Poltergeist

He tried to brazen it out. "Ms. Blaine, you seem to have a prejudice that is making you unable to complete your assignment as required. I'm afraid I'll have to fire you.”

"Go ahead. I'll march in that room and tell your professional colleagues all about your current experiment, the manipulations, the inadequate screening of participants, the equipment swaps and sell-offs. Your reputation can't stand another hit and enough of your associates know about your previous experiments and your interesting bookkeeping to take the accusation seriously. I doubt there are many people in that room who don't know the real reasons you were laid off from the University of Washington. Tell me—what happens to a psychologist who falls from professional grace? Do they disbar you? Tar and feather you? Or do they send you to jail?”

I fixed his gaze in mine, unblinking, and let him stew. He was uncomfortable but tough and stared back at me.

"You pushed things too far this time, Tuckman. One of your incipient psychos bloomed into a full-blown killer.”

"No," he answered, but his voice was soft and unsure, his eyes shifting.

"Yes. You've created a breeding ground for psychopaths with your permission and empowerment scenario—you selected them personally. You told them they could make ghosts and move things with the power of their minds and then you proved it to them and let them see what they could do. One of them made a ghost, all right. You never thought one of them was going to go that far, did you? Or maybe it was you. You came pretty close once before. A couple of years ago you put a subject in the hospital—”

"It wasn't me! It was one of them." The ghostly green snakes that seemed to dance around Tuckman's head in the Grey had turned inward, squeezing around him like tentacles and turning a sickening yellow green. Was that panic? I pushed on.

"So you said last time. And I suppose you'll say the same thing this time when one of your current subjects gets arrested for murder and says the ghost did it. You are an accomplice to that. You made a little pressure cooker with your handpicked group of unhappy, messed-up people, and one of them turned out to be a psychopath just waiting to happen. And you introduced him or her to a whole pool of potential victims with a handy excuse for whatever he or she wanted to do to them. I've been hip-deep in these people's lives for ten days—closer than you, I'd bet—and everything I see tells me one of them killed Mark Lupoldi. And used your damned poltergeist to do it.”

Tuckman went white, his dark villain's eyes widening with shock.

"You gave them permission and you put the weapon in their hands. One of them used it. There's nothing else that could have done it. One of them used the same power that levitated that table through the observation room window to throw Mark against a wall hard enough to crush his skull—”

He shook his head. "No. No, no, no. .”

I pulled him down into a chair and sat next to him, putting my face close to his and glaring at him until he met my eyes. I talked fast and low.

"Shut it down, Tuckman. Even if you don't believe Celia killed Mark, this damned thing is off the rails. I called around—Ken's lucky his legs weren't broken. Ian's got two cracked ribs and Cara one, plus the stitches from last week. It took a couple of sutures to put Patty's ear back together, too, and everyone else has cuts and burns from the lights that exploded. No one picked up that table and threw it. No one shorted the wires in the light board. No one made the temperature in the room drop and no one touched the stereo. You gave them permission and power to hurt one another and they did. But you have the power to pull the plug. So pull it.”

"No. I won't do it. This won't happen again—it can't.”

"It will! It will get worse as it's kept on getting worse. It started with petty theft and pinches and throwing things. Now you have broken windows and people in the hospital. Can't you see where this is headed? Are you going to wait until one of them is a red smear on the damned observation—”

"That's enough!" He stood up and stared down at me. He was breathing too fast, swaying, white-faced, and the people at the table outside the dining room turned to look at us. I got up and stood still in front of him, as still and quiet as I could manage, letting my face go neutral and my voice slide back to normal.

"It's a flawed experiment, Dr. Tuckman. It was a mistake. A miscalculation. If you shut it down now and clear off the paperwork that makes me and my contractor look like thieves, you can return some of the grant money and no one will look too hard at what you've done. So long as no one gives them a reason to.”

He turned a hopeful frown on me, licking his dry lips. He sank back into the chair and I sat down beside him again. It gave me the chills to do it, but I put my hand on his nearest forearm. Glutinous chill oozed up my arm and I stifled a shudder.

"I won't give them a reason to look if you shut this down now. If you do what I'm telling you, I won't have to defend myself from charges of theft and I won't need to give these reports to the police or your department chair. Just shut it down. Say there was a flaw in the protocol—write one in if you have to. Say it was a mistake. I know it'll be embarrassing, but a little pride isn't worth someone's life. It's just a mistake.”

I saw him swallow it. His posture straightened and the glaze of fear left his eyes. "It's flawed. I'll shut it down. I'll take care of it—the papers, the team. I'll call them and tell them we're done.”

I took my first decent breath in hours. Nodding, I said, "Good." I stood up one more time and put the envelope of reports in his hand.

"These are your reports—they're confidential and no one else has seen them. Just write a check for my fee and we can call this done.”

He looked at the bill, then glanced up, frowning as if he were confused. "I'm not going to pay this. You didn't do the job I hired you for.”

My mouth fell open in sheer surprise. "You have the biggest brass ones. . Tuckman—do you understand any of what I just told you? You're a thief and a liar and I can prove it. Do you think that's the only copy of my report? We have a contract for the investigation of a possible saboteur. I've proved there is no saboteur but you. Contract satisfied. If I need to call my lawyer, I'll have to tell her the whole truth about this—that's covered in the contract, too. You want to hear that in court?" I jerked my head back toward the dining room. "You want them to hear it?”

He glared. Old villain eyes again.

I sighed. "Don't even try, Tuckman. I have the cards. You don't. Shut it down, now.”

He dropped his gaze and pulled his checkbook from his pocket.

I left with his check in my purse. Tuckman was still looking at the reports. "A flaw. An oversight. .," he muttered, trying to convince himself it really was just a mistake.