Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  “I thought we weren’t saying serial.”

  “Multiple, then. Whatever.” Cherabino took a turn. Now the buildings on either side were three stories tall with cracking facades and battered brick, making the small street claustrophobic.

  She pulled into a weed-grown rocks-and-grass field labeled parking and cut off the car. I let go of my grip on the handle.

  Cherabino turned to look at me, tension in her brown eyes. “You okay?” I knew she was referring to earlier, on the porch, the craving that still sat in the back of my head like an unwelcome neighbor. She could smell it when I got twitchy, after five years of working together on and off, and she’d taken the last dive off the wagon very personally.

  I looked at her, backlit by the sun like an angel, a grumpy beautiful angel. A lock of hair had escaped from her bun and lay across the soft curve of her cheek. I suppressed a sudden urge to tuck it behind her ear. I was supposed to keep my hands and mind to myself. Even if I wanted more sometimes.

  “Okay?” Her voice cracked like a whip, bringing me back.

  I coughed and sat back. “I’m fine.” Probably I’d say that if I was lit on fire and covered in supercancer, but that was beside the point. “Um, crime scene?”

  “Yeah.” She opened the car door and let the heat in. “Time to go to work.”

  I got out of the car, the strength of the heat and the sun nearly knocking me over. I put on a pair of cheap sunglasses and hurried after Cherabino, who was moving toward a nearby alley. Judging by the wind blowing a certain smell our way, our body was in that direction.

  Something she’d said earlier was bothering me, and I fished it out of memory. “Why a stroke?” I asked. “I thought you said they had nothing in common.”

  She glanced back, nose scrunched up against the smell. “They don’t. Just the brain damage.”

  “That’s what a stroke is, Cherabino.”

  She shook her head, her face growing cold as she prepared herself for the scene ahead. “Not if it’s specific. All the victims have damage in exactly the same spot.”

  I stopped walking. It took her a minute to realize I’d fallen behind—a minute before she was yelling at me to hurry the hell up.

  This was not good, I thought, as I complied. This was very not good.

  The alley was long and skinny, two painfully hot brick walls behind the abandoned shell of a Thai restaurant. There was an empty dumpster at one end, coated with the smell of old garbage, a smell that mixed in bad ways with the reek of three-day-old decaying body in the heat. I told myself I never had to eat Thai again if I didn’t throw up. No vomiting in front of the cops. I was a consultant, not a cop, and they’d never let me live it down.

  Three forensic techs filled the alley with careful thoughts while they took samples of every conceivable surface and mark. Two more detectives and a couple of beat cops were here, murmuring among themselves, angry at their helplessness to catch this guy. They deferred to Cherabino but gave me hostile looks.

  Myself, I was standing maybe six feet away, near the mouth of the alley, trying to take in the scene.

  Cherabino came up behind me with an electronic notebook. She was one of maybe six detectives in the department authorized to carry them, since she helped out with Electronic Crimes. She had to pass a background check to do it, and the notebook didn’t even have a transmitter. Police data within spitting distance of a transmitter was just asking for trouble—even those of us too young to remember the Tech Wars could agree to that.

  “You about ready?” Cherabino asked.

  I noted the lab techs. “Any physical evidence to link the cases to this point?”

  She sighed. “Not yet. We’re waiting on the lab for a few generic fibers, a couple of footprints, piddly stuff. I’m not holding my breath.”

  “The labs backed up again, huh?”

  “Yeah. Since the mayor called, maybe we’ll get bumped up in the queue. But I don’t think there’s anything there to find.”

  I took a moment to dip my toe into Mindspace, see what I was facing. “We need to clear out the alley,” I told her.

  “Why?” She looked up from her notes.

  “Because.”

  Cherabino sighed and tucked her notebook under her arm. She moved away from the wall, took a deep breath—somehow, without gagging—and yelled at the crime-scene techs. “Everybody out!”

  She dealt with the murmuring, the threats, and the complaining without batting an eye. I stayed against the wall, out of the way, until she gestured me forward. Impatiently.

  I moved to the center of the scene, six inches from the dead body. The smell was almost overwhelming; the only reason anyone had found the body, after all, was the smell leaking into a shop three doors down.

  I fought down bile at my first look; the face was swollen horribly and covered in maggots. The thing had emptied its bowels, as dead bodies tend to do, which only made the smell—and the insect issue—worse. I made myself change my pronoun, after taking a closer look at the clothes. He. He had been out three days in the worst of the heat and pollution, at the height of the summer, I told myself. He couldn’t help this.

  His clothes had originally been clean, well kept; he’d been wearing pricey workout gear, new shoes, with a short haircut. Probably athletic, considering the attire, but hard to tell for sure. His dark complexion was still obvious if you could get your brain to focus past the flies. Black man, like one of the others, I thought. Couldn’t tell the age, but not a kid and not old.

  I wanted my poison, but my mind wasn’t kaleidoscoping, my hands weren’t shaking, and I had control over my stomach—mostly. I had to hold back a gag as the wind changed. I was okay. Time to work.

  “May I?” I asked Cherabino. She allowed me—reluctantly—to use her as an anchor when I went deep enough into Mindspace to need one.

  “I guess,” she said, and braced herself, holding out the “hand” I needed as the anchor. She blanked her mind so forcefully I knew she was hiding something. It took a real effort not to find out what it was, not to pull it from her mind. I didn’t need her cooperation. I was strong enough—and well trained enough—that she probably wouldn’t even know. But she was off-limits, and doing me a favor. I’d respect her and leave it alone.

  She made some scathing comment I ignored as I eased all the way down into Mindspace, until I felt the vibration of the minds of the forensic techs who had just left. I should have had her clear them out earlier; two of the men had been excited about a strip club they’d seen last night, and ethereal images of the dancers marred the surface of the space, mixed with the intense anger and frustration coming from the cops.

  The rest of my senses faded away, grayed out until Mindspace was all I could perceive. My link with Cherabino trailed up into reality behind me like a long, flat, yellow extension cord—yellow where no yellow should ever be. I could not see in this space, but I knew its depths and its shallows in the back of my head, a picture made by vibrations like a bat echoing through the night, a world complete without light.

  The alley was full of emotion-ghosts, layer upon layer of shifting vapors left by excited minds on their way to something else. The walls were porous here, and I could feel the very faint ghosts of harried restaurant workers through the bricks, while outside insects swarmed with flittery hive minds over the rotting food in the dumpster. The dancers the techs had created leaped around imaginary poles, fading already.

  A few old junkie-spikes dotted the walls, most from cigarettes or heroin, the occasional street cocktail. None were very recent, and none had the cloud-cut feel of a high-grade Satin boost.

  In the center of the alley there was a cold void, both expected and unusual. From the body itself I felt only absence, something I expected since his mind would have gone on to…wherever minds went when they died. But the void was still there. Three days after the death, it was still there. Something was off.

  “The victim died here, in the alley,” I said, and in the back of my mind felt Cherabino
making note of it.

  Most of the other bodies were killed off-site, she said, as if from a hundred miles away. Any idea how it was done?

  I walked out carefully and tested the area around the void. Fear permeated the space, and with it the stench of death so terrifying, anyone with any trace of Ability would know something bad happened here. I gulped down bile. This was probably why the victim hadn’t been robbed; no one with any Ability or any sense at all was going to get this close. The techs all had to be deaf as doornails.

  I tried to put it into words: “He knew he was going to die, was dying already, no details on how. He was terrified—it’s pretty bad. Very bad. But…” I took a closer look. Something was wrong, the ghost of his mind almost…patchy. Disappearing in places, strong in others. “His ghost is wavering in and out like a bad radio station, even now. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  I combed the area carefully, looking for the traces of the killer. I found him, his mind separate from the victim’s. He was worried, scared, disgusted…but not angry. He also felt familiar, like a song just out of reach. I had no idea where I knew him from.

  There was also another man, farther down the alley, this presence so faint it could mean nothing at all. Both men were telepaths, I thought, which was bad news. Anyone who could feel a man’s mind die while he killed him went at least a little insane. To do it outside a war or a threat to your family, to do it without any pressing reason at all…A chill came over me. I didn’t think I’d like these guys. Not at all.

  One last look at the void, running my not-there fingers around the cold edge, trying to see if I could get any more information about cause of death, about the killer’s intentions or how he did it. I tried to pick that vaguely familiar trace out of the middle of a haystack of violence, sharp fear and urgent, dull pain, desperation—

  Decade-old instincts were all that saved me, and I pulled back desperately. The world stopped. Then I was back in the alley, heart pounding a million miles per hour. Cherabino looked at me quizzically, as if she’d felt the edges of my panic.

  “I’m okay,” I told her, trying to be convincing, working on breathing deeply to slow down my heart. What had just happened? The back of my head said…something bad.

  I thought through it. That feeling, like I’d just escaped Falling In. Which was impossible. Nobody Fell In three days after a death.

  Telepaths died occasionally from that sort of thing; there’d been cases where, if you knew a dying person well, if you were connected to him at the time, you could be pulled in after him. Almost happened to me once, when my then-girlfriend’s mother had died faster than anyone expected. We’d both almost been sucked in to…wherever minds went when you died. We’d barely pulled each other out. But even then, death was gone from the room a few seconds later. I wouldn’t have been able to Fall In if I’d tried.

  I needed another look—dumb as hell, but what I needed. I opened myself back up to Mindspace, slowly, slowly, sinking back in all the way, to the depths, too deep to see anything but vibrations.

  I approached the edges of the void, slowly, slowly, so carefully it hurt to move. There, overlapping the edge of the void, was something, like the tiny chip in a wineglass you noticed more with your fingers than with your eyes—an aberration. Small, not exciting. But it could crack our case.

  If the killer or killers had really used Ability, there should have been, well, a smear, where they’d walked away, taking the edges of the death with them for a few steps before it dissipated. But the smear wasn’t there.

  Instead, the Mindspace puckered. Just a little pucker. And it was good to have a certified Guild education, because I knew what that meant.

  Now I only had to explain it to Cherabino.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sergeant Branen was the head of Homicide and Cherabino’s boss, a short forty-something man with overstyled hair and an air of confidence that made you want to trust him immediately. This made me dislike him on principle. He didn’t understand what I did and didn’t feel he needed to—but he did believe in results, and the conflict made for interesting meetings.

  Branen was also one of only three people in the department who could get me fired at any time. It was my goal in life—at least in front of him—to be twice as useful as annoying.

  “So,” he said after the second time I’d gone through what I’d found in the scene. “There was a…pucker in…Mindspace. What exactly does that mean?” He smiled his habitual smile, his eyes tired. His tiny beige office was almost too neat, his battered desk and guest chairs scrupulously clean.

  “It’s very rare,” I said, carefully neutral. “Like I said, it’s a small aberration in the fabric of Mindspace, a hiccup in the ghost, if you want to put it that way.”

  Branen looked pained. It wasn’t a good look on him. “You want to fight the Guild for jurisdiction and data…because you found a hiccup?”

  “Not exactly.” Although let’s be honest; I’d fight the Guild for a lot less. In this case, though, I just wanted some information from them. Nothing for Branen to get so worked up over. Just information.

  Cherabino noticed my attention flagging. “Does it work with the fish-tank analogy?”

  “Um, maybe?” The downside to Cherabino’s sharp mind was that she got insufferably grumpy until she understood what was going on. Back in the beginning, she’d pumped me for weeks about the telepathy before I’d given her a good-enough analogy to get her off my case. She just didn’t understand Mindspace—no matter how eloquently I tried to explain it—so I’d had to get creative. Don’t ask me why the fish tank made her happy; it just did, so I used it a lot.

  “I’m waiting,” Branen said.

  “Okay,” I began. “Imagine the world is a fish tank. One of those huge, multigallon monstrous fish tanks they have in ritzy offices. Better yet, picture the alley as a fish tank. You have sand on the bottom, and a definite ceiling, maybe even a sand castle or two, some coral. It’s a nice place. There’s all sorts of fish in it—you and Cherabino and half the world are shiny orange goldfish, Guild telepaths are those monster Japanese goldfish—what do you call them?—and you have a couple rogue bottom-feeders. So you’re going along, doing your goldfish thing, until one of the goldfish discovers an Ability.”

  Branen sighed. “How is this helping me?”

  “I’m getting to it. Now, what happens if one of the goldfish goes quantum and pops over to the other side of the tank?” I stopped, then explained, “He teleports.” Cherabino seemed to be following okay; she wasn’t asking her usual slew of questions. “Two things happen. The water’s going to shoot out in a little explosion where he pops in, because now you have, say, an inch cubed of goldfish mass where there didn’t used to be any, and the water has to move out of the way very suddenly. It’s kinda messy, though, and it’s hard to identify that’s what it was if you weren’t there at the time. But the other thing that’s going to happen is on the other side, where he started out. Suddenly, the water has the same-sized hole where the goldfish used to be, right? So it rushes in. But the water thing’s only an analogy—the way it works in Mindspace, the water moves weird, slow like honey, and what you’re left with is a little area where the water is less dense, and comes to a weird little pucker to show you where the fish used to be. At least for a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes?” Branen echoed, struggling with the concept. “So, what you’re saying is, our suspect teleported out of the area slightly before the police arrived. He was visiting the body?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, a little defensively. “It was a hot spot, and he was pulling along more than his own metaphysical weight, so it was like two of the monster Japanese pond-rats popped out together. The hole takes longer to fill in.”

  Branen sighed. “So we’re talking teleporter. Which means Guild.” He rubbed his head. “And the victims? They’re not Guild, correct?”

  “Correct, sir. They’re not in the Registry.” Cherabino sat back in her chair comfortably,
but then again she and Branen got along great. Me, on the other hand…

  Well, I had to say it. “They could be low-level, normal jobs, normal lives.”

  They both turned to me. “What?” Cherabino said.

  “You know the Guild’s Registry is only a partial list of members, right?” Their shocked looks told me obviously not. “It’s an industry list. If you want to hang a shingle and make money off your Ability—and you’re legit—you go through the Guild process, you get trained and certified, pay the money, and you get registered. They get dues every year; you get the resources of a large organization and sometimes a job.” For the low-level guys, it wasn’t a bad deal. You kept your nose clean, you showed up at the mixers, you went home every night, and you raked in the money.

  “So it’s like the Bar Association?” Cherabino leaned forward.

  I shrugged, stretched out in the chair. “I don’t know much about them.”

  “Organization for lawyers? Total control over your professional future, takes money from you and you have to be a member?”

  I blinked. “Actually, that’s not too far off. But the Guild’s only like that if you’re powerful enough. On the low end of the scale, it’s optional. If you don’t want to work for them, if you want to be an accountant, or a lawyer, or a bricklayer, you can. Keep your nose clean, you’ll never hear from them. But there’s a point—usually a heavy five in telepathy—where it’s not a choice anymore. At that point you work for the Guild directly, you do what they say, and you’re registered in the lists the Guild provides the public.” Well, most of them. The Guild held back a lot of information from the cops. A lot. Which was why I got paid my consultant fee, to tell them at least what they didn’t know.

  “What happens if someone wants to quit?” Cherabino asked, curious.

  I suppose it was an obvious question, but the truth was…“That’s not really something we talk about.”

  Both cops stared at me. I looked at my shoes, set on worn industrial carpet at least a decade old. When I looked up again, I stared past Cherabino at the speckled walls. Even in my situation—unusual, to say the least—I had certain obligations, and I did not want Guild Enforcement coming after me, not for something stupid like this.