Sharp: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  “Yes, I suppose. I would have noticed if they’d been blown out.”

  Oh, crap, let it not be . . . “Is there any reason to suspect some kind of extreme pressure, or trauma, that would do this?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any explanation for this at all?”

  “Listen, if you’ve got something to share with the class, share it,” Cherabino said. “Neither she nor I have all day here.”

  “It’s a telepath,” I said, and a strange sense of déjà vu overtook me. “It’s a way you can kill someone as a telepath, and there’s no way in hell I can tell you any more than that.” Hell, the watcher might turn me into mush himself if I said anything more than that. Assuming that was one of his skills. If not, he could always call in a favor.

  “Why in hell would the Guild want to kill this woman?” Detective Strangely asked grumpily. Of course she assumed telepath meant Guild. Mostly it did.

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.” But I did know how she died—how she was killed, her brain the focus of so much energy directed at a particular spot through Mindspace . . . “This took training. Training and raw power.”

  All the threads of my life seemed to be focused on one horrible moment. “Could we have another Guild serial killer?” I asked.

  “Sibley?” Cherabino frowned. “I’ve seen your federal files. There’s no affiliation with the Guild, anywhere, not here, not in England.”

  “The Guild’s not the only source of telepathic training. Not like they’d have you believe.”

  When I would say nothing further, Strangely swapped information with Cherabino and threatened to show up at the department if she didn’t share information on her ongoing case.

  “What the hell was that?” Cherabino asked me in the car.

  “I have to call Kara.”

  * * *

  Kara answered the phone on the first ring. “I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  “It’s me.”

  She took a breath I could hear over the phone. “I only have a minute. Is Swartz okay? Did the deal work?”

  “It looks like it. Thus far his prognosis looks really good.”

  “I’m so glad!”

  “Me too. Listen, I’m getting a strange death up in Chamblee that looks like a telepath execution. Do you have any—”

  “Damn it.”

  “What? I didn’t—”

  Kara made a frustrated sound. “We have a Minder missing, somebody who had a business contact out in Chamblee. This one could be a murder in our jurisdiction. I’ll look into it as soon as I get back from the courier office.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” I said. The Minder most likely could do that kill, but that was Guild jurisdiction for certain and nothing I needed to worry about for at least a few days. It occurred to me: “Why the courier office?”

  “Oh. Tamika called in sick today and they needed advice on who else to pull in. It’s the busy season and that’s my old department.”

  “Is there any way the two are related?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

  “If you say so,” I said. Kara would know better than I would anyway. “I just thought I’d report it.”

  “I appreciate that. I’ll send it through channels—somebody may come out and talk to you in a week or two, if that’s okay.”

  “As long as it’s not Stone, that’s fine.”

  “You guys having trouble?”

  I paused. “It’s more that I just don’t like him.”

  * * *

  Stone showed up at the station, at quitting time. I was already half out the door; I kept going.

  “We’ll talk about this away from the station. You’re making me look bad. Well, worse than I have to.” I hadn’t felt him in my head all day and I was getting twitchy. I hustled down the street two blocks, to where the trees grew in deeper and the government parking lot across the street, at this time of day, belched cars in a steady stream.

  Then I turned around. “Why are you here?”

  “You’re a mess of emotion right now,” Stone observed.

  “So sue me.”

  “I can come back.”

  I ignored that. “Why are you here?”

  “The Guild has decided what they want in return for your favor.”

  My hands felt loose, itchy, like I needed a cigarette and I needed one now. “And what is that?”

  He shifted, and I got a vague sense of discomfort from him. “You’re in a position to know things. You’re connected to one of the best homicide detectives in metro Atlanta—and more importantly, the one who knows the most other people of the type. You interview hundreds of suspects a year. Your boss has one layer of administration between her and the DeKalb County—and to some degree Decatur City—politicians. You’re in a position to know things. We’d simply like you to share some of those things with us.”

  We’d been over this, but I had a debt now. “What kinds of things? Anything we’re cleared to talk to the press about I’d be happy to send to you first, but I’d have to clear it with Paulsen.”

  “This is not an official relationship. Anything cleared for the press is probably not something we’d be interested in. My superiors simply . . . well, they want inside information into what the normals know and how it’s going to affect the Guild’s interests.”

  So they wanted me to spy for them. To use Cherabino’s barely-there trust as the stepping-stone for their stupid power plays. “And how am I supposed to know what the Guild’s interests are?” I asked, to buy time.

  He glanced down the busy street, body language almost too casual. “You’re not a stupid man. I think you can figure out the details.”

  “Why don’t you spell it out for me?”

  I got a strong sense of discomfort from him, which was odd. Either he was getting lazy or I was healing a lot faster than expected.

  “Power. The Guild wants power over its own people and its own destiny. It wants to develop stronger Abilities, stronger ties within its community, and it wants to protect all of those things from the degradations of normals, no matter how well meaning. If it affects Guild power, Guild profit, or lets the normals get leverage against the Guild in any way, it’s not in the Guild’s best interests.”

  “I’m not Guild anymore.”

  “I know,” he said, and suddenly the implacable Face of the Guild had given way to the quiet, competent, powerful cop vibe I’d gotten from him a few days ago. “And I know you want to stay neutral and keep your own counsel. I don’t think they’re asking you to get involved. There were things you could have done much worse with the Bradley case. If you wanted to torch the Guild and all it stood for, you would have done it then. You were raised at the Guild. You must have some vague remnant of patriotism for your people.”

  “It’s not patriotism if it’s not a nation.”

  “In a lot of ways, the Guild is the only nation that takes up the whole world,” he said, a much more radical—and naive—thought than anything I’d encountered before.

  “If you say so,” I said to cover my ass. “Let me get this straight. You want me to spy on my friends, share confidential police information that may or may not allow bad guys to go free and the Guild to get the jump on the law?”

  “You owe the Guild a debt. A debt you agreed to.”

  “And I still haven’t seen Swartz. I’ve paid what I can afford through your system. It’s a lot of cash.”

  “It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the fees you owe.”

  They had me by the balls. But even so. “I still haven’t seen Swartz. I’m not agreeing to anything until I see Swartz with my own eyes.”

  “It was a bad idea to involve the old man.”

  I put my hands in my pockets; they were shaking. “Yeah? And why is that?”

  “Now they know he’s important to you.” He let the implied threat sit in the air a long, long moment while my mind flashed to the vision of me, alone, without Swartz, without anyone.


  Finally Stone met my eyes and spoke past the threat. “Fairness is something I pride myself on. Fairness and getting to the truth. I’ll wait a little longer, if I have to, but I’ll get to the truth. If you’re planning to take down the Guild—”

  “I’m not,” I said hurriedly.

  “—if you’re planning to choose the normals over the Guild—”

  What did that even mean?

  “—then it’s my job to make sure you’re not a threat anymore. I can and I will use whatever force is at my disposal to do so.”

  And then a chill went through my entire system as this guy, this guy I kind of liked, was the executioner again.

  Which is probably the reason I was so surprised by her voice.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Cherabino said.

  * * *

  Cherabino crossed her arms. “What the hell nerve do you have coming here, three blocks from the police station, trying to work out a drug deal? I ought to string you up—”

  “You must be Detective Cherabino,” Stone said, absolutely unmoved. Cherabino was about three feet from him now, and if he didn’t start taking her more seriously she would have him on the ground with a kung fu move faster than he could blink. What he did then was another matter, but—

  “Cherabino,” I interjected.

  She ignored me. “Who the hell are you?” she asked Stone. “I thought I knew all the perps in the area, but if you’re new you’d better—”

  “Cherabino.”

  “—stay the hell away from my station because—”

  Cherabino! I yelled through the Link.

  She stopped cold and sent me a glare that would melt lead. “Stay the hell out of my head and I’ll deal with you later.”

  What?

  “Edgar Stone.” He gave a nod of greeting. “I’m this man’s new Guild overseer.”

  She sputtered. Finally to me: “Is this true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “Is this true!”

  “He’s Guild. That much is true, and he’s been sent—”

  “Guild. And you didn’t tell me.” She pulled back and hit me—hard. With her full weight behind her. Pain ex-

  ploded on my jaw like fireworks, and the world tilted as I fell.

  The sidewalk hit me with a thud I could feel in my bones, and Cherabino fell over too, cursing up a storm at the “damn Link, damn Link, damn Link, I’m getting the hell up!”

  Then her shapely rear stalked away from me, wobbly but far too quick.

  She’d thought he was a drug dealer, my mind reported numbly. She’d thought I was buying, on her territory, right in the middle of everything where anyone could see me.

  But worse, she’d assumed I was working behind her back, I was working for the Guild. And that—that—was a deeper betrayal, to her. She’d believed me earlier, when I’d told her what I’d told Paulsen. She believed me that I wasn’t dealing with the Guild more than I had to. But to see me here, with apparently friendly body language, outside the station . . . it was a betrayal, and her distrust had crystallized.

  “Does she do that often?” Stone’s voice asked urbanely.

  “Go away,” I said, jaw grinding against the rough concrete.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me your answer. I can’t. You should know that by now.”

  I picked my pride and my shame up off the ground and peeled myself away from the sidewalk.

  “What’s your answer?”

  The world crashed in on me and I saw my future, what it could be, and the betrayal I’d seen in Cherabino’s eyes. “I can’t do that. I can’t spy on my friends, on the people who’ve actually given me a chance and kept me on the damn wagon. I can’t. Burn me if you want, find something else, come after me hard for financials or forced labor or lockup or whatever the hell you need to do, okay? But leave Swartz out of it. He’s an old man. An old, sick man whose only crime is to try to help people get their worlds back in order.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  I nodded.

  A silence filled the street as the cars kept pouring, pouring out of that parking garage and taking to the skies and the streets in steady streams.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Stone said.

  * * *

  I ran up the battered stone steps at the front of the building, sucking in air hard, and slowed at the top, right at the door. Sweat pooled on the back of my neck as I opened that front door. . . .

  An unmarked police car, Cherabino’s car, screeched away down the street with her at the wheel. It burned rubber around a corner, then squealed as she demanded the anti-grav engage too suddenly—it limped into the air, narrowly missing an airbus, and left like all the demons of hell were following.

  Part of me, the tiny part that leaked through the Link, followed her, me running too, all my hopes disappearing behind her.

  In the front of my head, I felt Stone announce himself. I slammed up every shield I had, tolerated him only for the few seconds it took him to rummage through my mind, and stood, panting, as he pulled away.

  I had no secrets. I had no damn secrets anymore. And Swartz . . . and Swartz . . . how the hell was I going to explain all of this at our next morning coffee meeting? Would we even have another morning coffee meeting?

  I limped into the cold air-conditioned lobby and walked, like a funeral march, to the coffee closet. There, I locked the door and ate four stale donuts until my brain stopped screaming, until the fight-or-flight thing settled down and I could think, a little.

  When I came out, Bellury was standing there waiting for me.

  “What’s this about you talking to a dealer this afternoon?” Bellury wanted to know. He had a boxy leather case in his hand, the same case—well, I knew what that case was. Another damn drug test.

  CHAPTER 21

  By the time I called that night, Selah said Swartz was sleeping. Frustrated, I got Bellury to drive me home.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said as he drove. “Really.”

  “We’ll know for sure when the test comes back tomorrow,” Bellury said. He turned left, down a street into the bad part of town that neighbored my apartments from the east. It was out of our way to go this way, but Bellury had been a semiretired cop for a long time, and he was watching the streets carefully, hoping someone would be stupid enough to commit a crime where he could see it and have to do something about it.

  “Cherabino’s mad at me. I mean, really mad.”

  “She’s been mad before.”

  She had. This time felt different, though.

  “If you’re telling the truth, it will come out. She’ll calm down.”

  “She doesn’t trust me, though.” Bellury didn’t trust me either, but the knowledge of that didn’t cut at me.

  “She’s a cop.”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Is it?” Bellury asked, glancing over at me. “You falling for the detective?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You sure?”

  A note of question lay in my own mind. A real, honest question. Had I fallen for her?

  After a pause of far too long, with Bellury smirking, I had to say something. “I’ve proven myself, over and over. What more does she want from me? I’ve done everything she asks. I’ve worked hard.” Swartz said you couldn’t have a relationship if you couldn’t keep a plant alive. And I’d killed more plants than I could count; long hours did not a good horticulturalist make. But this was Cherabino, beautiful, cranky Cherabino, and more than anything I wanted . . . well, I wanted her.

  I batted the thought away like I’d fight down a craving, but it stuck back up. Bellury had twisted the tiger’s tail, and now the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. That kiss . . . and her. The way she smelled. The way she laughed. The way she cared, all too much, for the victims. For justice.

  She was beautiful, was Cherabino. She was strong, and difficult, and stubborn, and deadly smart.

  “She’s the on
ly one who doesn’t know,” Bellury said quietly.

  I realized with panic—and then with a pang—that maybe he was right. That everybody else saw. That I—when I wasn’t stuffing it in a closet and sitting on it—I saw too. But not her. Not her, and wasn’t that ironic? The only one in the whole department I shared headspace with, the only one I was Linked to, and I’d hidden my feelings so well she didn’t see me.

  “You think I’m going to keep my job?”

  “I don’t know, Adam. I really don’t know.”

  * * *

  Linda Powell, Emily’s sister, came back on Wednesday morning. Cherabino had asked Mrs. Powell to bring in her niece.

  “Children know everything,” she’d said yesterday. I had no reason to disagree; I didn’t have a lot of experience with normal kids, but the trainees at the Guild seemed to get in everyone’s business. The younger, sometimes, the more details they seemed to know. Of course, the youngest children in the Guild were in the fourth grade or so, but supposedly Laney Hamilton was about that age.

  At the moment, Cherabino was sitting in the observation room with a migraine that, despite my best efforts, was leaking behind my eyes. She’d asked the tech if she could turn the lights way, way down, and faced with her misery, he hadn’t been able to say no. She had a high pain tolerance, which her sensei liked, but when she came into work sharing this much pain it wasn’t pleasant for me. At least it distracted me from going over other things, things I couldn’t afford to think about right now.

  I was already in the interview room. I’d tried to book the clean one, but Clark had scooped it up for this rich man’s robbery case and wouldn’t let it go. So here we were. The surroundings were only the second step of hell, much less bad than the worst interview room. And the dirt layer was light; we actually let the cleaners in here occasionally. But it wasn’t a palace either, and the mirror-slash-observation-window behind me was smudged and covered in various types of dirt.

  Bellury escorted the sister in with a big smile and a sandwich he’d purchased on my credit—I was tired of him stealing my lunch. Mrs. Powell held her niece tighter against her side and stared at me disapprovingly.

  I gestured to the two seats I’d set up for them at the end of the table, complete with two cups. Mrs. Powell got a steaming cup of tolerable department coffee, and Laney got our best cup of artificial orange juice. They also spent far too much time getting settled.