Marked (11 page)

CHAPTER 10

“You realize
it's
not efficient to have the interview rooms in a separate building from the Enforcement offices,” I told Stone once we'd crossed the chilly covered walkway back to the main spine of the Guild's living quarters.

“The Sinclair Building has better shielding throughout because of anyonide fields in the living quarters stacked together,” Stone said. “The fields are built into the building, so it's cheaper and easier to extend that system into its basements than to build a completely different system at twice the energy cost. Efficiency of time is not the only consideration.”

“And the shielding takes a considerable amount of power, I take it?” I was still thinking about the too-visible, severe burns on Meyers's body. “How much power?”

“I have no idea. Orders of magnitude more than the household electrical system. The Guild has to contract with the city for special power grants. It adds up. That's why most of the shielding is in this building. Easier to circulate the power than separate it.”

I waited, but he said nothing else. “How do you keep the electrical systems separate?” I finally prompted.

“I'm not an electrical engineer, Adam. It's a custom design. They inspect twice a quarter.”

“When was the last inspection of Meyers's apartment?”

“About three weeks ago.” He'd looked it up, his mind supplied. They had given the apartment a clean bill of health.

I waited. “Well, isn't that a short amount of time for a short or whatever to develop?”

Stone nodded, reluctant for some reason. “That was the first reason I classified this one as nonaccidental. The second . . .”

“What?”

“The second was the madness report. We're going to see the woman who made it now.”

“Okay.” I noticed all over again how empty the halls were. Even the main elevator shaft, the open air extending into the endless levels circled above, felt empty. I didn't see a single person outside his room, even in the far-high floors. “They've really got the Guild shut down, don't they?”

“Essential personnel and prescheduled events only,” Stone said. “If it weren't for the Eleventh Hour testing today, the school would be on total lockdown as well.” Final testing for advanced Guild students took weeks to schedule and prepare for, and wouldn't be easily moved. It was a good sign that they were continuing with it for now.

“Let's say I believe we're dealing with a full-blown madness situation. Are all these steps even enough?” I asked. “I mean, you don't even know how it spread in the first place. Seems dumb to scare people if you can't do anything about it.”

“Assuming the team is right, and it spreads only via repeated deep-mind contact, this should be more than sufficient to prevent an outbreak,” Stone said. His mind, usually so disciplined, let leak a thin trail of worry. They didn't understand what this was. They didn't understand how it transmitted. And waterborne or airborne illness was a trouble of an entirely different level. The Guild wasn't set up to process either. Everything they were doing was just a hope, just a prayer, against this fear.

“I hope you're right,” I said, but my mind was still dubious and I didn't work too hard to hide the fact.

“It has to be enough,” he said, and I got that leak of fear and a picture of a boy's face, a kid about ten years old, and a woman behind him.

Your family?
I asked.

He started. But he had let the thought slip into public space.
Yes,
he said finally.
My family. They live here too. Anything that effects the Guild, that brings the contagion to the Guild as a whole, will affect them as well. With respect to Meyers, he made his choice. This should all have been shut down from the beginning, for the sake of the Guild.
For the sake of his family, his mind added.

His fear bothered me. He was like Paulsen, like Cherabino; I'd seen him face real danger with no more than healthy respect. But when a cop—or an Enforcer—got truly afraid, it was time to run.

And I, like a fool, had agreed to go deeper into the belly of the beast.

I followed Stone through the basement elevators and back onto the floor with the basement-level interview rooms where I'd seen Meyers's ex-wife. Oddly, I felt comforted; the industrially cold small hallway with two empty rooms and a monitoring station reminded me so strongly of the department basement where I spent most of my time. Plus everything was clean, something not true of the department.

“Johanna Wendell is waiting in the first interview room,” Stone said. “I'll be monitoring over the video system.”

“I'm used to a babysitter by now, Stone. If you want to be in the room, be in the room.”

His presence in Mindspace was hardly there, he was shielding so hard. “That would be my preference, yes.”

“Fine. Any rules I need to know about?”

“Don't kill her. And try not to rummage around in her mind if you don't have to—Enforcement prefers to have that done by official readers anyway.”

I didn't respond. “You have a file on her?”

“Not really,” he said. “At least nothing outside official Guild records. You and I don't qualify. Reports go up, not down.”

“Fantastic.”

•   •   •

I opened the door, and went in, smiling. Stone followed, taking up a seat at the back of the room.

A pretty late-twenties brunette sat at the table, Johanna Wendell. She was thin, with an angular face and an elegance of carriage and the kind of professional office clothes that made me want to take her seriously. Her body language reflected impatience, and disgust, briefly.

Then she brought it under control; her presence in Mindspace flattened out immediately, and she smiled. The smile was perhaps a little fake, but I'd been there.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she responded, in a smooth voice. “I was told Enforcement wanted to speak with me?”

“This is about the madness report you submitted last week on Del Meyers,” Stone said.

“We want to ask you a few questions,” I put in, setting the folders I'd borrowed down on the table. “Would that be all right with you?”

“Of course,” Johanna said, and clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “How can I help?” She studied me.

I explained myself as an independent investigator consultant who'd been brought in by Enforcement yesterday. “Please feel like you can talk to me,” I said. “I'm here to find the truth through good old-fashioned evidence, not deep-reads.”

“I assume you want to know why I reported Meyers to Mental Health.”

I sat. “That would be a great start, yes.”

“He was acting very strangely, to begin with.” In Mindspace, there was an odd effect when she said that, something I couldn't put my finger on. Her body language changed to more “open” and she seemed sincere. Then: “He had volunteered to help me study for my precognition recurrents, so I saw him rather more frequently than normal these last weeks.”

“You're a precog?” I asked.

“Yes. I also have a low-level Four telepathy rating.” Just enough to speak with other telepaths if they “spoke” loudly, but not enough to read normals or anyone else weaker.

Something about her felt off . . . felt
wrong.
But I didn't know what.

“Meyers was also a precognitive,” she said. “His frequency was rather less than mine, but his visions typically foretold large-scale natural disasters. He'd started in Disaster Response. Originally, I'd thought he could help me turn my gift into something more . . . significant.”

“You wanted to increase your accuracy?” I guessed. “Oh, you wanted to be one of the Preferred Futurists. Do they still pay them so much better?”

She nodded. Then she looked down at the table. There was that odd fluctuation in Mindspace again.

“What do you mean by acting strangely? Was he having odd visions?”

“No, nothing like that,” she said very quickly and firmly. “No. It was . . . strange. He kept talking about chickens. He paced the hallway over and over. Then he canceled our meetings with no explanation.” She moved her head to one side and her body language changed subtly, to a more wistful, closed-off place. “I was concerned. When I asked him about it, he pretended nothing was wrong. When I dropped by, I caught him talking to thin air and he threw a heavy stapler at me. I still have the wound.” She touched the side of her head, under the hair, and I got a faint impression of pain, though I could see nothing.

“He threw a stapler at you?” I asked. “Why would he have a stapler at his desk? Isn't that his assistant's job?”

“It was on loan,” she said quickly. Then, slower: “He was putting together stacks of paper that didn't make sense. Stapling them four times in the right corner. I didn't understand. But what really worried me . . . ,” she went on, and I started to miss things.

I realized then that something about the way she talked, the way she held her head, reminded me strongly of someone I'd known a lifetime ago, on the street. She'd been a sometime drug pusher who turned the occasional trick for money until she'd found out she could convince charities to pay for her room and board with a good sob story. She'd been younger, rounder, and infinitely more cynical than Johanna was here, but there was a definite physical resemblance, especially in the way they moved. The resemblance was jangling at my instincts like a dinner bell pulled by a child, making me see things that might not otherwise be there, making me distrust Johanna.

“Are you listening?” Johanna asked me.

I checked—yes, I'd been shielding hard. The mix-up with Meyers's ex-wife had taught me at least that much. I shielded a little harder and adjusted my body language to project sadness. “Yes,” I said. “Go on.”

“He complained of being manipulated. He sounded like one of those paranoid people on television. He told me he couldn't trust anybody but me. And then he got angry with me—for absolutely no reason—and wouldn't see me anymore. John—his assistant—was told not to let me come around anymore. It was very hurtful.” She paused, looking at me.

Something felt off. But I had to speak anyway. I told myself the lie first, told myself to believe it, then did, as much as possible. “How sad it is that a man in his position would treat you so badly,” I said. “He must have indeed been going crazy.”

A little anger flashed across Mindspace then, but she pulled it in. “I'm only sorry I didn't report him sooner. Maybe John would still be alive if I had.” She put her hands over her face, and breathed. “I can't believe John killed himself. Or Meyers. This is all my fault.”

“This is not your fault,” I said habitually. If I had a nickel every time I'd said that in the interview rooms, I could be retired in Bora-Bora by now. “Can you tell me anything else about Meyers?”

She pulled her hands down and stared at them. “I'm sorry he's dead,” she said. “He was a good guy.”

“Were you sleeping with him?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “No, nothing like that.”

But there was no surprise either in Mindspace or on her face at the question. She was a good liar, but she was hiding something.

Stone glanced over at me, saw that I had nothing, and told her, “You did a good thing by reporting him to Mental Health. It escalated the situation to the proper authorities and it's likely saving lives right now. We may be in and out asking a lot of questions of a lot of people in the next few days. Don't let that stop you from coming forward if you think of anything else.”

“I understand,” she said. But she looked at me carefully.

Probably she wanted to know if I'd guessed about the affair. None of my business either way, I supposed. Made me think less of Meyers, though. I forced a smile and some joviality. “I appreciate you spending the time answering the questions. I have one more.”

“Yes?”

“What do you know about the Guild's electrical shielding system?” I asked.

A note of surprise and worry entered the air. “It works by creating a moving electromagnetic field at the right frequency to resonate with Mindspace and prevent mental waves from being propagated across the intersection line of the field because of a modified fractional quantum Hall effect.”

It was nearly a word-for-word quote of the Guild's physics and Ability textbook. I was impressed. More impressive was the concepts folding out in her mind as she quoted the words. No dummy, this one.

“Did you kill Del Meyers?” I asked.

“No,” she said firmly. I believed her. Just the affair, then, huh?

“That's it?” she asked, after a moment.

“That's it. You have a nice day,” Stone said, and held the door until I followed him out. “What was that about?” he asked me in the hall when the doorway shut.

“Collecting information,” I said. “Is there a phone here where I can check in with the police?”

“I'll be listening,” he said cautiously.

I paused, thought about what I intended to say. “Just don't record, okay?”

He nodded.

•   •   •

Stone showed me a small alcove with a phone in one of the adjoining rooms. He left the door open and settled outside, to give me the illusion but not the actual presence of privacy. I'd have to be careful what I said. I was planning to anyway, seeing as this was the Guild, and the Guild's thoughts about privacy were loose enough to allow random monitoring. But even so.

I dialed Cherabino's office phone. With her working—what, five? six? eight?—cases right now, I had absolutely no doubt she'd be there on a Saturday catching up. Unless there was another murder to have her out in the field.

I wondered what Swartz was thinking when he'd asked me to ask her out. Would that really—