Fluid

by Alex C. Hughes

  It took an actual effort not to pursue the thought instead of what she’d said out loud. But I’d play by the rules for now. Death threats were worth asking about regardless. “A death threat? From who?”

  “I don’t know.” I got a tinge of frustration, then, instead of the grief I was expecting.

  “Are you and your husband having problems?” I asked, gently. She was hiding something.

  I felt her make the decision to lie, and I held out a hand.

  “Please don’t lie to me, Patricia,” I said, and played my trump card. “I’m a Level Eight Guild-trained telepath, and I’m not here for anything but the truth.”

  She blinked and sat back, and for the first time I felt a wave of fear. I could feel the thoughts swirling around her head like a mobile on cartoonishly high speeds. “I . . .” she started, then backed up to choose her words carefully. Finally she met my eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Isaiah and I were having problems, yes. He yelled at me and he worked all the time, and he didn’t respect my job. He said I didn’t have to work. He didn’t get it—he didn’t understand why I wanted to work at the hospital. He didn’t understand me at all. We fought, a lot. And he drank. He drank way too much. I can’t say that I’m sad that he’s gone.”

  “Did you think about counseling?” I asked, generally a safe question that would give me a lot more information if she explained the decision one way or the other.

  “No,” she said, then “No” again, more firmly. I felt tinges of regret and determination, both related to the no.

  Here we went. “You’re having an affair,” I guessed.

  She nodded, slowly, warily.

  “Did Isaiah know?” I asked her.

  “He did,” she said. “He didn’t care.” The last was said with an almost palpable contempt.

  “Oh.” I waited a few beats more, and then asked, carefully, “How were you planning to leave him?”

  “I wasn’t. His family had money. I had money married to him. There wasn’t any point.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  I could have pushed. In other circumstances, I would have pushed. But if her husband really had known—and it seemed like she was telling the truth—that invalidated most of her motive and her lover’s, whoever that was. Plus she had that alibi. Even if she had the motive somehow, perhaps with the money, she hadn’t had the opportunity, or much of one.

  I pulled out the pad of paper at the bottom of the stack of files and gave it to her along with a pen. “Write down the names and numbers of the nurses who were there at the hospital the night in question. We’ll be following up with them soon.”

  “I didn’t go into this to find another lover,” she told me. “It’s not like that.”

  Despite her apparent honestly, there was just something about her that felt off to me. Well beyond the cheating. I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for her, despite her husband being just killed, and I usually had a lot of sympathy for families. I sighed. “Just write the information down, please.”

  A flash of anger went out into the room then. “You don’t believe me,” she accused.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” I said, and made a mental note to do a background check on her at some point. I hadn’t gotten a good read on her in the interview, with her playing her cards very close to her chest, and that bothered me.

  Something was niggling at me from the interview with the wife, some detail I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was hungry, but I wanted to talk to Branen about what Freeman had said before I ate. I hated the idea that they were pushing us to drop this case, and I just wasn’t willing to do it. Branen would have to get an earful first.

  The victim was an alcoholic, okay. And he was having trouble with his wife, and screamed at her. But he still mattered, didn’t he? Those kids he’d saved years ago mattered. Even taking down corrupt cops mattered, if what Freeman was saying was right. How else was the department to keep the trust of the community, to get justice, except by staying on the straight and narrow? They should be giving the man a medal, not sweeping his life under the rug and saying alcoholic like it dismissed him, even if he’d done some really bad things. He still deserved justice. Some things mattered even if he was an alcoholic. They had to.

  I waited in the line outside Branen’s office on the third floor. Actually, the line looked like it was for his assistant’s desk, in front of the closed office door.

  I waited while a detective got told to come back later and the pool secretary from downstairs chatted with the assistant for about ten minutes about some scheduling matter. Only a few cops walked by, since we were on the top floor for administrators and brass, but all that did gave me extra room.

  Then it was my turn. I was frustrated, but I was holding it in.

  Branan’s assistant, Kalb, was in his early thirties at most, thin with a whipcord strength, and the kind of dark hair and sharp features that I associated with a Middle Eastern heritage. He seemed easily distracted, looking up every time someone went by, and his clothes seemed a little too nice for the job and the department salaries. Maybe he just liked looking nice, I told myself. Just because I interviewed a lot of suspects didn’t mean everyone was one.

  “I’m here to talk to Branen about an ongoing case he assigned me to,” I said. “I had a couple questions.”

  Kalb shook his head. “Sorry, he’s dealing with a high-level brass issue right now. Isn’t to be disturbed until at least tomorrow. I can take a message? Or give suggestions?”

  I didn’t want to wait, but, on the other hand, Branen being busy might keep me on the case longer by default. “I just had a question about the last case he’d assigned me to. The detective I’m working for had some questions about it and politics. Seems to think we should half-ass it.”

  Kalb smiled what seemed like a forced expression, par for the job. “Branen doesn’t assign people to things without thinking about it, especially when there’s politics involved. If he gave you the assignment, he had a good reason, and unless he changes his mind and tells you about it, it’s probably safe to continue in the direction you’ve been going. Doing a good job is always the right answer.”

  That was a very common sense reply, and mollified me. Maybe Branen did want the case solved.

  Kalb asked, “Listen, aren’t you the telepath who’s working for the department? Is it true you can read every stray thought I have?”

  I blinked. His feeling was . . . interested. Almost too interested, like he was one of the department gossips. But I also didn’t quite mesh with his mind, so I didn’t get more than a general impression and wouldn’t, likely, without a lot of effort that I didn’t feel like expending. “Most people are nervous around telepaths,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll read your secrets?”

  He laughed, but it was a nervous sound, with a nervousness that washed over him too. But that quickly changed back to gossipy interest. “So that’s a yes? I bet you’ve heard a lot of things!”

  “Nothing that I’m willing to talk about,” I said, uncomfortable. “Tell Branen that I stopped by, okay?”

  Reluctantly, he went back to professionalism. “Sure. I’ll make a note of your visit now. Anything special you wanted to add?”

  “No, just tell him I checked in.”

  “Will do.”

  I wandered across the second floor detective pool, ignoring the long gauntlet of hostile cops. These men and women hadn’t trusted me to start with, since I was a telepath. Now they disliked me even more for being associated with someone who’d been fired on brutality charges. I walked through the cubicle maze while shielding against the waves of hostility until my head nearly pounded with the effort. I pushed through the hallway between the cubicles, eyes narrowed, until finally the space between the cubicles opened up some and I was on safer ground.

  Michael had Cherabino’s old cubicle. Andrew, Cherabino’s old cubicle neighbor and forensic accountant, waved to me as I passed. I stopped, said hello, and took so
me of the Jamaican Blue coffee he offered me. As usual, it tasted amazing and made the area smell even better.

  Michael was seated in the middle of Cherabino’s old cubicle, and I stopped to stare, forgetting even to sip the coffee. The place was perfectly neat, nothing on the floor, nothing piled on the sides of the space, only a single vertical file folder holder on the desk next to him and a three-ring binder in front of him he was busy updating with new pages as he wrote a report in block caps on a gray-and-white form.

  I cleared my throat, and he turned around. “Adam,” he said, after a moment. “What can I do for you?” he asked, but his voice was more cautious than cheerful.

  I had thought about catching up, about seeing how he and his wife were doing, asking about his existing cases, being friendly. We’d worked together a while. But, judging from his demeanor, the friendly portion—however long it had been there at all—was over.

  I finally settled for asking, “How do I look up old newspaper articles? Can I do that in the department?”

  Michael frowned, apparently not having expected that question. “What paper?”

  “Atlanta Journal,” I said.

  “Depends. If they’re connected to a case, they’ll have them in Records, on the first basement level. But the library will have them all, on microfiche and cards, already indexed. If you need more than one and you want something specific, that would probably be faster.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t thought of that. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He waited for a long, awkward moment, and when I didn’t say anything else, turned back around to work on more paperwork.

  I tried not to take it personally. Tried very, very hard.

  Things had obviously changed, and changed a lot, and it wasn’t strictly my fault. But I had to deal with the aftermath anyway, and it really did feel damn personal.

  The Decatur Library was a tall stone building from before the Tech Wars, old and faded, boxy and yet somehow regal, with a large concrete parking deck on the back like the tail of some preening bird. A small fountain stood out front, cluttered with leaves despite the mid-winter cold, but still burbling determinedly. I climbed up the front walk and opened the central door.

  A long counter greeted me, with a cranky woman behind it whose mind radiated literal waves of irritation.

  I told her what I wanted, and she pointed me in the direction of the back. There sat the periodical card catalog and the huge old humming microfiche machine, its fluorescent light putting out a low-level hum when I turned it on. This was an inconvenient way to do my homework on the case, but not the worst I’d experienced; I could do it. Since the end of the Tech Wars, computers were largely illegal, and terrifying; a madman had used them to destroy the world—along with computer implants in peoples’ heads, smart houses, smart cars—and the world remembered. Bioengineering was fine, good even; medicine had advanced to a high level and we were all happy. But computers? Well, there were a few at the department, under heavy lock and key, but those who used them did so with distrust and three different layers of background checks. Sneaking in to use those computers without Cherabino was asking for trouble—no matter how much faster I could have gotten the information. So the cards and the microfiche would serve my purpose here.

  Michael had been right; all I had to do was flip through heavy cards fluttering like leaves beneath my hands. Every article Jeffries had ever written for the Journal was there, referenced by name and date. The word corruption appeared in title after title. I looked up as another researcher, probably a student by the age, moved past me to find her own cards.

  She was one of the few people I’d seen so far; the library was mostly deserted today. I noted the articles I wanted and went to find the microfiche for the machine I’d warmed up. The system was clunkier than the Guild’s, more spread out, with larger typed cards and more content everywhere, but I’d been a professor once and I could handle a little research, even if I had to do it all by hand.

  I set everything up, the low-level humming of the light bothersome but not debilitating; I’d trained with far worse as a telepath and still kept my cool, though that had been a long, long time ago, long before I’d fallen off the wagon and gotten thrown out of the Guild. The light was still irritating, but for now I could manage.

  I started reading. I’d pulled the older articles first, the ones from twelve years ago—had it really been that long? Three hundred kids he’d gotten out of the sweatshops. Follow-ups with the kids in foster care two years later. Exposing shady political deals. Then nothing, or piddly neighborhood stuff, for years. Then a year ago, he made a comeback. Police corruption!, the first article proclaimed. Then it started giving specifics on a patrol officer who’d been caught taking bribes and, in a Journal-exclusive story, assaulting a street-level prostitute when she wouldn’t give up information about one of her clients. The woman ended up in the hospital, her cheek and her livelihood broken, and there had been no less than two witnesses who came forward pointing at the officer—Will Washington, Sr.—as the unprovoked attacker.

  A cynical part of me wondered about those witnesses. One had surfaced against Cherabino, after all, and she’d been set up. But somebody, somewhere had to be telling the truth, right? If he’d really hit the prostitute to make her talk, he deserved to be called up for it. And surely a journalist would know the difference.

  It got worse. Three police officers were found selling drugs stolen from police lockup. A politician had been caught on a slightly-illegal public recording saying that he’d pressured a judge to drop the charges against the cops in question. And four more instances of police accepting bribes. Jeffries had found them all, called them all out.

  I noticed then that all of the officers implicated worked for the department I worked for part-time. All of them. And more than half worked specifically for Lieutenant Branen, in the Robbery part of his department.

  A chill went down my spine.

  This is why they wanted to cover it up, wasn’t it? They thought that somebody at the department had killed Jeffries. Or, just because Jeffries had made himself an enemy, when he’d gotten himself murdered they used the word “alcoholic” and looked the other way. Doing nothing.

  That couldn’t happen.

  I found Freeman behind the department, on the porch where I usually went to smoke. It was quiet back there, for all it was cold with an icy wind.

  A man was there with him, in plainclothes, his shoulders hunched forward, a man I was betting was a cop by the body language and level of comfort here at the station. He and Freeman both looked up as the door closed behind me with a bang. They went completely silent, which made me suspicious.

  “Am I interrupting?” I asked, queasy. Wondering if Freeman was involved in any of what Jeffries reported.

  “Why don’t you come over here, Ward,” Freeman said. “I’d appreciate your insight.” The last, I thought, based on his mental mood, meant that I was supposed to observe telepathically and figure out if the guy was lying.

  I walked over, keeping my shoulders low, my body language unprepossessing.

  “This is Detective Washington,” Freeman said. “He’s on administrative leave until Tuesday because of his involvement in an incident with a prostitute and a bribery charge.”

  “Which hasn’t been proven,” Washington said, quickly.

  I wondered what Freeman was doing talking to a guy like this.. But mostly I was pissed at Washington, if he really was one of the guys who’d been caught in corruption. That stuff was despicable.

  “Which hasn’t been proven,” Freeman agreed. “Internal Affairs has the hearing on Tuesday, and Washington came in to talk to the union lawyer. He’s agreed to talk to me, no paperwork, nothing on the record, to help me understand his relationship with Jeffries.”

  “Damn reporter,” Washington said, almost spitting it, and followed it up with a string of curses under his breath.

  Ah. Washington had been connected to the Jeffries case, past just the articl
e. Now I knew why I was here. “Did you—”

  Freeman cut me off with a shake of the head, indicating with a hand I was to stand next to him.

  I went, brow wrinkling, angry, but willing to play along.

  “I’m not asking you to talk about what happened with Ms. Cane,” Freeman said, in an even voice. “Like I said, I’m looking into the death of the reporter. Some have suggested . . .” Freeman shrugged, as if to dismiss the suggestions, “that you have motive to have killed him, since his accusations are what started your problems in the department.” Ah, there it was.

  “You mean when I was suspended?” Washington spat out. He was thinking he’d probably lose his job, and he needed this job. And then a lot of invective against both the prostitute and Jeffries. He was sounding more like a suspect all the time.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” Freeman said evenly. “He had wronged you, and it’s not a secret that you can take it personally when people do that. Strictly off the record, did you take it personally this time?”

  “You better believe I took it personal,” Washington said. “But I didn’t kill the guy. Maybe I had motive—I mean, sure, I had reason to hate him—but I didn’t kill him, no matter how much I wanted to.” I got a picture of him yelling at the reporter, and the general feeling of anger, truthfulness, and regret at missing his chance to hurt the man.

  Freeman glanced at me. Taking his cue, I nodded.

  Then I looked at Washington. “Did you meet Jeffries face to face?”

  “Well, yeah,” the man said. “I went over to his apartment that day and told him if he didn’t stay out of the thing with Internal Affairs I’d kill him. He’d done enough damage already, and he’d been talking about sending over his notes to be read into evidence. I wanted to beat him the hell up, but my lawyer said that sort of thing would get me fired for sure, just one bruise he said, so I spat on the floor next to him and I left.”