by Alex Hughes
Cherabino stood. “Okay, thanks for coming. This case has just jumped four levels in priority, and we’re all here to share information and try to figure out what’s going on.”
“Why the jump?” the tech asked. She was a short twenty-something with pink hair and a wrinkled shirt. “We’re backed up in the lab as it is.”
Branen leaned forward. “The captain got another call from the mayor over the weekend. He’s…upset over the story hitting the papers.”
Cherabino looked at him cautiously. Then she started again. “Let’s go around the table with our information. We’ll start with you, Michael.” She nodded to the junior cop, a slight Asian guy, and sat down.
He cleared his throat and looked at his notebook. “Um. Yes. Two kids playing in the abandoned store across the street saw a white or gray air sedan fly over the buildings and land in a parking lot two weeks ago. Old white guy who got out was carrying a heavy, long garbage bag. Lumpy, they said.”
“How old were the kids?” Cherabino asked.
Michael looked at the notes. “Nine and thirteen.”
“Old could be anything over thirty, then,” she said. “Only the one guy?” When the man nodded, she told him, “Could be one of the bodies being dumped. Good work.”
“Ma’am?” he added. “I’d like to stay on this case if you have the work.”
Cherabino glanced at Branen and shrugged. “There’s always plenty of work.” To Michael, she said, “Could you take a sketch artist to the kids and see if they remember enough to be useful? Two weeks is a long shot….”
“But a picture of the killer would be invaluable,” Michael agreed. “I’ll take care of it.”
Cherabino nodded at the next one along the table, the pink-haired tech.
“Trash bag?” the woman asked Michael, who nodded. “That would match with the bag piece we got from the sixth victim.” She straightened and looked at Cherabino: “Like you asked us, the lab reran the clothes from the fourth and fifth victims. In addition to dirt, and normal scene contaminants, we found trace amounts of a processed talc powder mix. No soap this time, though.”
“What kind of powder?” Branen asked.
The woman glanced at the notebook. “Manufactured talc. The kind used to coat the inside of latex gloves.”
“Like a surgeon?” He frowned.
“Well, yeah.” She tilted her head. “But I use latex gloves too. They’re not as permanent as skin sealant, less likely to contaminate your sample, and you can take them off if things get icky. They’re pretty common.” She held out a hand. “And before you ask, no, there’s no way to tell brand from the sample. Since they did away with cornstarch, everybody uses the same formula. Now latex, on the other hand…If I’d gotten a sample of that, I could tell you anything you wanted. But the gloves are kinda designed not to fall apart.”
“Anything else?” Branen asked.
By now I was tapping on the table, and Cherabino was crossing her arms, glancing at Branen when she thought he wasn’t looking. Just sitting in, huh? I made myself stop tapping.
“A couple of blue poplin fibers, fifty-five/forty-five cotton polyester. Used for a lot of things, most commonly medical scrubs.”
“So he’s a doctor?”
“Could be.” The tech shrugged. “He could also be a guy who bought a pair of slouchy pants at the local thrift shop and doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. I don’t think it’s conclusive.”
“What about the soap?” I asked. Everyone looked at me. So much for being quiet, but it was new information. If I was going to pull a rabbit out of the hat any time soon, I needed all the information.
“Where have you been? Liquid Dawn dishwashing detergent, Fresh Spring scent, very diluted traces. We identified it on the first body and all the rest.”
“Sadly, you can buy it anywhere in Atlanta,” Cherabino told me.
“But not on this victim?” asked the blond woman with the organized thoughts. Maybe forty-five, she spoke with a gravelly voice I’d never heard on a nonsmoker. “What else was different about this scene?” She was looking at me directly. “You’re the telepath, aren’t you?”
“I am. And you are who exactly?”
Cherabino’s hand came down on my arm, a warning to be careful.
“Claudia Piccanonni, the GBI lead profiler. Your department asked me to take a look at this case.” Her hard eyes studied me. “I prefer to see a staff meeting than have my own. I repeat, what else was different about this scene?”
“Me, for one. I wasn’t at the others. At this one, I found traces of two guys in Mindspace,” I told her, uncomfortably. “But the kids saw only one guy. And the second one at the scene seemed pretty angry, like something was different. Maybe he wasn’t there at the other scenes.”
“These are not where the bodies are being killed,” Cherabino put in. “We know they’re dump sites. If he set down in a parking lot, we may not have noticed the vehicle marks. I don’t think we canvassed that far out.”
Michael put his hand on the table. “The kids said the aircar was weaving a little and landed hard. The older one thought the guy might have an issue with one of the anti-grav generators.”
“How would the kid know?” I asked.
“His dad’s a mechanic and he hangs out in the shop on weekends, he said.”
Cherabino blinked. “Was this in the report?”
He shrugged. “Yes, ma’am.”
She made a mental note to read reports more carefully.
The tech leaned forward, excited. “A bad anti-grav generator can compress a patch of ground pretty bad. It wouldn’t wear away for a couple weeks on soil, longer on pavement—it’d have to wait for the next paving truck to come out.” She turned to Branen. “If you’ll let me take a couple of guys back to the scenes, I’ll see if we can find the impressions.”
Branen frowned. “Why wasn’t this done already?”
“No reason to canvass that far out,” Cherabino returned. “We had more than enough to do in the crime scenes themselves.”
“Quite a few man-hours to correct it now,” he said. “Would the anti-grav generator make a positive ID on the killer—or killers?” He added the last words with a glance at me.
Cherabino’s knuckles got white on the stylus she was holding as she struggled not to contradict her boss. Sitting in, my ass! she muttered mentally. He’s trying to take over. Then, out loud she said, “It would corroborate the kids’ stories and help us confirm how the bodies were transferred. Might eventually lead us to confirming the car.”
“Go ahead,” Branen said with a sigh. “But no more than two techs, hear me?”
The next cop around the table was about to speak when the blonde interrupted him.
“I’m sorry; perhaps I wasn’t clear. What changed in the last scene?” She folded her hands. “Change always means something in these cases. Always. If the second man was not at the other scenes, his presence means something. The fact that this body, of all of them, was not washed, tells me something. Was there a difference in position?”
“I’m sorry?” Cherabino asked.
“In how they were found. I can see on the board at least one was left lying horizontally, arms tucked at the sides, legs together. That’s rarely a position of death. Were the others the same?”
“The first six were like that,” Cherabino said. “The seventh was sprawled as if someone had dumped him.”
“And was not washed.”
“That’s correct.”
“I would venture to guess that the second man was not at the other scenes, and that the change in disposal was due to his influence.”
“They also didn’t take an aircar,” I put in.
Those cold eyes turned back to me and blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“They teleported into and out of the scene,” I said. “Probably the second guy is a teleporter, a really strong one to be able to carry two men besides himself, one of them dead.”
“Is it harder when they’re dead?
” the gravelly voice asked without emotion.
“A lot harder.”
“Why?”
I shifted in the chair. I supposed it wasn’t a secret. “There’s no shape in Mindspace to hold on to—literally, deadweight, and weight no amount of thinking is going to convince you is part of you, like clothes. Anything outside the body is hard to move, but something nonliving and big—that’s the hardest.”
Cherabino cleared her throat. Looking at nothing in particular, she said, “Actually, the coroner said he was still alive when he arrived at the scene, though probably dying of whatever it was by then. The other victims were dead when they were dumped.”
“Oh,” I said eloquently. That was right; I’d felt the guy’s fear.
“Still alive?” Piccanonni asked. “With different transportation and a new modus operandi? Then for certain the relationship between our two criminals has changed, and changed radically, between the last death and this one. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they begin to escalate their behavior.”
“Escalate?” Branen said, going a little pale. “As in more killings? Worse killings?”
“How can it get worse?” I asked.
“We don’t know they worked together on any of the other killings,” Cherabino put in.
Piccanonni looked at us all calmly. “More killings, in a faster time frame. Given the facts you’ve presented, I’d say the first man approached the victims with dignity. He washed the bodies; he laid them out carefully. The second—assuming that’s what caused the change—the second man is not so respectful. He’s dumping the bodies like garbage, a clear statement he thinks of them as anything but human. The fact that the first man was there and didn’t stop him suggests that the second is dominant; bad news for us. We’re looking at an increased time schedule. More violence. Escalation, and fast. If I’m wrong—and I’m never wrong—we are at least looking at an individual who is growing more unstable and more violent, quick.”
Cherabino flagged me down after the rest left, Branen escorting Piccanonni out and trying to convince her to handle any other information she needed by phone.
“Did you call the Guild yet?” she asked me, standing at the end of the table awkwardly. She’d heard about my weekend—and the test coming back clean—and didn’t know how to treat me now.
“Sunday,” I confirmed. “They’re supposed to call me back today—I gave them your number, actually, so you might want to check your messages.”
She nodded, looked away. “You said something about specialized Guild training?”
I paused, standing with one hand holding the other wrist, feeling awkward too. “You didn’t think just anybody could kill with their mind?”
She shrugged. “Hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, they can’t. It takes a certain level of Ability. Plus specialized training. Or, well, at least working in the right kinda field. One where the training already gets you close—most Minders, for example, can probably figure it out. They’re not taught it, though.”
“Who is taught it, then?”
I supposed it was the logical question. “The answer’s a little long.”
“I’ll listen,” she said. “I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
Me, on the other hand…I was already late for the interview room, but the perps could wait. They should wait, actually, if they hadn’t already. It made for better interviews, and Paulsen said I should take time if I needed it. “Well, the microkinesis guys can kill, the biochem medical guys could do it too, but neither one of those would look like this. I suppose an electric-fields guy could do it if he had enough knowledge of the brain, but it would be simpler just to burn out the back brain, not mess around with the higher cortical functions at all. Wouldn’t look like this.”
She was getting impatient. “What would look like this?”
I breathed, decided I could probably tell her. “Psych, Off, and Construct.” When her eyes narrowed, I explained. “Psych is trained in psychology and telepathy; they treat mental illness. If you want somebody to lose their mommy issues for good, you call Psych.”
“So schizophrenia and stuff?” she asked.
“No, schizophrenia is actually a brain-chemistry or mind-structure issue—Biochem or Construct. Psych treats the more normal kinds of mental illness, usually the severe ones talk therapy doesn’t touch. Off is Offensive Battle, the black ops guys. They’re trained to kill, because, well, that’s what they do for a living. They’re all at least a little crazy by definition, and mostly you hope it’s not at you. And Construct—the deconstructionists—well, we’re the structure guys. The mind, not the brain, though the two influence each other. If you want a criminal to literally not be able to think about molesting children again, or if you’ve lost your ability to see color from a brain injury and you want it back, or if you want to literally upgrade your personal memory and remember more of what you see, we’re the guys you call.”
“You’re a…,” Cherabino trailed off.
“Deconstructionist, yes. I’ve told you that before.”
“It’s weird,” she said. I could see the wheels turning; then she glared at me. “You’re saying you could have killed those people? You’ve had the training?”
Of course that’s the first thing she was going to think, especially today. “I was in the interview rooms Wednesday afternoon,” I said testily. “We have at least ten tapes showing it.”
“Oh,” she said, but she was going to check. Of course she was going to check.
“Anything else you want to know?” My tone had bite.
“No, I think that’s enough for now.” She gestured to the door.
I stomped out, watched her leave, went for a cigarette on the back steps. The drizzling rain suited my mood as I told myself I couldn’t have Satin and would have to make do with a second cigarette. At least out here no one would bother me.
CHAPTER 11
Two o’clock, and I snuck into the Electronic Crimes section to borrow a computer with decent processing capacity, pulling out the plastacard Paulsen had given me. I wasn’t technically supposed to be there, but Cherabino had all the codes in her head and thought them loudly.
I opened up the plastacard, full to the brim with data strings, captured at great trouble and risk from the WorldNet over the weekend. Apparently all the data had passed Quarantine without eating our computers or anything, so I could start sorting through what they’d captured by hand. Fun.
It would take me hours just to skim the hundreds of pages of information the search had turned up. Hours. When somebody with an implant—or even a better computer-assist—could get it done in ten minutes or less.
Paulsen didn’t trust me, not now, or she would have taken my lead a lot more seriously. Devoted processing time and resources to the query. I wondered pettily if Cherabino’s leads got a plastacard and a pat on the head. Somehow I doubted it. “Get me proof,” Paulsen had said.
I sighed, muttered angrily to myself, and started reading. I pulled a notebook over to jot down names. Maybe I’d find a list of names near the beginning of the stack, labeled neatly with very strong teleporters who are also telepaths, complete system-wide list. Maybe I could teach pigs to fly too.
I was still muttering darkly as I waded through page after page, over an hour of skimming in the hope of finding the right needles in the haystack. It was so bad that I was actually relieved when they called me back to the interview room and chewed me out for using the computer. The public information on the Guild and people with Abilities was terrible! I had a grand total of five names. As rare as the teleporter/telepath combination was, there would be more than five names. Even interviewing was better than this.
On the way to the interview room, Clark held a hand out to block my way. He was a big guy, and normally even tempered. Today, he glowered.
I looked at him, at the hand. “What’s going on?”
“In this section, everyone has to pull his own weight,” he said with a little too mu
ch emphasis. “Don’t be thinking I don’t know what’s going on.”
I paused. “And what is that?”
“You’re setting up one of those excuse fests where we pull doubles and triples and you sit in a facility somewhere with your feet up on the department’s dime. I’m not putting up with it this time,” he said, the glower deepening. “And if I have anything to say about it, neither will anyone else.”
“I never asked you to cover for me.”
“And I didn’t. But the work has to get done,” he said. He was thinking I hadn’t shown up all morning, and if he had to listen to one more rumor…“The work has to get done no matter what.”
We stood there, him blocking my way, for a long moment.
“Your spot could be filled with a cop.”
And there it was. “I tested clean,” I said tightly. “One hundred percent clean, yesterday and today both with separate testers. I never asked you to work double shifts for me. I never asked you to…” And the elephant in the room was his daughter’s fifth birthday, which he missed, and now regretted, furious at me. It stood between us, but I couldn’t say anything, not without making things even worse than they were. “Look, I pull my weight. I take the hard cases off your plate, I do the work. Twice the work of anybody else here, and you know it. If you’ll move your hand, I’ll do it again.”
I held his gaze, refused to look away. I’d never apologized for the last time off the wagon, not to him, and Swartz said I had to get in the habit of humility. But today wasn’t going to be the day for that apology.
He stood, blocking my way, his brain practically shouting his contempt for me and his plans to go to Paulsen to get a real cop in the spot.
“I do twice the work of anyone here,” I repeated. “Now, move your hand or I’ll move it for you.”
He backed off, slowly, eyes following me down the hall. His mind shouted his intentions to watch me like a hawk.
Go on and watch, I thought, as I kept walking. Go on and watch.