CHAPTER 13
Paulsen held up a finger. One ear was cradled against a phone at her shoulder, her hand was scribbling notes, and the other hand held that finger up before returning to the phone. “No, I understand, sir. It’s a difficult budget situation for everyone. If I could get your support for a two percent . . . Absolutely, no, that’s not what I’m saying.” She paused. “Two percent is— Don’t interrupt me. Two percent is . . .” She listened, nearly huffing, for a long moment. “Fine. You have a nice day too.” She hung up the phone with a little more force than strictly necessary. “Asshole.”
She looked up and waved me in. “Close the door, please. What are you doing here so late on a Saturday? Your hours were cut.”
I closed the door and walked in a step or two. “I’m not filing for overtime. I have a bit of a situation.”
“If you don’t get a license, there’s not much I can—”
“That’s not it,” I said. “Can I sit down?”
She took a breath. “Yes, go ahead.”
Her office, normally messy, looked like a hurricane of paper had run to shore against her desk. Drifts of colored paper notes littered the floors in front of the walls, as more notes stood three deep on the walls themselves. She even had a small pile of files sitting on the guest chair, something normally too sacred to touch.
“Can I move these?” I asked.
She sighed, got up, and took the files out of my hands, placing them on top of a leaning tower of law books next to her desk. “You’re over your hours this week already, for the third week in a row. I know you work with Cherabino, but she’s salaried, and you’re not.” She straightened and held up a hand. “Even if you don’t ask for reimbursement, it’s a problem. If we get audited—which looks likely if I get this two percent increase we’re asking for—someone will go through and compare hours worked and paid, and a discrepancy on either side could land us in legal trouble. You need to go home when I tell you, Adam.”
I sat, gently. “Well, in that case I have good news for you.”
“Do you, now?” She sat as well, leaning a little forward.
“I need to take the next two days off, maybe a third.”
She sat back. “Well, that would seem to solve our hours problem neatly. I’ve got most of the part-timers in this week, so the rooms will get covered. Still, you left without warning last week. What’s the reason you need to be out?”
“Here’s where it becomes a situation.” I took a breath. Yes, I was really going to do this.
“I’m listening.”
“Remember Kara? Tall blonde, wears suits? She’s come here a couple of times as the Guild’s liaison. She’s helped solve a number of cases for us.”
“You realize you introduce her every single time she comes up? Where is this going?”
“Her uncle recently died, and she thinks it was a murder.”
Paulsen got very, very still. “We don’t have jurisdiction on Guild personnel. Koshna is very clear.”
“You don’t,” I said. “The law is considerably fuzzier if they invite an ex-Guild consultant in for opinions.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then put forth very carefully: “It sounds to me like a conflict of interest.”
Paulsen was so very, very still. Her mind was trying desperately to withhold judgment until full information was had, but the Guild was potentially the most dangerous enemy her department could have—whether the Guild meant to be or not. Normals didn’t like the Guild, didn’t trust the Guild, and having the appearance of being in bed with said Guild could shut down her job and the jobs of most of the department. Neutral was the only thing here that could work. Strictly, strictly neutral.
She met my eyes. “I’m giving you an opportunity here to explain to me why it’s not a conflict of interest.”
Other than the fact that Kara’s word might have a beneficial effect on my PI appeal? “She’s my ex-fiancée,” I said. “And she’s asked for my help. Confidentially? Her uncle is one of the leaders of the Guild. They want a neutral investigator. It’s important to them that I’m unaffiliated in this context. If we take that to its logical conclusion, the department can play the same card. It’s very important to you guys that I am also unaffiliated. We saw in the Bradley case that my contacts at the Guild could play very useful to the department.”
“And in the Hamilton case your ties to the Guild cost a good man his life,” she returned. Her mind was still open, decision unmade, but she was squirrelly about this, and about trusting me. Her worst fear was me doing something stupid behind her back again.
“You’re talking about Bellury,” I said. “Bellury and my last fall off the wagon.” It hurt, because she was right. I pulled back into myself a little. “Bellury was my fault, for being stupid.” I hadn’t called for backup when I should have done so. It would haunt me—well, it wouldn’t let me go, and that was, as Cherabino put it, as it should be. It should hurt. It should. “But,” I said, “it’s important to note that you were investigating Emily Hamilton’s death as a normal murder, not a Guild case. Her connections to the Guild were even more recent than mine. I’m not saying that what happened was anyone’s fault but mine, but I am saying that the Guild’s politics is affecting cases with normals. You still need someone who can bridge that gap. Someone neutral. And I’ve passed every drug test you’ve put in front of me. That shouldn’t be an issue, not anymore.”
She settled back in her chair, her mind going hard and calculating and a little sad. “Neutrality will have a heavy price tag for you,” she said. “I can’t put you in the interview rooms as a department representative if you don’t represent the interests of the department.”
I hadn’t expected this. I felt like I stood at the edge of a cliff. A big, wide, deep cliff, where one step would take me over the edge.
But I owed the Guild a debt for Swartz’s life. And Kara had come through for me many, many times, and Meyers had been a good guy. “You’ve said yourself it’s very likely that my job will be cut because of politics on this side anyway. And nobody’s to say you can’t continue to employ a neutral third party for casework and suspects you need insight into. You call in Piccanonni for profiling. She’s not with the department.”
“Piccanonni is Georgia Bureau of Investigation, statewide law enforcement. It’s not the same thing. I’d caution you, Adam, to think this through all the way. You’d go from likely to lose your job to almost a guaranteed loss. You may get hired back part-time as basically an assistant to Bransen’s team. If—and only if—Bransen decides you’re worth the political fallout. Either way you’re out of the interview room and out of my department.”
“You’re saying if I help Kara out you’ll fire me?” I asked carefully. The cliff was right there. Right. There! “They’re not exactly asking nicely. There have been threats.”
She sighed, looking more tired than I’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry. I really am. You need to make your best choices, but as far as this department goes, I don’t have any other choice but protecting our interests. We can work out details on finishing up whatever case you’re working with Cherabino—you deserve that much, at least—but barring a miracle I think there’s no other way this can go. Is this really what you want, Adam?”
I considered lying to her. She didn’t monitor the interview rooms much anymore, and Clark and the others for good or ill were more than used to me bailing on my usual schedule for the sake of one case or the other. Usually I came back and took all of their interviews for cases later, so they went home early, but not always. I could tell Cherabino I was in the interview room; if she was really working as many cases as all that, she wouldn’t have time to think about it. Everyone else would assume I was working a case with her. I might very well get away with time away with a few good lies.
But Swartz—Swartz said you had to face up to your decisions like a man. You had to stand up and do something, and deal with what you’d done honestly. Lying about your actions was the mark of a child.
So then, the question became, was this thing for the Guild worth my job? Threats or no, was it worth my job?
“Adam?” Paulsen prompted.
“I need the next two days off, possibly a third,” I heard myself saying. “You do what you need to do when I get back.”
Her face fell in genuine disappointment. “Clear out your desk and locker tonight. I’ll have an officer escort you off-site.”
“That’s it?” Really? How could that be it?
“I’m sorry, Adam. You’ve made your choice.” She picked up a stack of folders from the floor and opened the first one. “See yourself out.”
I felt like she’d slapped me. “You said I could work with Cherabino . . . ?”
She looked up. Her face was like stone now. “We’re done, Adam. You need to talk to Bransen now.”
She looked back down at her notes and picked up her pen, a clear dismissal.
I pulled my heart out of my boots, streaming pain, and limped out of the door. I staggered down the hall and stopped, leaning against the wall dumbly until some cop asked what was going on. He had to say it three times before it registered.
“What?” I said, my bereft tone leaking pain like the rest of me.
“I’ve been assigned to escort you to clean out your things and clear the building,” he said. A big guy, with a scar on his neck almost covered by a geometric black-and-white tattoo.
I blinked, and made myself actually be present. Actually care, though it seemed painful and pointless. I knew this guy; he was one of the special tactics bruisers who’d invaded the warehouse in the Bradley case. Though I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me. He’d been nice to me back then. He looked stern now.
“Where are we going first?” he asked.
His contempt made me angry, oddly, and I stood up. “The locker room. I have a bag there that should hold everything else. Then the cubicle upstairs. I hope you’re prepared to wait. I’m taking everything.” I swallowed, then tossed out the ultimatum: “And you’re driving me home when we’re done.”
He wasn’t happy with that one. I didn’t care.
• • •
The cruiser dropped me off in the front of my apartment building, my breath visible in the light of the streetlight above. The building was a faded former office block converted to apartments—and converted badly—in the aftermath of the Tech Wars. It had a few surprises left in the walls, surprises I’d used to my advantage, but it was, essentially, a dump. Or at least it seemed now, with my world in free fall.
For all of the lower-income families that lived here and my single neighbors, there was no drug problem in this building. I’d looked, more than once, in the early days. The lack made part of me happy, very happy; I’d have to make the trek out all the way to Fulton County to ruin my sobriety. That part had turned in anyone who’d ever sold to me in DeKalb, which was why they wouldn’t sell to me anymore. But the rest, the suspicious and cynical pack rat that still wanted the drug, that still wanted to fall off the world and get high, that part was sitting up today.
It had been a while since we saw each other last, and I waved hello tiredly as I climbed up the long flights of stairs to my apartment, every step a triumph. I was paying attention, enough attention to see if anyone was waiting for me in my apartment again, but not much else.
The rest of me was working out how to get to South Fulton, or maybe East Ponce de Leon Street, and take my chances on the yuppie blocks not far from the public housing. It was pretty late, though, and my telepathy was better but not a hundred percent at this hour. I couldn’t rely on changing the seller’s mind to see that I was okay and not a cop. I might get shot. And the buses to Fulton County could very well stop running by the time I got down there and leave me stranded.
I argued with myself, back and forth, back and forth, but it was an old, well-worn argument and one already won. I had to be down at the Guild building at eight tomorrow morning, which meant I had to leave at six thirty.
And more important, I’d have to be in the midst of countless telepaths all day. Once I’d been a liar, mind-to-mind, when I’d had to be. Once I’d kept secrets from the brethren, and largely succeeded. I was not that guy anymore, and my telepathy was not that reliable anymore. I couldn’t rely on hiding anything.
So the decision was simple: if I had any chance at all at showing up and doing what I’d promised, of not ruining all of my credibility within the first half hour, I couldn’t use tonight. I’d just told Paulsen, the best boss I’d ever had, to jump off the cliff so I could show up and actually have a chance at being the good guy for once. What was the damn point if I couldn’t follow through?
So I unlocked my door—after checking the mat was empty—and let myself in. The same empty room awaited me, a barely there kitchen with an antique microwave taking up most of the counter space. A ratty old couch and coffee table. The infinitesimal bathroom through the door on the back wall, and the depressingly empty bedroom through the door on the back right. The grand total of my kingly castle, currently dirtier than I’d meant it to get.
I made myself a cup of rehydrated dehydrated soup, continued the worn argument in my head for another hour, more out of habit than anything else, and then went back to the bedroom to lie down.
As the machine turned on, canceling out my brain waves, I pretended it canceled out the argument too. I dreamed of pack rats clawing me, and I woke up tired and far too early.
I got breakfast, scrubbed the apartment more for something to do than anything else.
Regret rode me for not falling off the wagon last night, but the decision had been clear, and regret was an old friend. He didn’t scare me anymore.
• • •
The phone at my apartment rang with a piercing shriek just before I left the door. I sighed and went back for it.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Hi, this is Rachel Muñez,” a woman’s voice said crisply. “Is this Adam Ward?”
“Yes,” I said, and sat down on my cot. “What is it?” Rachel had been one of the department accountants handling my money for years; she wasn’t warm, but she wasn’t cold either. The numbers were just the numbers to her.
“I realize it’s Sunday, but we’ve got audits all week and I wanted to make sure that I talked to you. It’s going to be the weekend before I finish up the paperwork and get the final books update done. Honestly, maybe next week. These political guys are driving me nuts. Anyway, I don’t want to hold up your accounts. If you’re willing to work with the paperwork I have right now, I can transfer ownership this morning. You’ll have one more paycheck coming, but we can—”
“Hold on. What?” I asked. I felt like I was tracking every-thing. It was still pretty darn early.
“I’m sorry. Was I unclear?” her voice asked, very tired. “Which part?”
“You’re transferring which accounts?” I asked.
A pause came over the phone. “Um, I was told you were leaving the department.”
I swallowed. “Well, yes. Paulsen’s department anyway.”
“Do you anticipate other arrangements?” Rachel asked. “I’m not trying to push you into anything. But with your relationship with the department ending, the money relationship does as well. You have a right to your accounts if you want them.”
I looked up at the ceiling. Years of other people having to approve every purchase. Like I was a child. “I do want them,” I said, a crazy, bright sense of relief popping up in the back of my head. “If we can get this done this morning, let’s do it. How much do I have?”
“Well, with the recent transfers to the Guild Medical Fund and the—”
“How much?” I asked.
“Oh. Just a second.” The sound of shuffling papers came over the line. “You have about seven thousand ROCs in cash, and another thirty in investments, plus the usual retirement funds. I’ve withheld tax for the rest of the year already, so that’s not a concern.” She paused. “Do you have a preferred bank?”
I blinked. Holy crap, that was more money than I’d had at once since my Guild days. Way more than I thought I’d had. “I thought we cleaned out the accounts for the medical stuff,” I said.
“Not quite. And you’ve been spending considerably less than you’ve been making for years. We talked about investing several times, Adam. You said to go ahead.” Her voice was annoyed. “Did I do wrong?”
“No,” I said. “No.” I racked my brain, and finally came up with the name of a credit union who’d been particularly difficult to get information from in the last case. “Let’s put the money there,” I said.
“I’ll get it done today.”
“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.
“Well, I have good news and bad news for you,” Cherabino’s voice said over the phone. I’d called her presumably to ask about the Wright case, but actually to hear her voice. With everything else . . . well, I just needed to hear her voice right now.
“Give me the good news first,” I said. I needed good news.
“Well, I read your mysterious file and did some research on the soldier project. Then I called Cornell to ask her about them. You know, Wright’s supervisor at the lab? It turns out Wright was upset when the project turned from a medical monitoring and stabilization device to an enhancement project for the military. He objected to the secretization of what they were doing—supervisor said he literally screamed at her at one point, something about the good of all mankind.”
“She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d be all that offended by that. Socially awkward and all, but she seemed to be satisfied that justice was done when he got fired.”
“That wasn’t my read of the situation at all,” Cherabino said, thinking it through. “She seemed satisfied all right, but her employees all seemed a little afraid of her. One said she had a way of lashing out at him when he did something wrong. She could say really cutting things, he said, and when he tried to defend himself he thought she was going to throw something.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman?” I asked. “She seemed so harmless to me.”
“Let’s be honest, Adam, you were hanging on her every word. Of course she seemed harmless to you. I didn’t like her.”
“I spent a lot more time with her than you did, and there’s always that one guy who complains,” I said. Cornell’d had such an interesting mind it was hard to believe she was a bad guy, but maybe I had been distracted. “Did she set off your cop instinct?”
“She didn’t seem normal,” she said cautiously.
“Really, Cherabino. Do you think she could have swung the ax that much? She’s not a big woman.”
“She runs marathons, according to her file. She has the fitness level. And the ax was at the most five pounds.”
I was disturbed at the thought that I had met someone who potentially could have killed someone that violently. Especially someone with that cool new kind of mind. “She just . . .”
“Doesn’t seem the type? Maybe. I don’t believe in types anymore. I’ve seen too many people do too many bad things.”
I took a breath. “What was the good news again?”
“Ah. The ME found a tendril of some kind of foreign biologic matter in what’s left of the back of Wright’s head. She’s been running every test known to man on it, and coming up blank. I sent her a copy of the report—and she thinks it’s a piece of this thing they were testing.”
“Contamination?” I asked.
“No, she thinks it was installed—I don’t know with or without the lab’s permission—and Wright was using himself as a test subject. And get this, Adam, the report references a section in this creature-thing designed to go down the skin on the top of the arm, you know, to control it or something. I don’t really understand the science.”
“And we had that missing piece of the arm.”
“And the back of the head,” she said almost gleefully. “Yes, exactly. That gives us motive. I say the supervisor killed him in retaliation for spilling company secrets, take it a step further, say stealing company property. She takes it back—and the rest of the ax wounds are there to cover up her primary purpose.”
“That’s . . . diabolical,” I said.
“You said whoever killed him got really focused there at the end. That it was about control. That would fit.”
I tried to remember the scene in detail. “Yeah . . . but that mind . . . I didn’t think it was a female.”
A pause. “Is that something you could get wrong? Or do I need to keep looking?”
I looped through the footage of the scene in my mind, the feel of that mind, the violence. Then back to my interactions with the supervisor. “She doesn’t have a typical female mind. And that kind of violence would skew any kind of read I’d have of someone. Most people don’t get that violent in everyday life.” I took a breath. As much as I didn’t want to think it . . . “Yeah, it’s as good a theory as any. It explains the missing pieces. If you can bring her in and get a confession, that will get one more case off your desk.”
“I’d rather you interrogate her, given the choice. She likes you already. When are you going to be here? I have some leeway in scheduling, though I’d like to get her here in the next few days.”
“Um, the thing is . . .”
“What?”
Might as well just jump in. “Paulsen said I can’t work in the interview rooms anymore, because of the Guild thing. Apparently I’ve lost my credibility.” I didn’t understand it even now. I mean, what credibility did I have to lose? I was a felon, and the cops never let me forget that anyway.
“You got yourself fired again? Wait. What Guild thing? I swear I’d like to jump through this phone and strangle you. You have to tell me this shit if I’m supposed to get you hired back!” She made a low, frustrated sound. “How bad is it? What exactly did Paulsen say?”
I sighed, and caught her up with what had happened, and about the case I’d taken on for the Guild, partially for Kara, and partially because I didn’t have any choice. I left out the debt but included the threats. “I mean, the only thing she said was that I definitely couldn’t do interview room work again right now. She said what Bransen wants to do with his team is up to him.”
She made an airy growling sound. “So I have to clear this with Bransen now. Why didn’t you tell me before we started talking casework?”
“I already have all the pieces. It’s not an information concern. Look, I know you’re overwhelmed. I figured I’ll see this Wright case through, give you as much help as I can, maybe use the results to talk to Bransen about coming on full-time. If not, there’s always the FBI.”
“I thought that was stalled.”
I sighed. “Who knows?” I paused. Worse comes to worst, if I was out on the street again . . . “Want to open a private detective agency, just you and me?” I asked, half joking.
“Don’t tempt me,” she said, a little too quickly. “They gave me another two cases yesterday. I don’t know where they think I’m getting the time for this.” Knowing her, she was already sleeping at the office to try to catch up.
“Like I said, I’d like to help.”
She sighed. “I appreciate it. Let me arrest this woman and see if we can get a confession. If we can, I’ll bring you in on a couple more cases if Bransen says it’s okay. Um, I have no idea if you’ll get paid for it.”
“If it helps get me rehired with his department, I can do without the money for a while. Besides, it helps you out.”
She huffed. “Thanks. Really. I’ll feed you at least.”
“Mexican?” I asked. She hated Mexican food, my favorite in the world.
“Not all the time.”
“Okay.”
No matter what I told Cherabino, I knew it wasn’t all that likely Bransen would hire me on at the end of all of this—for one thing, I’d have the exact same problems justifying my job that I’d had with Paulsen. I really did have to call the FBI, and see if they’d meant that job offer a few weeks ago. But here, now, I didn’t have anything else to lose, and Swartz’s words just wouldn’t leave me.
“Cherabino?” I asked.
“What?”
I jumped in, no prep, rip the bandage off. “I wondered if you’d like to accompany me to a restaurant tonight.”
There was a pause, and I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking. We’d been to restaurants plenty of times; why was I asking? “Like a date?” she asked.
That didn’t seem promising. Normally I was better at this, damn it. “I—”
“Okay. But you’re taking me somewhere nice, right?”
I closed my mouth so as to avoid the appearance of a dead fish. “Um, well—”
“Yeah, your payment thing. I’ll bring my wallet and you can get the accountants to reimburse. We can go Dutch. I can play the feminist card. Whatever. That’s not really the point, is it?”
“No, not at all.” I blinked. Really? That was a yes? I thought on my feet. “How about the French place on the square?” They had candles on the tables and everything; you could see them through the window.
“I’ve never been there.”
“Want to walk over after work?” I asked. Cherabino was one of those health nuts; she’d rather walk anywhere than drive, and I was getting so I didn’t mind. “Let’s say seven? I can meet you at the station.”
There was a long pause on the phone.
“If tonight’s not a good—”
“No, that’ll work,” she said. “Seven sounds good.”
A minute or so later, I hung up the phone. Part of me had relaxed. The rest was twisted up in knots. What in the world had I gotten myself into? I was going on a date. A date. With Cherabino.