Read PsyCop 5: Camp Hell for Free Online

Water, check. Soap, check. Rub hands together—damn, did he really have to look at me so hard? Especially with that slightly curled lip. He used to look at the orderlies that way.
    “So. Uh. This is your…building.”
    “I rent an office here. That remark you made, on your message, about me changing my name. What was that supposed to mean?”
    Cripes. He could always argue circles around me, and now he had an arsenal of therapy-tactics to batter me with. “I just…I don’t know. I couldn’t find anybody—you, Big Larry, anyone else from Camp Hell. I couldn’t find anything about the whole place.”
    I watched him in the mirror because it was easier than facing him. He’d been imposing in his twenties. Now, at forty-something, he looked like he could haul you down to the principal’s office and give you a whack with a ruler that would sting for a week.
    He tilted his head back and gave me his most imperious down-his-nose look, held it for a moment, then rolled his eyes and gave another long sigh. “Are you having a panic attack? Because I really want to be pissed at you, but it’s kind of hard when you’re peaking.”
    “What’re you pissed at me about?”
    “Earth to Victor. You were the one who left.”
    Left what? Oh, right. Camp Hell. We were talking about Camp Hell. And I left….
    I left.
    He was still there.
    “Not that I blame you—I left the first chance I had, too. But you could have sent me a letter. A singing telegram. A cake with a file inside.”
    “Well, I just, um…. I mean….” I could have lied, said that I had written to him, and blamed Camp Hell admin for ditching my letters. But I hadn’t written him, not once. I hadn’t even thought of it. “How long?”
    “Oh, a year,” he said with fake breeziness, “maybe two.”
    “God.” I held onto the beige sink. My knuckles were white.
    “I’m not saying you should have stuck around and waited for me to get placed, of course. That wouldn’t have made any sense. So what else could you have done?”
    The sink was wet.
    “I mean, aside from telling a reporter what was going on there. Or, how ‘bout this, maybe someone at the Police Academy? Oops, did I say that out loud, or just think it?”
    I grabbed a paper towel and dried my hands with it. I twisted too hard, and it started to shred.
    Stefan stared at me. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything but the twisted pills of paper towel that fell onto the sink and stuck there in the water. But I could feel him.
    “I’m going outside,” he said. “I need a cigarette.”
     
    • • •
     
    When Stefan said he needed a cigarette, I’d just assumed that he already had a pack, and he wanted to smoke one. Turns out he hadn’t smoked in over ten years.
    He scowled down his nose at the colorful, candy-like stacks of cigarettes behind the counter. “Almost six dollars a pack. I never would have started if it was this expensive.”
    “You don’t need to start again now.”
    “It’s not your business to tell me what I do or don’t need.” He couldn’t decide which brand he wanted, and since both Camel and Marlboro had come out with new varieties since the last time he’d lit up, he decided he might as well try them all. He couldn’t decide which color lighter he wanted, so he got a purple lighter and a red lighter, too.
    The clerk, a bored Lebanese teenager, handed the bag to Stefan, along with a credit card slip to sign. “I think you missed something,” I told him. “The fluorescent orange lighter, for instance. A pack of Virginia Slims. Cigarillos.”
    Stefan tilted his head back and aimed his disapproving look in my direction. I wondered if he’d flashed that expression once too often and his face had frozen that way.
    We walked a few blocks to an alley between skyscrapers that was littered with cigarette butts. Stefan picked the plastic off a fancy black pack of Camels and lit up a cigarette. He took a drag and scowled. “This is disgusting.” He dropped