Marked (2 page)

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 myself 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.

“The Council isn't going to interfere in quarantine even for one of their own, Kara. I'm not Guild. I'm not Enforcement.” I wanted to help, at least do something, for her. I'd asked her for many things in the last year; I should be able to step up and give her something in return. But this, well, I kept picturing being dragged in front of the Council. Having Enforcement showing up en masse
and wiping all of my memories. Either way I'd be lucky to be thrown in a holding cell. “Enforcement takes their job very seriously,” I told her. “Especially for a Councilman. Why not let them handle it?”

A short pause, and a shuddery breath. “Tobias Nelson looked Uncle Meyers straight in the eye on Tuesday in open committee and told him he'd bleed. Four days later, he's found dead in his apartment.”

“Who is Tobias Nelson?” I asked carefully, but with a sinking feeling I already knew the answer.

“Tobias Nelson is the executive chair of Enforcement. Everyone in the branch reports to him. Uncle Meyers was pushing for a budget cut for his department.”

Great. Just great. “And you want me to take on the head of Enforcement, a man with an established interest against your uncle and possibly your family as a whole?”

She took a breath. “Tubbs—that's my boss—told the finance committee that Nelson can't be objective and that the job should be given to someone not associated with his chain of command. I'm pretty sure that your credentials with the police will translate into an answer the committee can accept. You'll find out who killed my uncle and they'll prosecute him.”

“You're pretty sure?” I asked. “You're pretty sure! Tell me you've thought this through more than that, Kara.” Pretty sure could get me killed, damn it.

Another shuddery breath. Another. Until she was crying, full out, deep sobs that wrenched at my heart. But there wasn't anything I could do for her, not on the end of a phone line. And she was crying harder now.

We'd been engaged once, and the Link was still there, too deep to lose. Like a hotel room with two locked doors, we'd closed it off. But it was still there. I found it, in the back of my mind, pulled the furniture from in front of it, and opened my side of the door. I knocked, gently. A Link was the only exception to the location-limited physics of telepathy; like two bound quantum particles, when two people were Linked they could contact each other halfway across the world.

Her crying paused, and I could almost hear the locks slide. The door came open in small, rusty spurts. And then she was there, in my head.

I was pulled headlong into hurricane-force grief and shock and anger and loss, so strong and deep and wide it shook the boundaries of reality. After a while, I pulled back enough, got enough distance to think about hanging up the phone, and decided against it.

My eyes might have watered too, with hers. Then I was able to send waves of warmth and shared sorrow over Kara. Her tears tapered off, and over the phone she made the snuffly sound that was Kara, and only Kara.

I pulled away then. She was married, I told myself. Married. I must have leaked it into Mindspace as well, because then the door was closing again.

“Hold on, I need a tissue,” she said. The sound of someone riffling through papers and boxes came over the phone, then her cute little blowing-nose sound.

I closed my own side of the Link, lighter this time. I'd help if I could, but there was a reason why I kept my distance. A good reason. For my health, my sanity, and the debt I had outstanding from an earlier agreement with the Guild. I did
not
need to go into their headquarters and cause trouble.

“Will you help me?” Kara asked after a minute. “I don't have—well, I don't have anybody—”

“I'll help you if I can,” I said carefully. “I'm not going to storm the Guild to do it. I'm not going to end up mind-wiped over this or interfere in a real quarantine. I'm not crazy. But I'll come and talk to you if you want me to. You need to make sure you jump through the right hoops and get me cleared. You know, so I don't get shot when I walk in the door.”

“If I can get you cleared with security for an hour or so from now, will you come?” Her voice was small, and still heavy with tears.

She'd betrayed me once, long ago, when I'd been in the middle of my drug addiction. She'd reported me to Enforcement, the first domino in the chain that had sent me to the street. She'd betrayed me. But she was still Kara, still the woman I'd lived with and loved with for years. And this last year she'd moved mountains for me—and she hadn't had to. I should be able to do the same for her. I should.

But I hesitated. I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to face the Guild again.

“If I can get you safe passage to the Guild this afternoon, will you show up?” she repeated, her voice more firm. “Soon?”

I sighed. Looked like I was going to do this. “Can I bring Cherabino with me?” It seemed less likely I'd disappear with a normal cop in tow, somehow.

“No, that won't work. She's not on file with security.” Her voice quavered. “Just say you'll come.”

I closed my eyes. For anybody but Kara . . . “I'll be there in an hour and a half.” It would take me at least that long to take the bus to Buckhead.

“Thank you!”
she breathed.

“This is not a promise about anything. I'll listen. We'll talk. You might invite Stone to be there, if you trust him.”

“I'll think about it,” she said coldly. “I'll get you cleared. Adam?”

“What?”

“Thanks for coming.”

“I'm not promising you—”

“Even so . . . ” She paused. “I appreciate it more than you know.”

•   •   •

One winter day some years ago, when I was still at the Guild and still living with Kara, her uncle Meyers stopped by the classroom where I was teaching just as the tone sounded for end-of-school.

“I'm taking a walk in the gardens,” Meyers had said. “Care to join me?”

I'd met him at a few of Kara's family functions—she was part of several politically important family groups who met regularly—but I hadn't ever spent much time with Meyers one-on-one. Still, if I was going to marry Kara, I was marrying the family, right?

“Let me get my coat,” I'd said, curious but confident I could handle whatever he'd throw at me. Probably just another warning to treat Kara well; I'd gotten four of those already from various family members.