Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (8 page)

“So why Frankies?” I asked. “Sounds like a stupid name to me.”

He shrugged. “Boss-man, he says they’re messing in stuff they don’t need to be messing in. He’s the boss-man, you know? If he calls them the Easter Bunny, I go find eggs.”

Okay. I took a moment to get that image out of my head. “Tell me about the Frankies. What do they look like?”

“I told you. White guys, young one, old one—not too old, fifty maybe. The young one talks more, yells a lot. Old one has a purple patch on his jacket he keeps covering up like he thinks we can’t see. He’s always worried.”

A Guild patch—he was picturing something like a Guild patch. I knew they were involved somehow! The brain damage alone…

But it wasn’t any good if I didn’t confirm it for the recorder. I took a second to sketch out the Guild telepath patch on a piece of paper and do another couple wrong ones, the Ruten space shuttle service patch and one I made up on the spot. I pushed the paper over to Joey. “Anything look like what you saw?”

He pointed to the Guild’s, and I handed him the pencil so he could circle it. He did, and I gloated internally for a long second before getting back to work.

“So how do you know so much about the Frankies?”
I asked him after he was done. “You see them kill those people?”

Joey shut down like I’d flipped a switch. “Didn’t see anything,” he said. Huh. First time he’d shut down. Could mean nothing but…

“Your boss dealing with the Frankies directly, Joey, cutting you out of the deal? Must be worth a lot of money, a bit of body disposal like that.”

He set his jaw and thought nasty thoughts about me in specific, creatively nasty thoughts. “Didn’t see anything.”

“How do you know so much about the Frankies, then, Joey, if you didn’t see anything?”

He paused, looked at me suspiciously. “I hear plenty. Just about the time they tell you not to ask no more questions, people start asking ’em. I keep my ears open. Keep my eye on the business, you know? A lot of attention on the neighborhood for no reason. I don’t like the Frankies, nobody here does.”

For the record, I said, “Because they killed a bunch of people and dumped them in your neighborhood after you made a deal to dump them somewhere else.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s insulting, you know? And even if I was inclined to look the other way, too much of that, it’s bad for business. Too much attention. And they’re cutting us out of the game. Bad for business. Somebody should cut them out of the game, you know, all the way out.”

I ignored the veiled death threat. I needed more details, some actual hard facts I could use. I started tapping the table. “What kind of game we talking, Joey?”

“The Frankie game,” Joey said with a bit of an attitude. “All the Dead, Dead, and the money.”

“Where’s the money, Joey? What money?”

He looked at me for a long moment. Apparently he was willing to help me only so far. He looked down at the table, at my tapping hand. I stopped as I felt him recognize the gesture and try to place it.

Quickly. “The bodies found in your neighborhood, the ones killed without a mark?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re saying the Frankies killed those seven people?”

“You said there were six. Paper said six too.”

Bellury gestured significantly. We weren’t disclosing the last body. Crap. At least it would give me an excuse to distract Joey.

I backpedaled like a marathon biker. “Six, then. Sorry. I have trouble with numbers sometimes.”

“Dyslexia?”

“Yes,” I gritted out.

“You should go to some of them classes. Really helped a buddy of mine.”

“I’ll look into it,” I lied. This was good, probably. He’d never believe the guy he’d known then would struggle with the words. Even high as a kite, I’d done crosswords. Well, when I’d been in touch with reality.

Joey shifted in his chair. I think somewhere in his subconscious he did remember me, and that was probably the only reason he was being even this friendly. I hated it. I hated him and the whole former life of mine he stood for, but I couldn’t exactly stop him talking to prove it.

Joey sat back in his chair. “You’re not really a telepath. You’re bluffing with me.”

“That so? Well, I know that regardless of what’s on the file, you’ve stolen at least three cars personally.
Before you started muscling for Marge. The first was a”—of course, now he was thinking about it—“bright yellow classic Camaro. Black stripe. Second was a Mercedes A-34400.”

He looked very disconcerted. “There’s no way you could know that.”

“Want me to tell you how you did it?” I asked. Parlor trick, but it would do the job.

“What do you want?” he asked me in a dangerous tone.

“I need to know how all of this relates. Something I can use.”

“What can you use?”

My eyes narrowed. “Dead bodies. Frankies. Your neighborhood. Why?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

I held his eyes with a small smile. I faced scarier things than him every day in the mirror.

“The boss man doesn’t like the Frankies,” he said flat out. “He don’t care who knows that. They’re making a lot of trouble for the neighborhood, bad for business.”

“Who’s the boss-man?”

He snorted and leaned back. “You think I’m going to tell you that?”

“I need a name.”

“Maloy,” he spat out, with a good flash of the man’s face and the worry that something had happened with the man out of town. I had no idea what to do with the information.

“And proof of the killings,” I said. “Something to connect them to the Frankies.”

Joey shifted in his chair. He’d made a deal with the guys—or Maloy had anyway—and he was thinking
he couldn’t break it, couldn’t turn the bastards into the cops. Maloy had forbidden it.

I frowned. “I’ll get a police sketch artist in here so you at least can give us a picture of the Frankies. How do you know they’re the guys we’re looking for? I’d be very disappointed if you gave us the wrong ones.”

“I’m no good at the sketches,” Joey said. “You going to pull stuff out of my brain? Start something here? Or are you going to let me go?” I felt his decision not to buck Maloy no matter what happened—to hang in there until the man got back, even if it was in a holding cell.

He set his mouth. Let me feel his contempt for rich telepaths born with the fuckin’ silver spoon. He wasn’t going to do anything else today.

Standing up, I grabbed my repro files and waved Bellury with me into the hallway for a chat.

“Can I arrest him? Or at least hold him for a while?”

Bellury lifted an eyebrow. “Can you prove he’s committed a crime?”

“Not unless you’ll take my word for it.”

“Hard evidence. Something on the recorder?”

“Well, no.”

“Then you can’t arrest him, can you?” He shrugged in a way only old cops can. “Why don’t you go on to Paulsen and I’ll take care of the guy, huh?”

I sighed. “Okay.”

In the interview observation room on the other side of the glass, Paulsen was seated in the only wobbly chair, alone, a paper in front of her. She’d obviously sent the recording tech away already.

“Editor sent over a copy of tomorrow’s lead story.” She offered it to me. Her voice was more intense, her
waves in Mindspace more angry than her actions would suggest.

“‘Serial Killer Stalks East Atlanta,’” I read. Crap. “This is what the mayor wanted
not
to happen, right?”

“That’s correct.” She stood, her hands going to her lower back as she looked at nothing in particular, her anger simmering under the surface. “When the mayor gets his morning coffee, Captain Harris is going to get a very unpleasant phone call. Branen is going to have an unpleasant morning apologizing. And I—well, I had a very long list of meetings before this happened, and I don’t imagine the list is getting any shorter.” Her eyes focused on me. “Good work in there. It’s a whole lot of nothing, but between that and the forensics from the last scene, at least we’ll have something to show.”

“It’s not a whole lot of nothing. Remember the patches Joey identified? I’ve got his mark on it confirming. No mistaking what it was. Plus he’s saying there’s more bodies we haven’t found.”

She shrugged. “Not important. His credibility is nonexistent.”

I realized I hadn’t identified the patch out loud. Sloppy of me. “That’s the Guild patch. The Telepaths’ Guild? Remember them?”

“I’ve had—”

I barreled ahead. “At least one of the Frankies is Guild! I was suspecting two—”

“Do not interrupt me. I have had a hell of a day and am about to have a hell of an evening.” She took a deep breath. “Whether Joey’s testimony means anything or not is something you and Branen will have to figure out.”

“We need to go to the Guild,” I insisted. “For information if nothing else. The brain damage…”

She stopped, listening now. “What brain damage?”

“I thought you were up on this. The coroner yesterday.”

“
Don’t
sass. You will treat me with respect. This is not my case. If it weren’t for the goodness of my heart, it wouldn’t be yours either. Now, tell me what it is you think is so important.” She looked at me critically, and I knew what I said in the next few minutes would determine whether she’d ever listen to me again.

I sucked in air. “Every victim has brain damage in the parietal lobe, in the area controlling Mindspace processing. The victim’s brains were burned out from within.”

“You mean a stroke?” She was listening, arms crossed while I could faintly feel an ache in her back.

“No, a literal burn, an excess of energy. They were killed with the mind. I’d lay good money on it. I’m betting it’s those Frankies Joey was talking about—the ones with the Guild patch. Not easy to get if you’re not Guild.” And though it stuck in my throat to say it, I continued. “We need to call them, Lieutenant. I know we agreed we wouldn’t, but I’m finding more and more details that tell me we need to. As much as it’s the last thing I want to do. You want this guy—these guys—off the street, you want the murders to stop, we need to contact the Guild.” At minimum, I needed a list of names to cross-check with Joey’s description. I knew better than to trust the list they gave the cops.

“It’s quite a can of jurisdiction worms you’re talking about, a can I don’t see any reason to open,” Paulsen said. “And I don’t know why you’re the one bringing this up. We’ve already made the decision.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. But if Joey’s right, and it’s two Guild guys killing—at least seven bodies that we know about? Maybe more? That’s not an accident.
That’s not an oops-I-didn’t-mean-to-kill-the-poor-citizen moment. That’s somebody with purpose, maybe two guys with purpose. I can’t be everywhere. I can’t protect everyone. And all it takes is five seconds, five seconds for someone to burn your brain from the inside.”

Her eyebrows narrowed. “Why didn’t you say this before, when we were talking about the killer in the first place?”

I took a breath. “To be honest, we’re not supposed to talk about details. The training is limited to maybe a handful of guys. There’s rules, Enforcement. Process. I’d rather not deal with any of that crap, trust me. But I can’t be everywhere at once. We need to call them. There’s things they can do we can’t touch.”

She leaned back, keeping a lid on her anger only with difficulty. “I swear, you were put on this earth to make my life difficult.” She blew out a line of air. “The Guild’s trouble. You yourself have said it a hundred times. And I’m not convinced we need them. Two guys, well, we can track the records, start eliminating suspects. Sounds like something
you
should do. Like something you should have done before this.”

“I can try to run down the records, cross-check.” I folded my arms. “But half of the guys with that training are off the books on purpose. Black ops.”

“Of course they are,” Paulsen said. She muttered under her breath for a good long moment, and I did not listen in.

“We need to call the Guild,” I repeated, though it burned to say. “They have resources, names, and data that we need. Maybe they’ll even share.”

She looked up, scrutinizing my face, my body language. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Um, what to say? I settled on a version of the truth. “There’s a lot I’m not telling you. I
can’t
tell you, kicked out or not—there are a lot of Guild secrets I only know of through rumors. I’m not getting my ass in trouble for rumors. But I can tell you this much: At least one of the killers is Guild. Not affiliate, not I-joined-because-you-made-me-and-I’ll-just-coast-along, but hard-core, invested, I-know-the-company-secrets kind of Guild. The I’m-not-listed-in-any-public-database kind of Guild. The scary kind. The kind we probably can’t touch legally. We need help here, Lieutenant.”

She seriously considered it, and a chill ran through me. Was I really asking for this? Killer or no, breaking ethics or no, these were the people who kicked me out. Who humiliated me. And who might easily come after me for telling their secrets. I was not the guy I was ten years ago. I was not the golden boy, the genius professor, the idealist anymore. I was a drug addict, a cynic—a doubter. Pathologically. I knew all the things that could go terribly wrong, and if I reported every little violation of ethics, I’d never stop. People broke the rules. That was life.

I took a breath, clamped down on all of my complex feelings about the Guild. I was probably making myself a bigger target by doing this, but I didn’t care. There was part of me that was still that idealist telepath. Part of me that thought killing with the mind was a sin worse than murder with a knife. A part of me that still lived by those ethics, those Guild ethics. I was in trouble, I thought. I was arguing for contacting the very people who made my life living hell. But I couldn’t take it back.

Lieutenant Paulsen took a deep breath. “Get out of here. I’ll talk to Branen, but I don’t see why you can’t
call them for information if it’s so incredibly important to you.”

I looked in the face of what I’d asked for, scary as hell. And I didn’t run away, not quite. I kept it to a walk. A sedate and dignified walk.

I was sitting
on a small chair in the coffee closet, turned sideways to fit in the narrow space. The creaky table, coffeepots, and endemic stale donuts to my left had a comforting smell, the closet light above pleasantly dim. There were no desks for ten feet in any direction, so the minds of those around me receded to a dull whisper and I could think. Well, until Cherabino walked in my direction.