Pinewood Corner Kitchen Chapter 10
Graham hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary at Pinewood Corner Kitchen, but he had managed to get a timeline from the Chapmans before they left of when most of the attacks had happened, as well as when they recently intensified. He planned to go back that afternoon, but first he had to go track down some bird with a concerning wingspan and even more concerning teeth, so Gabriella spent most of the afternoon steeped in research.
She couldn’t go back to the Foundation archives. She wasn’t entirely sure she was banned from entering the building, but she couldn’t go back in the archives or something bad would happen. What, she had no idea. But she wasn’t about to find out.
Maybe McGovern could look, but she didn’t want to push that too hard. She appreciated what he’d done for them multiple times by now, but that relationship was entirely between McGovern and James. If James decided to forgive him, then Gabriella would too. But if James couldn’t handle that, then it wasn’t her place to decide to be buddies with him.
And if this wasn’t healthy, that wasn’t her problem either.
But between the local library system, some resources Madelyn had introduced her to online, and digging through what they already had in the building, Gabriella built up a large pile of books and papers on the coffee table, with others saved on her computer. They were down to one couch now, which was good. At least in her opinion. The other couch had been small and comfortable, but between that and the rearranged computers, there was more room to move around the living room.
For now, Gabriella was alone in the living room, eating a slice of the cake she’d made last night. The nostalgia of it tasted good for a few bites, but it was too sweet. She wasn’t going to eat the whole thing, so it was currently sitting on the kitchen counter. James was working in his office and from this angle, she could see him at his desk. She kept half an eye on him while she worked, something she knew he wouldn’t be thrilled about if he knew, so she kept it to herself.
Psychic ability. It was like just researching the ocean and hoping she’d get exactly what she needed from it. These books had everything from children predicting a cousin’s movements at a house ten miles away to an alleged group of people who communicated through telepathy and attacked anyone who got too close to their settlement deep in the woods somewhere in the Midwest. For once, it wasn’t in the Leominster State Forest and that gave Gabriella a little relief. But she wasn’t sure if any of this was going to help her with her case.
Ultimately, psychic abilities were a wide-ranging field and the scientists who could get the funding to study it were barely scratching at the surface. There was thought that it might be a physical thing, something in the structure of the brain that allowed for the manipulation of the electrical currents within the body. That was a fascinating theory that ended up taking more of her time than she thought it would as she read through the short eBook a PhD candidate in Belgium had written on the topic. She assuaged her guilt by saying that this wasn’t wasting time, it could come in very handy. If both the Chapmans and Casey had this particular structure, then maybe there was some kind of connection between them.
And hadn’t Bradley said that psychics were rare? Extremely rare, if she remembered his angry lecture in her car correctly. Maybe it was something that drew people toward one another. She had to be careful here, because that risked going more into a cryptid approach than a human approach. And some of the research she found seemed to hint at the possibility that people with these abilities weren’t actually human, a path that she definitely did not want to go down. It looked like bullshit anyway, with a lot of false conclusions and iffy sources. But she still moved on from that particular report feeling a little gross.
There were different degrees of ability reported in a lot of the literature. Many instances of people predicting future events, far fewer of people manipulating material objects around them. And even fewer people doing so for things that weren’t right nearby. Gabriella found one story about a woman in Sweden in 1910 pouring milk from a jug into a glass a kilometer from her home, and that was considered one of the greatest accomplishments this modern scientist had ever seen.
But the field of research was so big that she felt like she was barely skimming the surface. And her approach of knowing what she was looking for when she saw it wasn’t going to work so well here. The Foundation had information about their own history of ESP testing available through their online resources, though of course it was all anonymized. Agents were brought in when they displayed signs of extrasensory perception in the field. She had never been, but she knew some of the others had. It was fairly rare and usually resulted in negatives. But occasionally an agent might be brought in twice. And if they tested positive during the screening, there was no indication of what the Foundation wanted to do next, but she hoped it involved a raise. There was very rarely a second round, and further rounds than that were almost unheard of.
Almost.
She filled about seventeen pages, front and back, with notes as she worked, barely noticing the activity around her as people moved through their day. Occasionally she remembered that she was also checking in on James, but he left his office at one point and she had to double check the schedule to see that he was on a field mission.
Eventually, Bradley was on comms while Amelia and James were in the field. Gabriella stayed where she was, continuing research as he argued with them over the case, something out on a golf course nearby. James seemed lighthearted on the comms the few times she actually paid attention to what was going on, so she didn’t worry too much.
Something different in the brain, this one said again. Something that could manipulate the energy in and around the user, whether through electrical or other means.
She looked up, blinking her dry eyes as she looked thoughtfully around the room. Graham was in the gym and Madelyn was off today, so it was just her and Bradley here. He was psychic, he was very obviously psychic. How did that ability work?
He didn’t notice her looking at him as he bickered with James. “I don’t give a fuck,” he said. “Golf is boring anyway.”
“I’ve never played,” James said.
“You don’t want to,” Bradley replied. “You’ll waste your entire day out there, fuck it all up anyway, and get a sunburn.”
“Did you caddy as a child?” James asked.
“No, but my…”
Bradley stopped. “Go on,” James said.
“It’s nothing. My dad played, so I went a couple times. It sucked.”
“That’s the deep, dark secret? You golfed? How old were you?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Wait, that reminds me,” James said, sounding distracted as a set of readings came in with a friendly ding. “Your birthday’s coming up. What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“No, for real.”
“Yeah, for real. Don’t buy me a fucking present.”
“Come on, it’s your birthday.”
“No. I didn’t buy you one, don’t buy me one. I don’t want it. It’s under the bench there.”
Did he see whatever it was on the screen or was he sensing it using some kind of electrical signal none of them had access to? And the electric idea was just a theory, there was so much still left to explore that none of them could even imagine.
“What?”
Shit, she’d been staring. “Nothing,” Gabriella said. “Sorry, I was staring into space.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. Did he know? It didn’t seem to matter anyway as she went back to her research.
About twenty minutes later, she came across the first instance of an attack seeming to go wrong. A man in Tokyo in 1998 attempted to kill a woman with psychic energy and it apparently came back and killed him instead. There were pictures of his bleeding corpse, which seemed both extremely violent and very unnecessary. But that was a possibility that they had to keep in mind here. Not that the Chapmans were necessarily doing this to themselves, but it was possible.
As she continued to research, it was becoming not just possible, but more and more probable. A case out in North Dakota where a family feud became fatal. Another case, this one in New Hampshire in 1976, where two people got in a car accident. It was minor, but the drivers were both dead from severe bursts of psychic energy through their heads. Again, more gruesome photos from the accident scene. These ones caught her off guard. She thought she was pretty tough after two years of this job and the things she’d seen. But the blood pouring from the mouth and nose, the blank eyes. Even if they weren’t as violent as some of the others, they were chilling.
“What’s that?” Bradley asked from where he was suddenly standing next to her.
“Murder, I guess,” she replied. “Or maybe a murder-suicide? This man crashed his car into that one. It was minor enough, but this guy got really mad and attacked the other one with psychic energy. It looks like another case where it bounced back and killed him as well.”
Bradley was looking at the photos intensely. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “You think these assholes are doing that?”
“It’s more likely than the food truck owner that left them a pissy comment on a bad recipe.”
He made a slight noise of agreement, but was scowling as he walked into the kitchen.
“Hey, what’s this?” he called.
“It’s cake,” she replied. “Help yourself.”
He came back in a moment later with a small plate of cake, taking a bite. “Did you make it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Gabriella said. “Jan Chapman was mocking it, so I decided to make some. It’s on old recipe, Better Than Sex cake.”
He choked slightly on the bite he’d just taken, then swallowed it. “McManus, you really think this is better?”
“I didn’t invent it,” she protested. “I swear to God, look it up.”
Bradley shook his head pityingly, but took another bite anyway.
***
By the time James got back from the golf course, looking overheated and slightly sunburned, so much work had piled up for him that he couldn’t join Gabriella when she went to Worcester to talk to Casey Romano again. He was glumly apologetic, so she told him it was fine, she could handle it with Amelia on comms with her. So while Graham was with the Chapmans again, Gabriella got in her car and headed toward Worcester where a man who might or might not have anything to do with it said he had ten minutes of time to talk to her after all.
When she got to the Romano food truck, a teenage boy was taking orders at the counter. He was tall and thin, with sharp cheekbones that contrasted with his dad’s round, full face.
“What can I get you?” he asked, his voice soft as Gabriella reached the front of the line.
“I’m here to talk to Casey,” she said.
The kid frowned nervously as he looked back into the truck. “It’s all good, Theo,” she heard Casey call. “I’m expecting her. Gabriella, give me a sec, I’ll be right out.”
There were two other people in line behind her, so Gabriella sat at the picnic table nearby and waited for Casey to be done making their rice bowls. As she sat, she mulled over the possibilities. It could be him, sure. He could be faking the struggle to mentally affect things around him. He could be an excellent actor. This was still a possibility.
But it made no sense. Who was she going to trust here, the Chapmans or her own senses? She’d seen the struggle to prove the point. And if he was supposedly knocking down a chandelier fourteen miles away at the same time he was coaching four-year-olds in soccer, then how did he manage it? Did he do it in advance, scheduling the destruction? Was that possible? It didn’t seem likely, especially based on everything she’d read earlier that afternoon.
“Alright, sorry,” Casey said, startling her out of her thoughts. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I’m not asking about the Chapmans again, I swear. At least, not directly. But would you mind telling me more about how your abilities manifest? I have a supervisor on the line with me too, she’s checking in on the case.”
“How do they manifest, huh?” he said. “I can do two things really well. I can see spirits and I can get readings off of people.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, I can tell a person’s future. Well, not always,” Casey corrected himself. “Don’t want to puff myself up too much. I can get flashes of the future. But I can also get flashes of the present. Or the past, things I have no way of knowing without you telling me.”
“How about physical manipulation?”
“God, please don’t make me demonstrate that again.”
“I don’t need you to demonstrate,” she said quickly. “Sorry, I mean, what’s the extent of your ability to do that?”
“Pretty much what I showed you last time,” he said. “I wasn’t lying about being in bed for a week if I tried to break into someone’s computer. My brain would fucking explode, literally explode, if I did the things they claim I did.”
“I was researching psychic phenomena for the case today,” she said.
“Oh yeah?”
He looked amused now, and Gabriella’s cheeks went a little warm. “I have no experience with it,” she said. “And I can’t go into details about the case, obviously, but we need all the information we can get.”
“Remember to go to good sources,” he said. “There’s a lot of bullshit out there.”
“I’m the team researcher, I know how to get good sources.”
Thankfully it didn’t sound snarky as the words left her mouth. “So what did these good sources tell you?” Casey asked.
As she laid out her research, he nodded in agreement at some of it while disagreeing with other parts, usually theories involving spirit communication. She kept everything about the Chapmans to herself. While she’d ruled him out pretty solidly, it still wasn’t a good idea to talk about every aspect of a case with someone who was still technically under suspicion.
“Look, I have to get back,” he said, and she realized it had been closer to twenty minutes instead of the ten he’d promised her. “It was nice talking to you. If you guys need anything, information or whatever, just let me know.”
They shook hands and his eyebrows went up just slightly before he glanced over her shoulder again. “Did you see something?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “Sometimes it’s just a handshake. Take care.”
As Gabriella drove back, she had the comms on the passenger seat. “What do you think?” she asked Amelia as she resisted the urge to stop for coffee.
No matter what she bought, it wouldn’t taste as good as the Chapmans’ coffee, which pissed her off. And while it might taste as bad as Bradley’s back at headquarters, it wouldn’t keep her awake the same way. So she might as well save her money, but it was tempting.
“I’m with you,” Amelia said. “I don’t buy that guy doing it. I mean, short of testing him in ways that would be dangerous to him, we can’t prove that he isn’t capable of doing what happened. But based on your interviews with him, the situation, and what you told me earlier from your research, it doesn’t fit well enough.”
“Which sucks, because the Chapmans haven’t given us any other potential names,” Gabriella said. “So, going with their information, it’s Casey and absolutely no one else. And now we’re stuck on no one else. Which means I get to choose whether to start by blaming them or checking in on Polly Grace.”
