is a mile long. She hasn’t murdered anyone through mind control because it’s not possible to mind-control people. The judge laughed it out of court. The worst thing your fuck buddy Memphis has to worry about is being scammed out of money. The end. Happy?”
“Holy shit,” Tallus breathed. “I can’t believe you still think I’m fucking Memphis?”
Covering my face with a palm, I cursed.
More chuckling. “I’m teasing, D. Are you for real? Witchcraft? Fraud? Extortion? This is huge.”
“Tallus—”
“The woman is an escalating criminal. That’s what they do.”
“She’s not an—”
“But she is. I’ve watched every episode ofCriminal Minds. It’s Behavioral Psychology 101. How do you not know this?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Murderers start with small crimes. As those crimes become less satisfying, they move on to bigger things. Plus, it’s not like she hasn’t tried this before. She did. In the eighties with her husband. Yeah, yeah, the judge tossed it out, but the joke’s onhim. She’s been perfecting her skills ever since, and now she’s figured out how to get away with it.”
“No.”
“There could be more victims we don’t know about.”
“There aren’t.”
“She could have been doing this for a long time.”
“She hasn’t.”
“It’s the perfect crime. My god, this woman is brilliant.”
“It isn’t. She’s not.”
“D, we need to look into this further. Where’s her husband? Is he dead? Did she kill him? Are they divorced? Maybe we could talk to him if we can find him.”
I counted backward from ten as Tallus kept talking a mile a minute, suggesting we try to contact Amber’s brother or Allan’s neighbor to get a better feel for what they had witnessed, suggesting we set up a meeting with a psychologist to learn how psychic manipulation worked because it was so real and hadn’t I heard about those cult leaders who managed to convince hundreds of people to commit mass suicide?
“It was mind control, D. How can you deny it? When can we meet? I work until five thirty all week. Tomorrow night? I can be at your office at six.” When I was about to tell him no, he added, “I had plans with Memphis, but I can postpone. What do you think?”
Fucking Memphis. He didn’t want to know what I thought. And since Tallus had managed to scramble my brain and electrify my blood, I stammered, “S-six?”
“Or six fifteen. Traffic pending.”
“Fine.”
“Awesome. You’re the best, D.”
We got off the phone, and I sat in confusion, unsure what exactly had happened and how I’d been talked into investigatinga bullshit alleged mind-controlling psychic who Tallus thought was killing people.