Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  “Go and what, Kara? What—”

  She blew out a hard stream of air into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

  “What are you—”

  “You’re an idiot,” she summed up, and disconnected.

  I stared at the phone, seriously considering pounding it against the booth in front of me until it broke into a hundred thousand pieces. And I stopped. Cold.

  It had started raining, fat merciless raindrops in a steady stream. The whole air suddenly smelled of wet dirty trees, mildew, and overly humidified humanity. The old man had pulled out a sheet of battered plastic, was huddled under it, still staring at me suspiciously.

  Droplets hitting me in the head despite the dubious protection of the booth, I put the public pay phone back. Carefully. Kara sounded like she was wading through some pretty deep politics over there. That could be good for me, or bad—hard to know. No one had told me anything about the politics directly; I hadn’t cared. Now maybe it was time to snoop around in people’s heads. I huddled deeper under the awning, trying to avoid as much of the pollution-soaked rain as possible.

  Finally the bus arrived, and wet and in a foul mood, I climbed on board with the other passengers. The old man sat across the aisle and stared, his mind thinking I might do anything. No one else sat anywhere near me either. I looked away.

  As the bus pulled away from the curb with a lurch, I braced myself a little better in the uncomfortable seat. The rain intensified, deep, wet, torrential rainfall hitting the top of the bus stop like a waterfall. We were on West Ponce heading toward Decatur, and the tiny, shifty lanes were too small for the bus in the best of weather. After a block or two of wobbling, the driver slowed down and grounded fully, counting on the mass of the bus on the asphalt to get us through the puddles better than the gravity-assist.

  The trees directly on the right side of the bus—most were directly next to the lanes and historic, having survived the Tech Wars and a couple hundred years—were right up against the lanes and ruined any chance at decent drainage. Within minutes, the small, Southern road—no business being in the big city, but no one had asked—was flooding. The bus slowed further, a hippo in a white-water river, making slow, unhappy progress.

  Just then I realized I hadn’t brought an umbrella. And the bus stop was two blocks from the station.

  I arrived at the station soaked to the skin, like I’d stepped under a waterfall by accident and narrowly avoided getting swept over. I was pissed, tired, worried—and, in the first half hour of the storm, I’d probably been exposed to every kind of foul pollution, the raindrops full to bursting with cancer-causing pollution and worse. I needed a shower. Bad.

  Bellury went to get me some of his clothes while I was trying to scrub off whatever nastiness had come in contact with my skin. The scientists said we were getting better, that it was more in the dirt and the concrete than in the air these days, but I didn’t trust them. Rainwater shouldn’t smell like that.

  I dried off and got dressed in Bellury’s clothes. He was past retirement age but hadn’t gone too badly to fat, and we were the same height. If I belted the pants pretty heavily and tucked the shirt all the way in, I could make it work. It was summer, though, so his button-down shirt was short-sleeved, showing the tracks on my arms. I stood in front of the mirror in the empty locker room and looked for a long moment, feeling naked, trying to decide if I would go out like that. Finally I went to get my jacket. Better to sweat endlessly and die from the heat than advertise my weakness to the cops, to the suspects, whoever. I just didn’t like strangers staring at my arms. Whatever they were actually thinking at the time, the back of my head was still convinced they were judging me.

  Bellury had left the sports jacket in my locker but taken everything else. Again. He’d just tested me, but maybe they thought they’d find something in the clothes that wasn’t in the urine. He was welcome to it. The Old-People Conspiracy was keeping me far away from my poison, the bastards. Probably it would stay that way, and I would pass this time, next time, even the next. Swartz said nobody could stay clean forever, but you could do it today, just today, over and over again until you crossed the finish line. Right now that seemed maybe doable, at least for the moment.

  Bellury was nice enough to take the clothes to the washer-box while he was at it, though. I would have clean, fresh clothes in my locker at the department again tomorrow. Clothes that smelled good. Not bad.

  I wondered how Cherabino was, what had happened last…I happened to glance at the clock. Oh, crap.

  I grabbed the jacket, slammed the locker door shut, and hustled out. I was late for my first interview, and I needed to make sure Bellury looked out for Kara’s courier.

  After three rounds of interviews I had a break, and Kara’s courier had arrived. I borrowed a viewing tablet from Paulsen. Barely powerful enough to view the data, it would still scream like a banshee if I took it out of the area. But I wasn’t going to take it out of the area.

  “Can I take a chair and a corner for an hour?” I asked Andrew. “I need to go through some data.”

  He looked up from a stack of numbered sheets. “Oh yes.” He looked around distractedly, cleared off his guest chair, looked at the little sliver of cubicle counter it sat against. “Um…”

  “That’s fine,” I told him, holding up the tablet. “I appreciate it.”

  I sat on the chair in the little sliver of counter and waited for the tablet to unpack Kara’s information. Cherabino was away from her desk for the moment, but I was sure she would be back soon. No need to get in her face about what had happened.

  I spent a half hour going through lists, endless lists of data. My eye stopped on the tablet screen, slowly paging through a list from Kara’s file—and caught. Gretel Sandsburg. The name of our fourth victim.

  I frowned at the file. How could our fourth victim be a telepath? Her family didn’t…Oh. Kara had sent me more than one list. This one was the fourth-grade testing results from the last twenty years, all the people the Guild had identified with Ability but hadn’t thought worth recruiting.

  My fingers danced on the tablet. This had to be a—no. Three names. Four. Five.

  All of our victims had low-level Ability. All of them. And all of them were listed as available for Atlanta Research.

  That was the research department where Bradley worked. The same department that would have every name on this list—and worse—hundreds of other names. All the names of every Good Samaritan willing to be a test subject to advance the Guild’s knowledge. The names of these people in particular—all of whom lived in Atlanta.

  I had found the connection.

  Cherabino was back at her desk right now, her mood like an angry storm cloud over the vicinity. She should probably know about the connection I’d found. Any other day I’d have marched right over there and told her. Maybe brought coffee.

  Not today, though. Today she hated me, and I was too much of a coward to see it in her face right now. To have my nose rubbed in it. But I had to know. Did she really hate me? She was close enough to read, link or no link, and if I was careful, she’d never know I was there. I had to know if she could forgive me.

  If Mindspace was a long meadow, Cherabino and Andrew and all the other cops were little hills dotting the landscape, and Cherabino’s hill was crawling with angry thoughts like ants. As I got closer, I tasted the beginnings of a migraine, and her anger and shame about the night before along with thoughts of the case. She was angry at Bradley for continuing to evade their patrols. No one could find him; no one could even pinpoint where he might have gone. No credit cards, no traces. She was furious.

  Worse, Neil had owned an aircar with a defective anti-grav engine—the list had just come through this morning from the metro-area mechanics—and his name was on it. Had she dropped the ball? Could she have found him sooner if she’d worked harder?

  I pulled at the thought, trying to get more information, more detail on how she’d found out about Neil, what we knew about Bradle
y. But as subtle as I was, Cherabino noticed—and turned her attention inward.

  She should not have been able to feel me there. She didn’t have either the training or the mental ability—but she did it. I felt the knowledge come across her mind like a string of Christmas lights turning on. I was reading her mind.

  Her anger swelled, and she pushed me out—hard. I could have fought, some part of me wanted to fight. With the link between us, I could stay if I wanted; she couldn’t stop me.

  And I felt her register the thought—that we were linked—before she pushed again and I let it push me out. Her anger like a tidal wave swept over me, and I fought bile. She knew.

  Just a cubicle away, Cherabino slammed papers into a bag and threatened to kill me—or worse. Like a coward, I let her go. I let her walk right past the five-foot-high gray fabric-covered cubicle wall. And I didn’t say anything. Her wrath faded as she stalked away, down the hall, with the intent of talking to Paulsen. She couldn’t work with me now. She wouldn’t.

  Andrew’s cubicle smelled like old coffee and ledgers, ozone, and metal. It smelled like cowardice, my cowardice.

  Beside me, he shifted in his chair, stretched. His mind extended with the stretch, and I instinctually shielded for a moment. I was worried about Cherabino, I thought as I looked at the blank walls with faded motivational posters. I was worried about me.

  She’d found out at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way. This was like the cut of a betrayal to her, and she was right, I should have told her. But to find out after last night…my regret and anger burned like bitter gall.

  But I couldn’t let it go, as much as I wanted to with every fiber of my being. My mind kept flashing back to the vision, and the picture of her lying on the floor with all her hope extinguished. Nothing I could do—or not do—could ever be worth that. Nothing. But with her scrubbing me off the case, out of her life…

  Was there any chance in hell I was going to be able to protect her? And if I couldn’t, how in hell would I be able to look myself in the mirror? That couldn’t happen. It couldn’t.

  Paulsen intercepted me in the elevator, getting on at the second floor as the ancient machine stopped. She pushed the faded floor one button even though I’d already lit it up. The doors closed slowly, and the mechanism started with a soft whirr.

  “Hello,” I told Paulsen, my mind craving Satin, craving an escape at any cost. An escape I couldn’t have.

  She hit the stop button on the elevator, and the thing stopped with a clang I could feel in my bones. My stomach took a moment to settle.

  “What is going on with you and Cherabino?” she asked. “The woman just told Branen she wouldn’t work with you anymore. I don’t need more drama with you right now, not with Clark lobbying for you to be gone. Now Cherabino?”

  “I made a mistake.” I kept it simple, an admission without specifics.

  “And what is that?”

  “A mistake. A bad one that I will fix if I can. I found the connection between the victims. They’re all volunteers for Guild research.”

  The overhead light flickered. I had Paulsen’s attention now. “Guild research? Why didn’t this come up in their files? Or did you just forget to put it in the report?”

  “My report’s complete,” I told her. “This is new. And volunteering for Guild research is like giving blood, it doesn’t happen often, and it’s confidential. Nobody but the Guild will have that list—and Kara just sent it over this morning.”

  “So the artificial organ thing is a dead end? We’re going on Guild information now?”

  “It dovetails, actually. Bradley and Neil were working together, the Tuner with the Research guy. It makes perfect sense. The victims would have to be people both of them had access to, people they knew they had good resonance with. Bradley would have all the Guild research records—the full list of people with Ability who weren’t part of the Guild. Neil could find these people and Bradley confirm—”

  “You’re saying they’re telepaths? The victims?” She pushed off the wall where she’d been leaning and moved forward.

  “I’m saying they have some kind of Ability. Something.” And the way the mind had felt in that first crime scene…I’d never felt that before. It was like an absence, almost, like something taken away…. Could Bradley have converted the machine to…take their minds from them somehow? If so, Kara had to know about it. I’d rub her face in it myself. That thing had to be broken down; it was essentially, ethically wrong….

  Paulsen tapped me on the shoulder, and I blinked. Looked at her hand accusingly. You didn’t touch a telepath, not even through clothes so I couldn’t feel you. It was rude. It was worse than rude.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” Paulsen asked.

  “I’ll patch it up with Cherabino,” I told her, hoping it was true. “Trust me at least that far. We need to solve this case now, and she needs the information. This guy has to be shut down.”

  Finally, Paulsen nodded.

  When I found Cherabino, she pulled me into the smaller, green conference room and shut the door. The only witnesses were two whiteboards, a large table, and several faded chairs.

  I reminded myself I was the one looking for her. That meant I had to speak first. Apologize if necessary. Grovel. “Look, I need to talk to you about—”

  “What in hell were you doing in my head?” Her eyes were narrow and dangerous.

  “I wasn’t quite in your head, per se. I didn’t quite—”

  “So you were in my head? Really? After the shit—”

  With no warning, she reared back and punched me on the jaw. The world went gray, lightening just in time for me to get kicked in the side. Pain flashed through my body. I lay with my cheek on the sour-smelling industrial carpet.

  As I listened to the door opening and closing behind me, I thought, Okay. She is not going to let me protect her. Not at all. Not even a little.

  I’d have to do this another way. Solve the case and protect her another way somehow. Get Bradley off the street.

  A half hour later I was at an empty desk in the secretaries’ pool downstairs, working like a man driven. The noisy background, the people moving around from every direction, the anger, the sadness, the minds of criminals, didn’t matter. I was too focused on my goal.

  I went through all the data, cross-checked. Made phone call after phone call as I turned over every rock I could think of. I didn’t call Kara, not yet—but others, other former coworkers, other friends, whatever it took to get the information I needed. Bradley had to be stopped.

  I was leaned over the desk, staring at the list, at my notes on the Guild research department personnel, when the desk phone rang. I’d told the receptionist to forward calls to this number, but I hadn’t expected it to actually ring. I stared at it suspiciously.

  The precog decided to work for no good reason; it was Kara again, and she was going to scream at me for stupid power politics I had nothing to do with. And she was going to offer to let our department come along on their search of Bradley’s apartment she’d just set up if it was all so damn important we wouldn’t stop calling her boss.

  I picked up the phone, hit the answer button. “Is it cleared with the upper echelons?” I asked Kara. “I’m not all that interested in getting pounded by Security at the Guild apartment building.”

  Six full seconds passed while she figured out what in the hell I was talking about.

  “There’s no call to yell at me,” I told the desk. “It’s been a crappy few days, and you don’t need to add to it.”

  Kara made a disgusted noise. “I hate it when you do that. I really do. And no, it’s not. But it’s a hell of a ripple you’re making, and I want it to stop. Now. It’s not Koshna if you’re only looking at the apartment. With us there. Probably. If it makes the phone calls stop, I’ll swing the heat with the Guild somehow.”

  I took a breath and decided to risk it. “Kara?”

  “So help me God, if you do the trick again
, I am going to Jump in there just long enough to get you in trouble. Bad trouble,” she said.

  The precog obligingly provided an image: her arriving in the middle of the busy sea of desks, every cop around reacting with drawn weapons; her popping out again; me getting almost shot and then thrown into an interview room for a while. I winced. “There’s no need to do that,” I said. “Really.” I decided not to ask her what was going on at the Guild after all. “Not that I have anything to do with it either way—low man on the totem pole and all that—but you know the department isn’t going to stop the phone calls as long as Bradley’s free. I’m not going to stop the phone calls. There’s a woman’s life at stake. Maybe more. He didn’t hesitate in killing his partner, he’s not going to stop now.”

  “I understand that. But I’ve been straight with you, and I want the same courtesy,” she said, snippy tone hiding concern over something involved with her job. Her own politics. “Get them to stop calling my boss. I’ll get your guys cleared for the search. Okay?”

  “When and where am I showing up?” I asked her.

  “Not you,” she said pointedly. “We want nontelepaths. As deaf as possible, and good at their jobs—crime-scene techs, maybe? I don’t want to run the chance he might overhear what we’re doing from their minds.”

  “He can do that?”

  She paused. “I don’t know. Some of the Research guys are tricky. I don’t want to take the chance.”

  “Fine,” I said, trying not to be angry I wasn’t wanted. Trying to see the sense of it. “But the department will want to send a couple of cops at minimum. You’ll need to call the lieutenant. Do you have her number?”

  “If you could handle the politics over there, I’d appreciate it,” Kara said in a rude tone—apparently a lot of the pressure was coming directly at her. “When you figure it out, though, I’ll need you to get back to me—do you have a pencil?”

  I fished one out and wrote down what she told me.