Sharp: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  I sighed, trying desperately to figure out if I had clothes for a funeral. Probably Bellury would have them and let me borrow; Bellury kept a lot of clothes at the station. “There’s no way I can make two minutes. If Michael can drive me, let’s do that. You need to tell me these things, though.”

  “I’ve told you twice. For a damn mind reader, you sure don’t pay attention.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked down the length of the hall, her butt moving in interesting ways with those heeled shoes on.

  Stop that, I heard through the Link, and get dressed, damn it!

  * * *

  Michael waited patiently for me, even donating a tie to the cause to get me on the road faster. He borrowed an unmarked car from the pool; apparently his old black-and-white had been reassigned to somebody from his old unit and he hadn’t gotten another yet. I knew this because he told me. Twice. Michael didn’t like silence.

  In direct contradiction to every other cop I’d ever seen, Michael drove safely, like a normal person, putting on blinkers before he changed lanes, checking all mirrors every few moments, but hitting reasonable speeds and reacting in reasonable time to the usual homicidal rush that was Atlanta traffic. He also made conversation while he drove. A lot of conversation, some of which I kept up with and some of which I let pass me by. Finally, apparently I let something go too long and the dreaded silence filled the inside of the car.

  He broke it suddenly. “What’s your story?”

  “What?”

  “Your story. Cherabino says you’re the best, but you mostly seem to sulk and be rude. My wife says I should ask you what your story is.”

  “You’re talking to your wife about me?”

  “Nothing confidential. But anything else—well, there’s not much we keep from each other. Like I said, I don’t have many secrets.”

  I wondered what that would be like. Even at the Guild, there were some things I kept back. It was hard to live in a community of telepaths and keep secrets, but if you were careful and had good shields, if you paid attention to where you were and who was around, it was actually, barely, possible. You could also bury things so deep you never thought about them, never dealt with them. . . . I shied away.

  “What’s your story?” I asked.

  “I’m a cop.”

  Okay. “Well, what part of the city did you patrol before you moved to Homicide?”

  “West South DeKalb and the eastern part of East Atlanta.”

  Suddenly I looked at him with a little more respect; that was a tough area, not as tough as the gang-ridden center of Fulton County, but full of poor, desperate people. The drug trade was a big deal there; I knew because that’s where I found my suppliers the last time off the wagon, before I’d climbed back on and helped to shut them down. Decatur I’d shut down years before that—the drug dealers weren’t exactly excited to see me coming now, which was why I had to take the bus all the way out to Fulton County.

  The radio sputtered then, and Michael answered it, exchanging numbers and location information. The dispatcher took his explanation of what he was doing—on the way to a victim funeral—with an acknowledgment and a reminder not to be too long with the borrowed car. Michael acknowledged and hung up, like he’d done this every day for years. He probably had.

  “You don’t want to talk about yourself much, do you?” Michael asked.

  “Not really.”

  * * *

  The late morning sun bathed the graveside in an odd brightness, and the changing leaves rustled in the breeze like they were mocking me. We found seats near the back, where we could see everyone, and suddenly it hit me: this wasn’t just another victim’s funeral. This was the end of Emily’s funeral, the woman whose life I destroyed—and the woman whose killer we weren’t much closer to catching than we were a few days ago. The woman I owed.

  Her sister was there, in a smart black cocktail dress and pearls, her husband looming uncomfortably in a dark suit beside her. Beside them, two girls, one of whom would be the girl from the painting, the girl whose mother had just died and whose father was still missing. There were reasons I stood well back, and few of those reasons had anything to do with the coffin at the front. Emily’s empty shell held no fear for me, not at this point; no ghosts would cling to it, and the expanse of the cemetery away from the mourners was quiet and still in Mindspace. If this had been a hospital or a hospice, on the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the lingering death for long.

  I made myself focus as Michael nodded to Cherabino a few rows ahead of us. She gestured, forcefully, for us to come up there. I ignored her, and Michael looked back and forth before settling more firmly beside me. He was, in fact, deaf as a doornail in Mindspace, and in these surroundings not a problem, even as I tried to scope out the surroundings in Mindspace.

  Apparently the sister’s family were atheists. The man giving the ceremony at the graveside didn’t have the look of any religion I could name, and the platitudes he mouthed seemed short and unsatisfying. The whole moment above the coffin seemed too short, inadequate for anyone’s life, much less the life of a woman who’d battled back from losing everything—and made a life.

  The trees, leaves changing, looked on as I scanned the crowd. The family, as expected, and a group of solemn-faced folks in very nice clothes who had the look of salespeople. Work friends of Emily’s, maybe. A smattering of women her age, some rich-looking, some in more modest clothes, friends, maybe. And last, quietly, sitting by herself, the elegant microbraids falling around her down-looking face, Tamika.

  Tamika—the woman I’d destroyed when I’d destroyed Emily and Charles. The only one still alive. In the back of my head, I heard Swartz’s voice tell me now would be a good time to approach her and apologize. The guilt twisted and I ignored that voice.

  And last, across the row, were two women I knew. One was Kara, and if she’d known about Stone and hadn’t warned me, there would be hell to pay. And the other . . .

  Jamie Skelton, my old mentor at the Guild. My old teacher, and one of the strongest—and most controlled—telepaths in the world. Back in my time she’d been head of the research division for a while before becoming much more involved in the advanced school. She’d come to visit me, once, the first time I did rehab. She was the only one from the Guild who’d ever bothered. If I hadn’t been so distracted today, I would have known her immediately; despite her control, that strength made a hell of an effect in Mindspace.

  The interment ceremony was over quickly, as the man in charge threw a ceremonial clod of dirt on the coffin and said his last platitude. People began to get up, to file past the coffin or talk or whatever their temperaments called for. At the first moment I felt I could, I made a beeline for Jamie, to try to say hi—only to come up short. A tall redhead dressed to the nines barred my way. “Are you with the police?” she asked me, grabbing my arm with no regard to her mental health.

  Even through the fabric of the long sleeves, I was thrown into her mind. A whirling maelstrom of conniving intelligence, she was plotting desperately how to keep the police from suspecting her. From knowing Emily had reported her for sexual harassment of an intern—and nearly cost her her job.

  Michael literally stepped between us, and the contact was broken—just in time. I stepped back, panting and scared; I hadn’t been expecting that kind of contact. If she’d been skin to skin, bad things would have happened. As it was, as I panted and pulled myself together through sheer nerve and training, I thought, There was a reason for the damn Guild patches. So people didn’t do that. So I didn’t end up crazy—or killing her by accident.

  “I’m Officer Hwang.” Michael flashed his badge. “What can I help you with?”

  “She was murdered, right? They say she was murdered.”

  “That’s right, ma’am. We’re in the process of investigating what happened. May I ask how you knew the victim?”

  The redhead pulled herself up to her full height, a few inches shorter than Michael, the tight
bun she had pulling her face taut. “I’m Theodora Wilcox, Emily’s direct superior. You know her husband was a horse’s ass. I wouldn’t be surprised if he beat her to death.”

  I was starting to regain my center, and couldn’t help jumping on the statement, my interrogator’s instincts firing. “You seem awfully intent on driving our attention away from you. Is there a reason?”

  “That’s . . . Well, that’s ridiculous. Emily and I were close as sisters. Why, just last week I gave her an extraordinary bonus for contracts sold. There would be no reason I’d . . . Why, that’s ridiculous. Frankly, I’m insulted you’d even suggest such a thing.”

  “We know about the sexual harassment complaint,” I said, pushing. “With an intern, no less. That could cost you everything. To have one of your own people report it and get the intern to speak out, why, that had to hurt. She’d gone behind your back. People just don’t do that to people.”

  I almost had it—I almost had it; I saw the angry justifications welling up behind her eyes. But Cherabino chose that moment to come over, reacting to my focus in Mindspace.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. And Ms. Wilcox, Emily’s “direct superior,” clammed up. I saw the truth waft away on the wind.

  “Your timing stinks,” I told her tightly. And Ms. Wilcox found another person to talk to. Worse, Jamie and Kara had already left. So I told Cherabino exactly how much I appreciated her interrupting an interrogation.

  Which was why I was walking back to the car, guilt, frustration, and anger, mine and Cherabino’s both, stirring up in my mind.

  * * *

  “What are you doing here?” Tamika asked. She stood stiff, a purse held out in front of her like a shield. As I’d feared, her mind was like a sodden knot, twisted on itself and unbreakable, too collapsed to allow her to interact with Mindspace at all. Too twisted to let Mindspace interact with her either; nothing I could do could touch that mind.

  She was right, maybe. I was quick to justify my presence. “I’m part of the team investigating Emily’s murder.”

  Something flashed over Tamika’s face then, something like scorn—and then it disappeared in the face of surprise. “Isn’t that the Guild’s job now?”

  “She’s still being classified as a normal for these purposes. She paid taxes to the county. Now the county is doing its job by her.”

  “Probably just as well,” Tamika said. “Guild doesn’t care anymore what happens to the rest of us.”

  Swartz’s admonishments echoed in my head, and I squirmed under them. I didn’t want to apologize. I didn’t. “Kara says you’re working for the Guild now. You still in the research department?” For a while there, she’d been working for my friend Dane, before he died. He’d said she was good at the technology part of Structure. I could see that would be a worthwhile job even without the Ability.

  “No,” her voice spat, like a bullet burst. A wavery breath, then she met my eyes like she was daring me to make something of it. “No, they kicked me out of Research about a year ago. Kara shoehorned me into a job with the courier logistics department.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “It’s good they’re giving you a job.”

  “I hate courier. It’s a glorified postal service. But the Guild says they won’t release my employment records, and I don’t have any other skills,” she said, bitter.

  I made an apologetic sound, the most I could get myself to do.

  “I got your letter, from rehab,” Tamika said. “You sounded like your life was over. And now here you are, working for the police.”

  “I’m just an interrogator.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  We stood there a long moment, under the shade of the huge, spotted oak tree, a small pollution-monitoring vine trailing up its side, in the process of turning red. The soil apparently was toxic in this cemetery—hopefully most of it was the embalming fluid.

  “I think you should go now. I think you should leave.”

  So I left, huddling in the back of the police car, until Michael came to find me.

  * * *

  Oddly, on the way back Michael let the silence sit in the car while I stewed. He turned on some quiet pop music.

  “You asked me what my story was,” I finally said, halfway back to the station, at least ten minutes later. Mostly because he hadn’t asked again. Cherabino’s anger was still poking at me. And the guilt over Tamika. The guilt, like burning coals.

  “That’s right.”

  I took a breath. “Well. I’m an ex-addict. I got hooked on a drug that should have been a short-term deal. The Guild was doing a study. But I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—let it go. And I made a mistake. A big, expensive, horrible mistake, as a result. The Guild finally kicked me out for it, and it took me two years to get gone enough to find real life again.”

  I let that sit for a long moment, but Michael said nothing. “About the time I was looking for it, Cherabino shows up in the bad part of town, not far from where I was squatting, looking for a dealer who she was pretty sure had killed a college girl. Harry did kill her, of course; he’d killed more than one person who’d gotten in his way in the past, and I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and my head low and let it go by. He was bad news, was Harry. But he was the streets in that area. You dealt with him or you didn’t deal.”

  I felt the words slide out of me like they were coated in butter, and I didn’t feel like stopping them. “Anyway, Cherabino wanted some help and I needed somebody to vouch for me at the sliding scale rehab place before they’d let me in. I ended up helping—and saving her life about twice—and she got me into the rehab center I wanted. She also got Harry, cold, and took out most of the organization involved in the sales. What got me, though, was she looked me up six months later, just to say hello. Like she cared or something. She offered me a job, if I could keep my nose clean, and it took me another round of rehab and a lot of Swartz, my NA sponsor, knocking my head against reality, but I did. When I showed up at the station, I was shaking in my boots, but she met me at the door with that matter-of-fact thing she has, and that was that. That was more than five years ago. Now it turns out the same things that made me a good telepath make me a good interrogator too, a damn good interrogator, and Cherabino, well . . .”

  Michael’s brow creased as he negotiated an odd vertical merge in the only skylane over a curvy road. “You like her, don’t you? More than just the job?”

  I was silent. Apparently I’d given away more than I intended, but I couldn’t take it back now. “She’s afraid of me right now. Of the telepathy.”

  “I’m sorry.” Michael made another turn; we were getting close to the station. I could feel a decision crystallize in his head. “I don’t know anything about telepathy, but I’ve been married awhile now and I know something about women. Let me give you some free advice.”

  “Okay.” Did I really just say okay?

  He glanced over at me. “All the words in the world don’t matter as much as what you do. You show up and you don’t mess it up, and if you do that often enough, it matters. Your actions show what you really mean.”

  I nodded, a kind of numb sadness hitting me. He was kinda right; I hadn’t been acting like I’d acted before. Letting her go, letting her avoid me, on reflection, well, it was cowardly. Worse, it wasn’t working. She’d dealt with the telepathy before, but I’d saved her life and gotten cases closed, and it had worked.

  “I’ll add one more thing, and then I’ll leave it alone. I’m the new guy, I get that. I don’t expect the clouds to open up and friendliness shine down. But the hostility, well, I don’t think it’s helping your case with the girl. It’s not an observation about anything except Cherabino.”

  I sighed. “I’ll try to lighten up.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  * * *

  Cherabino showed up at my borrowed desk downstairs with food. Two large cardboard containers of delicious-smelling Mexican food. Through the Link, I could feel her determination—and small, qu
iet fear. It was the best, the simplest, the most understandable thing I’d felt all day.

  “Break room?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She didn’t like Mexican food, my all-time favorite kind of meal. For her to bring it to me was a big deal, especially with what had happened at the funeral. “What’s going on?” I asked. It was too early for dinner, and too late for lunch. But I hadn’t eaten and neither had she.

  Cherabino led the way, and settled down, handing out napkins and silverware with studied concentration.

  “I thought you were pissed,” I said.

  She blew out a breath. “We’ll get Emily’s boss back in the station if we can; if not, we’ll go there. You were out of line to yell at me, but I was out of line to interrupt you in the middle of your thing. You’re good at the interrogations, and if you say you were getting somewhere—”

  “Apology accepted.”

  She shot me a look, and annoyance leaked out over the Link. That’s right, when she was apologizing, she wanted to apologize.

  I pulled out my heaping pile of tofu enchiladas and chimichangas—the latter with real meat, it looked like—and waited for Cherabino to cut up her plain cheese quesadillas. I might have eaten several heaping forkfuls while I waited.

  “I have to work a double for Electronics Crimes tonight,” she said, like an excuse. “I need the calories. And if I was ordering anyway . . .”

  “You said you weren’t helping them out anymore,” I said, taking the bait. I’d talk about air; hell, I’d talk about shoes if it would make her more comfortable.

  She finished chewing with a determined look. Then: “Manuel quit. It’s just for a month or so while they hire somebody to replace him.”

  I nodded companionably, like I actually believed her. “And your close rate’s still higher than most of Homicide, am I right? Just how many hours did you work last week, anyway?”

  She swallowed. “None of your business.”

  Ah, eighty-plus, then. Some things didn’t change. I took another bite of the chimichanga, deciding it was a really, really well-seasoned faux beef. Delicious, though, with just enough jalapeno to be interesting. Yum.