Marked

by Alex Hughes

  She heard me and pointed a gun in my direction.

  “Police telepath, DeKalb County.” I raised my arms. “Authorized consultant. There’s two detectives in the main area. I can produce ID.”

  “Please,” she said, and lowered the gun back to the floor. She controlled the urge to heave again; she’d just flushed the toilet and didn’t want to be seen doing this to start with.

  I fished out my department ID—which I should already have clipped to my shirt—and handed it to her. “Who are you?”

  “Briggs,” she said, and swallowed again. She gave the ID a cursory look and handed it back.

  I gave her space. She was upset; I could feel that along with the nausea.

  “Did the scene get messed up?”

  “So far as I know, we’re the first ones here and it looked good,” I said. Waited a moment.

  “Could you leave now?”

  “Sure.”

  • • •

  “Where is the officer?” Cherabino asked.

  I explained, then added, “From the feel of it, she’ll be throwing up or trying not to for awhile.”

  Cherabino frowned. “I’ll take care of her later.” She was pissed, caught between her hard-line rule that officers didn’t leave the scene and the knowledge that the officer had called it in properly and had avoided throwing up at the scene itself; the puddle was well clear. She’d had her own messy scenes, when she was a rookie. She’d give the woman space but chew her out later. “Let’s handle the scene.”

  I nodded, like I had any understanding of how this all worked without the Forensics crew here.

  Michael was doing something with a box of swabs, stand- up numbers, and plastic baggies around the perimeter. Getting ready for the photographer?

  Cherabino held out a set of disposable booties, and I put them on.

  “How closely do I have to look?” I asked.

  She looked at me.

  “No, really.”

  “This is not happy-fun time. This is time to figure out what happened.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “If the victim’s mind left anything at all for us behind, you go over that with a fine-tooth comb. Twice. That’s what you’re here for. Do you have to study the exact damage? Yep. Nobody likes this stuff. We do it anyway so that the killer doesn’t do it to the next guy.”

  I looked down. “Would be easiest to go ahead and read the scene before anyone else arrives.”

  “You want me to be your anchor again? We need to do it quickly. I’m going to have to administer the scene.” As she looked over at the scene, her voice was flat. Too flat. Through the Link, I could feel a careful control, a not-think, a walling off of any possible reaction.

  I stole shamelessly from that not-think, that dispassion, putting it on like a coat as I trudged over to the couch, looking into the space that had gotten most of the blood. It soaked the carpet in a long puddle; the human body held more blood than you thought it ought to, and that blood was everywhere.

  The body was pretty damaged, an ax strike having shattered the collarbone, shredded part of the arm, impacted the clothes-covered back and buttocks in strikes covered with blood, and cut far too deeply into the skin in a way that made my stomach curl. He was facedown, and the major damage was to the back of the head—most of it was simply gone, some spread out over the room along with the blood, and some doubtlessly on the blade of that ax. One ear was completely missing, dried blood and flesh in its place.

  I looked away, breathed deeply, and told myself I wouldn’t vomit either. Even with Cherabino’s borrowed dispassion, it was horrible. Really, really horrible. “Ready?” Cherabino prompted. Her voice was still too flat.

  “Yeah,” I said. If I waited to think about it, I wouldn’t do it. And I had to do my job and get out of here. Now.

  She held out the mental hand, the anchor that would help me find my way back to the real world. With all the times she told me to keep my hands and mind to myself, for a case, for safety, she’d do anything it took.

  I established brutal mental control, and then took that mental hand, carefully, so carefully.

  Reality faded as I moved deeper and deeper, the connection with Cherabino falling behind me like a long yellow scuba line, yellow where no yellow should be. Mindspace was a colorless space, a space in which vision was useless, like the inside of a totally dark cave. The landscape was more felt than seen, echoing back vibrations like I was a bat and the world my cave. Other creatures made waves in the space, and some left wakes behind.

  Mindspace remembered. It held on to strong emotion and the leavings of human minds for days, sometimes weeks in a hot spot. Occasionally a spot forgot too soon. But here, in what was apparently a deep and wide container of human energy, I felt Mindspace along the edges of the room layered with the habitual feelings of the house’s occupant.

  He was a thinker, a planner, a wheels-within-wheels plotter with mathematics and problems and three-dimensional crafting. The space was littered with the spillovers of his thinking, like complex glyphs worn into a wall over time. Other, smaller, lighter presences left scents here and there, other people came and went, but the majority of his time, his life, was wheels-within-wheels.

  In the center of the room was the collapsed “hole” of death, where the mind Fell In . . . to wherever minds went when they died. The hole left a distinct shape in Mindspace, a distinct residue and taste. Still very clear, but not fresh.

  And around it—anger and violence and dark satisfaction layered with pain like red knives slicing through the very fabric of Mindspace. Layer upon layer of resentment and frustration and anger, leading to this final assertion of control.

  And the victim—surprise and panic and anger and pain, so much pain. Hit after hit of damage, then nothing.

  I’d have to dive deeper into the emotion eventually, but for now I tried to gauge how old the traces in Mindspace were. Always tough, but here, with the strength of these, it was tougher. I wasn’t a newbie, though, and here, finally, I was in my element.

  Time of death between twenty-two and twenty-six hours. I shaped the words carefully and sent them up the long yellow line behind me to Cherabino. Assuming Mindspace here has the standard fading pattern.

  Insight on the killer? Her voice came back, faint and far away, like a missive sent around the world. Grudge or random?

  Give me a second. I breathed.

  I swam forward with my mind until I was right above the death place, until I could feel the time around it clearly, until I could interact as best I could with the memory. Careful, careful, I told myself. Don’t want to change the space so much I can’t read it.

  But of course, thank Heisenburg and his Uncertainty, you couldn’t read something without changing it somehow. You couldn’t see without interacting, hear without being changed. Two particles—and two minds—necessarily interacted no matter what you did. Even with memories. Even with emotion-ghosts, no matter how strong they were; by reading them, you changed them. You had to.

  Grudge or random? Cherabino’s mental voice echoed down to me again. I hadn’t replied.

  I moved, and found myself drowning, drowning in anger and violence and pain. It turned me over and over like an ocean riptide, overwhelming and deadly, until I could tell what end was up.

  I tumbled over and over, coughing up anger, coughing up pain, until finally—I found the connection to Cherabino. Two hands on it and I pulled against the tide, pulled up and out on the long yellow rope, emotions grabbing at me, hanging on like thick taffy.

  I pulled with all my might, pulled again, and again, and finally popped free. Panic beat at me as I looked at the maelstrom below. That would have gotten me without her. It would have eaten me alive. Level Eight telepath or no, I would have been lost.

  My heart beat hard with panic and pain, and I reached for training to calm mys
elf by force and will. Guild training was the only thing that had saved me; the forcible drills through hell and back the only thing that kept my mind together. Strong emotions. Too strong.

  When I could compose myself, I sent a line of thought right back up at Cherabino, who was sending a vague sense of concern.

  Bad one, I said. I don’t think—I don’t think it was planned. Got a strong picture of the ax by the fireplace; when he saw it, he snapped.

  I collected my thoughts, pushing for dispassion again. The victim . . . calm. He’s an ordered guy. But he was nervous. The killer . . . the killer was here to assert control and to prevent something. The violence was just the escalation. Calculating? He wanted the man dead, Cherabino. He wanted him well dead.

  Not a bad start for a profile, Cherabino told me. Get on back here; Forensics is arriving and I need you out of the way.

  I swam up, slowly, from the depths of all that pain, into the shallower areas of Mindspace, following the yellow cord up to Cherabino’s mind. When I reached it, I surfaced: into reality, into the presence of other minds and blinding sunlight. The cops and the techs were staring with hostility. I shielded, slowly, against that gaze.

  “Have you swept the house for the missing pieces?” Jamal, one of the Forensics techs, asked Michael, while looking directly at me.

  “Not yet,” Cherabino said, letting go of the mental hand that had grounded me. “We’ve been processing the scene here.”

  “You think the back of the head is sitting on a bed somewhere?” Michael asked, looking very green.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Jamal said.

  “Keep a lookout for that arm section,” Cherabino said. “And the head.”

  “What arm section?” Michael asked.

  “Can I go?” I asked.

  If you must, she sent through the Link. For someone who claimed to hate the Link between us, she was getting awfully comfortable with speaking mind-to-mind. When I tried it, half the time she told me to keep my hands and mind to myself.

  She added out loud, “There’s a section missing from the right biceps. Maybe four inches? Could be under the body. Obviously there was a bit of a struggle. I just want it found.”

  Michael looked thoughtful. “Trophy maybe?”

  “The arm?” Cherabino blinked. “Odd place to take a trophy, don’t you think? More likely it just got thrown under the sofa or something. Just keep a lookout, Jamal, okay?”

  He shrugged. “You got it.”

  I left.

  CHAPTER 2

  Near the drafty-cold back of the house I flagged down one of the Forensics techs, a woman with the focused look of someone in the middle of a critical portion of her job.

  “Have you guys processed the bedrooms yet?” I asked.

  She just looked at me.

  “I need to make a phone call,” I said. “Can I use the phone in the back bedroom without messing up the scene?” I was tired of getting screamed at for my prints being at scenes. With my drug felonies, I inevitably ended up as a suspect for a day or two until I got cleared.

  “Um, we’ve processed for fingerprints, but . . .”

  “Good,” I said, and pushed past her.

  • • •

  I sat gingerly on the twin bed’s faded bedspread. An old treadmill sat at the end, and a small bookcase of odds and ends took up the rest of the small room. The large phone sat on the nightstand, beneath a lamp with an ugly shade.

  I had long since memorized Kara’s number. The receiver felt heavy in my hand, the keys of the phone all too real.

  She picked up on the second ring.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” a man’s voice replied. “Is this Adam?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. “Who is this?”

  But the phone was already being passed to Kara.

  “Adam?” Her voice was thick, as if she’d been crying.

  “Yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t call sooner,” I said. I didn’t like apologizing—it felt like rehab every time—but I also didn’t like hearing her crying. Even all these years later. It stabbed me in the heart. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “There was a death in the family yesterday morning,” Kara said quietly, in a voice that shook just a little.

  “I am so sorry. Do you need me to come over?” Crap, the husband wasn’t going to be a fan of the old fiancé coming over. What else did you offer in these situations? “I can help with arrangements.” Wait. That was even worse. Crap, I was terrible at this. “What do you need?”

  A pause on the other side of the phone. “Aren’t you going to ask who died?”

  I took a breath. “Who died?”

  “Uncle Meyers,” she said. “They’re calling it a suicide.”

  If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have sat down, hard. I’d known her uncle; we all had. He’d been surprisingly good to me when I’d been a self-righteous punk kid. I couldn’t believe he was dead.

  “How?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated,” she said, and her voice broke. “I need your help.”

  “I’ll help you however I can,” I promised quickly, and realized I meant it. “Anything, Kara.”

  “I don’t think it’s a suicide,” she said quietly.

  My stomach sank. “Enforcement is investigating?” Enforcement was every telepath’s worst nightmare: judge, jury, and executioner all in one, with absolute legal authority over telepaths. Since the Koshna Accords, they had absolute authority over telepaths, absolute. The Telepath’s Guild had saved the world from the Tech Wars, but they’d scared most of the world doing it. In return, they’d asked for—and gotten—the right to self-police. They could shoot any telepath in broad daylight on a normal street, no trial, and have no repercussions other than a PR crisis. Normals wanted it that way, in the post–Tech Wars world. But the telepathy police were fair, or at least that’s what we were taught, though my experience with the normal courts put some of that into question. Still, Kara was part of the system. She’d been taught since she was small that Enforcement represented the truth and the Guild as a whole. They got to the truth, no matter what it cost, even if it took steamrolling over you and your memories to do it.

  “Why not just let them investigate?” I asked. “What’s the problem?”

  She sniffled, and didn’t speak.

  “Kara?”

  “They put somebody junior on it, so I pulled to get Stone. He got reassigned to the case like I wanted, but now he won’t talk to me.”

  “You trust Stone?” I asked. He’d seemed fair, when he was investigating me, but it was still an odd choice. He worked as a Watcher, not an investigator.

  She sniffed. “Not enough—he’s not talking, and they’re pushing to do a full wipe on the apartment where Uncle Meyers died. They’re trying to cover this up, Adam, and I don’t know why. They’re saying he’s crazy. They’re saying it’s safest for everyone to lock it down and worry about what happened later. It could be a contagious madness situation.”

  “Madness?” I asked. Oh. Suddenly it all made sense. In a society of telepaths, that was Public Health Crisis Number One. Thought patterns and mental health issues could spread through a population of telepaths in scary ways. Madness, a particular kind of transmittable health issue, was worse. It destabilized a mind in unpredictable ways, was difficult to treat even at early stages, and if untreated was universally degenerative to the point of death—suicide, homicide, or both. Although madness never transmitted more than once or twice between people and its origin wasn’t clearly understood, one person with madness could infect half the Guild if he wasn’t shut down immediately. “You’re sure it’s not a real contagion of madness? You’re absolutely sure?” Suicide was one of the indicators. On the other hand, suicide (and homicide) happened on their own
pretty often. “Quarantine might be the right thing to do here, Kara.”

  “He’s . . . he d-didn’t kill himself. He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t— Adam, I need you to come down here and look at him. At . . . at the b-body. And the apartment where they found him. I want you to tell me if they’re lying.”

  “Why would Enforcement lie?” And why would she want me to risk contagious madness? “Especially about a suicide?”

  “It was not a suicide!” Kara said, and her voice broke. “He was not mad. No one else is having issues! Look, he was electrocuted with an iron. An iron, you know, an iron you iron with! They say it was tampered with, but . . .”

  “An iron?” I asked. This was surreal. “They think he killed himself with a faulty iron?”

  “It had some kind of failure and it electrocuted him. They thought it was an accident, but he’s a Councilman. They had to investigate. And now they’re saying it’s a suicide, Adam. They’re saying he did it to himself on purpose.”

  “With an iron?” I asked. I couldn’t picture any man from Kara’s hypermasculine family killing himself with an iron. Hanging or a gun, maybe. But an iron? Seemed . . . unmanly.

  “That’s what I said!” she nearly shouted at me. “I told them he’d never . . . not with an iron. But they say he went crazy after the divorce. He wasn’t! I’d know. I need you to help me prove this was a murder.”

  Okay. Here was the real reason. “Where is the scene? Where did it happen?”

  “In his apartment.”

  “In Guild housing?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to go into Guild jurisdiction and ask difficult questions of everyone. Potentially offend some very important people. Interfere in a quarantine proceeding.” If I did that, no one in the police could save me—they could ask, sure, but they had no power whatsoever in Guild halls. “I take it the telepaths Meyers worked with are still very important people?”

  “Well, yes, he’s the Employment chair on the Council. Everyone he works with is a VIP.” In other words, one of the dozen or so most powerful people in the Guild.