PsyCop .1: Inside Out by Jordan Castillo Price Page A

jazz flautist.”
    “A what ?”
    “A jazz flautist.”
    “Yeah, I heard you.” Jacob tilted her hand so he could get a look at this Neil character without the glare bouncing off the side-view interfering. Neil half-smiled back at him from a publicity shot. “A jazz flautist. How many different kinds are there?”
    “I don’t know. He could be part of an orchestra, I guess. This is one of those snap-judgements of yours, isn’t it?”
    Jacob considered lying. Again. Instead of assuring her it wasn’t, he shrugged.
    “Isn’t he a good-looking guy?”
    “What,” Jacob said, “you can’t tell?”
    “By your standards.”
    “My homo standards.”
    “Well…yes.”
    It wasn’t much fun arguing with Carolyn, since she couldn’t exactly defend herself when you nailed her. Jacob sighed and looked more closely at the snapshot. “Neil, the jazz flautist” looked like a smug bastard, was what he looked like. “It’s not that he’s unattractive. He’s just not my type.”
    “So you’re attracted to someone more like Keith. More masculine.”
    When Jacob tried to take the phone from Carolyn, she held for a moment, then reluctantly released. Jacob scrolled back to the previous photo, and stared. Carolyn herself was in the shot, Carolyn in bright red lipstick—with a bleached-blond guy who looked like he’d just stepped off the set of a music video. He’d stretched out his arm and snapped the shot while they were toasting each other with a margarita at a run-down Mexican restaurant, in a plastic booth Jacob never would have imagined Carolyn sitting down in without wiping it off first. And she didn’t even look awkward with him, like she usually did, with everybody else. She was laughing.  
    “This guy is hot. Who’s he, your gay neighbor?”
    “No, that’s my new stylist.”
    She tried to take her phone back, but Jacob held onto it. “Does your new stylist have a name?”
    “It’s Crash.”
    Crash. Jacob could totally see it. He had a neck tattoo—too small to make out what it was supposed to be, but what difference did it make? It was a neck tattoo. “I’d take his phone number.”
    “I don’t get it,” Carolyn said. “He’s kind of, uh…swishy. Which probably sounds more insulting than I mean it to be, since I’m crazy about him. But you’re total opposites.” Were they? Jacob could say the same thing about Crash and Carolyn, her with tasteful pearl earrings, him with a silver hoop through his nostril—but look how she sparkled while they were together. He had a broad smile that looked like it got a lot of use. No stuffy half-smiles there. “What’s wrong with Neil?”
    “I don’t know.” Was that a lie? Possibly. But maybe it was a nebulous enough lie that Carolyn didn’t need to point it out. “I just don’t like him.”
    And that was the truth.
    “Neil isn’t your type—but Crash is? Why?”
    Jacob caught himself before he denied knowing why, since that wouldn’t have been entirely true, though saying Crash had a gorgeous smile was more information than he wanted to dole out. “Lots of reasons,” he said, one of the ways he answered her without lying, but without really answering, either. A black Crown Victoria pulled up beside them, a pair of female PsyCops from Rush Street, and he added, “We can talk about this later. I want to get a good seat.”
    “The clairvoyants are already sitting in them.” It was more a statement than an argument, as Carolyn already had her phone stashed and her most inscrutable designer sunglasses on. They locked the car and walked at an efficient clip to the Twenty First Precinct building, where a squinty-eyed rookie at the door pointed them toward the meeting.
    As conference rooms went, the room in the Twenty First was unremarkable—a bit shabbier than the meeting room at the Seventh, but big enough to hold all the PsyCops without rubbing auras. Jacob eyed the other detectives as well as he could without being too obvious. Some, he’d