Fluid

by Alex C. Hughes

  Freeman was staring at me. I paused. There was a great deal of truth in Washington’s statement, it felt like, but he was lying, at least on the fringes, at least to himself.

  “Really,” Washington said into the silence, now directly at me. “Really, man. You’re here to read the truth, right? You’re a telepath, right? I’m telling you the truth now. I didn’t kill him. I wanted to, but I wasn’t anywhere close to there. I was at home, watching threedee programs. I . . .” he trailed off, shook his head in anger.

  “He is telling the truth,” I told Freeman. Mostly, I added, mind-to-mind. The strict letter of what he’s saying is true. I can’t tell you further than that.

  “What time were you at Jeffries’s apartment?” Freeman asked, his voice unchanging from the neutrality he’d used thus far.

  “I don’t know, maybe four o’clock? It was afternoon, before rush hour. Couldn’t have been later than that. Listen, can I go? I’ve got to meet with the union lawyer today, and he’s not going to wait for me forever.”

  “I have one more question,” I said, thinking back to the autopsy information Freeman had shared earlier. “It’s not a big deal either way, but I need to account for some bruising. Did you put your hand around Jeffries’s throat?” I held up a hand at his protest. “He clearly didn’t die from it, and I’m not judging, but I need to know.”

  Intense rage came from Washington then, rage intense enough I well believed he could kill, given the right moment and opportunity.

  Freeman put his hand on the man’s shoulder. Quietly, he said, “It won’t go anywhere. Like the man said, we need to account for bruising. Yes or no, that’s all we need.”

  The anger cooled a little at Freeman’s words, though Washington still glared at me with resentment.

  “Yes or no,” Freeman prompted again, so quiet you almost couldn’t hear it.

  Washington took a breath, then another. His anger still bubbled up, but more quietly. “I didn’t kill him, I said. I didn’t.”

  “We understand,” Freeman said. “We do.”

  Washington looked down at him. “I didn’t touch him. I threatened him, okay? I threatened him pretty good. But I didn’t touch him. Wherever the bruises came from, it wasn’t me.”

  And that last bit was the honest truth, no hedges, no exceptions, when it came to that particular incident in the afternoon. My gut said it was truth for the wider case, but I didn’t know that, not really.

  “Of course,” Freeman told him, without changing his expression at all. “Thank you for helping me with my case. I wish you luck with the lawyer.”

  “Yeah. Don’t bring any of this up with IA, okay? I’ve got it bad enough without getting me involved in Jeffries. Who I didn’t kill.”

  “If your story checks out, I don’t see a reason to mention it,” Freeman told him.

  Washington looked at me, significantly.

  “I’m a telepath,” I said after a second. “I can keep a secret.” It didn’t mean I would keep his secret, not if I was wrong and he’d killed somebody, but he didn’t see that. They never did.

  “Okay,” he said, and left.

  Freeman waited for a long moment, for the door to close behind Washington and him to walk far enough away. I shivered, settling a little deeper into my coat.

  I was amazed. I knew that I wouldn’t have gotten a tenth of the information from that guy—especially once he knew I was a telepath—that Freeman had gotten freely. Cherabino wouldn’t have done much better than me. And calming him down to get an honest answer at the end—Freeman was good. Very good. And he was obviously investigating this case again, far beyond what he had to do.

  “I thought you were going to drop this case,” I said to him, finally. “I mean, didn’t you say the department wanted you to drop this case?”

  Freeman shifted his weight, looked out into the brown-grass courtyard. “Yeah, well. He is a victim, and you’re right about the other reporters. Maybe it’s worth a look. I’d rather finish what I started anyway.”

  “Even with the brass wanting you to drop it?” Maybe I’d misunderstood what was going on here.

  That made him turn around to look me directly in the eye. “Nobody’s given me an order yet. I’ve got options, I can use them. Where have you been, the last few hours?”

  I took a breath. “Decatur Library, looking up newspaper articles. I have a list of people that Jeffries’s articles hurt, at least the recent ones. Washington’s on the list. So is a politician who was out of the country during the murder.”

  Freeman nodded, slowly, his scar pulling again unattractively as he thought. “We’ll need to compare notes and make sure I haven’t missed anyone. I’ve been working off the department’s suspension lists.” He’d talked to a dozen cops today, quietly and respectfully, like he had with Washington. Nobody else had nearly the motive that this guy did, and watching programs at home didn’t equate to a real alibi. “We need to keep Washington on the short list of suspects,” he said.

  Once again I couldn’t quite believe that Freeman was doing this much, this quickly, when he’d been so against it earlier.

  “Washington was telling the truth,” I said. “Mostly, anyway.” And Freeman had been surprisingly cordial to the man, very hail-fellow-well-met. “I thought you liked the guy.” He’d certainly treated him well, with a real connection that had paid off in real information.

  Freeman shrugged. “He’s a fellow cop. Even if he’s dirty as hell—and with the IA investigation, I don’t see any reason to doubt it—he’s a guy who’s chosen to put his life on the line. That deserves respect as long as he has that badge.”

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t know how to feel about that attitude. Wasn’t there right and wrong, good and bad, when it came to people? Wasn’t that what everybody had implied with all the alcoholic comments?

  “Doesn’t mean he’s not guilty. Besides. You’re the big shot interrogator here. Which tactic gives you more information, respect or intimidation?”

  “Um . . .” Honestly, it depended on the subject.

  “With fellow officers, it’s respect, and I don’t see any reason not to extend that respect to the citizenry, barring really serious crimes. Sometimes even then, if it gets you somewhere.” He shook his head, like he was throwing off a bad feeling. “I need a cup of coffee now, and I’d like to see your research before you have to leave for the day and I need to move onto other cases.”

  “Okay,” I said, and followed him back upstairs to his desk. “Well,” I said in the elevator.

  “What?”

  “How deep do you think this thing in the department goes?” I asked. He probably wasn’t the one to ask—thin blue line and all that—but I couldn’t keep the words from coming out.

  Freeman shrugged, the ancient elevator moving infinitesimally upwards. “Hard to tell. You get one bad apple, you get another. IA is on it, though. They’ll get to the bottom of it sooner than later. The department will survive.”

  That . . . was an odd way to put things. I still felt like an outsider, sometimes, and I wasn’t concerned with the department surviving. I was concerned with the right thing, and with the citizenry getting the protection its tax dollars had paid for. I was concerned, like the journalist, with shutting down the corruption, not protecting the system.

  “We’ve got plenty of work now,” Freeman said. “We’ll get to the end of our run of clues, we’ll send any excess to IA, and we’ll find the truth. Or we won’t. But we’ll do the job.”

  The elevator doors opened then, and he walked off.

  Freeman was . . . different. A lot different than Cherabino, for all they worked the same job—or had. He worked less hours, I was betting, but he seemed . . . more direct. More clear on what he was doing and how to get to the end. But also, less idealistic. More about the cops. More about the in group and the out group.

  I admired that clarity, maybe even preferred it. But the idealism . . . I missed that too. Cherabino wouldn’t have sided with a dirty cop, e
ven out of respect. At least I didn’t think she would.

  I felt like I was standing on sand. But Jeffries—any guy who did the right thing, who found the corrupt and made them pay, well.., he deserved justice. He did. Bad guy, rough on his wife, hitting the booze and all. He still deserved justice. Didn’t he?

  I spent the next hour going through records with Freeman and comparing notes, at his small cubicle towards the front of the detective floor. His neighbors noticed me when I walked up and then looked away. There were a lot fewer thoughts about me standing next to him, a lot less hostility, than there had been a year ago when I’d been on my own or working with Cherabino. Even a lot less than when I’d walked through the cubicles on my own earlier today. I resented that.

  Freeman’s cubicle was sparse, a few well-worn pictures of family on the walls, and his filing system was nothing more than three-ring binders in stacks—labeled yes, neat no. Some of the binders looked older than I was. He seemed . . . comfortable here. Not as scattered as Cherabino had been, not as prim and neat as Michael. Just comfortable, serviceable Freeman, who got the job done.

  I walked him through my research, he walked me through the high-level results of the interviews for the day, some of which were off the books and so didn’t have more than a few scribbled notes on a page in a binder. He kept names out of it, given that we were sitting in the open cubicle area, and kept the words to a sentence or two, knowing that I’d read his assessment off his mind anyway. Then he gave me a copy of the autopsy report, which I was settling down to read when we got interrupted.

  A beat cop in uniform—an unusual sight on this, the second floor for detectives—cleared his throat at the entrance to Freeman’s small cubicle. I looked up. He turned around.

  “Yes?”

  “Adam Ward?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “You’re listed as the emergency contact person on Isabella Cherabino’s record for non-medical emergencies.”

  My heart sped up, and I put the papers down. “What’s going on?”

  “Could you come with me please?”

  I grabbed my bag and followed him, very worried. I got even more worried on the elevator when he pressed the button for the first basement, the one that let out on the lower level behind the building, the level that held the holding cells.

  “What did she do?” I asked him.

  The beat cop squirmed a little. “She was found on site attempting to use her former credentials to look up a citizen’s traffic record, including his address.” The subtext was disapproving. Clearly, whoever this guy was, he was by-the-book.

  I winced. “How long ago was this?” I could completely believe that Cherabino had tried to bend the rules to work on a minor case for the agency, but I found it hard to believe that I hadn’t noticed her mind in the department. It had been a long day, but even so . . .

  “She’s been in there about three hours, while her former supervisor decided whether to press charges.”

  “Branen decided not to press charges?” I hoped. I guessed.

  He nodded. “She’s getting off with a warning this time, and it looks like the Records department was prompt in calling for help, so no privacy laws were compromised. Please emphasize to Ms. Cherabino that she cannot legally enter these premises again unless she is arrested.”

  “I will.” I swallowed. She was going to be fit to be tied. And I still had to come back tomorrow morning and finish up this case. Could I leave her?

  The ancient elevator hit its correct floor with a lurch I could feel in my bones. The doors opened, displaying a row of five cells on either side, plus a larger, wheelchair-accessible one at the back. Holding only; anyone who’d be locked up more than twenty-four hours got a berth across the street in jail. Even so, most of the cells were full, and by the smell of them, mostly with drunks.

  Cherabino was in the third cell on the right, sitting curled up in the corner, utter defeat and anger on her face and in her mental signature. She looked up when we got in front of the cell, and she stood up, slowly, every line of her body angry.

  “You’re free to go, Ms. Cherabino,” the beat cop said, and unlocked the door with a set of keys he’d had on his belt.

  “Thank you,” she said, through her teeth, meaning anything but.

  A half hour later, as I settled into the passenger seat of her car and she put her things in the back seat. I could still feel her anger.

  The driver’s side door closed after her, and she gripped the steering wheel hard, her knuckles turning white with the pressure on the wheel. Her thoughts nearly freezing with the pressure on her mind.

  “Are you sure you’re safe to drive?” I asked her, evenly. I didn’t usually drive but considering her usual recklessness and current mood, I would take over if I had to.

  “Yes. No.” She blew out a breath of air. Took in another. Visibly relaxed her hands on the wheel. “In a minute.”

  It was still cold outside, the February sun not nearly bright enough to make the inside of the car uncomfortable, even parked directly in that sun. So I’d wait.

  “What happened back there?” I asked. “You know—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she spat, cutting me off.

  “If it was for a client for the agency, you’re going to have to talk to me eventually,” I said.

  After a moment, staring straight ahead, she said, “No. No, I won’t. It won’t happen again.” Then she cranked the car up, the whine as the small fusion warmed saying everything she was willing to say.

  No matter how I pushed her, she cut me off, walling me off. By the time she dropped me off at my apartment, I looked at her retreating car, caught between hurt and anger myself.

  Sure, she’d lost a hell of a lot when she’d lost her job, but this was just stupid.

  I went inside and called my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor. “I need a meeting,” I said.

  The next morning, I reported to Lieutenant Branen, the head of Robbery and Homicide, and my and Freeman’s boss. I couldn’t in good conscience not report in.

  I knocked on his door. It was still twenty minutes before shift change, but he was there like I knew he’d be, head lowered over paperwork.

  He looked up. “Ward. Come in and close the door.” He set the paperwork aside and smiled his habitual empty smile.

  I closed the door and sat uncomfortably in the guest chair. “I’m checking in again, since you assigned me to the Jeffries case with Freeman and I’ve already spent so many hours there. Is it true you give him more of the political ones than anybody else? Freeman seems to think that you want to just bury this case. Is that true?”

  Branen frowned at me. “I wouldn’t say that, officially. Freeman and his team are reliable, and they don’t get intimidated by high profile cases. In this one, I didn’t think we’d get away with anything but a thorough investigation. The Atlanta Journal will be all over it if we’re seen to be shirking. But yes, I’d rather it turn out to be an accident and his investigations go away. That’s not a secret.”

  “You’d rather it be an accident. And saying that loudly isn’t going to prejudice the case at all.”

  Branen sat back in the chair and sighed. “For a man who spends most of the day in other peoples’ heads, you’re sure blunt this morning. I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of assuming accident in this kind of case, even if we’d like to, and I’ve talked to Freeman and heard his concerns. He’ll follow it to the end. That doesn’t mean you need to spend a lot more time there, especially since we’re up against your time allotment for the month soon. I have another task for you today, actually.” He seemed worried. He also didn’t want me focusing on the Jeffries case, and I got the impression more than half of what he’d said was a lie.

  I read a little deeper, risking him realizing I was in his head. Oh. Oh, the bastard! He’d assumed since I was an addict, I’d half-ass any job involving an addict and assume the guy had done the thing to himself. Self-hatred or some such. I pulled out of his head, a
ngry.

  I hadn’t slept well, and it bothered me that he was lying to me, bothered me more that he’d just assumed I’d do a crappy job. I still needed this job, so I forced myself to ask, “What’s the task?”

  “My . . .” Branen trailed off, and moved forward again in his chair to a more normal position. “You remember Kalb? My assistant? He’s been here almost a year now.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure where this was going.

  “Well, um. It’s the unfortunate truth that when the technicians identified the fingerprints from the Jeffries apartment as part of their murder scene processing . . . my assistant’s fingerprints were at the scene. As he wasn’t part of the investigating team, I was notified. He’s due into the office in a few minutes, and I’d like you to question him. Carefully. He’s still a member of this department. But considering Jeffries’s history of reporting on this department . . . well, we can’t rule it out, and I need you to be thorough.”

  That made me blink. “You want me to question Kalb like a suspect?”

  Branen nodded, slowly. I could feel both his regret and determination. “I’d sit in, but since he works so closely with me we need to have as much distance and impartiality as possible. Please make your report thorough, and file it on time this time. I’ll give him a few days’ administrative leave if he clears, but I’ll need to know whether to pursue more by this afternoon. I’ll pay for your overtime if it comes to that.”

  “Let me see if I get this right. You want me to decide whether your assistant is hiding enough to justify . . .” I trailed off. Maybe Branen did care about the corruption, about justice, just really differently than I did.

  “To justify some kind of action by the department, possibly firing. Yes. And don’t worry; you might not be able to testify in a formal court of law, but both Paulsen and I will stand for your character in the interview room if it comes to an internal investigation. You’re one of the least political interrogators we have on the payroll, and that will only help this case.” He looked pained. “I . . . can’t help but think if I hired him . . .”