Vacant (9 page)

“You okay?” I asked Tommy.

“Yeah,” he said in a small voice, and turned around, moving toward his room.

Jarrod caught my eye before I could follow. “Alibi?”

“He wasn't at the veterinarian's,” I said. “But he wasn't anywhere close to the attack either. He seems genuinely wanting to help find whoever it was that attacked his son. I think you can let him go if you want to. He's not meaning any harm, at least not to us.”

Jarrod nodded, dismissing me, and I went back to find Tommy.

That was fast. I guess I wasn't used to cops taking my word seriously. It was kinda nice actually.

If it wasn't for the weight of the vision and my worry about Cherabino's job hanging over me like anvils, this might actually be a good day. I wished I could believe it would continue.

*   *   *

It was dark outside and I was hungry. Very hungry. Out of desperation and nothing more, I was now standing over a
hot stove with a cardboard box in my hands, puzzling out the directions for a dried soup. I'd stayed with Tommy the whole time, and had mostly avoided any major lapses in conversation. But with the day going on and my fuel tank getting low, that would change if I didn't eat.

I needed to call Cherabino, to check up on her and ask how the hearing was going, but I didn't want Tommy to overhear. I didn't want to scare him. The conflict between the two feelings was making it much harder to puzzle out the directions on the soup box.

“You need water,” Tommy said. He was perched on a tall stool in front of the raised counter, a breakfast bar or some such.

I looked back at the mix. “Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, and located the sink. Check. Now for measuring. Eight cups of water, exactly?

“That's not a very good soup,” Tommy said as I opened cabinets in the overly modern kitchen. Measuring cups, measuring cups . . .

“Third cabinet on the right, below the counter,” he said, with the dismissive tone of a kid stating the obvious.

I counted cabinets and opened the third one on the right.

“The other right,” he said.

I moved to the other cabinet.
Kid thinks he knows everything.
“Aha!” I said, then under my breath: “Jackpot.”

“Can't you make macaroni?” Tommy asked. He swung his legs forward so they hit the counter in front of him.
Thump-thumpity. Thumpity-thump.

“Not unless it's dead easy,” I said. “Rehydrating dehydrated food is about the extent of what I can manage. Unless you want to take a shot, this is what we have. Unless you have peanut butter. I can do peanut butter,” I said hopefully.

“Mom says peanut butter is fattening,” Tommy said.

Of course she did.

“Why isn't anyone else cooking?” he asked me.

“They're doing rounds of the property and calling their contacts for research and talking to your dad's contacts,” I said. “It's just you and me. They'll probably have some food later, but I wouldn't count on it.” Most cops I knew carried around bar-shaped meals in small packages to tide them over, and I'd been known to do the same but had left Atlanta in too much of a hurry.

“Mom says Dad lies a lot so he can get what he wants,” Tommy said, still thumping the front of the counter.

“That's usually why people lie,” I replied, and got the water level right in the cup after the third try. I poured it into the pan, which sizzled and spat steam at me. I stepped back.

“I don't like liars,” Tommy said.

“You don't like a lot of people, then,” I said. I'd spent years in the interrogation room separating out truth from lies; even the innocent people lied about something under that kind of pressure. The trick was to figure out what the lie was and why they were doing it. Why in hell were those witnesses lying against Cherabino? It made no sense. It got them nowhere.

“Do you really talk to so many people? Like in the movies? You're a police officer, right?”

I got the last of the water in without burning myself and opened the box of dried soup. I threw it in, most of it ending up in the pot and not on the stove. I should probably have had a bigger reaction to him reading me—he seemed awfully consistent for someone his age—but I'd just spent a bunch of time at the Guild. He was doing surface thoughts only, what the Guild considered public space, and if I kept a lid on the worst of what was going through my head, that was okay. But I had to be careful.

“Can you do all the stuff telepaths do on TV?”

“What?” I turned around, stirring the soup. “What was the question?” He asked a lot of questions, but I guessed that was okay. Questions were better than terror, and at least they meant I knew where he was.

“Like disappear, and make people do things, and lift things with your mind, and make people see things that aren't there. And make fire. The fire part was cool.” His mind, now that I was paying attention, flashed a B-movie version of a pyrokinetic holding fire in his hand. “If I'm really going to be a telepath, can I make fire too?” He was thinking the kids at school who made fun of him would run from fire, and it would make them like him.

“Um, I can't make fire—except with a match—and I doubt you'll be able to either,” I said. “That's a pyro, and the Ability is pretty rare. And the disappearing part is usually a teleporter. I know some of them, but that doesn't mean I can do it. I have to walk everywhere, but then again that keeps you in shape. Honestly? Right now you're probably not going to be able to do much but see what people are thinking sometimes, and that's not going to be super stable. Give it a year or two, though, and you'll be able to train and get more control. If you have one of the secondary Abilities, either you'll discover it on your own or it will come out in training.” I considered testing him, or doing a deep-scan to determine, but with the strange connection that had established itself earlier, I wasn't sure I could control the situation well enough. The only other person around his age I'd ever spent any time with was Jacob, and thus far Tommy hadn't reacted at all the same way.

“Who's Jacob?” the kid asked.

“My . . . the woman I'm dating and work with, her nephew,” I said awkwardly. “Girlfriend” didn't seem quite right in context, too small and too large a term for the
present discussion, but we weren't quite police partners anymore either. Even though I missed her input on this case and her presence. I took a breath. “Anyway, he has a health issue and a very strong Ability that's pretty stable right now. He's getting training, but he's ready for it too. You'll get there, and honestly, you'll probably do better in the Guild system when they come around recruiting. The Guild's not a bad life, not if you're one of them.”

He thought about that. “Will I still get to see my mom?”

“You'll spend a couple of weeks with her three times a year. More if there's a good reason and you go through the approval process.” I stirred the soup again, looked at the clock, and called it done. I located the bowls in an upper cabinet. “If you'll remind me later, I'll teach you how to separate yourself from other people's thoughts. It takes a little bit to get good at, but that way school won't be so loud and distracting.” And I might get away with more worries in front of him if he could shield better.

I missed Cherabino. I really did, but I pushed that to the back of my head and focused on the soup. And Tommy.

He blinked at me.

“Really,” I said. Then handed him the bowl of soup. “Now eat up.”

He watched me over the rim of his bowl while he ate.

*   *   *

“Ward.” Jarrod stuck his head in the kitchen.

I looked up from the donuts we'd found for dessert. “Yes?”

“Ward's a funny name,” Tommy observed. If that was the worst he was saying about me, it was a good day.

Jarrod ignored him. “We need your talents in the main room for a moment.”

“You going to be okay on your own?” I asked Tommy. “You won't go wandering off?” Suddenly even being a few
feet from him seemed dangerous. That vision was coming whether I liked it or not.

“Don't be stupid,” he said.

“Um, okay.” I looked at Jarrod, who then turned around and left, a clear expectation that I'd follow. Reluctantly, glancing back at Tommy, I did, but I kept mental tabs on him. I'd know if he moved a foot.

There was a card table set up in the corner of the main room, one of those supermaterial tables that would fold up into the size of a pack of cards and then fold out into a lightweight table with a nice pattern of cracks on the top (and hinges on the bottom) to make it look decorative. Of course the lightweight table would hold up the weight of a small car without buckling, so as expensive as it was, it was a good choice for them. Normally people would put a tablecloth over it to make the surface more even, but Jarrod hadn't. With all the electronic equipment he'd set up on another, similar table next to it, perhaps he hadn't had the time. It seemed like they should be watching the electronics more closely, more carefully. Dangerous stuff there—nothing rated for a civilian—and they were treating it casually, like it didn't matter. This bothered me. Didn't they know how dangerous computers could be after the Tech Wars? Weren't they worried a supervirus would attack their equipment and destroy everything?

Mendez stood next to Jarrod, a thick sheaf of papers in hand. She set them down on the table, starting to fan them out over its surface. I forced myself to calm down. Being a bundle of nerves and worry wasn't going to help anyone.

“What's going on?” I asked. Why had they asked me here, away from Tommy?

“We just got the judge's letters back from the local crime lab,” Mendez said. “Analysis of the physicals will take another few hours, but I thought we'd give you a look.”

“What?” I walked closer to the table.

The letters overlapped like the blades of a folding fan, a few faceup, the rest spread out with edges showing only. Some of the letters were handwritten, others typed, but the ones on the stack to the right, the ones that bothered me, looked like something you'd see in a movie. Large and mostly brightly colored letters cut out of magazines and newspapers spelled out things like
YOU
KNOW
WHAT
YOU
HAVE
TO
DO
, and
LET
HIM
GO
OR
IT
'
S
OVER
. A shiver went up my spine.

“The newspaper letters look ominous,” I said. Like the kind of thing a movie villain sent, right before somebody died. If the judge had been getting these for weeks and months . . . I understood then on a deep level why she'd hired the bodyguards.

Who, now that I thought about it, were dead or severely injured. This wasn't a safe job I'd taken on. This wasn't a safe job at all.

Jarrod moved next to me. “The lab says those are more recent, and created by only one person or a single group working together. The rest are from several individuals over a matter of years. Please take a look.”

I swallowed. “Can I touch the letters?”

“Go ahead.”

I picked up one, looked at it sideways in the light. The magazine and newspaper letters weren't attached with glue; they weren't rippled enough. I poked one of the cutout squares. It was solidly connected to the lined notebook paper page, like the two materials had fused. “Paper-weld bonder?” I asked. “Those are usually owned by businesses, not individuals, because of the cost, right?” Maybe we could find him that way, and take the danger out of the situation before it escalated. Nothing would make me happier.

“Yes,” Jarrod said slowly.

“We can probably track those and get an idea of who's sending them. Legwork, but I don't mind calling around.” I'd do the most menial tasks if it would keep Tommy safe without me having to go toe-to-toe with Sibley like I did in that vision.

Mendez looked at me in surprise. “Aren't you going to read the letters?”

I looked at her, confused. I was new here and clearly wasn't doing what they expected, though what they expected wasn't clear. It didn't hurt anything to read the things out loud. “You aren't listening. Do the thing or I will destroy—”

“No,” Jarrod said. “That's not what she meant.”

Mendez frowned at me. “Read them. Like, read them.”

“Ruth could get a vibe off an object and tell us more about who it belonged to,” Jarrod said. “I take it that's not part of your skill set.”

I blinked at him. “No . . . not really. Um, I can try to do something like that, but even when that works, it's not usually paper for me. Especially if it's been handled a lot by other people, there's usually nothing left in Mindspace. But—” I forestalled an objection. “Really I will try.”

The note in my hand felt like nothing, a completely neutral object with no emotion to it at all. I picked up another sheet, the
YOU
KNOW
W
HAT
YOU
HAVE
TO
DO
missive, in the hopes that this one would be better. The letters looked darker, more crooked, and it looked angry and disturbing and urgently wrong. But in my hand, in Mindspace, in any way I could think to look at it, even this one was just paper. I didn't have a clairvoyant gift, even though perhaps Ruth had had a slight one. I couldn't see anything. The man—or woman, I supposed—who'd created this had probably spent less than an hour with it, and while I could imagine a disgust and threat coming from them, that was all it was, an imagination.

I shook my head and put the paper down. “I assume
Ruth had a clairvoyant gift, but it's not something I have. It's just an object to me.” The only times I got anything from an object was if it was with its owner for years upon years of constant use, and even then I didn't get a lot of information. I didn't understand clairvoyants, not at all. Their gifts didn't seem to obey the laws of Mindspace physics, at least not easily.