Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (30 page)

Two hours later, Lieutenant Paulsen frog-marched me to the hallway outside the captain’s office. She knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Paulsen strode in. “We need a SWAT team, sir.” She stood at parade rest in front of the captain’s desk; I did my best to copy her.

Captain Harris looked up. “And why is this?”

“We have a SWAT situation.” Paulsen backed up and explained our talk with Joey (“an anonymous informant”) and our suspicions about it tying in with the Guild serial case. Then she caught him up on the events of the day, and the excellent map we were now convinced was of the Frankies’ (Jason Bradley’s) base of operations. She went into enough detail to show him we had done our homework. Then she said, “I say we take a SWAT team in tonight.”

Davis uncrossed his arms and went back to the desk. He flipped through a few files. Then he looked up. “As it happens, SWAT is free tonight. And tomorrow. But don’t rush it—I want this done right.” He looked pleased, actually, like he’d been looking for an excuse to move full-tilt at this case. The paper this morning, which featured the police force as ineffectual fools on the serial case, probably had something to do with it.

“Yes, sir.” Paulsen turned to me. “I’m putting you on alert. We may need you at the end of this, to help us sort through the suspects.”

I stared at her. All of this and I didn’t even get to go?

Apparently I said that out loud, because the captain responded. “You should be glad we’re taking you
seriously at all. You’re the one who said nobody should go into warehouses alone.”

“I’d be with the SWAT team!” I protested. I was a damn battle-trained telepath, for crying out loud. It wasn’t like I’d be a burden.

Paulsen frowned at me. “They’ll be plenty of work to do afterward.”

“Okay,” I said, moving on to my plans to get Bellury to drive me over to Cherabino’s house. That would probably be easier if I didn’t go on the SWAT mission anyway. “Has anybody called the Guild yet? They’re going to want to send a couple of guys to take custody of Bradley and/or their missing supplies if they’re there.”

“They have missing supplies?” Paulsen asked.

“Custody?” the captain asked sternly. “We’re not giving up custody of this guy to the Guild.”

Paulsen made a gesture. “We probably can’t hold the guy anyway. I’ve brokered a deal with their external relations department—they’ll hold him, we’ll try him in the courts publicly. Saves on jail costs on our side.”

This was news to me, but I played along. “The murders are too public for them to get away with an internal sentence anyway. They’ll want as much good publicity as they can wring out of it, the same as we do.”

The captain sighed. “If that’s the way it goes, that’s the way it goes. Get this guy off the streets, Paulsen.”

“Yes, sir!” she said, grabbed my sleeve-covered arm, and dragged me away.

“I can walk,” I protested, two-stepping behind her.

“Can you?”

“Tell me again why I have to take you all the way out here,” Bellury demanded grumpily as he drove
through a particularly nasty snarl of traffic in the air lanes.

“Cherabino’s not picking up her phone. She’s not at work. She’s not answering the radio. The case is cracking open, and she deserves to be there.”

“She probably got one of those migraines. Hurts too bad to listen to the radio—it wouldn’t be the first time, kid.” He shifted his hands on the wheel and tapped his fingers, waiting for the red light to turn green.

“I just want to make sure,” I said. I was stuck in guilt—I’d had a vision, and had still let her out of my sight—and a strong feeling something wasn’t right. She was probably fine, sitting in her kitchen, crying over a migraine with her phone unplugged.

“You’re being dumb. Really dumb. But at least we’ll be there soon.” Bellury sighed, slowing as we entered the residential area. Suddenly, old oak trees and century-old small brick houses lined both sides of the street. Small children played with a genetically engineered dog in the front yard while their mother talked animatedly on the front steps of the porch, the phone cord stretching behind her inside the house. The old-fashioned middle-class American pipe dream, and here it was, different in daylight. I hated it, all the more because I’d almost had it once.

Two more turns and we’d be at Cherabino’s.

“Thanks for driving me,” I told Bellury.

He brought the car to a complete stop at the sign. “Couldn’t exactly let you take a cop car out by yourself.” He looked at me. “’Sides, I didn’t have anything better to do this afternoon anyway. Good day for an errand. You good for clothes? We need to go out again?”

I was looking out the window, trying to see Cherabino’s house. Huh? Um, there was…“I could probably use another couple of undershirts.”

“Maybe we’ll pick those up on the way back, then.”

For the next few minutes, Bellury started humming an out-of-tune country song as he drove. He kept humming it all the way up Cherabino’s street and as he parked on the right side of the street in front of her house, a little bit down from her parked car. He kept humming as we got out and started walking up the driveway.

About halfway up the driveway, he stopped humming.

Cherabino’s driver’s-side car door—opposite side from the street—was open. Just standing open.

I ran around the car, quickly, Bellury following. The car door was gaping like an open wound. There were a few small spots of red on the ground and the car window—blood?—and a couple of dents in the side of the car, like there’d been a struggle.

Worst of all, her purse lay half open, abandoned, on the ground.

My legs gave out. I crab-walked back, back, until my hands hit the grass of the next yard over. I kept looking at that scene, at the evidence left behind by my failure—at what I’d done at abandoning her, and worse, talking myself out of that feeling, letting it go this long—and fought dry heaves.

Bellury went over and checked her door, still locked. He rang the doorbell, waited. Nothing. He didn’t seem surprised.

Then he trotted back to the car. He opened the door while I sat there, unmoving, gave me an odd look, and then pulled out the radio. His presence in Mindspace was worried, worried and strangely calm, as if all his years of experience as a cop, a beat cop, an interviewer, and briefly a detective—as if all of them combined all at once into heavy, steadying weight.

I couldn’t hear the conversation, not with my ears, but in my mind I could hear him reporting the scene: It looked like an officer had been taken, probably alive. A few blood spots. Evidence of foul play.

The dispatcher started asking questions, and Bellury gave what answers he could. He looked at me when he ran out of details. I took a deep breath, looked back at the scene, and started feeding the answers he needed back into his mind.

He finally put the radio down and closed the door. Walked back to me.

Bellury thought about mentioning the pictures that had appeared in his head—the pictures that felt like me, somehow—but decided against it. It got the job done, and there was a hell of a job to do. “You’re going to have to pull yourself together, kid.”

Forensics was crawling all over the scene.

Paulsen took me aside, to a corner of the front porch. “You didn’t tell me you had a feeling.”

I had my arms crossed, doing my best to look annoyed instead of cold, too cold. “I told everybody about the vision. Didn’t seem to matter before—nobody did anything. Not for weeks. Just got obsessed with the aircar tracks and getting interview permission from the Guild.”

She pursed her lips. “There’s process. And you did have an incident.”

“That’s exactly it. You didn’t look like you were going to listen.”

She grabbed my face and turned my head toward her, very unexpectedly. For a long painful moment, our minds half merged. I saw how lonely she was, how badly she wanted a hug—a real hug—from somebody friendly, and her overriding sense of Responsibility. I
saw her immediate, pressing need to find Cherabino; to catch Bradley; and her Duty, her greater Duty to the department and the city. After a second of adjustment, she looked me straight in the eye without letting go. I wasn’t getting off that easy.

Next time you
make
me listen, genius,
she thought, knowing I would overhear it. And I could feel how much she meant it.
Whatever it takes.

And then she let my chin go, her eyes narrowing.

I was too much of a trained telepath; I couldn’t just let it go. I opened my arms, small invitation to a hug.

She snorted and turned away, walking off the porch.

I put my arms down, awkwardly, feeling dumb. And responsible. We had to get Cherabino back. And she was right; I should have told her.

I should have made Cherabino stay. I should have made her listen, whatever the cost. This thing Bradley had out for me—well, it had to be personal, now. It had to be. Otherwise, why kidnap a cop? I had a bad feeling that this was a message to me, that this was my fault.

I wanted Satin. I wanted it all to go away. But it wouldn’t, and now I’d have to fix it or die trying. Perhaps literally.

I found a quiet corner in the back of Bellury’s car and tried to think. To calm down. But my mind kept unfocusing, like I was being pushed into a dense fuzzy cloud.

The second time I got wise and fought my way out. I sat, blinking at the light, trying to figure out what had happened. The link? It must have been the link.

“I think she’s drugged,” I finally told Bellury.

“Tell the lieutenant,” Bellury said.

The entire department moved into action as suddenly and completely as a kicked anthill.

Every cop in the force gathered in the main room, sitting on desks, standing around them, three and four deep. The pressure of all those buzzing, angry minds was giving me double vision and the beginnings of a pressure headache. But I had to fix this.

Branen was standing near the door, knowing he’d have to leave at any second for the press conference, but still wanting to show support. The head of Electronic Crimes was next to him.

Lieutenant Paulsen was standing at the front of the room. Or should I say, Paulsen was standing
on top of
the receptionist’s desk at the front, giving herself an extra three feet of height so everybody could see her.

Paulsen held up a finger on each hand and brought them together. “Focus, people. We’ve got an officer to find and a case to solve, in that order. And we all know that every hour here hurts our chances of getting our girl back. So, let’s move.”

She started handing out assignments, pointing to sections of the crowd as she came to them. “We all think this is related to the multiples case, but just in case it’s not…” She put about fifteen people on tracking down likely suspects from Cherabino’s other open cases. Then another five on various old grudges—Cherabino had been a cop for a while, and a good one; she’d made enemies. Paulsen put one mean, hulking ex-military cop on the issues around Cherabino’s husband’s death. Then she portioned up the rest of the room on following up Cherabino’s movements over the last few days, her electronic work, and every conceivable angle of the serial case.

“If you have an assignment, go ahead and get started,” she said. “The rest of you, come up a little closer.”

People scattered; I stayed back, trying to take advantage of the momentary clear space in the room.

As the room tightened up around her, Paulsen accepted Brown’s help down from the desk. Then she addressed the remaining dozen or so officers. “The fastest way to find Cherabino may be to find our perps. As of this morning, the multiples case is our highest priority—now, just behind getting our officer back. The captain is on the phone right now getting help from additional zones to search door to door if necessary. What we need to do,” she said. “What
we
need to do is get these guys off the street and hope they lead us to Cherabino. The profiler thinks it’s likely they’ve taken her as retaliation for the bad press lately, or for her searching the killer’s apartment. Maybe she got too close.”

She fielded a few questions and then portioned up a hell of a lot of investigative work between the right four detectives. Then she said, “You, you, and you,” pointing to the three department lawyer-types. “Find me a way around this Guild jurisdictional crap so we can talk to his coworkers.
Invent
something.” She overruled an objection. “We have an officer’s
life
on the line. Find me a way.”

Lieutenant Paulsen then identified four of the remaining five. “You all are ex-military, ex-tactical, that sort of thing. I’m asking you to come back and give us some additional support for today’s raid. It’s not mandatory, but we could be facing Guild training on the other end with only a couple Guild telepaths as support in kind.” After a few questions, all four buzz-cut military types agreed.

She dismissed them, then turned to the last guy and me, waving us forward. My head was spinning from all the decisions made so quickly.

I realized suddenly that the other guy was Andrew, Cherabino’s cubicle neighbor, and that he had a slight Ability. I didn’t understand how I hadn’t realized that before. Was I not paying enough attention?

“Andrew, I need you to do your finance thing and find the money moving here. This is our primary interviewer—I’m sure you’ve heard of him—for the interview transcript I already gave you. He’s also ex-Guild. So if you run into any trouble, or want to get subtext, this is the guy to talk to. He also has access to the case files.”

“We’ve met,” Andrew said.

I nodded. “Most of the information is at Cherabino’s cubicle. I have the codes to her computer.”

Neither Andrew nor Paulsen asked me where I got them, and I didn’t volunteer.

“I’ll meet you there, then,” Andrew returned.

He reached over, touched Paulsen on the shoulder—probably not even realizing why, just knowing on some level that she needed it—and headed in that direction.

Paulsen had actually just treated me like a real person, no accusations, no mistrust, no warnings. Suddenly I was nervous. “What exactly did you see in my head?” I asked her.