Sharp

by Alex Hughes

  By the time I caught up to Cherabino, we were on Church Street, near the public transport hub—and Cherabino was standing, panting, in the middle of the street.

  Cars honked at her, and she flashed them a badge and a finger and didn’t move. One of the other cops, with a sigh, started directing traffic by the library.

  Cherabino was standing, frustrated. She was looking at the entrance to the underground tram, and beyond it, the bus station and taxi circle. All areas without so much as a single camera after the latest Privacy Accords ruling. All very well and good to say the public deserved not to be recorded, but it made a cop’s life living hell.

  “You got a good look, right?”

  “No.” She seriously considered punching me out of sheer frustration. “How could you take him to the smoking porch? That’s like a kill box at the back there, and he was connected to our murder. Our murder with connections to Them.” To the Darkness, she meant, the massive organized crime group to which Fiske was supposed to be connected.

  “He needed to smoke.” You couldn’t smoke at the front of the building or in the parking lot.

  “Well, you may have cost us this investigation.” She sighed and walked away, knees aching, back in the general direction of the department.

  A car honked at me and I got back on the sidewalk, feeling failure crushing down on me like a falling piano.

  Bellury opened his car door. “Get in. We’re going to drive until you can tell me what you’re going to do next.”

  “Okay,” I said numbly.

  * * *

  We drove, around and around, until Bellury finally headed up Clairmont.

  I sighed and sat back in the passenger’s seat, the same passenger seat I’d been in on the way to the hijacked truck, the same seat that had taken me to the meeting with Swartz’s medic.

  I was certain now the hijacking case was connected to Emily’s murder. Otherwise, why kill Hamilton? Why bother, unless those blueprints, that stolen Tech, and Sibley’s order to kill Emily were inextricably connected? Tamika was clearly up to her ears in it all, and as much as it pained me, I couldn’t be thinking about her anymore as anything but a suspect. I owed her, yes. But I owed Emily too. And I owed my job, my present life, and Cherabino far more. I had this nagging feeling that all the pieces were on the board now—that if I could just see them clearly, I’d be able to solve this case.

  So I turned things over and over in my head, looking at everything from as many angles as I could, waiting for the puzzle pieces on the table to start fitting together.

  We passed a nice-looking senior center, an older gentleman in a small, staid floater-assist chair waiting to cross at the light, and I was still thinking.

  “If you had a large-scale criminal organization, what would you do with blueprints for Tech and Tech parts?” I asked Bellury. “Not just sell them, right? By the way, where are we going?”

  “My house. If you need to think long enough, I want some of the leftover lasagna from last night,” Bellury said evenly. “And it depends on how much money the final product will get me versus how much use I have for it myself. Are we talking about Fiske here?”

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about him, actually. There’s apparently a complicated, delicate investigation in the works.”

  He shrugged. “Paulsen asks me for input. I’m already in the loop.”

  I turned all the way around in the seat to look at him, seat belt pulling at my shoulder. “What?”

  “I worked with the special organized crime force for ten years,” Bellury said, still in that flat, no-big-deal tone. “Rachel said we were getting too old for her to deal with the stress. So I found something less dangerous. Paulsen will still call me into meetings sometimes for background.”

  I stared at him.

  He glanced over. “If you don’t close your mouth, the flies will fly in. Now, Fiske? I guess we’re talking about the hijackings, since you’re involved in that case too. First thing you’d need, whatever you did, was someplace to put the stuff together. Atlanta—at least the east side—is too hot right now. Somebody would eventually catch on.”

  “Oh,” I said eloquently.

  “But like I said, mostly that’s above my pay grade these days. And criminals change tactics over time. That’s life.”

  “I see.”

  But my mind was going over and over this idea of needing a place, somewhere to take the Tech. Not too close—Bellury was right, that would be too risky for somebody as smart as Fiske was rumored to be—and not too far, because road transportation would be an issue with the increased police presence there.

  Well, if you couldn’t take it by road—Guild courier routes. I’d take it by Guild courier, obviously, but if you couldn’t . . . well, there was always the airport. Emily’s father apparently had a stake in the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport. Maybe you could . . .

  Airport. Emily’s daughter had smelled kerosene on her. Kerosene, according to Michael’s handout, was also used as jet fuel. Jet fuel, airport, and then Emily ends up dead. Right after Tamika and Sibley visited her, and the blueprints changed hands.

  Everything fell together like a perfect puzzle. It all made sense.

  “You’re brooding,” Bellury said.

  “No, I’m thinking. Can I get you to take me on a quick side trip? I need to test a theory.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The airport was a monumentally huge open space, ground covered in wide strips of concrete and grass, and the air smelled crisp, like fall, with the earthy scent of cut grass and dirt thrown in for good measure . . . with the faintest, lightest smell of kerosene wafting in the breeze. The sun beat down on my head as across the length of the field, two boxy hangars, wider than they were tall, anchored the airport. They looked small until I realized that the low shape to the right of them was another building, this one half as tall, with people like ants scurrying at its base.

  I folded myself back in the car and put on the seat belt. Bellury, with the windows cracked to enjoy the rare sunny day, drove closer on the ground-level little airport road until he reached an open area beside one of the hangars where other cars were parked. He pulled in and turned off the engine, then looked at me.

  “I want to look around,” I said in answer to his unspoken question.

  He nodded without comment. He was the only one, maybe, the only one in the department not to care how much I read his mind.

  He pulled his gun holster from the glove department and strapped it on. There were times Bellury sidelined me with how deep the cop instincts really went. A gun in your glove compartment? And he buckled the fastenings with the unconscious ease of a man who’d done this for years, over and over, until it became another habit, like breathing. Bellury might be old, might be perfectly happy to settle into light duty, but he was still a cop. Sometimes that caught me by surprise.

  I closed the car door behind me, and the smell of fuel and oil, sun and grass, metal parts and sun-cooked metal siding was overwhelming. It had been raining for weeks, and this much sunlight was nice, like a strong cheerful slap on the back from the fusion-powered star above us.

  I needed to find confirmation here—a clue or two that would crack the case wide open—and get back to either Morris or Paulsen, or both, to finish up the job. If I was right—and I could prove it—we would close two cases. And maybe, just maybe, I would have earned my spot in the department for good.

  I walked forward, around the circumference of the huge hangar in front of us. Corrugated metal sheeting made up its sides, relatively new sheeting by the looks of things, and the white paint bent the light oddly, like small oases in the afternoon air. Some kind of supermaterial, maybe. The side soared up maybe three stories above us, straight up, a boxy and hard-cornered shape.

  The front of the hangar was a huge, rolling door—probably on hydraulics, by the look of its heaviness—cu
rrently closed. A smaller door to the right side was open.

  I told Bellury to follow me with a gesture and went through the door, on high alert but not really expecting anything. The telepathy was much more reliable lately, and it was early enough in the day that I was sure I could handle any bad guys long enough for Bellury to bring out the gun.

  The inside of the hangar was about what you’d expect; a few high windows cast long dust-filled lines of sunlight down onto the planes. Specifically, four small aerobatic planes in bright colors nearer the door, and farther back, a mammoth thick-necked jet with wide bulges along the side for anti-grav and extra room for cargo—the wingspan took up practically the whole of the hangar. It had a plain gray paint job, which was odd. Even the serial number on the tail was small.

  “Hello?” a rough man’s voice called out. A high scraping sound came suddenly, like a metal piece scraping hard against concrete. Then a few seconds later, a guy in mechanics’ coveralls came out, rubbing his hands with a rag.

  “Can I help you?” he asked me.

  I paused. Oh, crap. I didn’t have either a cover story or a badge. My mind raced . . .

  Bellury stepped forward. “The kid here is thinking about buying an airplane and wants to know what the storage fees are in your little operation. How much access will he have to the plane on, say, holidays and weekends?”

  The mechanic named a number for hangar rental, which I had no idea whether it was too high or not. Then he added that all rental folks had their own keys and had to pass a background check. He gave me a sideways look, suspicion in every line of his body.

  I straightened a bit, staying absolutely relaxed. If there was one thing you learned by working for the Guild, you could never tell who—or what organization—really had money. The most seemingly simple people in the world had major purse strings. On the other hand, you could tell who didn’t have money: the ones who blustered and tried to impress everyone in sight. People with money—real money—didn’t really care what you thought of them, if you were the help. They also didn’t particularly care about price tags as long as they got what they wanted.

  So, with body language absolutely relaxed, I asked, “You available to do annual flight checks? Or am I going to have to pull the thing out every year and have it shipped to another shop?”

  He blinked, and I could see that he bought it. A short conversation later, I’d managed to talk him into letting us wander around, “see the facilities on a spot check. I’ve found the average day is much better represented if I don’t give warning, I’m sure you understand.”

  The mechanic shrugged. “We do have cameras on the facility. We have permits for them all, and signs posted, but it bothers some people.”

  Bellury got tense next to me.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. Odd that they had cameras. Private businesses didn’t usually have them, not the least of which because it was hard—and expensive—to get around the privacy laws. It also could cost them significant business, as most normals didn’t want to be recorded anymore, not since the data piracy of the Tech Wars had made it all too easy to find out everything about everyone. The only places you saw cameras anymore were multimillion-ROC jewelry stores, larger banks, courthouses, and the interview rooms at the station. Pretty much anything else was hamstrung by the cost, the laws, or the prevailing public opinion.

  The mechanic nodded. “Keep out of the back building. That’s the owner’s office, among other things, and he gets real testy if you interrupt him. He certainly won’t approve your rental if you bother him.”

  “Understood.”

  * * *

  After a cursory look around the rest of the airport, we approached the shorter building toward the back, where a small white van was parked.

  I tried the door—which was open—and stepped through.

  A small air-conditioned office had a hip-high pile of boxes next to the large desk, boxes with labels on the side saying ELECTRONICS COMPONENTS. The permits and bills of sale were attached to each box in brightly colored papers and seals; legitimate, so far as it looked.

  And on the other side of the room, coming through a door there, was a middling-height bald man with a military bearing, carrying a small cube-shaped machine covered in wires, with a small blinking light on top.

  “You must be Adam,” the man said, in a lower-class London accent. “You see, this is why I thought we should cut ties with the airport after the termination decision. All too easy to trace our involvement backwards. But I was overruled. Fortunately, you two look like you’re alone.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, suddenly worried. “What’s that thing in your hand?” With the missing Tech, and blueprints, and sketches, unidentified machines seemed ominous. And his words . . .

  “That’s not important,” he said calmly. He seemed to be staring at Bellury intently, and something felt odd. “You can do as I say. Pick up two boxes, exit the building, and climb into my white van parked on the curb.”

  “Okay.” Bellury picked up the boxes.

  What the . . . ?

  “Hold on.” I dropped shallowly into Mindspace to see what I was up against.

  I saw a strange bent-light effect around the box, and the traces of waves it had just let out, odd waves. And behind it—the sharp mind whom I’d seen before at the crime scenes. The strangler. Sibley. The bottom fell out of my world. I had just been crazy, monumentally stupid. He was right—we were alone.

  I reached out with my mind to disable him—but before I could, he pushed a button and the thing he held lit up with a second light. A strange compulsion hit me, enough to break my concentration. I stared at Sibley. He was fascinating in that moment, like a cobra with its hood spread, his every movement mesmerizing. That square-jawed face, the bald head, the broken nose, the little burn scar near his ear—fascinating.

  “And you, my dear Adam. You want desperately to follow my instructions.”

  “That’s right,” I heard myself say, unable to take my eyes away. In the back of my mind, I tried to pull away, to figure something . . . this wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out why. I had to follow his instructions.

  “You want to follow your friend down to the van, but don’t forget an armful of the boxes yourself. We’re going to load the van. But don’t get too far away from me, now.”

  “That would be bad,” I said as I did what he asked. It was important I stayed close to him.

  My training was starting to kick in. I slowly parsed out this weird feeling, this . . . force coming at me through Mindspace. Like clouds hitting my brain obliquely, like another dimension, something was changing the shape of my mind . . . or more accurately, getting me to change it. But knowledge wasn’t mastery; I could no more stop walking in the direction he wanted, I could no more fight this mesmerizing fascination than I could fly.

  Bellury, ahead of me, slowed down, to look around, and Sibley moved faster to stand in front of him as we made the transition back outside.

  “What . . . ?” Bellury mumbled, and shifted the boxes in his hand so he could reach for his gun.

  “Give me the gun,” Sibley said firmly, and then accepted it. “Open the door and set the boxes in. It’s unlocked.” Then to me: “You too. Go quickly and carefully and don’t fight me.”

  “You got it,” I said, despite myself.

  * * *

  After loading was done, we piled onto the long bench seat in the center of the van, and Sibley put the blinking machine on the floorboards while he put handcuffs on us. All the time that mesmerizing force stayed steady in my brain, and my eyes settled on the grapefruit-sized cube like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. When Sibley spoke, I obeyed. Was this why none of the victims had struggled? Even Emily . . . had the shape of her mind protected her some?

  What would it have been like to sit there while Sibley strangled you to death, unable to lif
t a finger in your own defense? Was I about to find out?

  The seeds of true fear began to grow inside me.

  We waited for a long moment; then Sibley turned all the way around to look at us. “Bellury, forget the last few minutes, as much as you can. And fall asleep.”

  Bellury slumped over.

  “What are you doing? What are you . . .” I trailed off.

  Sibley’s attention turned to me, that sharp, calm attention like a small cruel child staring at a bug. “Quiet now.”

  I fell silent despite myself. My heart fluttered in my chest like a bird trapped in a tiny cage, frantic, frantic to get out. I tried to talk, but I couldn’t. . . .

  “Keep your thoughts to yourself. Calm down now.”

  And despite every bone in my body, despite all my panicked effort, I did. My mind settled into smaller, calmer analytical circles, but my heart . . . my heart kept that frantic movement in my chest.

  Sibley turned around, humming to himself, and took the car out of park. Outside, like tears, the sky began to rain.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, we were turning into an old office park in a wooded area off North Druid Hills Road. About the time I’d recover my will enough to struggle with the handcuffs—maybe once every three or four minutes—Sibley would find me through the rearview mirror and order me back down, back to silence and calm. It should have been terrifying, frustrating, horrifying. But I couldn’t feel anything or think anything without an artificial, disturbing calm lying on top of it like a heavy pillow cutting off my air.

  Bellury was still sleeping to my right; Sibley had sent him back as soon as he began to stir. I was behind Sibley, on the left of the bench seat, watching the cube’s lights turn on and off.

  The car pulled into a parking lot and moved to a front door of an office building. A woman stood at the door, an overweight woman huddled under an umbrella that shielded her face.