In the dark, surrounded by sharp memories and the sour taste of fear, the parking deck seemed like a deadly carnival ride, something I couldn’t step off of. I was here for a kid, I told myself. And I’d see the killer coming – I’d see his mind. There was nothing to fear.
But, as a shadow moved, I knew I was kidding myself. I had to push on anyway, my heart beating too fast, my body starting at every change. Concentrate on the kid’s trail, I told myself. The kid.
The taste of his fear wandered down the line of cars in a staggering path. Here, a level below where we had been, a level down the sloping concrete into the bowels of the earth, the kid slowed.
Mommy! His thoughts echoed off the cold walls. Mommy, it choked. The boy was afraid. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of the monster he’s just seen do… something bad.
And the killer, growing more annoyed by the moment, followed ever after.
Down another ramp, this one more deserted, I felt the kid’s trail stop, next to a tangle of pipes and a control box dominating one corner of the lot. In the barely-lit shadow, the nest of pipes looked impenetrable. The killer’s trail grew thicker here, like he had stopped for a moment, for a long moment full of impatient annoyance, before he went on, before he found the elevator and his trail disappeared.
Maybe I was supposed to follow the killer, to catch this guy at any cost. But I couldn’t leave the kid be.
I stood in front of the pipes, let the Mindspace there sink in, until it settled into my very bones, until I felt what the boy had felt. Until the thoughts he’d left behind became my thoughts. I was tired, overwhelming tired and scared, and I’d peed myself, not like a big boy. I was cold. And I was finally, finally sleeping. A little. I wanted my blankie. I wanted my Mommy.
With a gentle wrench, I pulled myself away – that wasn’t Mindspace. That was the boy himself. His consciousness, asleep but strong. In the real world, I shifted around to the back of the tangle of pipes. There, in a small niche between two large pipes, way in the back, I saw a foot. A small foot.
The clattering of Cherabino’s shoes came from above, from the curling concrete ramp above me. A radio sputtered on her hip.
Still crouched in front of the pipes, not wanting to wake the boy, I found Cherabino. Sent one, clear thought, flavored with my mind so she couldn’t mistake it:
I found the boy. He’s hiding.
“Stay out of my head,” she said, more out of habit than conviction. Her feet sped up, coming closer.
With apologies, I pulled away.
Cherabino cursed my ancestry, then spoke into the radio: “Small child, Level Five section Four-Dee, repeat Five section Four-Dee. We need a medic.” She glanced down, still thirty feet away from me. “Maybe a shrink,” she said.
I stood awkwardly to the side and smoked, the sinuous trail of it winding up the open heart of the curling parking lot, smoke drifting in a long stream up into the darkness. The cops were clustered around the kid, the elevator, anything else they could get. I was pushed out, away from the action, standing in the cold central parking deck, even my cigarette butts ignored.
Cherabino didn’t get ignored. She was just as much a stranger as I was in this part of the county, but she got respect. I was the expert. They’d called me in specifically. Not that it meant anything.
My first kid at a crime scene – a living one, anyway – and no one would let me do anything. I made a face and lit another cigarette.
Finally a uniformed woman cop carried the kid up the ramp, every line of her body filled with relief. The kid held onto her tightly, and shook. Wiggles trailed behind them.
“For gods’ sake, put the cigarette out,” he told me. “He’s a kid.”
I sighed and snubbed out the blue cigarette under my shoe. At least the little guy seemed okay.
Wiggles kept moving, concern leaking out behind him in a long trail, and Cherabino walked up behind me. She was exhausted, now that the adrenaline had passed, and cranky.
She worried about her knees, which hurt from crouching on the concrete trying to get the boy to trust her. And of course in the end, he’d come out for the uniformed cop, not her. Maybe the woman had looked more like his mother. But her knees hurt and she was cranky anyway.
“You could have given me one,” she said, and I had to figure out what she was talking about.
I pulled out the half-empty pack of blue cigarettes and the lighter, handed them over.
“Give it a minute,” I said. “Until the kid’s gone.” With the kid gone, Wiggles could deal with the smoke.
She held the pack, sighed, but didn’t light up. “Tell me about the killer,” she said. “Not the path he took – you pointed that out to the techs, I’m sure they’ll do fine. About the killer, as a person. Give me something I can use to catch this guy.”
I looked over at the clump of North DeKalb cops talking to a secondary detective over on the other side of the deck. “I’m not a cop,” I said, “but shouldn’t we be over there? With them?”
Cherabino shrugged. “They don’t trust you.” She lit a cigarette, hands sure on the lighter as if this was a completely normal statement. Maybe to her it was.
“Telepath thing?” I asked. Since the Tech Wars, when the Telepath’s Guild had stepped up to save the world – and gotten real scary to do it – a lot of the normals didn’t trust telepaths. Even seventy years later. I hoped at least this time it wasn’t personal against me, drug problem, felon, or not. I mean, they didn’t know me well enough to hate me yet.
She nodded, shrugged. “You were telling me about the killer. Something I can use to lock him up.”
“This isn’t your case?”
“The killer,” she said, circles under her eyes seeming to grow even deeper.
I closed my eyes to recall what I’d seen in Mindspace. Tried to tease out details that would help her. “A man. Not old, not young. Confidant. Calm. He’s killed before – he’s killed that way before. No fumbling, no worry about details. I’m not sure he saw the kid. If he did, it didn’t break the calm. He chased after the boy – to take care of witnesses, perhaps? – annoyed when he had to go farther than he expected. I didn’t get a read of any purpose other than the killing itself, though with the woman’s panic—”
“Audrey,” Cherabino corrected. “Officer Peeler’s panic. At being strangled to death. While fighting back. Tell me something that will catch this guy. What he looks like, maybe. That’d be a good start.”
I shuffled through impressions, memories. The woman hadn’t seen her killer – she’d been strangled from the back and had other things on her mind other than looking calmly in the rearview mirror. The killer hadn’t sat around and thought emotion-drenched thoughts about what he looked like. And with all the adult emotion in the car, I’d hardly felt the kid there at all.
Apparently I was silent too long, because Cherabino said, “Well, you did what you could, I guess.”
“We can go back to the car,” I said defensively. “I’ll know better what I’m looking at this time. Maybe…”
Cherabino sighed. “They’ll be here for hours, going over every spot of physical evidence. Do you really think you’ll get something new?”
I paused. “Well, no.”
“Then we’re leaving,” she said. “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, and I need at least a little sleep.”
“Don’t we have to…?”
“It’s not my case,” Cherabino said, pragmatically.
I spent the day firmly ensconced in the interview room, talking to guilty defensive suspects and stupid defensive witnesses with spotty memories. I’d had an early-morning meeting with my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor and no additional sleep. I felt like I was running on empty, past empty, until my internal gears scraped together.
I was supposed to be talking to a local drug pusher, but I got the call to go upstairs instead. I blinked at the messenger, hardly able to process the request. “Fine,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
Paulsen – my boss – was sitting at
her desk, her office empty except for its usual snowstorm of papers. She was a young sixty-something Black woman with high standards. Standards, as she put it, that she expected to be met.
“What is it now?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed. “Now, you’ll go back into that head of yours and remember I’m your boss. The key to your continued job security.”
I took a breath. Rubbed my eyes. I needed a nap, bad. “I’ll rephrase then. What exciting assignment do you have for me today?”
She let it go, pushing some papers to the side of her desk. “North DeKalb is asking for you again. As I don’t want a cop killer roaming the streets, I’ve said yes. Cherabino will take you. I’d suggest you get ready.”
I frowned. “They didn’t seem to like me at the scene last night. And the scene will be even less substantial this morning.”
“Liking has nothing to do with it,” she said, firmly.
“What will I be doing?”
“They didn’t say.” She met my eyes. “Now, get packed.”
I sighed. More work. Peachy.
Cherabino was unusually quiet on the drive to North DeKalb, her driving – for her – relatively sane. Tired focus leaked from her, and I noticed her hands shaking, her breathing just a little fast like she’d had far too much coffee.
“Where are we going?” I asked, to distract myself from the craving. They said in the Program if you distracted yourself, you wouldn’t want it anymore. Sometimes it was true. Today maybe I was tired enough for it to be true.
“Audrey’s house,” Cherabino said. From the case in the parking garage, her mind supplied.
“Why go to the house?” I asked. No one had died in the house, had they? I felt like I was missing something, brain not quite tracking.
“Not sure,” she said, and would say nothing else. Since she spent the rest of the trip thinking about an unrelated shooting case, I couldn’t even steal it from her thoughts. Assuming she was even lying. Maybe she didn’t know. I wondered even so.
I mean, I’d as much as told her yesterday that the guy was a professional. I would have laid money on him being a hitman, a murder-for-hire guy. At the least, ex-military. It was hard to be that cold while killing; it took a lot of practice and a lot of confidence. I didn’t see where going to the house was going to get us to the hitman. Maybe they were just chasing down leads. Either way seemed dumb to invite me, but hey, if they were willing to pay the fees, the Homicide department needed the money.
Twenty minutes later, Cherabino touched the car down onto a small residential street, most of the homes small, with native red brick and small shrubs. Two lots were taken over with mammoth twenty-first century mansions, built right up to the property line. The wood on those was blackened, the porches starting to sag despite many artificial supports and a fresh paint job. The small brick houses still stood as strong as they had a hundred years ago; progress was overrated, apparently.
The house we wanted was a slightly-larger version of the same modest brick ranch style house, complete with carport and carefully-trimmed shrubs. Brightly colored toys were strewn about the front yard, one stuffed rabbit still soaked from last night’s rain. It would mold if someone didn’t bring it inside, I thought.
We got out of the car and crossed to the front door, using the sidewalk. From inside, I could hear a baby crying. I braced myself, building heavy shields to keep me from the despair already wafting from the house. This would not be fun.
Wiggles opened the door. When he saw Cherabino, he waved her in. Me he addressed cautiously. “Walk careful.”
“I understand,” I said, in a careful, calm tone. No need to get anyone any more upset than they already were. The sound of baby crying came louder from deeper in the house.
He closed the door behind us. “Jake’s in the kitchen.”
Cherabino nodded. “Anything we should focus on?” She wasn’t quite sure why she was there, but trying to bluff her way out. I sat back and let it happen; she was better in this environment than I was.
Wiggles nodded, slow. “Jake won’t say anything. And we need an ID, ASAP.”
“He’s five,” Cherabino said quietly. “Maybe you should give him some time.”
“I know he’s five, dammit. He’s my partner’s kid. But I’ll be damned if I let her killer walk away from this. He’s not talking to George. He’s not talking to me.” He looked at me. “We need him to talk, and you’re the logical choice.”
“You want me to read the kid’s mind,” I said, finally putting two and two together.
“That’s what I said.”
Great. I took a breath. “Legally, I can’t read a child under the age of thirteen without his express consent,” I said. “Unless he’s in real physical or emotional danger, or a measurable telepath. Privacy laws.”
“Audrey’s killer is out there. Walking the streets. A cop killer, you understand. A cop killer.”
People kept saying that, like it was a mantra. “It doesn’t change the law,” I said.
Wiggles’s anger swelled like a tidal wave. Cherabino grabbed my arm and pulled me into a side hallway. The ugly architectural wallpaper was faded from age.
“Could you not be difficult right now?” she hissed. “This is a cop’s worst nightmare, and you’re just making it worse for him.”
“I’ll talk to the kid,” I said. “I never said I wouldn’t.” Then, after a second: “He seems awfully attached for someone who’s just a partner.”
“A partner’s everything on the beat,” she said. “You spend more time with them than your family, you fight together, you trust them with your life.”
“But she’s a woman, and he’s, well… not dead.” I said. “There has to be some level of sexual tension, or feelings, or something.”
“Some of the older guys say women partners are better,” she said, defensively. “The adrenaline cycles are different, so someone’s always thinking, always thinking somewhere in the fight. Plus one tear isn’t going to get you screwed over.” Her mind added: why the younger guys were so macho, why they couldn’t get their shit together… (and why she couldn’t find herself a stable partner…)
I reined myself in, refusing to respond to the stability comment even though I wanted to. I wasn’t supposed to be reading her anyway. Distantly, I heard the far-off baby stop crying. I was still holding out reservations about Wiggles and the partnership.
She looked down, and I noticed the painful wallpaper again. She considered not telling me what she’d found out, decided I needed to know. She leaned forward, close, very close. The edge of her presence in Mindspace brushed against me like silk.
Her breath touched my ear. “Audrey had a Narcotics case undercover a while ago. A couple of big enemies on the street. But, she just testified in a case against a former lottery official. An official who’s Wiggle’s cousin. He’s a clean cop, by all the records. A good guy. It doesn’t necessary mean anything.”
She paused, her breath tickling my ear, painfully close. “Be gentle with Jake. He could act younger than he is. He could do – well, anything. Don’t make it worse.”
“I understand,” I said, smelling the closeness of her hair. Something inside me mourned as she stepped away.
Two more cops were standing in the Peelers’ small living room, Detective Bull and another guy from last night. Both were distrustful of me, but Bull was also nervous. I paused in the living room, Cherabino and Wiggles following me. It seemed strange he was nervous.
“I need to go,” Bull said, firmly. He turned to the back door.
Wiggles was suddenly beside him. “No,” he said with punch. “No, stay.”
Bull looked at him, wary, trying to figure out how to leave the sticky situation, angry he had to be here at all.
And Wiggles was mad, mad and guilty.
“What’s going on?” I asked, words echoing into the awkwardness. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them.
But I was closer to Wiggles, closer and I’d re
ad him once already this afternoon. I saw the trail his thoughts made – his instinctual answer to the question. I dipped in and stole them.
Huh. I’d expected a power play, the uniformed cop who’d never been promoted angry at the detective a decade his junior. Instead what I got was a rivalry, a rivalry with a woman at its center – Audrey Peeler. Bull and she had been lovers.
No one responded to my words, but they hung in the air like lead weights, making everything more intense.
Some twist of guilt rolled in Wiggles’s gut, a twist that made him even more angry, and he grabbed Bull’s arm. “You’re not going anywhere until the teep reads Jake,” he said. “It’s the least you can do, after…”
Bull stared Wiggles down. Wiggles slowly removed his arm, frustration painting the air like sparklers.
Hmm. There was something there. Something deeper than was obvious.
“Jake’s in the kitchen,” Wiggles said, still standing far too close to Bull. “Jake’s in the kitchen,” he repeated, now clearly to me.
I took my cue.
The small eat-in was decked with more brightly-colored ugly wallpaper meant to mimic blueprints. The heavy-lined background made the walls dance to the eyes, and made me nauseated. Worse was the teeth-jarring high-pitched buzzing in Mindspace that I could feel as I got closer.
“You have a quantum stasis box?” I forced out. They were easily ten times the cost of a fridge – and a waste of money. The electromagnetic field they generated as a side effect also interacted with Mindspace in a way that was already giving me a headache.
I assumed the man in the kitchen was George, Peeler’s husband. He looked absent, like he was in shock. He nodded to me – after a long moment of delay – with an empty look. He was average looking in every way, medium complexion with messy hair, wearing a wrinkled button-up shirt and juggling a baby, a toy, a jar of peanut butter, and overwhelming confused grief. The baby, maybe six months old, was hiccupping quietly.
At the kitchen table next to them, a boy of five – the same boy from last night – was chewing slowly on a peanut butter sandwich. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anyone.
“Can you turn off the stasis box?” I prompted. Thank God they were expensive enough to be rare. Keeping meat in stasis would make it last practically forever, sure. But if you actually ate your food, you didn’t need it to last forever. You needed it to last two days. The fact that the family had one of these and Peeler had driven a crap car said bad things about the couple’s relationship. Priorities all out of whack. Plus an annoyance to me, an annoyance that would keep me from doing my job if it didn’t get shut off.