Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (17 page)

I felt the comment register. She shook her head and finally told me the truth. “I don’t want you that close to me, not while I’m sleeping. You don’t have the self-control.”

I answered the unspoken question. “Maybe not about the drug. Maybe not about a lot of things. But this, this I’ve got. You don’t have to worry about
that
. Not today. Not any day. Not if you don’t want it.”

She opened her mouth to say something, and I could see this could take forever. And like it or not, I really did want to get some sleep tonight.

I reached out and inserted a thought,
my
thought flavored with the sound of
my
voice so she couldn’t possibly mistake it.
If I wanted to take advantage, I don’t need you to be asleep.
Then, slowly, I trailed soft points of pleasure down her spine.

She shivered and looked away.

“I’ll be on the floor,” I said firmly.

“Fine,” she said, and turned on her heel, every line of her body angry. “But stay out of my head.”

Her bedroom carpet was pink. Well, peach. And it didn’t match the rest of the room, which was brown
and beige, down to the checkered comforter and brown curtains. It didn’t match Cherabino.

It was soft, and reasonable to sleep on—which was good, since I was lying on it now and had to sleep—but it was pink. I was vaguely offended.

Cherabino was tucked away two feet above me, trying to sleep and failing, dressed in full-length pajama pants and a ridiculously large T-shirt. I don’t know why she’d put up such a fight. This wasn’t exactly glamorous. No man woke up in the morning thinking, I’ll sleep on my coworker’s pink carpet today. Not remotely.

Now, if she would only go to sleep, I could try to do the same. I sighed. If she’d stop jumping every time there was a noise…

“You still there?” I heard faintly through the darkness.

“Yes. Go to sleep!”

I stayed up a long time, torturing myself with my last few days at the Guild, with Kara’s betrayal, with the head of training stripping off my patch and literally throwing me out of the meeting room. I would do anything not to face that again—and I wanted my drug. Of course I wanted my drug right now, with things falling apart. But I wasn’t going to get it. Paulsen’s rough disbelief, the contempt of the other interviewers, Swartz’s disappointment, all played over and over in my head. I knew it would be worse if I’d actually shot up, a lot worse. But it was plenty bad enough.

Like fate or a capricious Higher Power flexed its muscles, in that moment I saw my vision again: Cherabino abused and beaten on the floor; myself dying. Bradley yelling
at me
, specifically, like he knew me. The old woman’s scarf in my hands. This was personal,
and as much as I wanted to run away—into Satin—into somewhere else, I knew that if I did, I’d never forgive myself.

I had to fix this. I had enough crap to look through when I stared at the mirror. I didn’t need any more.

In the morning,
a horrible ringing woke me up far too early.

Cherabino was up, gun trained in less than two seconds on the phone on her nightstand. I blinked at her very nice butt, outlined through the pajamas.

“Sorry,” she said, sheepishly. “It’s new.” She put the gun down on the nightstand and picked up the handset.

She frowned. I felt her decision to lie, to make it seem less suspicious that I was there. She didn’t want Paulsen getting the wrong idea. “He’s on my couch. Want me to wake him up?”

Huh?

“Just a second.” She held the phone against her shoulder, fidgeted for a long moment. “Okay, he’s here.” She held out the phone to me.

I stood and took it, watching Cherabino carefully. She grabbed the gun and moved away a bit.

“Yes?” I said into the phone.

There was a long pause at the other end.

“Hello?”

Paulsen’s voice was testy. “You and Cherabino have been called into Fulton County. Atlanta PD thinks it’s another of our murders. They want you there five minutes ago.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to do fieldwork for a while?”

“Who told you that?”

“The captain.”

“What in
hell
you were doing going to the captain with that vision of yours I’ll never know. I’m your boss. You should have come to me!”

“You were busy,” I said.

She growled into the phone. “Out of leash, I told you. Twice. If you didn’t have the best close rate of any of the interrogators, I swear this would be the very…” A pause. “Get up and get to that scene, ASAP. Don’t give me any more grief. I’ll handle the captain.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Um, ma’am?”

“What??!?”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh. Hold on.” Clattering sounds came over the line. After a moment, she found what she needed and read me the address, on Ponce de Leon.

“How far down is that?” I asked.

“Near the old City Hall East.”

I frowned. “That’s almost in Midtown!”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Paulsen said. “Now get there. I’m not going to have detectives from another zone waiting around on our clock.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, hanging up.

I looked up at Cherabino. Her hair was sticking straight up on one side, pillow marks on her cheek. Her pajama pants were imprinted with teddy bears, an interesting contrast with the oversized police department shirt. I could see she didn’t have on a bra, and I had to look away before I embarrassed myself.

“Another case?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I grabbed my bag from the floor. “Atlanta city
cops think they’ve found another one of our murders down by old City Hall East. We’re supposed to be there ASAP. Can I borrow your bathroom?”

She pointed me to the one in the hall, her brain waves slow, tired.

I threw my bag on the counter and closed the door. If we were going to somebody else’s territory, I needed to shave.

While I waited for Cherabino to finish her shower—and so I wouldn’t picture the process—I sat down by the phone in her dining room. My stomach roiled, unhappy with the fruit-and-nuts oatmeal. I’m sure stress had nothing to do with it.

Cherabino had left the number on a scrap of torn paper on the dining room table. I stared at it for a long moment, called Swartz for courage.

He’d been up for hours, of course, and was just about ready to go to school. “What are you waiting for?” he said pointedly. “Call her. You have to face the fear, or it gets power over you. More every day.”

He let me chitchat a little longer before he told me, “Now call her,” and hung up.

I stared at the piece of paper for a long time before I dialed.

The phone rang, and I answered Kara’s hello with who it was and the fact that this wasn’t social. “I’m working with the DeKalb County police. I was the one who called you yesterday to report the abuse and”—I gritted my teeth—“ask for your help.”

On the other end of the phone, there was a long, long silence. Then I heard a funny clicking, Kara tapping her teeth with her tongue the way she did when she was thinking. It was like a stab to the heart, and it
made me angry all over again. “What do you need exactly?” she asked me.

Kara was Guild to the core; her whole family was Guild, and while she only rated a heavy four on the telepath scale (and only with touch), her Jumping marks were off the charts. She was trained, she was smart, and as she’d proven by me, slavishly devoted to the Guild and to its whole ethical and political system. She had all the right background and connections—and the Ability—to be a good political courier. I’d known, we’d discussed, from there it was a short step to big-city politics, and then to the international stage. So it made sense she would be the city attaché. It also made sense she’d be the one handling the call from DeKalb; as much as metro Atlanta cared about jurisdiction and breaking up the city, the Guild didn’t give a damn. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. It didn’t mean I had to like it at all.

I made a fist. Let it go. Looked down. I could do this. I would do this. “Can you meet this afternoon?”

“Where?”

“The AT&T plaza, by the ice cream place. Do you remember?” We’d stopped for dessert on a date there once. It gave me heartburn to suggest it, but there was a very good reason to meet there in particular, so I’d suck it up.

“I remember,” she said, her voice trailing off. “You doing okay?”

“I’ll see you at two,” I said, and hung up.

Getting called in by another police force was a big step, since somebody had to put jurisdiction and pride aside enough to admit they couldn’t get the job done alone. We found out from Branen’s messages they’d actually
called me to consult on the crime scene—for once, without arguing about budget—instead of Cherabino. I was the telepathic expert, after all. She still came with me.

We were in the north part of DeKalb County. Our destination was the old East City Hall near Freedom Parkway, maybe eight miles as the crow flies southwest. The direct route took us through one of the oldest parts of the city, around Emory University, the ancient trees telling stories of centuries before us, their trunks twisted from the fallout from the Tech Wars, but still standing. The area around the university was a strict no-fly zone with twisty roads, and those eight miles took a good twenty minutes even on a good day. Now, in morning rush hour, it took us more like forty. Paulsen would not be pleased, I thought. I wondered if I could blame it on Cherabino.

She was sad this morning, a sense of loss riding her like a second skin. She kept thinking about tomorrow, worrying about me somehow, then shying away from both thoughts, so that I couldn’t follow, and it was only giving me a headache to try.

She also drove sedately for her, not making me grab the handrail even once. Somehow I did not think that was a good sign.

We took a turn onto Ponce de Leon, the new old Peachtree, as commuters clogged the old road and the space just above it. On the sides of the roads, ancient rotting mansions shared space with old churches and debris-filled parks. The street deteriorated further as we went. On the edge of the trendy, dirty city blocks, right by the old City Hall East—now cheap lofts by the same name—we turned into a huge parking lot meant to service the few megastores still left in the area.

We parked in front of the hardware store, intending
to walk around the building to the back alley where the murder scene was. Cherabino led the way. The day was cloudy and dim, the humidity in the air sticking to my skin like the steam in a sauna.

Our shoes crunched on bits of unnamed debris as we stepped into the alley. We walked past a line of dirty recycling bins, including a huge dumpster that smelled of old, rotting wood. Then past a cop car, its red and white lights turning the alley into a flashing red and blue carnival show. Two male detectives in plain clothes stood just beyond the car.

The first was thin, red-haired, and freckled, and he looked far too young to be a detective, his face far too innocent. Atlanta PD—especially in the heart of the center (and inner) city—wasn’t a police force that exactly bred innocence, so either he was so new to the job he squeaked, or he was a damn good actor. I marked him as someone to watch either way. When Cherabino stepped forward to introduce us, I stepped closer than was strictly necessary and got the faint impression of a very wily mind. He was McMartin, and he’d been the one to suggest they call me.

The second detective was a big, burly Latino. He looked to be in his late forties, at the top of his game professionally, and clearly in charge. Despite the fact that Cherabino had introduced me as the ex-Guild telepath, Sanchez offered me his hand.

I looked at him just long enough to make sure he knew what he was doing—his eyes were steady enough—and then took the hand. His grasp was firm but not overwhelming. “Sanchez,” he introduced himself.

I nodded in turn, releasing his hand as I tried hard to pretend he wasn’t at least a Level Three empath. I didn’t know whether his coworkers knew, but there
was no hiding it with the handshake. He probably had some preliminary training, nothing major, not with the feel of him crawling up my arm like a strong cloud of cologne. So either he didn’t think I’d notice—unlikely—or he wanted it out on the table between us immediately. Guessing that I could crush him with a thought, use his Ability against him, and deliberately sticking out his hand anyway.

With those kind of guts, he got my respect immediately.

Cherabino finished the pleasantries, and they all nodded to one another. I echoed, feeling a little out of place, still trying to hide what I knew about Sanchez. The other cop led the way to the end of the alley. A medical examiner in full crime-scene coveralls crouched over what looked at a distance to be a pile of rags.

“Call came in this morning about five thirty,” Sanchez summarized as we walked. “One of the store employees taking out the recyclables found the body at the end of the alley. He checked for a pulse, and when he found none, reported it to his supervisor. The supervisor called us.”

“Where’s the employee now?” Cherabino asked, her hands in her pockets.

The other detective shrugged. “We took his statement and sent him home. He seemed pretty shaken and didn’t know anything useful. You missed him by just a couple minutes.”

I looked around. “Where’s the crime scene analysts?” I asked.

“We called them ten minutes before McMartin suggested talking to you,” Sanchez replied. “They’re running late. Very late.”

We stopped a few feet away from the medical
examiner. Sanchez kept walking a few more steps. “Rogers,” he said, “can you give us a few minutes?”

“One moment,” Rogers replied in a quiet baritone. He wrote one last thing in his notebook and retrieved his equipment. When he had everything tucked away neatly in his case, he set the lock and stood up.

Way up. The medical examiner was at least six foot five, and his dark complexion matched his baritone. “You the teep?”

“That’s right.” I
hated
the common slang word for telepath, but I didn’t really want to risk the argument right now. If I was here to look at the Mindspace residue around the body, I wanted as few strong emotions from these guys as possible. Ideally, I wanted them to back up about nine feet.