by Alex Hughes
“I remember,” she said, her voice trailing off. “You doing okay?”
“I’ll see you at two,” I said, and hung up.
Getting called in by another police force was a big step, since somebody had to put jurisdiction and pride aside enough to admit they couldn’t get the job done alone. We found out from Branen’s messages they’d actually called me to consult on the crime scene—for once, without arguing about budget—instead of Cherabino. I was the telepathic expert, after all. She still came with me.
We were in the north part of DeKalb County. Our destination was the old East City Hall near Freedom Parkway, maybe eight miles as the crow flies southwest. The direct route took us through one of the oldest parts of the city, around Emory University, the ancient trees telling stories of centuries before us, their trunks twisted from the fallout from the Tech Wars, but still standing. The area around the university was a strict no-fly zone with twisty roads, and those eight miles took a good twenty minutes even on a good day. Now, in morning rush hour, it took us more like forty. Paulsen would not be pleased, I thought. I wondered if I could blame it on Cherabino.
She was sad this morning, a sense of loss riding her like a second skin. She kept thinking about tomorrow, worrying about me somehow, then shying away from both thoughts, so that I couldn’t follow, and it was only giving me a headache to try.
She also drove sedately for her, not making me grab the handrail even once. Somehow I did not think that was a good sign.
We took a turn onto Ponce de Leon, the new old Peachtree, as commuters clogged the old road and the space just above it. On the sides of the roads, ancient rotting mansions shared space with old churches and debris-filled parks. The street deteriorated further as we went. On the edge of the trendy, dirty city blocks, right by the old City Hall East—now cheap lofts by the same name—we turned into a huge parking lot meant to service the few megastores still left in the area.
We parked in front of the hardware store, intending to walk around the building to the back alley where the murder scene was. Cherabino led the way. The day was cloudy and dim, the humidity in the air sticking to my skin like the steam in a sauna.
Our shoes crunched on bits of unnamed debris as we stepped into the alley. We walked past a line of dirty recycling bins, including a huge dumpster that smelled of old, rotting wood. Then past a cop car, its red and white lights turning the alley into a flashing red and blue carnival show. Two male detectives in plain clothes stood just beyond the car.
The first was thin, red-haired, and freckled, and he looked far too young to be a detective, his face far too innocent. Atlanta PD—especially in the heart of the center (and inner) city—wasn’t a police force that exactly bred innocence, so either he was so new to the job he squeaked, or he was a damn good actor. I marked him as someone to watch either way. When Cherabino stepped forward to introduce us, I stepped closer than was strictly necessary and got the faint impression of a very wily mind. He was McMartin, and he’d been the one to suggest they call me.
The second detective was a big, burly Latino. He looked to be in his late forties, at the top of his game professionally, and clearly in charge. Despite the fact that Cherabino had introduced me as the ex-Guild telepath, Sanchez offered me his hand.
I looked at him just long enough to make sure he knew what he was doing—his eyes were steady enough—and then took the hand. His grasp was firm but not overwhelming. “Sanchez,” he introduced himself.
I nodded in turn, releasing his hand as I tried hard to pretend he wasn’t at least a Level Three empath. I didn’t know whether his coworkers knew, but there was no hiding it with the handshake. He probably had some preliminary training, nothing major, not with the feel of him crawling up my arm like a strong cloud of cologne. So either he didn’t think I’d notice—unlikely—or he wanted it out on the table between us immediately. Guessing that I could crush him with a thought, use his Ability against him, and deliberately sticking out his hand anyway.
With those kind of guts, he got my respect immediately.
Cherabino finished the pleasantries, and they all nodded to one another. I echoed, feeling a little out of place, still trying to hide what I knew about Sanchez. The other cop led the way to the end of the alley. A medical examiner in full crime-scene coveralls crouched over what looked at a distance to be a pile of rags.
“Call came in this morning about five thirty,” Sanchez summarized as we walked. “One of the store employees taking out the recyclables found the body at the end of the alley. He checked for a pulse, and when he found none, reported it to his supervisor. The supervisor called us.”
“Where’s the employee now?” Cherabino asked, her hands in her pockets.
The other detective shrugged. “We took his statement and sent him home. He seemed pretty shaken and didn’t know anything useful. You missed him by just a couple minutes.”
I looked around. “Where’s the crime scene analysts?” I asked.
“We called them ten minutes before McMartin suggested talking to you,” Sanchez replied. “They’re running late. Very late.”
We stopped a few feet away from the medical examiner. Sanchez kept walking a few more steps. “Rogers,” he said, “can you give us a few minutes?”
“One moment,” Rogers replied in a quiet baritone. He wrote one last thing in his notebook and retrieved his equipment. When he had everything tucked away neatly in his case, he set the lock and stood up.
Way up. The medical examiner was at least six foot five, and his dark complexion matched his baritone. “You the teep?”
“That’s right.” I hated the common slang word for telepath, but I didn’t really want to risk the argument right now. If I was here to look at the Mindspace residue around the body, I wanted as few strong emotions from these guys as possible. Ideally, I wanted them to back up about nine feet.
“Could you wait over by the wall?” Sanchez asked Rogers. “Clear the space here.” I wondered if I’d accidentally let the thought slip into Mindspace for Sanchez to pick up, or whether he was just that smart.
The examiner nodded, walking the six feet to the back wall of the store. The other cops went with him without being prompted, and only then did I look down. Wedged into the corner of the old wooden fence ending the alley and the concrete wall to our right was a pile of rags. Or so it looked. Finally my eyes resolved the body. On top of a pile of ancient shag carpet lay an old lady. She was painfully thin, her light skin sitting on her face like wrinkled paper. She was also very dirty, her gray hair hanging in strings. What ratted clothes she had on were patchworked with age, until even on her body they looked like piled rags.
“The supervisor says she sleeps here sometimes,” Sanchez said. “They bring her food when they can. McMartin claims it’s one of your serials. I’m thinking no. It’s probably not an exposure death—not in the middle of the night in the summer—so I’m willing to explore possibilities. Even if it’s old age that killed her. Worth seeing what you had to say.”
“I appreciate that.” I nodded, pausing just long enough for politeness. Then, “First, I’ll need some space; you’ll have to go over to the wall with the others. This will take about fifteen minutes, maybe a little more.” I met his eyes. “I probably don’t have to say this, but don’t touch me while I’m under. It could be bad.”
“I have no intention of touching you.” His mouth quirked before he joined the others.
Cherabino shifted. “You need me to stay or to go?”
I studied the distance to the back wall. “Could you be about halfway between me and them?” I asked.
She started walking and settled at the spot I’d indicated. The Atlanta detectives started talking among themselves, a running commentary on what I was doing, I’m sure. They’d be surprised when there was nothing to see. Or maybe Sanchez wouldn’t—he might be able to spot me in Mindspace if I had to do something big. I wasn’t planning on it, but who knew.
The alley seemed very empty, to a
ll my senses, but sometimes if I sank all the way into Mindspace, an area opened up to me.
With my mind I reached across to Cherabino. “You ready?” I asked her, meeting her eyes. She nodded. Knock, knock on her mind, and then she let me in—just enough to provide a real-world focus if I should need one. She was picturing a hand, her hand holding mine. She was also carefully thinking about nothing, more sad and wary than I had ever felt her.
I looked back down at the old lady then and took a deep breath. I dropped fully into Mindspace, all at once, hoping to catch a piece of what had killed the woman.
It was too early in the morning; I was too groggy, my mind wanting to drop down into sleep rather than Mindspace. So it took me a little longer than normal to “open my eyes” enough to get a good look. And even then, it took a long moment to understand what I was seeing.
It was clear. Mindspace was clear, as clean and full of light as a freshly scrubbed bathtub full of clean water. Which was impossible. A hundred ways, impossible.
There were small whirls where the people around me were walking through, making little ripples in the shallows, like small boats on a pond. Sanchez was a heavier boat than the rest, but still a shallow-dweller. So I went deeper.
Underneath was still clear, too clear, as if impossibly someone had come through and cleaned it up. As if a vacuum or a broom had whisked the whole thing clean.
I sank down into Mindspace as deep as I could go—my metaphorical ears popping under the strain—and looked. Carefully. Tasting the area as much as looking. Spending a good, long time trying to figure out what had happened.
There, in the area of the body in front of me—almost too faint to notice—were the traces of the second man I’d seen earlier, at the other crime scene. But his presence was obscured, covered, as if someone had chalked it over with raw Mindspace.
I was disturbed. As I surfaced, I was more disturbed. The only thing I’d ever heard of doing this was a small machine at the Guild headquarters here in Atlanta, stored under lock and key and physical barrier, impossible to retrieve. And rumor had it that the machine was broken, had been for twenty years, and it was illegal then.
We were dealing with a telepath/teleporter, yes, but one with access to some of the Guild’s secrets and to a good mechanic. And, I suspected, a man who had walked out of here on his own power.
Because, although the whole area was cloaked in thick clear nothing, the nothing was solid and uniform. Without a single pucker in the whole area. Even one. And the second guy noticeably absent.
My stomach cramped. The Guild was letting a lot more than murders out now—if the killer had the machines…. It was bad. It was very bad.
By treaty, the Guild got absolute power. But in exchange, they were forbidden several things. Government and political control. Private investments. And most of all, technology. They’d negotiated over the years—they could have low-level basic silicon computers, now, to process their internal data. A government technology auditor came by every month to ensure the data and the computers never touched a network, never touched the WorldNet, and were never altered in any way. If one seal on one hard drive was broken, one circuit breaker changed, the government would bring all hell to bear. Because the big scary thought, the one that kept political analysts up at night, was that the Guild, who’d saved the world from the Tech madmen, might turn to Tech themselves. With no one left to stop them.
But the Guild was run by crazy arrogant bastards, worse thirty years ago, men who didn’t care who they screwed so long as it didn’t get out. They broke every law, every treaty ever given, and locked the results in a secret vault no one had touched in twenty years. The Guild leaders now wouldn’t destroy the machines; they couldn’t—but they didn’t bring them out either.
But if the contents of that vault at the Guild were to become public…the street would run with blood before the authorities would allow the Guild to go on. They’d send in every standing army, every reserve force they could find. And the soldiers who worked for the Guild, the Guild black ops, the minders, even the deconstructionists…well, they wouldn’t roll over. Ireland might escape; they’d never agreed to the Guild. India and Brazil might get off lightly—the Guild was weaker there, and its members more integrated into society. But the Western World…we’d see a war such as the world had never known, something that made the Tech Wars look like a child playing with a machine gun.
I took my time disengaging from Mindspace. I’d lost track of real time, but it had been long enough that Cherabino was getting impatient. Very impatient.
I let go of my link with her. The old lady in front of me still lay quietly, her sad form left sprawled like a child’s manikin without its boning.
I turned; behind me was the forensics team I’d felt arrive while I was under. They were impatient, ready to be working, unsure why I was standing staring in the middle of the crime scene. The Atlanta cops had them well controlled, though. I walked forward to meet Cherabino.
“Please look for footprints,” I told them all. “Very carefully.”
I tried to figure out what to say, how to explain what I’d found without giving away any more Guild secrets than I had to. The best line of defense for this sort of thing was ignorance—even past the locks. As much as I hated the Guild, I hated even more the thought of their secrets getting out. Mass panic was not an option. War…No.
I needed to talk to Kara. Yesterday.
“Spit it out,” Cherabino commanded. They’d been waiting twenty minutes, and she was cranky and hungry and wanted information.
I started on the part I could tell her. “It’s empty. The Mindspace around here is empty, much emptier than it should be, and it’s not filling up. It’s not holding on to anything at all. For all I can tell from Mindspace—and trust me, I looked—the old lady was never here. The clerk you talked to—never here. The supervisor—also, completely missing. And your signatures are fading as fast as you walk away.”
“What does that mean?” Sanchez waved the forensics team onto the scene behind me. Then he folded his arms and set his jaw. He wasn’t thrilled to have waited. But since it looked like I was done, the rest of the team—waiting for his approval—could go ahead and get started.
I paused for a long moment, figuring out what to say, controlling my face so it didn’t show. I settled for saying, “Our killer has Guild training.”
He looked at me, frowning; he’d read my decision to lie, but wasn’t quite confident enough in his empathy to say anything in front of the others.
I took a deep breath, careful not to have any tells. “You were right. This is the same guy. His signature—his taste, if you will—is exactly the same.” I was lying through my teeth, but I thought probably it was the same guy. Though why he would dump a body so far from his stomping ground in East Atlanta—fifteen miles or more to our south and in a different jurisdiction—meant something had changed. I was thinking the profiler lady might have something to her theories.
McMartin shifted. “It did seem a lot like your other cases. No mark on her, scared expression.”
The examiner moved a bit closer then, making no secret of the fact that he was listening. “A couple defensive bruises, but no obvious cause of death. Could be exposure, but…”
“Not likely in August at night,” Cherabino agreed. “Not at a balmy seventy-five degrees.”
“Heatstroke can hit anytime, yes, but it seems more likely during the day.”
Cherabino nodded. “You should be able to identify them by brain damage if it’s one of ours. Talk to the DeKalb coroner—I’m sure she can fax you over the info. Do keep it quiet, though, okay? We’re not releasing the brain damage to the press.”
The examiner nodded.
I’d been hesitating to add anything else, but I thought they should know. “You’ve got to realize, I don’t feel her death here. It’s like she never existed.”
“No emotions? No feeling of death at all?” Cherabino asked.
“Very strange,�
�� I agreed.
The other detective shrugged, shifted his feet. “Not our primary crime scene, then.”
“No way of telling,” I returned. “It’s just a little too blank around here. But if he was here—he definitely didn’t teleport out. I told the guys to check for footprints. Maybe we’ll get a good one.”
“Twenty minutes of staring into space like a moron—and you’ve got nothing,” the examiner said, his voice more curious than hostile.
“Guild training and a confirmation it’s our killer is hardly nothing,” Cherabino protested.
“It’s okay,” I forced myself to say. “I don’t have much.”
“The problem is, none of us do,” Cherabino echoed. Then, to Sanchez she said, “I don’t have any problem with you guys forgetting to invoice the department for this one. We didn’t help much.”
Behind me, one of the Forensics guys was waving to Sanchez with some minor physical clue. Sanchez nodded and went over, and we took our leave of the Atlanta PD cops.
The day was starting to warm up already, well on its way to the usual punishing heat, and something about the taste of the air made me think a storm was coming.
CHAPTER 15
“What aren’t you telling me?” Cherabino demanded in the car, on the way back to the station.
“This is our guy, and he’s had Guild training,” I repeated, but my voice wasn’t as steady as it could have been. Cherabino was driving recklessly again, and my knuckles were turning white as I gripped the door handle.
She repeated, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“This guy has his hands on some serious Guild secrets. Stuff that can’t get out, that shouldn’t have gotten out even this far. Bad enough he’s killing. To do this…” I took a deep breath. “If my suspicions are true, we’re sitting on a powder keg. I need to talk to Kara. Away from the department. No recordings.”