Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel Read Online Free Page B

he hung up, I ventured, “Basically the—”
    He raised a finger for me to wait.
    I thought about attempting small talk, but I was bad at that sort of thing.
    A knock came on the partially open door.
    “Come,” Branen called out.
    Lieutenant Marla Paulsen entered the room and gave me a nod. Great, he’d invited my boss.
    She glanced at the chairs, and finding them occupied, leaned against the door frame.
    Branen inclined his head in my direction, eyes on her. “You know he’s assisting with the multiples case,right?” She nodded. “Well, we’ve got contradicting theories, and they all point to the Guild. You still keep up with the Koshna Treaty law changes?”
    “Not too many changes lately, but yes.”
    Paulsen was a strong woman with a strong face, skin the color of cinnamon sticks, and more than a few old-fashioned wrinkles. At a young sixty-mumble, she was a stickler for Tech Separation (she remembered the aftermath of the Tech Wars) and she wore her uniform like she’d been born to it. Paulsen had high standards, and as she’d told me more than once, she expected those standards to be met.
    Branen caught her up on the discussion and my Guild ramble in about three sentences, then said, “So with a perp who shouldn’t exist and victims who aren’t registered, can we ignore Koshna?”
    Paulsen frowned. “Well, technically the treaty says we’re supposed to call the Guild at first suspicion of anything, but the courts have been siding with the cops lately. Koshna Accords are there mostly to let the Guild police their own. Clearly they’re not policing themselves in this case.” She looked at me. “You sure this guy is a—what do you call it?”
    “Double trouble,” Cherabino offered.
    “Thank you. Double trouble. You sure he’s Guild?”
    I straightened in my chair reflexively under her look. “I know a teleport when I see one. I know a telepath. But there were two guys there. I think it’s one guy who’s the telepath and teleporter, I’m almost sure. We’re not guaranteed, though. They could be different guys.”
    Branen leaned back in his chair. “Worst-case scenario,” he addressed Paulsen. “We don’t report it. We track it down to its conclusion, capture the perp, submitthe findings in triplicate to the political guys to fight out with the Guild directly. What are we looking at?”
    She shook her head. “Won’t get that far. Besides the legal red tape, we can’t hold him without Guild support.”
    I nodded reluctantly and confirmed. “He’ll Jump out of the cell. Or convince the guard’s mind he wanted to let him out in the first place. The strong guys are hell to hold if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
    Branen sighed. “Let’s say we put boy wonder here on guard. What’s worst case?”
    Hold on now. “I’m not nearly—”
    Cherabino waved me down, and I seethed.
    Paulsen frowned slightly. “It’s a high-profile case, or could be made one with a hint to the right reporter. They’d have to fight it in the courts.”
    Branen glanced at Cherabino, then back at her. “We still have friends in the DA’s office who’d be glad to take something like that on, for publicity if nothing else. Meanwhile the killer’s off the streets, and the captain doesn’t have to field a phone call from the mayor asking why we’re not doing anything about the East Atlanta murders. I say we do it.”
    “Do what?” I asked. I was shielding hard enough to give myself a headache, and I was definitely not tracking as well as I could have been.
    “Work the case without the Guild,” Cherabino said. “You might want to try to keep up.”
    I admit that the Guild weren’t my favorite people since they’d kicked me out, but…“Can you do that?” More important, could I do that? As bad as things were for me right now, they’d be a lot worse if I got the attention of their Enforcement unit. Still, it would twist the Guild’s tail, to have one of their people held responsible to the