They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (21 page)

"No, I didn't use the gun because I was afraid a bullet might go through the wall and hit one of my neighbors."

"Very thoughtful. So you attacked him with your powers?"
"Yeah."

He wrote that down. "So what happened after that?"
"Well, he lost his shit and came at me, so I, uh," fuck what even really happened? It was all a blur. Shit. I had to come up with something. "He said he was going to kill my family. My sister and her family in Wooster." No, wait, fuck, he had said he was going to rape the girl next door. "He said 'I'll be there in less than three minutes, and then they'll be dead.' He was also going to rape, he threatened to rape, my next door neighbor. He told me that. So as he was running out the door, I just tripped him up with some heat."

"You tripped him?"

"Yeah, a cloud of heat hot enough to make him stumble."

"A cloud of heat. That's kind of
vague. How big was this cloud?"

"Maybe three feet."

"Good aim. How hot?"

"I don't remember."

"And he just fell?"

"Yeah. He fell."

He put his pen down. "Okay, I'm having a hard time understanding this. You tripped him, and he fell. What happened next?"

I glanced at the one-way mirror without thinking and jerked my eyes away to look at the wall. "He fell into my doorframe."

"At high speed? He was going fast?"

"Right."

"How fast?"

"I don't know. Really fast."

"And that did what? Knocked him out?"

"Yeah, he went out like a light."

Blue shrugged. "And that's it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, okay, now I gotcha. Hopefully, that apartment's not burned up so much that the doorframe's been destroyed. We can corroborate this from the damage, right?"

"Yeah, the frame got busted to shit."

"Okay, all right. Now, we'll circle back around to this to find out about all this blood, but it brings me to the next question I've got. Wilmont Avenue. What happened there?"

Holy.
Fuck
. My heart slammed against my ribcage. Felt like I had just found out my mother had been a man in drag all my life.

"What?"

He checked the sheet like he wanted to make sure he'd read it right. "Wilmont Avenue in your hometown there. They had this wild fire that ate up a city block. Witnesses said," he went through the reports, "'the fire burned with an unnatural intensity,' and no cause has yet been determined. You know the world we live in, stuff like that gets forwarded up the chain 'cause assholes get puckered tight when people think a Post-Human is going nuts. And with you being pyrokinetic, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask. So can you tell me anything about that?"

I shook my head. "No. I don't know anything about that."

"Okay. Now, don't take this personally, but I have to say this too. We got another warrant this morning for a federal psychic to do a sweep down there, and a warrant to do a sweep of your truck and your apartment. Now if they come back and say they found a match between your truck or your apartment and an
y
residual thought pattern at Wilmont Avenue, you know you're gonna be in trouble, right?"

"I've driven by there before."

"While thinking about fire?"

"Man, I'm always thinking about fire."

"So you're saying you don't know anything about the fire that killed five people on Wilmont Avenue? And you're saying that we'll find no evidence whatsoever linking you to it?"

It was getting hard to take a goddamn breath in there.

"Look, man," I started, licking my dry lips, "I turned myself in to help y'all catch Tracey--"

"You were arrested," DeltaBlue butt in casually.

"But I didn't resist. Because I want to help you catch Tracey. You've probably got a whole group here trying to catch her, don't you?"

He nodded. "That's correct."

"Then that's what I'm here for. I'll tell you everything I know about her, and slink away into Witness Protection for the rest of my life or whatever. I didn't turn myself in to get the fucking third degree."

DeltaBlue put his pen down again. "Mr. Guillory," he stopped to find his words. "We.
Investigate
. Post-Human crime. That's what we do here. It is our responsibility to indiscriminately pursue those who pose a danger to society--"

"I guaran-fucking-tee you Tracey's more of a danger than I am."

"Let me finish, please."

"Fine, but I'm not a fucking danger."

"Before we can do anything like getting you into the Witness Protection Program, we have to assess what you know and how valuable you would be to any case against her. You witnessed her commit not one but possibly two murders, that is true, but what we also have to determine is if it's prudent to use you for testimony and then release you back into the wild with the general public. Now I'm gonna be perfectly up-front with you: you have a
serious
criminal past which you seem to not want to acknowledge--"

"You gotta be fucking kidding me--"

"And you don't seem to show any signs of stopping that behavior, Mr. Guillory. Am I wrong in believing that?"

"Yeah, you're fucking wrong. I want to get back to my normal life. I've been living a normal life for fucking
years
. Until this shit with Tracey started up."

"The Wilmont Avenue fire happened days before your planning session in Missouri, if the timeline you've given me is correct. And we haven't even scratched the surface of your time in Europe yet."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," I said.

"No, I am not fucking kidding you." His glowing light got more intense. "And as for what I think about all this, I think this is just your way of getting back at somebody who pissed you off. You can't find her, so let us do it, right?"

I licked my dry lips. I felt like laughing, crying and jumping up to whip his ass all at once. "I said I wanted my friend in protective custody. That's why I'm doing this. But not one of you assholes has told me a goddamn thing about any of that. He will die because Tracey will try to take him out
just like I stopped her from doing to Lee in Missouri
, and you're sitting here giving me shit instead of protecting him. And
I'm
the asshole?"

DeltaBlue nodded and closed his file. "So, for the record, you have no knowledge of what happened on Wilmont Avenue, is that correct?"

"I don't know what happened there, man. Some crack head probably lost control of his pipe."

"And you don't have any information about Tracey's or Kamikaze's client?"

"No."

"And is there anything you'd like to add to your statements before I shut off the recorder?"

I stuck my middle finger out on the table. "No, Sir."

DeltaBlue nodded and gave a signal to the people behind the mirror. "All right. Let me go check on that protective custody thing for you."

He left me there at the table alone. I gave the finger to everybody behind that one-way mirror.

"This is bullshit," I said, boiling and unable to sit still. My plan was eating its own asshole right in front of me. "I'm doing all of you a favor," I told the mirror.

Ten silent minutes passed, and I shot the mirror a pissed-off look. "Any day now, guys. I'm waiting on
you
."

The Tank walked in and took DeltaBlue's seat.

"Hello, Mr. Guillory, I'm Special Agent Bethany Nowakowski. How are you today?"

"I'm not fucking good, Tank. How 'bout you?"

She adjusted herself to get more comfortable in her seat. Up close, she had freckles and short, strawberry-blonde hair. The cream-colored suit she wore looked like it
came from the Men's Department.

I asked her, "Hey, what was your nickname when you played ball? I can't remember and it's been bugging me."

"The Tennessee Tank," she replied. "I played for the Lady Volunteers."

"That's it, that's right."

She put her own digital recorder and folder on the table and went through all the legal shit.
Again
.

"I'm sorry, I know this is hard for you," she said, "and I want to warn you, I don't have good news for you. They sent me in specifically in case your control on your powers lapses. So please,
please
remember to keep them in check even though I am invulnerable to them."

"Yeah, okay. We'll see."

"Do you feel you are in a state of mind conducive to controlling your powers at the moment?"

"Fuck if I know, Tank."

"Do you want to do this another time? We can if you don't feel up to it right now."

"Look, do whatever the fuck it is you're in here to do. Jesus
Christ
."

She read from a page, "This is about North Dakota. Do you remember what happened there?"

"Yeah. I do."

Her eyes went back to the page as she read. "Agent Red was found dead in North Dakota near Harper Township, killed by a radio pulse detonation. Seven residents of Harper Township have been admitted for psychiatric care due to the detonation's effect." She stopped for a second. "Additionally, Mr. William Bowman was found
with Agent Red, also deceased."

". . . What?"

"Both of them were found dead. I'm very sorry." She gave me a moment. "Due to the circumstances, Agent Red's death is being investigated as a murder. What we're trying to do is determine the events that lead to his death. Since they did find ample evidence of fire damage to clothing fibers found on him, we're hoping you can shed some more light on this for us. In your statement, you did not mention coming into conflict with Agent Red, only that Mr. Bowman did."

"How'd he die?" I said.

"Both Agent Red and Mr. Bowman died from the radio pulse
fail-safe
you described. When it went off, the pulse created nearly instant--" she hesitated, "lethal brain damage."

"I need to be out of this room," I said. "I, I fucking feel the walls closing in on me, and I need to be out of this room, or I'm not responsible for what happens."

"Take a minute, take some deep breaths. I know this isn't easy. Is there somethin
g I can get you, Mr. Guillory?"

I could hear myself breathing in my ears. "I need a cigarette, a fucking bottle of something to drink and I need to be out of this g
oddamn fucking room right now."

Will, God
dammit
.

Tank slid a pack of smokes and a lighter from her pocket. I grabbed the pack, fucking Slims, slapped it against my hand a couple of times, tore a cigarette out, spilling half the pack and lit it with a thought.

"You're not allowed to use your powers while in cust--"

I slammed my hand on the table. "Are you fucking kidding me? I lit a fucking cigarette, Jesus fucking Christ, you just told me my best friend is
dead
. I know you don't give a shit, but,
fuck
. Fuck
you
, man."

"Mr. Guillory, please refrain from using your powers from this point on."

I could tell I was heating up the room, sweat beaded on the Tank's forehead, but I couldn't feel it at all. I felt numb.

I stared her straight in the eye and let smoke seep out of my mouth. "Let me out of this goddamn room."

She didn't budge. "There are men right on the other side of that door. Some of them are waiting to help you get through this. More of them are waiting for you to do something violent. We can leave, but I need you to calm down first."

"You need to let me out of this room is what needs to happen."

Heat radiated out from me; heat lines wriggled up from the surface of the table, and Tank's papers browned and caught fire. Her skin wouldn't burn but she'd sure as shit feel it. They had guys waiting to take me out, fine, they could bring it the fuck on. This whole thing was fucked from the get-go, and this bunch of cocksuckers let me throw my life away for nothing.

"Tell those guys they can come on in here," I said, spitting smoke. "The ones ready to kick the shit out of me."

The Tennessee Tank put her hand across the table to me. "Mr. Guillory, please. Don't do this. We're going to do everything we can--"

"Send 'em in, or you and me throw down." I could barely get the words out without choking on them in my mouth. I bolted upright and slung my chair at the mirror, the leg struck it and a spider-web crack splashed across it. I popped a few ugly, sloppy fireballs in front of Tank's face.

The heat got so hot the fluorescent lights blew out, and two sprinkler heads went on and sprayed drenching, high-pressure water from above.

"
Get me the fuck out!
" I yelled at the mirror.

Then the door flew open and put a sharp shaft of light in the room. Body-armored and armed officers filed in to put me down, shouting shit at me I didn't give a fuck about. This time, I wasn't taking a fucking dive. In the raining water and the dark, Tank got me from behind and wrapped an invulnerable forearm around my throat in a chokehold that would've been illegal on anybody not burning cops. She didn't have any enhanced strength, that was true, but the dyke fucking worked out and probably ha
d a dick almost as big as mine.