Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (4 page)

Branen glanced at Cherabino, then back at her. “We still have friends in the DA’s office who’d be glad to take something like that on, for publicity if nothing else. Meanwhile the killer’s off the streets, and the captain doesn’t have to field a phone call from the mayor asking why we’re not doing anything about the East Atlanta murders. I say we do it.”

“Do what?” I asked. I was shielding hard enough to give myself a headache, and I was definitely not tracking as well as I could have been.

“Work the case without the Guild,” Cherabino said. “You might want to try to keep up.”

I admit that the Guild weren’t my favorite people since they’d kicked me out, but…“Can you do that?” More important, could I do that? As bad as things were for me right now, they’d be a lot worse if I got the attention of their Enforcement unit. Still, it would twist the Guild’s tail, to have one of their people held responsible to the real world.

“We’re going to,” Branen said, then addressed Paulsen. “Unless you have an objection?” They were technically equals, but Paulsen’s department was much larger, handling anything the other three didn’t. She was also more senior than he was, so while he didn’t have to defer, it was a good idea.

She shook her head. “I’ll clear it with the captain, but it’s our case. In our jurisdiction.”

After four hours of interviews, I was bone tired. The ancient elevator seemed to crawl. I mashed the third button twice to get it to engage, the buttons so old their imprinted numbers were worn away by a hundred years of fingerprints.

Working for the Guild had given me a lot of numbers behind my name. Other than the eight and the seventy-eight percent, my next big number was one-ninety. That’s base valence; it means I can flex to read maybe ninety-five minds out of a hundred. A big number for anybody; for a guy, it’s impressive. Or was.

Unfortunately, it meant I could read almost everyone in the station, four floors of constant disturbance like ripples on a very windy lake. When I was this tired, the ripples came through my shields in waves, half-heard and insistent.

I only got the hard interviews, the ones that had stumped some detective, some beat cop to the point where he’d passed it up the line. I got the guilty, the difficult, the ones who cried heartbreaking manipulative tears, the angry men with something to hide and the women who thought they could sleep their way out of anything and didn’t realize a telepath couldn’t do casual sex even if he wanted to. In those times I was glad for Bellury, or McDonnell, or anyone else there.

If the interviewee made it through me, he got a
round with Paulsen, and she didn’t like to be disturbed for anything short of an asteroid barreling toward the Earth. I’d gotten real good, real quick, as a result—it helped that I could spot a lie at twenty paces. I also said right off I was a telepath, which sometimes made a gullible perp confess for no good reason. But no-holds-barred crazy people gave me nausea or worse, and some really annoying perps actually paid attention to the Guild’s service announcements.

A bit of advice: if you must throw a telepath off your trail, be nice and recite multiplication tables or something. Concentrating on an out-of-tune rock song like the last suspect had just makes me want to hit you.

I still had the ear-wrenching, repetitive song stuck in my head from the last suspect. The low-level cacophony of the station was rubbing at me like sandpaper. I was exhausted. And I wanted a hit with every fiber of my being. I thought about my tiny holdout stash in my apartment, the two little vials I’d put in a hole in the wall. I thought, Tonight might be the night to take them out again.

The elevator attempted to ding when it hit the floor, instead managing only a tiny metallic thud. I struggled to focus, bracing myself before walking out into the cubicle farm that was the third floor, detective alley. This was my least favorite part of the day.

Cherabino’s cubicle was all the way at the other end of the building, past at least thirty cubicles full of thinking minds—row after row of forgettable boxes and claustrophobically crowded detectives, none of which said hello.

I walked past their silent eyes, unable to completely block the mixed-bag observations on everything from my hairstyle to my history, the tightness of my butt to my latest successful interview. Also complete
indifference and a lot of thinking on actual cases. They did actually do work here, some of them.

The last two lines of cubicles were larger and had more space between them, with real windows on this side of the building. Over here it was quieter in Mindspace, the detectives here and bigwigs upstairs all calmly efficient, the secretaries below happy with their gossip. Some part of me calmed, knowing no one was paying any attention. I managed to put the shields back up, slowly, with a lot of effort.

I passed Cherabino’s cubicle neighbor, and I said hello to Andrew. I think he was an accountant; he thought about numbers a lot, was always in the cubicle, and had gourmet coffee. The real stuff, from beans. He shared the coffee cheerfully, and never once labeled me felon in his head.

Andrew was on the phone, but he went ahead and waved me toward the coffee set up in the back of his cubicle. He hit mute briefly, and told me, “Get Cherabino some too—she’s been in there since noon.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went to get the coffee. The first for me, black with sugar. Cherabino liked hers with one liquid creamer, half of one of the blue not-sugar packets, and about three spoons of water. Andrew was already back to his phone call when I left, carrying two cups in my hands.

She was hunched over, her face in her hands as she shook her head back and forth.

“Cherabino?”

She shot up, narrowly missed hitting her head on the desk lamp in the process. “What?” After blinking a few times, she said, “Oh, it’s you.”

“I have coffee,” I said, unnecessarily, and put her cup next to her hand on the only free spot on the desk.
The rest was covered in paper and objects in a messy smorgasbord.

I moved a pile of printouts off the cubicle’s second chair, placing the papers carefully on the floor separate from the other piles. For all the apparent mess around here, Cherabino claimed there was a pattern to the madness. That being said, the second chair and the counter next to it were sort of mine.

I sat down. There was a scarf in a plain plastic bag on the desk, which was weird since Cherabino didn’t wear scarves. I picked it up and paused—the thing had a very clear effect on Mindspace. I could feel the kindly old woman who’d worn the scarf almost every day. Another presence, hanging over the thing like a faint perfume. Was that the presence from the crime scene? It felt familiar somehow.

“Where is this from?” I asked Cherabino. I didn’t get impressions from objects often—they had to be in very close proximity to a person for a long time to pick up Mindspace—but it looked like I was just tired enough to notice. Maybe we could identify the guy from this.

She turned around to face me, rubbing her eyes. They were bloodshot, with deep circles, and the rest of her face didn’t look much better. She looked…wilted, almost—but when I checked, no migraine. She sighed. “It’s from the second crime scene. It’s a reminder.”

I studied the scarf again, but there were no blood spots. “I thought you weren’t supposed to take evidence from the file room.”

She grabbed the scarf. “I’ll give it back when the case is over.” She pulled out a drawer, deposited the scarf, and shut it firmly. “Is there a reason you’re here?”

I pointed to the cup I’d just given her. “Coffee, remember?”

She turned around as if just now remembering, and took a sip. A pleasant warm feeling spread through her, the taste comforting.

I sighed and worked a little harder to shut her out. “How’s the work coming?”

She sighed and took another long sip of coffee, frowning. “Who battled the Hydra?”

“What’s a Hydra?”

She blinked. “I thought you were proud of your Guild education. Maybe it was Jason. This big, huge monster—you cut off one head and two more grow up in its place. That’s what I’m doing, chasing illicit net porn. No matter how many perverts we shut down, you turn your back and there’s six more just waiting for you to find them.”

“I thought you weren’t working Electronic Crimes anymore,” I said.

“They’re understaffed,” she said. “Two more rounds of job interviews, a little training, and God willing I’m off for good. Two weeks, three maybe. But I’m waiting for some tests on the multiples case.” She took another sip of coffee, then looked at me again. “How are you?”

“Other than feeling like someone has beat me with sticks, I’m fine.” She looked at me strangely, and I clarified, “Too many interviews, and the last guy was difficult. Really difficult. Any news on the case?”

She sighed. “We’ve got several local cops going door to door tomorrow and Saturday, guys who’ve done patrol in the area and know what they’re looking for. Paulsen’s handling details since they’re her guys, so if there’s anybody good, you’ll probably get them in the interview room. Just keep me in the loop, okay? I’d like to sit in if it’s possible.”

“Possible?”

She sighed, pointing to a loose stack of three files
next to the computer that had previously blended into the mess. “Three new cases today, and only one’s Electronic Crimes. Branen’s going ape-shit because the county turned down his request for more personnel. If Paulsen didn’t share, we’d all be underwater by now.”

“Any city funds?” I asked her. The City of Decatur usually preferred to help fund the DeKalb County homicide and drug divisions rather than tackle it on their own. They did their own patrols, but that was about it.

“Not so far.” She rubbed her head. Wasn’t a migraine, not yet. “Though knowing them, they’ll slip them in right before elections. Listen, I’m going down to the morgue tomorrow morning to see if they’ve got anything on the latest multiples victim. You should come.”

“I’m allowed at the morgue?”

“You are if you behave yourself.” She frowned. “Why, weren’t you going to?”

I ignored the sidebar and reiterated. “I’m not usually invited.”

“Well, you are if I say so. With the Guild connection, people are going to talk. I want you there to debunk the myths before the rumors turn into anything. The last thing we need is a mass panic against the telepaths again.”

“Again?”

She shook her head. “Don’t be a moron. The last time, they called them witch hunts, and honestly, I don’t have time for that kind of foolishness.”

She wasn’t quite right about the history. Most of the witches at Salem weren’t telepaths, just old women herbalists. Well, except the one, and she was famous in Guild circles; she projected a lot of the fear on the townsfolk. Perfect example of what not to do as a telepath.

Still, what Cherabino meant by it was good. Kind, even. Fighting the prejudices against the telepaths; she didn’t have to do that. I looked at the circles under her eyes again and asked the question quickly, before I could think better of it. “You got anything I can do to help with the caseload?”

She shook her head. “Not at the moment, unless you’ve got new skills with the computer you’ve never told me about. I’m trying to finish up the Net porn case today, and it’s not minor-level coding. Advanced polygon cipher, at the very least, maybe worse.”

“Um…is that good?”

Cherabino laughed. It was a small laugh, more shocked than anything, but it counted. “Probably. We’re maybe halfway done.”

“Congratulations,” I said, with as much cheer as I could muster past my general exhaustion.

After just a little more small talk, we settled down to work in companionable silence, her on her cases, me on paperwork.

In the quiet fifteen minutes later, I found the pencil she’d been looking for and handed it to her. In Mindspace, Cherabino’s presence was shocked, but I kept working, chewing on an antacid for my stomach as I filled out paperwork I’d rather not do. Whatever she was shocked at was probably something I didn’t want to see anyway.

That night, I went home and slept, unaided. The vials stayed in the wall, and I stayed on the wagon. I was tired.

I tapped my fingers
against the wood grain of the table. Swartz was late. And by late, I meant, not early. Swartz was one of those spry sleepless old men who showed up to everything at least a half hour early. So it was unthinkable, with me arriving a whole minute and a half before the agreed time, that he wasn’t here yet.

Here being an out-of-the-way corner of a faded old coffee shop, what had once been a pub before the owner’s mother joined AA more than thirty years ago. A long wooden bar still dominated the space, beat up with coffee stains and long scratches. Pub tables lined the walls with chairs and carefully repaired leather booths. Behind the bar, the owner nodded at me and turned around to brew a pot of dark licorice coffee.

That black licorice-flavored liquid was a taste I’d never known existed until I met Swartz. It was too strong a flavor for me to say I liked it, exactly, but the pungent taste and Swartz’s abrupt truth mixed together in my mind over and over until the tradition of both became a stalwart against weakness, until the black licorice clung and clung and made me want to be a better man. Or spit it all back up again, all at once. I had days of both.

There was Swartz—the whole dark room flashed with the outside sun as he entered; then the room
dimmed again as the door swung closed. He made his way toward me, his slate gray hair slicked back in a style that had been old when his grandfather was alive. The pronounced wrinkles on his thin face in no way took away from his air of authority. He wore a pair of beat-up khakis and a textured golf shirt.

Swartz sat down, the leather on the seat creaking, and nodded a greeting. Then he waved to the owner, who held up a finger to let us know it would be another moment.

I nodded in return. He made me come up with a list of three things I was grateful for every week—I had to tell him three brand-new things at our usual weekly meeting, or he’d give me this look, all disappointed. And the feeling I got from his mind was worse, like “ungrateful” was an insult of the worst order. So, I studied. I thought. And for six years running now—not counting the two weeks I’d missed the last time off the wagon—every week I had three new things. This week I was having trouble.