We dragged our prisoner into Booking with full ceremony. Dirty, pissed, and with a loudly mumbling burden, we made quite a sight. Two bored cops followed us in our little parade through the department—it was day shift and lunchtime on a slow day, so any distraction was welcome. We probably weren’t as gentle as we could have been with the suspect.
The booking officer looked up. “What’d he do?” she asked, actually interested.
“Tried to mug us within sight of the police station,” I said flatly, before Cherabino had a chance to get into it. Judging by her expression—and her treatment of the suspect—she’d happily get into a diatribe if I let her.
The two trailing cops laughed, loudly. The booking officer tried hard, but she also snickered.
“And you ended up looking like that?”
The cop behind me guffawed. “Must have been quite a fight!”
“Well,” I said with full dignity and no small frustration, “it was.”
As soon as Cherabino got the guy booked in, I pushed her back to her cubicle to cool down, telling her I’d finish the paperwork. She left with noises of cleaning up in the ladies’ room. The cut on her cheek was still seeping blood, and she looked pissed.
The booking officer scanned in the paper forms as soon as I could fill them out, but we still had to have the original hard copies filed away. It was stupid, mindless work, and exactly what I needed to calm back down. The junkie’s face, his desperation, was sticking with me all too clearly.
I focused instead on the stupid hard-copy forms, line after line, box after box filled out in pencil in block caps so the secretaries could read them. Hard copy, for all it was dumb, was necessary. Nobody remembered losing all their records in the Tech Wars the way the cops did. Electronic quarantine and antivirus, separation and security—they were all good to have and the cops were fanatical about them. More important was keeping data and transmissions separate, checking every byte of new data, every new program as if it was the new End of the World. Because once it had been.
No one remembered the war like the government, like the cops, who told one another the stories over and over again. Bombs had split the sky, and worse, the superviruses split our minds from the inside, until the toll of death made people look at computer technology like the Black Plague. Even now, more than a half century later when small computer chips were let out on a leash—small ones barely powerful enough to run an oven timer, and still frightening to the diehards—the real Tech, the sentient computers and the implants and anything powerful, was outlawed with terrible penalties.
People were afraid. Still. Terrified of the computers, the data, even the smallest transmission of information over unsecured lines. So if it took three days to send an e-mail through all the layers of Quarantine, if the small Web was regarded with the same respect/fear as a pit viper, if even Cherabino had to have a thorough background check and be monitored constantly in the Electronic Crimes works for fear she’d come across something truly dangerous, well, a lot of people had died in the Tech Wars. A lot of data had been erased beyond retrieval; a lot of holes had been made in the history books. A lot of loss, period. Hard copy? Hard copy was safe. Hard copy was forever. And if India and Mars and Brazil made fun of the West for our caution, well, they hadn’t taken the brunt of the Tech Wars, had they? They hadn’t died in the millions and rotted on the street and watched while their neighbors died, trapped in their houses while a madman held them captive through their Tech. Never, never again would that be possible, we had sworn. Never.
And so here we were, fear burned in the memory—and schooling—of every American, every European since. Caution was king, even from those like Cherabino who policed the tiny Net that remained. Some things would never happen again. Could never happen again.
It was still a pain in the ass as far as paperwork went. Hard copy was slow, tedious, and had a regrettable tendency toward paper cuts. But even I wasn’t stupid enough to suggest a change. Biology, artificial organs, physics, anti-graviton generators for flying cars, drug-assisted telepathy—the world might be perfectly fine with those kinds of technologies. They didn’t talk to one another. They didn’t grow minds of their own. But computers? Data? Tech? A complete WorldNet with instant e-mail and a phone system connected to the computers? Not in my lifetime. People were just too afraid, with too good a reason. The population might be rebounding, but memory didn’t leave that easy. So I filled out paperwork, hard copy, and didn’t complain.
I finished checking the last box. I said good-bye to the booking officer and the secretaries and found my way to the men’s room to wash the pencil lead off my hands.
In the elevator I ran into Paulsen. Papers and coffee flew everywhere—I managed to grab the cup as it half spilled on my shirt. The stale donut I’d grabbed was a lost cause, now covered in dirt. I sighed and bent over to pick up the papers from the floor. At least Paulsen helped.
“I was looking for you,” she said, once I’d regained my mental balance. “We have a hot one in the interview room.” She met my eyes. “Wait for me before you start, okay? Recording tech has the brief.”
She handed me the last paper and a napkin before getting off at the main floor. I hit the button to the basement, still mourning the lost donut. I’d wanted that donut, damn it.
The doors opened up on a badly lit hall with nine doors—four interview rooms with mirrored walls that let the cops observe while the suspects sat, plus the entrance to the holding cells farther on. All the doors had unnecessary bars on the windows for effect. But only the entrances to the actual interview rooms, the housing for suspects, had double lights above the doors to show when they were in use. The third room was full and interviewing, and the second had a suspect but no interviewer. I was betting that was me.
I opened the second cop’s door, nodded hello to the recording tech. The room was long and skinny, filled with boxy recording equipment with built-in self-diagnostics and absolutely no connection to any other equipment. The recording ban in public places had gotten a—carefully controlled—reprieve in police interview rooms, but it was still bound up in a lot of laws and regulations I was glad not to keep track of. The interviews were always transcribed, printed in permanent ink, and filed within twenty-four hours. The army of secretaries upstairs wasn’t just for show.
I lit up a smoke; the recording tech turned on the air filter without comment. We’d wait however long it took Paulsen to arrive, hopefully a while. It’d give me some time to settle.
Through the glass, the suspect was pacing the room. At the moment, he was facing away from us, head down, looking like any other self-important lowlife. “What’s he accused of?” I gestured with the cigarette, the smoke making sinuous trails on its way to the filter.
“Actually, this one’s on spec.” Paulsen’s voice came from behind me.
I turned. “The multiples case?”
She frowned, the wrinkles on her face deepening. “Might be. Department received an anonymous note this morning telling us to talk to the guy. Likely another trafficker trying to improve his own business, but we’re going to check it out anyway.”
“Trafficker?” I said cautiously. “You mean drugs.”
“Yeah. You’re interviewing the beta for a ten-block radius in East Atlanta. For the local Darkness ring, apparently, not just drugs, though of course we can’t prove anything.”
I took a breath. “Anonymous note, huh? Does sound like a local squabble with amateur tactics. Any fingerprints?”
She snorted, as if to say, “Of course.” “The thing’s sitting in the lab waiting for the techs to get to it. Low priority, but might turn into something. I want you to ask him about the multiples case either way. It’s his territory; he probably knows something we don’t.”
The tech’s boredom lightened suddenly, and I turned back to the glass to see what he was reacting to.
It was then I got my first good look at our suspect’s face, and my stomach sank. “Joey the Fish? That’s your beta? Seriously?”
“Do you know him?”
I ground out the cigarette. “He was muscle for Harry and Marge, maybe part-timer for some other groups. You’re serious, he’s second in charge?”
“For ten blocks, yeah.” Paulsen’s nose wrinkled, and she cranked up the air filter to try to clear the air.
“Peachy.”
Joey was my fault, and I knew it. When I went clean—and then when I came back on the wagon the second time—I’d helped take out all of the guys who’d ever supplied me with Satin. Vindictive? Not even a little. I’d helped take down all the big fish, the Harries and Juans and Marges; I’d sicced the cops on them in one industrial-strength drug raid after another, until the last guy who’d helped me sell out my soul was off the streets. So the little fish, like Joey, had really risen in the ranks. Unfortunately, he knew me and had access to plenty of info on me I’d rather the cops not remember. Now I was going to interview him, in front of Paulsen. This day just kept getting better and better.
“Is there anything else I need to know about this?” I gestured to the glass.
“Nothing I can tell you right now.” Department policy—written by Paulsen herself—was nobody prejudiced my interviews.
Would Joey recognize me? I did look a lot different now, bulked up from regular eating and lifting weights, had even shaved. I’d grown out my hair and lost the half-dead look of desperation. Maybe he wouldn’t even question the clean-cut interrogator. It would be a big bet—for high stakes—but a fair one.
“Let me get my files,” I told Paulsen, and she nodded.
Assuming he didn’t bring up my past, I knew exactly how to deal with Joey. Me and the file clerk had gotten together a nice little collection of repro files, glossy photos of gory crimes solved while my grandparents were still in diapers. I retrieved the smaller set from the file room and started back; they were three files, not real thick, the glossies inside only medium-shocking and unlikely to fall out without my meaning them to.
Joey’s room was the worst of the four. It was done for atmosphere. Ancient, beat-up furniture you wouldn’t wish on your enemies, so dirty I couldn’t sit in there too long before I needed to steam myself clean.
The man himself looked like he hadn’t showered in at least a week, and even across the room I could smell rancid sweat and caked-in pollution. He was wearing the latest street fashion, an upscale fan-denim, faux-fur jacket combo, his hair greased from sweat, his face streaked dirty from the air outside. The look in his eyes carried your final impression, though, a look that mixed anger and a subtle intelligence that just wouldn’t let you dismiss him.
I slammed the door open with a bang against the inside wall. Dirt from the old ceiling fell in a flurry, but I ignored it, doing my best angry-badass walk to the table. I was a good enough telepath to project at low levels even to the “deaf” non-Able like Joey—I did it then, nothing illegal, nothing coercive, just the kind of menacing anger that raised the hairs on your spine.
The other officer in the room—my official observer this round, though Joey wouldn’t know the difference—blinked twice, but then settled back complacently in his chair to the right. Bellury was an old cop, uniformed, had never really risen through the ranks but hadn’t wanted to either; he was past retirement but didn’t want to quit. We worked well together. He even sometimes gave me some pointers on the best way to legally threaten a suspect.
Joey looked a little disconcerted at the anger in the air. When I slammed the repro files on the table in front of him, he shifted back. I pulled the chair out, hard—it screeched. I reversed it and sat down, my hands crossed over the top. I leaned forward.
“You’ve been a very bad boy, Joey,” I said, with menace. I checked his mind—no recognition. He had no idea who I was. Good.
I opened the top file, the jumbled-up one with ink too light to be read upside down. “Manslaughter, arson, grand theft auto, assault and battery…” I went on for another few seconds, making it about halfway down the randomized list of crimes considered felonies in the state of Georgia. I stopped, abruptly, and gave him a look. It was the same look my father had given me over the vidphone when he’d found out about my poison—mingled horror, disappointment, and damning wrath.
Joey sat back in the chair, crossed his arms, tapped his foot. “Didn’t do it.” I didn’t need telepathy to tell he was lying, but it certainly didn’t hurt my act to get a confirmation. He was guilty of something on the list—being a beta, probably several somethings—and we both knew it. The trouble was, I had to get him to admit to guilt out loud.
“Didn’t do what?” I said. Maybe I’d get lucky; he’d think about something too hard.
He looked at me. “Nothing on that list. I’m a fucking model citizen.”
I pretended to study the paper in front of me. “Really? That’s not what the file says,” I responded. And if he hadn’t been caught red-handed on something, the cops just weren’t doing their jobs.
Silence reigned in the room. I could feel him thinking, the wheels turning. A careful assessment of risk and reward. Finally Joey asked, “What do you want?”
“I want you to start talking.” With nothing more than a note, I was fishing anyway. I wanted him to dwell on one of the flashes I’d seen in his head—let me see the violence a little closer, let me get him to admit to it. Or something. I was bored, and Paulsen was watching.
I felt a decision and Joey opened his mouth. I thought for a second I had him. But no.
“What am I supposed to talk about, exactly, then? I ain’t a mind reader.”
“No, that’s me, Joey,” I said, and his eyebrows drew together. “Level Eight telepath, in case you’re wondering. I’m required to tell you if you ask.”
“A teep? Silver spoon in your mouth fucking teep. What’re you doing at a police station?”
“I’m a consultant,” I returned evenly. “I’m consulting.”
After a pointless staring contest during which he imagined at least three ways to hurt me, I got bored and decided to switch tactics. Maybe he knew something about the multiples case. He was from the right territory.
“What I’m asking today has to do with the six dead bodies found on your block, not a mark on them. Word on the street is it’s your block, that you arranged the hits yourself.”
“The ones in the paper?” The side of his mouth crooked. “That’s what this is about?”
“Those are the ones. Why? You know anything about them I should know?”
“Sure, there’s a lot of things you should know.” He crossed his arms. “But I don’t have anything to say.”
I cranked up the low-level anger projection and smiled my best evil smile. “Oh, you have plenty to say. I’d hate to have to call in an outstanding mind-warrant to pull it out of you myself.”
Bellury next to me suppressed a snort. Yeah, I knew, the odds of me getting a warrant of any kind weren’t good—ex-felon, after all—and for a mind-warrant, it was just asking for trouble. As ridiculous as saying the pope was my homie. But the suspect didn’t know the difference.
Joey frowned. “You wouldn’t.”
I sat back, still smiling evilly. “I would.” Not that I was exactly eager to roll around in the particular pile of waste that was Joey’s mind; even across the table, his mental presence felt as sour as his smell. But I would if I had to.
He was looking at the table, at his hands, very intently. He was also thinking, hard, in scattered pieces I couldn’t follow without tipping him off to my probe.
Joey, sprawled out in the chair, put a hand on the table. His mental scales of risk and reward had settled on him talking. “Not a single mark on ’em, scared to death like dog-caged rats? Those’re the ones?” I nodded, and he continued. “You never found ’em all. ’Bout three? Four? A month since May. Nobody from around here, just turned up dead here.”
“Why haven’t we found the other dozen bodies? Seems unlikely we’d just suddenly start finding them. Tell me the truth, Joey.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I heard somebody made a deal with somebody else to hide the bodies, and, say, stopped later when up the line the boss gets angry.” Meaning him and his immediate superior Maloy—well, in the beginning anyway. But I had to get him to say it out loud for the recorders.
“Your boss?” I asked to confirm.
“Maybe we’re saying farther up,” Joey said. “Not sure who exactly. But the word came down. Nobody deals with the Frankies anymore. Frankies can hide their own fucking bodies.”
Who the hell were the Frankies? He wasn’t even picturing them, but he was sure as hell angry at them. An opportunity. Any time there was a falling-out, there was a weakness to exploit.
“So who do you figure hid the bodies, Joey?” I asked. “You dumped them in the alleys what, early morning?” Behind me I could feel Paulsen get very, very interested.
“Wasn’t me, and I don’t know nothing,” Joey said pointedly. “But maybe we’re saying bodies before that.”
“Before that?”
“Could be,” Joey said.
“Okay, where are the bodies hidden, then?” Was he just making this stuff up? Didn’t feel like it from his thoughts, but there was a lot he wasn’t thinking about on purpose.
He just looked at me.
Different angle. Pretend to know what’s going on even if I don’t. “Who are the Frankies, then? Germans?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why would you think that?”
I made myself stop tapping on the table—just in case—just in case. “Tell me what the Frankies are. Who they are.”
He was suspicious of me now, but he had decided to talk and wasn’t going to go back on that quickly. “Frankies are guys from the north side, rich guys. Wouldn’t give their names. Boss-man says we gotta call them something.”
“So why Frankies?” I asked. “Sounds like a stupid name to me.”
He shrugged. “Boss-man, he says they’re messing in stuff they don’t need to be messing in. He’s the boss-man, you know? If he calls them the Easter Bunny, I go find eggs.”
Okay. I took a moment to get that image out of my head. “Tell me about the Frankies. What do they look like?”
“I told you. White guys, young one, old one—not too old, fifty maybe. The young one talks more, yells a lot. Old one has a purple patch on his jacket he keeps covering up like he thinks we can’t see. He’s always worried.”
A Guild patch—he was picturing something like a Guild patch. I knew they were involved somehow! The brain damage alone…
But it wasn’t any good if I didn’t confirm it for the recorder. I took a second to sketch out the Guild telepath patch on a piece of paper and do another couple wrong ones, the Ruten space shuttle service patch and one I made up on the spot. I pushed the paper over to Joey. “Anything look like what you saw?”
He pointed to the Guild’s, and I handed him the pencil so he could circle it. He did, and I gloated internally for a long second before getting back to work.
“So how do you know so much about the Frankies?” I asked him after he was done. “You see them kill those people?”
Joey shut down like I’d flipped a switch. “Didn’t see anything,” he said. Huh. First time he’d shut down. Could mean nothing but…
“Your boss dealing with the Frankies directly, Joey, cutting you out of the deal? Must be worth a lot of money, a bit of body disposal like that.”
He set his jaw and thought nasty thoughts about me in specific, creatively nasty thoughts. “Didn’t see anything.”
“How do you know so much about the Frankies, then, Joey, if you didn’t see anything?”
He paused, looked at me suspiciously. “I hear plenty. Just about the time they tell you not to ask no more questions, people start asking ’em. I keep my ears open. Keep my eye on the business, you know? A lot of attention on the neighborhood for no reason. I don’t like the Frankies, nobody here does.”
For the record, I said, “Because they killed a bunch of people and dumped them in your neighborhood after you made a deal to dump them somewhere else.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s insulting, you know? And even if I was inclined to look the other way, too much of that, it’s bad for business. Too much attention. And they’re cutting us out of the game. Bad for business. Somebody should cut them out of the game, you know, all the way out.”
I ignored the veiled death threat. I needed more details, some actual hard facts I could use. I started tapping the table. “What kind of game we talking, Joey?”
“The Frankie game,” Joey said with a bit of an attitude. “All the Dead, Dead, and the money.”
“Where’s the money, Joey? What money?”
He looked at me for a long moment. Apparently he was willing to help me only so far. He looked down at the table, at my tapping hand. I stopped as I felt him recognize the gesture and try to place it.
Quickly. “The bodies found in your neighborhood, the ones killed without a mark?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re saying the Frankies killed those seven people?”
“You said there were six. Paper said six too.”
Bellury gestured significantly. We weren’t disclosing the last body. Crap. At least it would give me an excuse to distract Joey.
I backpedaled like a marathon biker. “Six, then. Sorry. I have trouble with numbers sometimes.”
“Dyslexia?”
“Yes,” I gritted out.
“You should go to some of them classes. Really helped a buddy of mine.”
“I’ll look into it,” I lied. This was good, probably. He’d never believe the guy he’d known then would struggle with the words. Even high as a kite, I’d done crosswords. Well, when I’d been in touch with reality.
Joey shifted in his chair. I think somewhere in his subconscious he did remember me, and that was probably the only reason he was being even this friendly. I hated it. I hated him and the whole former life of mine he stood for, but I couldn’t exactly stop him talking to prove it.
Joey sat back in his chair. “You’re not really a telepath. You’re bluffing with me.”
“That so? Well, I know that regardless of what’s on the file, you’ve stolen at least three cars personally. Before you started muscling for Marge. The first was a”—of course, now he was thinking about it—“bright yellow classic Camaro. Black stripe. Second was a Mercedes A-34400.”
He looked very disconcerted. “There’s no way you could know that.”
“Want me to tell you how you did it?” I asked. Parlor trick, but it would do the job.
“What do you want?” he asked me in a dangerous tone.
“I need to know how all of this relates. Something I can use.”
“What can you use?”
My eyes narrowed. “Dead bodies. Frankies. Your neighborhood. Why?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
I held his eyes with a small smile. I faced scarier things than him every day in the mirror.
“The boss man doesn’t like the Frankies,” he said flat out. “He don’t care who knows that. They’re making a lot of trouble for the neighborhood, bad for business.”
“Who’s the boss-man?”
He snorted and leaned back. “You think I’m going to tell you that?”
“I need a name.”
“Maloy,” he spat out, with a good flash of the man’s face and the worry that something had happened with the man out of town. I had no idea what to do with the information.
“And proof of the killings,” I said. “Something to connect them to the Frankies.”
Joey shifted in his chair. He’d made a deal with the guys—or Maloy had anyway—and he was thinking he couldn’t break it, couldn’t turn the bastards into the cops. Maloy had forbidden it.
I frowned. “I’ll get a police sketch artist in here so you at least can give us a picture of the Frankies. How do you know they’re the guys we’re looking for? I’d be very disappointed if you gave us the wrong ones.”
“I’m no good at the sketches,” Joey said. “You going to pull stuff out of my brain? Start something here? Or are you going to let me go?” I felt his decision not to buck Maloy no matter what happened—to hang in there until the man got back, even if it was in a holding cell.
He set his mouth. Let me feel his contempt for rich telepaths born with the fuckin’ silver spoon. He wasn’t going to do anything else today.
Standing up, I grabbed my repro files and waved Bellury with me into the hallway for a chat.
“Can I arrest him? Or at least hold him for a while?”
Bellury lifted an eyebrow. “Can you prove he’s committed a crime?”
“Not unless you’ll take my word for it.”
“Hard evidence. Something on the recorder?”
“Well, no.”
“Then you can’t arrest him, can you?” He shrugged in a way only old cops can. “Why don’t you go on to Paulsen and I’ll take care of the guy, huh?”
I sighed. “Okay.”
In the interview observation room on the other side of the glass, Paulsen was seated in the only wobbly chair, alone, a paper in front of her. She’d obviously sent the recording tech away already.
“Editor sent over a copy of tomorrow’s lead story.” She offered it to me. Her voice was more intense, her waves in Mindspace more angry than her actions would suggest.
“‘Serial Killer Stalks East Atlanta,’” I read. Crap. “This is what the mayor wanted not to happen, right?”
“That’s correct.” She stood, her hands going to her lower back as she looked at nothing in particular, her anger simmering under the surface. “When the mayor gets his morning coffee, Captain Harris is going to get a very unpleasant phone call. Branen is going to have an unpleasant morning apologizing. And I—well, I had a very long list of meetings before this happened, and I don’t imagine the list is getting any shorter.” Her eyes focused on me. “Good work in there. It’s a whole lot of nothing, but between that and the forensics from the last scene, at least we’ll have something to show.”
“It’s not a whole lot of nothing. Remember the patches Joey identified? I’ve got his mark on it confirming. No mistaking what it was. Plus he’s saying there’s more bodies we haven’t found.”
She shrugged. “Not important. His credibility is nonexistent.”
I realized I hadn’t identified the patch out loud. Sloppy of me. “That’s the Guild patch. The Telepaths’ Guild? Remember them?”
“I’ve had—”
I barreled ahead. “At least one of the Frankies is Guild! I was suspecting two—”
“Do not interrupt me. I have had a hell of a day and am about to have a hell of an evening.” She took a deep breath. “Whether Joey’s testimony means anything or not is something you and Branen will have to figure out.”
“We need to go to the Guild,” I insisted. “For information if nothing else. The brain damage…”
She stopped, listening now. “What brain damage?”
“I thought you were up on this. The coroner yesterday.”
“Don’t sass. You will treat me with respect. This is not my case. If it weren’t for the goodness of my heart, it wouldn’t be yours either. Now, tell me what it is you think is so important.” She looked at me critically, and I knew what I said in the next few minutes would determine whether she’d ever listen to me again.
I sucked in air. “Every victim has brain damage in the parietal lobe, in the area controlling Mindspace processing. The victim’s brains were burned out from within.”
“You mean a stroke?” She was listening, arms crossed while I could faintly feel an ache in her back.
“No, a literal burn, an excess of energy. They were killed with the mind. I’d lay good money on it. I’m betting it’s those Frankies Joey was talking about—the ones with the Guild patch. Not easy to get if you’re not Guild.” And though it stuck in my throat to say it, I continued. “We need to call them, Lieutenant. I know we agreed we wouldn’t, but I’m finding more and more details that tell me we need to. As much as it’s the last thing I want to do. You want this guy—these guys—off the street, you want the murders to stop, we need to contact the Guild.” At minimum, I needed a list of names to cross-check with Joey’s description. I knew better than to trust the list they gave the cops.
“It’s quite a can of jurisdiction worms you’re talking about, a can I don’t see any reason to open,” Paulsen said. “And I don’t know why you’re the one bringing this up. We’ve already made the decision.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. But if Joey’s right, and it’s two Guild guys killing—at least seven bodies that we know about? Maybe more? That’s not an accident. That’s not an oops-I-didn’t-mean-to-kill-the-poor-citizen moment. That’s somebody with purpose, maybe two guys with purpose. I can’t be everywhere. I can’t protect everyone. And all it takes is five seconds, five seconds for someone to burn your brain from the inside.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “Why didn’t you say this before, when we were talking about the killer in the first place?”
I took a breath. “To be honest, we’re not supposed to talk about details. The training is limited to maybe a handful of guys. There’s rules, Enforcement. Process. I’d rather not deal with any of that crap, trust me. But I can’t be everywhere at once. We need to call them. There’s things they can do we can’t touch.”
She leaned back, keeping a lid on her anger only with difficulty. “I swear, you were put on this earth to make my life difficult.” She blew out a line of air. “The Guild’s trouble. You yourself have said it a hundred times. And I’m not convinced we need them. Two guys, well, we can track the records, start eliminating suspects. Sounds like something you should do. Like something you should have done before this.”
“I can try to run down the records, cross-check.” I folded my arms. “But half of the guys with that training are off the books on purpose. Black ops.”
“Of course they are,” Paulsen said. She muttered under her breath for a good long moment, and I did not listen in.
“We need to call the Guild,” I repeated, though it burned to say. “They have resources, names, and data that we need. Maybe they’ll even share.”
She looked up, scrutinizing my face, my body language. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Um, what to say? I settled on a version of the truth. “There’s a lot I’m not telling you. I can’t tell you, kicked out or not—there are a lot of Guild secrets I only know of through rumors. I’m not getting my ass in trouble for rumors. But I can tell you this much: At least one of the killers is Guild. Not affiliate, not I-joined-because-you-made-me-and-I’ll-just-coast-along, but hard-core, invested, I-know-the-company-secrets kind of Guild. The I’m-not-listed-in-any-public-database kind of Guild. The scary kind. The kind we probably can’t touch legally. We need help here, Lieutenant.”
She seriously considered it, and a chill ran through me. Was I really asking for this? Killer or no, breaking ethics or no, these were the people who kicked me out. Who humiliated me. And who might easily come after me for telling their secrets. I was not the guy I was ten years ago. I was not the golden boy, the genius professor, the idealist anymore. I was a drug addict, a cynic—a doubter. Pathologically. I knew all the things that could go terribly wrong, and if I reported every little violation of ethics, I’d never stop. People broke the rules. That was life.
I took a breath, clamped down on all of my complex feelings about the Guild. I was probably making myself a bigger target by doing this, but I didn’t care. There was part of me that was still that idealist telepath. Part of me that thought killing with the mind was a sin worse than murder with a knife. A part of me that still lived by those ethics, those Guild ethics. I was in trouble, I thought. I was arguing for contacting the very people who made my life living hell. But I couldn’t take it back.
Lieutenant Paulsen took a deep breath. “Get out of here. I’ll talk to Branen, but I don’t see why you can’t call them for information if it’s so incredibly important to you.”
I looked in the face of what I’d asked for, scary as hell. And I didn’t run away, not quite. I kept it to a walk. A sedate and dignified walk.