Vacant

by Alex Hughes

  “You’ve been busy,” I said cautiously. “There’re several of us who can get on the phone and help.”

  Jarrod nodded slowly. “We need to go down to the FBI lab today sometime and figure out what evidence they collected at the attack scene and if it can tell us anything.”

  “I don’t mind going. Labs are educational,” I said. I’d bring Tommy with me. “A moving target is harder to catch, right?”

  “Depends,” Jarrod said, and sighed. “Priorities have shifted, though. That last phone call? My APB came back. Four of the guys on the suspect list were found this morning.”

  I leaned forward. “Found where?” He meant “found dead,” didn’t he? That was what his mind was saying.

  “Found in the marsh, by a conservationist working on a pollution-cleanse. Apparently the ties on one of their ankles came loose.”

  “Dead,” I said.

  He nodded. “Dead, with their throats cut in a thin line, in a pattern the detective who called me had never seen before. The conservationist goes to that section of the marsh twice a year at most. It’s sheer luck he found them, much less that I got a response on my APB.”

  “Throats cut in a thin line, like a strangulation device?”

  “Yes.” He thought, as I did, that this was Sibley’s work. “It’s suspicious that the four most likely suspects for Tommy’s attack all ended up dead.”

  “Okay, I don’t get it,” I said. “There’s absolutely no reason for Fiske to want these people dead if they’re working on behalf of his buddy Pappadakis.”

  “Assuming they are, in fact, working together as we think they are,” Jarrod said tiredly. “We keep hitting dead ends on this one. Honestly if that bodyguard hadn’t gotten Tommy out of there that morning, I’m not sure we would have been able to find him so quickly. His father doesn’t seem to have any involvement whatsoever. The letters are a dead end—”

  “How hard is it to fake a fingerprint?” I asked him then.

  He blinked at me. “It would take some knowledge and skill, but the materials are freely available. Why?”

  “Would someone who knows what they’re doing be able to make a partial with a smear?” I asked. “With oils that are the right age?”

  “That’s a whole other level of difficulty,” Jarrod said. “It’s highly unlikely anybody would go to that much trouble, in my opinion. Usually a complete fingerprint in the right place will get you anything you want. And, as I’m sure you’ve learned, people leave their natural fingerprints everywhere. Again, why?”

  “Unrelated case,” I said.

  “I don’t pay you to work other cases while you work for me,” Jarrod said.

  “It was one phone call with a homicide detective I work with all the time,” I said. “It’s not a big deal. She was just getting another perspective. It didn’t affect this case at all.”

  He looked at me, unconvinced.

  I looked back.

  “You take a lot of phone calls while you’re here.”

  I felt guilty, like I’d done something wrong. But I hadn’t, I didn’t think. “You wanted me to leave on three hours’ notice, right? I’m here, but there’s stuff I can’t leave undone. I’m keeping it under control. I really am.”

  “See that you do.”

  I nodded, and then that thing that had been bothering me about this conversation came back up. “I still don’t get why Sibley would kill those guys, much less dump them somewhere where no one will find them. It’s not like him, I don’t think. As near as we can tell, Fiske pays his guys well. It’s not good for his organization if he gets a reputation for killing contractors randomly.”

  “You’ve worked on a case against Fiske directly?” Jarrod asked. Now I had his full attention.

  “That homicide detective I was talking to? She was a member of the task force against him. I’m not surprised that you can’t connect Pappadakis with any wrongdoing; if he’s taking lessons from Fiske, he’s going to be good. In several years, they’ve never been able to make evidence stick against Fiske. Witnesses end up dead. Judges are paid off to exclude evidence. But if you talk to the guys on the street, the ‘big boss’ calls the shots. You do what he tells you, or you clear things through the organization, you’re fine. You get paid. Everything is great. Fiske has a reputation for being ruthless in business, but he doesn’t move without a reason. In his own way, to the guys he works with, he’s one of the fairest organization leaders they’ve had in a long time. Not that he won’t slit their throats in a heartbeat—or have his guys do it—if they cross him. It’s why he’s stayed in power so long, and why he’s been able to expand his territory this far south in the last few years.”

  Jarrod thought about that. “So he only kills people that go against him, which makes sense. Let’s take it a step further, though. Why were these guys going against him? Why kill them specifically, if they’re good little soldiers?”

  “All of this assumes Sibley is still working for Fiske. For all we know, Pappadakis or some third party could have hired him to do this work.”

  Jarrod shook his head. “Either way, I don’t see the benefit of killing them unless it’s to shut down our inves-

  tigation. It’s like someone is going through systematically and closing down every possible avenue we have of connecting A and B. It sounds to me like it’s completely in line with what we know about this group anyway. Ruthless and self-serving.”

  “I don’t buy it being all the same people, though,” I said. “There have to be at least two—” I stopped midsentence, having just realized that Tommy was standing in the doorway with wide eyes. I’d known, on some level, that he was there. There weren’t any threats anywhere in the area—both of those things I’d been monitoring steadily for hours. But I hadn’t thought to keep him from overhearing things.

  “Who is killing people now?” Tommy asked in a very small voice.

  “No one is killing anyone,” Jarrod said, like denying everything would put the genie back in the bottle.

  Tommy’s expression closed like someone had slammed a door. He turned to go.

  I sighed and went after him.

  In the hallway, I said, “Hold up.”

  He turned back, rebellion in his every line.

  Probably I should lie to him, but I didn’t see how that would help. And I didn’t want things coming out later. So I tried. “The unfortunate truth about investigating bad people is that that they don’t always do what you want them to do. Sometimes they do bad things before you can catch them.”

  “Who did they kill?” Tommy asked, unable to help himself. He wasn’t happy, but he also wasn’t shutting down.

  “A gun store owner who may have brokered the deal, and now some of the people who we believe attacked you.” He probably already mostly knew about the gun store owner, but telling him officially might as well happen now along with news about the other deaths.

  “The guys who attacked me are dead?” Happiness and sadness mixed inside him like the ingredients to a grade-school papier-mâché volcano, ending with a burst of fear. “Does that mean I’m safe now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He looked up, and his mind wanted comfort, wanted a hug. It went against nearly every habit I had—telepaths don’t touch as a rule, and I’d been working with the police for years, who were just as much against touch—but I reached out and hugged him, awkwardly.

  He grabbed onto me, shivering, emotions still roiling inside him in ways he couldn’t quite cope with. He was grabbing my clothes, at least, so the skin-to-skin telepathy increase was minimal. But those emotions were overwhelming, even from a distance, even from the outside.

  I didn’t change anything; I didn’t manipulate or cause anything. But I stood there and let him shiver, and helped dampen down his emotions from the outside, small structural changes to help him feel more in control. Just at
the point where he could think again, I stopped. He needed to feel what he felt.

  “There’s too much dead,” he said then.

  “I know,” I said, feeling it too. He missed his bodyguard, and he was terribly, terribly afraid now that I would die just like her.

  But he hadn’t said it out loud, and I didn’t want to lie and tell him that it couldn’t happen.

  Loyola knocked on the hallway side, a dull thud of fist impacting wall.

  I looked up.

  “We need to leave for the courthouse soon,” Loyola said. “Sridarin and the judge left twenty minutes ago, and Jarrod doesn’t want us separated for any longer than necessary.”

  Tommy pulled away from me then and rubbed his face. “Nobody can die today, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I hoped I could keep that promise.

  And then he turned and went back to his room to get his toys together.

  CHAPTER 15

  I was still at the house. Tommy was moving slower than Jarrod wanted, and Loyola was back there trying to hurry him up. Even Mendez had asked for another ten minutes to pack equipment. Jarrod was in a mood, and I was spending time on the opposite side of the house so I couldn’t feel it.

  The phone in the kitchen rang, and I picked it up.

  “Is this Adam?” Kara’s voice asked.

  “Yeah. Let me call you back on another number,” I said.

  “Um, okay. I’m at the office.”

  Ignoring Jarrod’s impatience across the house, I grabbed a jacket and walked across the street to a pay phone and dialed. This was more important than a ten minutes’ delay.

  A woman walked her tiny bioengineered dino-lizard past me along the sidewalk. The thing hissed as it got near to me, its mantle rising and turning red-yellow. She glared at me like this was somehow my fault and pulled the lizard along forcefully. It went. Nasty thing, it was like a blazing sign of wrong priorities. Get a cat from the pound; cats were free.

  Kara finally picked up the phone. “Guild Public Relations Office. Kara Chenoa.”

  “It’s me.”

  “I want you to know we had to get an engineer and a Structure guy to work overnight.”

  “Huh?”

  “For your stupid demand. For that influencer device. We had two pros work overnight on the thing on my request directly. My superiors aren’t happy with me. But we have a solution. You aren’t going to like it.”

  “That was fast,” I said. Then, awkwardly: “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. Honestly the Guild needed this. That’s what I told the departments, along with the request for discretion. If it’s out there, we need to be able to counter it.”

  I tried to take that personally and just couldn’t muster up the energy. Kara played for her own team, always had, and lately maybe it wasn’t bothering me quite so much. At least not if I got what I wanted. “What’s the solution?”

  “Is the line secure?” she asked.

  I turned around and scanned the surroundings. With the exception of the woman and her dino-lizard (currently peeing on a flower bed two hundred feet away), no one was around. “No. But it’s a public phone I doubt is monitored. Say what you’re comfortable with.” It was chilly out here, but not outright cold; warmer today. Hopefully it would stay that way, though in late February even in the South I doubted it.

  A pause. “We’re not going to get any better?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll chance it, I guess. You remember your Structure basics?”

  “I used to teach the stuff, Kara.”

  “With your history, I didn’t want to assume.”

  Okay, that one hurt a little. Mostly how she said it, dismissive and judging, with hidden weights, more than the fact of my drug history. She’d been the one to turn me in to the Guild. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me. “You going to tell me or just string me along for another half hour?” I asked. “I’m running out of time here.” I really was; Jarrod would be out looking for me at any moment.

  “So, the mind has thirty-six set points for telepathic communication, yes?”

  “Yes. Which are we changing and how?”

  “You remember them by name, not just position still?” she asked.

  I was irritated. “Yes, I do remember, Kara.” It was a valid question; I’d had a lot more opportunity to do practical hands-on work than teaching in the last ten years. But I was tired of being asked the same stupid questions over and over again. “Give me the answer, okay?”

  “The pro wanted me to be absolutely sure.” The rustle of papers, and then her voice changed to read something. “A1, B5, B7 through 9, A13x, and C4 need to be closed, as fully closed as possible. HL7 spun up as much as you can hold. And . . . you’re really not going to like this. Processor 4 muffled as much as you can stand.”

  I closed my eyes. “That one processes all the senses, not just telepathy, Kara! You screw with it too much the wrong way, and you’re blind and deaf until somebody comes to bail you out. I don’t have anybody to bail me out down here. And with those comm points closed, really, Kara?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

  “Why in hell do you have to make so many changes? That’s like spinning three plates on your head while you do the tap dance samba singing ‘Yankee Doodle’ over a pothole. There’s no way I can do all that, not and Mind my charge.”

  “You’re Minding now?” Kara asked. “You’re not certified for that.”

  I could hear her disbelief, disbelief and judgment. “They cared more about non-Guild talent than credentials for this job. It’s legit, and that’s all I can say. I didn’t misrepresent. And it’s a good thing I am here, considering. Who else would have called you and put up a fuss? I need to know, though. Why so many mind-changes?”

  She sighed, then offered resentfully, “They aren’t exactly sure what part of the mind the interference waves are manipulating. It was trial and error, honestly, with the version we have. This was the first combination that worked. You want an answer quickly, you’re going to have to put up with some fuzzy edges.”

  “The mind has plenty of fuzzy edges all on its own,” I said.

  “Yeah, well,” she said, in that tone of voice you get when someone complains about the weather. “What are you going to do? I don’t like you taking Minding jobs.”

  “It’s not like you have a vote anymore,” I said. “And you put pressure on me to get money. You can’t get too particular about how I get it, now can you?”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Adam.”

  “You’re the one who started it.”

  She sighed. “I got you your answer. Please keep your side of the bargain. I really need that device to not get out in the normal population.”

  “Don’t we all,” I said. “Tell me that group of sets again, slower this time, please.”

  “Try to listen this time.” She repeated the numbers, and I paid close attention.

  Then she hung up on me.

  “Good-bye to you too,” I said.

  It started to drizzle, a cold, cold drizzle that interacted with the nasty gray fog in a way that made me think pollution, and nasty pollution at that. I wanted a shower, but there wasn’t time.

  Jarrod stood on the back porch of the house, tapping his watch. I nodded and moved faster.

  I just prayed the information Kara had given me would be enough.

  And then I went back in to deal with Jarrod. I was only ten seconds later than Mendez and got away with a single, frustrated wave to hurry up.

  * * *

  We made it to the courthouse with maximum alertness and minimum excitement. Then, after a long and careful procedure, Tommy and I settled into the judge’s chambers for the morning. A long morning. Hours passed, hours during which I was on too-high alert and was fighting off worry—and a craving for my
drug—only through sheer will, because Tommy was watching me.

  About noon, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was starving. And losing track of my emotions. A walk would do me a lot of good, but I couldn’t leave him either. “Let’s get lunch,” I said to Tommy.

  He sat up, thought he was hungry too, and started picking up the toys strewn everywhere.

  “Leave them,” I said.

  Tommy looked up.

  “Really. We’ll clean them up when we get back. I’ll help.”

  “Okay,” he said. He was nervous about leaving stuff in his mom’s office. She’d get mad.

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “If she gets mad, it’s your fault.” He stood up and got his coat.

  “Fair enough.”

  We moved out into the now-crowded hallway at lunchtime. I could still feel his nerves over the general cacophony of the surroundings. Now that I was moving, mine were settling. A little. I still wanted . . . a lot of things I couldn’t have.

  “What do you feel like eating?” I asked him.

  “Food,” he said.

  “Very funny.” I pulled us to one side of the hallway, close to the benches. For security’s sake, I should get Loyola or Mendez to escort us. When I went to locate their minds, both were halfway across the courthouse, busy in something mentally demanding. I looked around. There were a lot of people here, to the point it felt overwhelming in Mindspace. I couldn’t see us being in a lot of danger in this kind of environment.

  “What are you waiting on?” Tommy asked me, not happy.

  I sighed. “Nothing, I guess. Let’s go.” We’d go to the busiest place, the one all the jurors were going to, close enough to the courthouse that everyone could get there immediately.

  * * *

  The deli across the street on the opposite corner from the courthouse was to the right of the newspaper kiosk I’d seen Sibley at earlier, but it was crammed with people, with no danger to be felt anywhere around. I remained alert but kept moving. Inside, it was standing room only, a line for the food all the way to the door. But a group of courthouse employees—led by a bailiff—just abandoned a table as we got near. I dashed forward and sat, hurriedly, uncaring of the abandoned plates.