Payoff

by Alex Hughes

  Cherabino was fighting her own nausea—she hadn’t brought her nose filters this trip, apparently—but she managed to bend down and look more closely.

  I blocked with everything in me. And I got someone else to drive me home, a towel thrown over the backseat of the patrol car to protect the seats from my dripping clothes.

  * * *

  I stood dripping mud in Paulsen’s office. She pursed her lips, reached into a drawer, and came out with a very frayed, faded towel that might once have been blue. She handed it to me without comment.

  I patted my shirt and the back of my neck dry, then dropped the towel on the floor so I could stand on it, my socks squelching into the fiber of it. I needed shoes. “I’m going to need to take more time helping to solve this case.”

  Paulsen sighed. “You realize we’re behind on our interview load? And I can’t afford to pay you overtime until next month. The interview list isn’t getting shorter.”

  “I’ll stay a little late off the clock,” I said, a small iota of relief making its way through my gut. Paulsen didn’t spot-check the recordings from overtime, normally. Maybe my sprained brain would stay a secret just a little while longer. It would heal, I told myself. It would. The precognition was a good sign, even if I kept seeing the flashes of light across my vision all the time now, and I was exhausted and in pain. I could focus past it now, most of the time, more than I’d been able to do a week ago.

  Paulsen sighed. “I know it’s not right, the unpaid time, but there’s nothing I can do about the budget talks. The damn politicians—”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Really. I was just waiting to see if you had something else for me, or advice.”

  “Don’t piss off a judge,” Paulsen said. “And if this one was yours back then . . .”

  “He was.”

  “If this one was yours, don’t screw it up. We all are suckers for the underdog, for the turn-your-life-around soap operas and happy stories, but you don’t get this old in this profession without seeing people crash and burn. Don’t give him an excuse to think that’s you—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s going over your file right now, to see what to look for.”

  “Thanks,” I said, now twice as paranoid as before.

  She glanced at her very tall stack of files sitting in the in-box. “Was there something else you needed?”

  “No, I’ll just be going now.”

  A little spot of relief entered the air again—I wish I could have said for sure that it was the telepathy, and not just my overactive imagination reading body language. Probably just the body language, as depressing a thought as that was. Just a few weeks ago I could have read her at will.

  I grabbed the towel to take with me, and closed the door gently on my way out. I had to figure out how the hell I could get this case—and Cherabino—settled as quickly as possible.

  At least there were showers in the men’s locker room. I had a couple changes of clothes there. I needed to be clean, pronto. And I needed shoes.

  Then I needed a nap in the crash room instead of lunch. My brain needed the rest.

  * * *

  Cherabino came and got me a few hours later, after I’d woken up and gone back to the interview rooms. I was better, the pain less, but this late in the afternoon even with the nap I was having trouble focusing. That, and I was so tired, the letters on the files were moving around so much I couldn’t make sense of them. I’d asked Bellury to read the last one. Too many more and he’d get suspicious.

  So when Cherabino knocked on the door to the interview rooms, relief hit me like a tidal wave in a kiddy pool—unexpected, devastating, and oddly fun.

  She made us walk, of course. Since it was only a few blocks to the courthouse, that wasn’t all that big a deal. Even though I was still tired, it was a tiredness of the brain, not the muscles; with my blood pumping, my tar-soaked lungs panting, I was feeling a little better.

  “Would you tell him?” I asked. “Please?”

  “It’s your favor.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “Fine, but keep an eye on his reaction. I hate to say this about a judge, but he is the family at this point.”

  And you are most likely to be killed by the ones closest to you. Sad truth. “We have to inform him today?”

  “It’s standard procedure.”

  The DeKalb County court complex was like so much of the town, gorgeous on the front end with columns and trees, solid concrete walls and jail-cell barbed wire on the back. It had been remodeled after the Tech Wars when security was a major concern. You could still see the turrets where the old automated motion-activated guns sat before such things had been declared illegal.

  Judge Datini’s office was on the third floor, all the way to the back, past a couple of court rooms and several other offices. The corridor walls were paneled with wood and metal, but from the acoustics you could still feel the reinforced concrete under it all, a building huddling under its shell like a turtle.

  Cherabino went straight in.

  The judge looked up from his humongous wooden slab desk. “Any news?”

  He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk, and came around to sit on the small sofa even with the chairs. Judge Datini was short—hardly taller than five two—something that caught me by surprise every time; his personality was so much bigger. He’d lost a lot of weight in the years since I’d seen him on the bench, and not for the better. His dark complexion was mottled, now, and the hair that had been so full and dark was now a pale, limp gray, the hairline so far back you wondered what had happened to him. Today he looked tired, overwhelmingly tired like I felt, with deep, dark circles under his eyes. He looked sick.

  “There’s no need to stare,” he said quietly.

  I could feel my face warming as the guilt wandered up my neck and cheeks. My attention must really be going, to get caught like that. I’d been far too afraid of him—and the decisions that hadn’t reached their shelf life yet—to ask.

  “Yes, I’m sick,” he said in a tone that broked no complaint. “It’s one of the damn supercancers. And I’m getting too old—and too tired—to play the speculation game. Now. Close the door and tell me whatever it is you need to tell me that’s making you so nervous you had to bring backup.” He settled into the sofa like his bones hurt. It was driving me nuts that I couldn’t actually feel that twinge of pain, that I had to guess.

  “Yes, sir.” I closed the door. He was going to shoot the messenger; he was going to reverse those decisions, I could feel it. I’d gotten community service, fines, and hundreds of labor-hours for things that deserved years of jail time.

  Cherabino shifted in her squeaky chair. “Judge, I’m sorry to inform you that your grandson, Raymond Datini, was found dead this morning on the campus of his university.”

  The judge seemed to fold in on himself, his face collapsing into sorrow. “How?” he asked.

  “It appears to be a gunshot wound. We’ll know more when we get the report back from the medical examiner.”

  He sat there. I noticed a small bonsai on his desk slowly changing color—bioengineered to be calming, maybe. I didn’t feel calm. No one spoke.

  Finally Cherabino broke the silence. “Is there anything I can get you? Perhaps a cup of tea?” She was better at this than I was.

  The judge shook his head.

  After an eternity, he spoke. “Raymond is such a hard worker, such a good young man. He’s done everything I’ve ever asked of him. Since his parents died in the car wreck, it’s . . . I’ve put a lot of pressure on him. But with the internship, and the degree . . . he was going to be a lawyer. A great lawyer. He just got his LSAT scores.” His eyes seemed to focus, directly on me. “You’re going to find his killer. You’re going to find out who killed my grandson, and you’re going to do it quickly.”

  “Campus PD—” Cherabino began.

  “Campus PD isn’t experienced. Not like your team. Adam owes me, and you—you, Detective Isabella Cherabino, have the best cl
ose rate of any detective in Homicide. Bring me answers.” He looked to the side, blinking back condensation from his eyes. “Bring me answers, okay? I need . . .” he trailed off. “Could you leave?”

  “Of course,” Cherabino said, and pulled me away.

  * * *

  That night, I let my sponsor, Swartz, drag me to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I ran into two doorways, my visual-spatial sense dramatically off, and I fell asleep halfway through the meeting. Swartz said I snored. He poked me awake several times.

  Afterwards, in a fog, I limped up the apartment stairs, Swartz’s arm supporting mine. Despite the skin-to-skin contact—usually a dramatic boost to telepathy—I felt nothing.

  And that was scarier than anything else. The telepathy was going to come back, wasn’t it? It had to come back. Panic and obsession skittered in the back of my head, and I held it back by force. It had to come back.

  * * *

  The next morning, I was up bright and early, feeling fully rested for the first time since the injury. Mornings were better. I felt stronger in the mornings, more focused. I brewed my cup of high-grade sim-coffee, sat on the beat-up couch, and started my exercises.

  Maybe the brain-wave canceler machine I had in my bedroom was finally starting to work. It was tuned to my mind, the shape of my old uninjured self, and sleeping in it—something I used to do for sanity’s sake, as it kept out the world—was hopefully training my brain back into its old shape. That was what the Guild doctors did with drugs, after all; coax the mind into its old shape.

  I did the exercises, pushing my mind into impossible positions. Like a session of yoga where I couldn’t quite make it work, I kept slipping, kept falling flat on my ass. I got back up again and tried—just enough, just enough. Like stretching a tight muscle, you had to push—but not too hard, or you’d injure it.

  By the time Cherabino showed up to collect me for work, I was starting to get a headache behind my eyes and had finished a set. An entire set. I took a multivitamin and an amino acid formulation for brain support—both bought through the accountants at the police to make sure I wasn’t trying to pull anything over on them—and actually dared to take an aspirin.

  I was out at the corner waiting for her when she arrived.

  “Today is about information,” Cherabino said and handed me a cup of coffee as I folded into the car. “I’ve got a half day to learn everything I can about Raymond before the forensics come back tomorrow and we figure this out.”

  I buckled up. “How’d you get the forensics done in only two days?” I asked, impressed.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I instinctively went to read her—and she threw up a shield.

  “Mind to yourself,” she said.

  * * *

  Raymond’s roommate, one George Babel, answered the door in a bulky shirt and ratty sweatpants. His dark complexion was scarred with old acne on the right side of his face, his hair shaved tight against his head, and he was very thin; otherwise he and Raymond could have been brothers, though in the picture Raymond had been muscular, healthy. This kid—from the smell of sugar and energy drinks emanating from him—had been a chair jockey for years, and not a particularly healthy one at that. I also smelled something else . . . something familiar. If I’d been able to feel him in Mindspace, I was betting he’d be strained, hyped up on too much caffeine and other things to quite think straight. But since I couldn’t, I’d have to guess, to guess about everything. It galled.

  “Who are you?” George asked.

  Cherabino flashed her badge again and introduced us. I was a consultant, unspecified, and she a detective, no department given.

  “Do you have a minute?” I asked. “We’d like to talk to you about Raymond Datini.”

  He gripped the wooden door hard. “Yeah. He hasn’t been here. Is he okay?”

  Cherabino focused like a pointer dog going taunt. “Do you have reason to suspect he’s in trouble?”

  “He hasn’t shown up in a long time,” George said. “I mean, the college assigned us to the room, it’s not like we’re friends or anything. We get along. I don’t know where he is.”

  She nodded.

  “Can we come in?” I asked. All the interrogation books claimed people were more likely to tell the truth surrounded by their own things. It was strictly book-knowledge though; mostly I interviewed in the interrogation rooms in the basement of the department.

  “Oh.” He frowned. “Yeah, I guess.” He opened the door.

  The dorm room was small, just large enough for two parallel beds, desks, and two infinitesimal closets. It was also covered in clutter, clothes thrown everywhere, empty pizza boxes, forgotten soda cans and protein cube wrappers, and layers and layers of cheap paper stirred up like in a blender. The smell was of stale sweat, cola, energy drinks, and desiccated food—along with an unpleasant undercurrent of musty . . . something, and more of that faint sweet smell of George’s.

  Cherabino removed a banana peel and perched on a clear spot on the far desk. George took a seat at his own desk, less than four feet from her, and, finally catching up to reality, I leaned against the wall by the door.

  Cherabino didn’t say anything, which meant I was up. I relaxed my body language, opened up my shoulders to seem friendlier, and uncrossed my arms. I even added a small, polite smile. Interviews were my gig, and I was going to do a good job if it killed me. I owed the judge, and I knew it, and finding the man who killed his grandson seemed the least I could reasonably do. Plus the whole jail question. I couldn’t screw this up, and this early in the morning, when I was feeling good, maybe I wouldn’t.

  “How long have you been rooming with Raymond?” I asked George.

  He looked uncomfortable, just a little too tense for the situation, and he kept looking back at Cherabino. “Since May. We both did the summer semester this year.”

  “And you said the college matched you up?”

  “It’s the cheapest housing on campus, and the only one open during the summer. If you don’t have a roommate going in, it can be a crapshoot. But he’s okay. Quiet guy, never really here. As long as I let him sleep, he’s cool with pretty much anything. Doesn’t mind me bringing over girls. It’s not like we’re friends, but it works. We kept the room for fall, saved a little money. It’s weird he’s gone this long though.”

  “His grandfather said he talked to you a few days ago.”

  “Um, yeah. That’s right. He seemed okay.”

  “Why was Raymond always gone?” Cherabino asked, following up. “You said he was never here. What was he doing?”

  George shrugged. “He’s a poli-sci major, involved in all those studies with Professor Klaidman, plus he parties. And his internship was intense; he had to stop the work-study. It’s full-time hours even though he’s got a full course load. Too much for me—that’s intense.”

  “Parties?” Cherabino said.

  “Internship?” I said.

  George looked back and forth between us. He shrugged, and looked down. “He works for a state senator. Billy Oden or somebody. The guy’s bad news if you ask me.”

  Billy Oden the Incorruptible? Swartz actually liked him, and my sponsor didn’t like any politicians. “Why do you say he’s bad news?” I asked.

  “Other than the fact he’s getting Raymond to work for him around the clock without paying him? He says dance, Raymond does a jig, and the whole time Ray’s going into debt. Had to call his grandfather for money a couple of times earlier in the semester. It’s not right. And lately he’s been worried. I think there’s something going on. Maybe Raymond found something he didn’t like and split.”

  “How long has he been gone?” Cherabino asked.

  “Like, more than a week,” George said. “It’s been a couple days before, and he’s got clothes missing. I didn’t worry about it. But—his grandfather called, seemed worried. He said I should report it, so I did, but the campus police don’t seem worried either, says it hasn’t been enough time. You think someth
ing happened to him?” George asked. “He’s not on campus. Nobody’s seen him.”

  Wow. Seemed like Raymond’s case had gotten thrown about in a bad way for days. If the judge hadn’t strong-armed us into it . . . would anybody have found Raymond? If the rain hadn’t kept the construction crew from emptying that dumpster, would I have?

  “George,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to inform you that your roommate, Raymond Datini, was found dead yesterday on campus.” I waited.

  George’s immediate reaction was scorn, and anger, then he looked down. Took a breath. “I guess I’m going to have to find a new roommate then.”

  Had they fought? Was George having to pay more of the money share than expected? There was something there he wasn’t talking about and without the telepathy I didn’t know how to get to it. Normally at this stage I’d be picking up flashes of guilt or shame or whatever he was feeling, and that telepathic read would help me figure out where to press. Without it, I was down to guesswork and prayer.

  “You said Raymond partied?” I asked, maybe to chase down the drugs angle. If George was involved, maybe that was Raymond’s connection. I’d been in the Guild school at this age, so I didn’t know firsthand, but a lot of the guys at the Narcotics Anonymous meetings talked about college parties as the places they first met their drug. “Tell us about the parties,” I said.