Here’s a good police procedural story, but seeing where you’re reading it, there’s a bit extra added into the procedure. A story from the hard streets of the big city, where not even your thoughts are your own.
I’d read the dead woman’s final thoughts properly. As I walked up to the abandoned shopping complex in Ringgold, Georgia, just over the Tennessee line, I perceived a presence ahead. Arthur Rook. The woman’s killer.
The complex was a relic from the days when people left home to make purchases. It sprawled across a low plain somewhat removed from residential areas or a major road — the reason for its demise. I walked carefully across a parking lot littered with papers and broken glass. Weeds sprouted through cracks in the pavement. The doors weren’t even locked. Few of them still had full panes of glass, and I stepped into the building between knife-edged shards.
I punched a code into my police handlink requesting backup as I ducked into the store nearest me. It was called a “drug” store, though it seemed to have sold everything from towels to toys.
It took the Ringgold police a minute to understand that I was a federally licensed telepathic agent making an official request. I couldn’t read Rook’s thoughts, not without a physical touch, but I could perceive his emotions; in this case, dominated by hatred and an underlying fear. As usual, I was wearing dark clothing — that and my dark skin, like Rook’s, might help keep me concealed an extra moment.
I pulled my needler and set it to subdue. I moved toward the rear of the store.
Rook’s voice boomed through empty corridors. “I bet it’s the tap!” That’s what he called me, meaning I “tapped” into others’ thoughts.
I wasn’t about to be coaxed into a response — Rook couldn’t know exactly where I was. My main disadvantage — telepathy isn’t a directional sense. I could sense Rook drawing nearer, but I still had to watch my back.
A glimpse of movement — Rook was somewhere ahead of me. An intersecting aisle was about three feet in front of me. If Rook crossed it, he’d be exposed.
I felt his hatred and fear more strongly as his cautious steps across the rubble-strewn floor grew louder.
A sudden upsurge in Rook’s emoting —
I stood and brought my gun to bear —
And something struck me, hard, in the stomach. My breath whooshed out of me and I doubled over, then fell to my knees. My needler was snatched from my grasp. Rook had been closer than I thought. “So,” Rook’s voice said. “Looks like it’s brain-tapping against street smarts — and street smarts just won.”
I looked up. In one hand, Rook held the Louisville Slugger he’d hit me with. In the other was a small handgun, the older-style type that fired actual bullets. Definitely illegal.
Not the way I’d imagined things playing out the first time I saw him.
I wasn’t prepared that day in the prison when the guards brought Rook into the interview room. He was in a stasis restraint. They rolled him in on a dolly, like a washer/dryer or virt projector. A pale amber glow enveloped him. I knew the advantages — no messy problems of physical restraint, no medical expenses. Revival for an hour a day, just long enough for a shower, meal, and exercise period, then back into stasis.
Four guards accompanied Rook into the interrogation room, as did his attorney, a light-skinned women named Marietta Miller. I acknowledged her with a nod.
Two of the guards retreated to different corners of the room. No one had ever been scanned by a telepath in Hamilton County, Tennessee as part of a legal proceeding. I’d told them my requirements: a room bare of all furniture except a chair for the alleged perp. No speaking through glass or between cell bars.
The guard who’d rolled Rook in held the dolly steady while the fourth one canceled the amber field. Rook shook his head and blinked in wonderment, then started to sag. The fourth guard helped him sit in the chair, then he and the one with the dolly took position in the other two corners of the room. Miller stood a few steps behind her client.
I waited as the prisoner gathered his wits. I’ve been told that coming out of stasis is like being awakened in the middle of the night after only a couple hours of sleep. It gave me a chance to assess him as he slouched in the chair.
He was a big man, with a rough complexion. I was surprised how quickly he came around. His mouth had been hanging open. Now his lips closed and curled into the smart-ass grin I’d seen on a thousand street thugs. His eyes grew aware and appraised me with a steady stare that tried to conceal the cunning behind it.
“You’re the tap,” Rook said, his voice low and rough.
“The telepath.”
“What you call it don’t matter. You ain’t doin’ it to me.”
“I have a properly-obtained warrant, and your lawyer is present. I can only scan for evidence that you killed Roberta Shiner. If you didn’t do that, you have nothing to worry about.”
Rook turned slowly and regarded Miller. “You can’t do nothin’ about this?”
Miller said, “No, I can’t.”
Rook looked back at me. “So that’s how it is.”
My primary motivation is the same as my grand-dad’s. He marched with King as a young man and served in the Alabama state legislature as a middle-aged and elderly man. He fought the battles of his time, necessary battles.
I’ve overturned my share of racist convictions, cut short trials based on charges brought out of prejudice. Mostly, I just try to do what’s right for victims, whether they’re brown or pink or whatever. Or if they’re beyond help, I locate their killers.
Rook was charged with murdering Shiner, his live-in lover. Rook had a record — his previous convictions included robbery and assault. Previous murder charges three years ago in the same city, in the case of another woman, Margaret Weldon, had resulted in a not guilty verdict. In interviews after the trial, jurors cited a lack of evidence. The prosecutor had rushed to trial thinking he had an easy case. No telepathic evidence was gathered.
Rook’s trial on the Shiner murder was set to start in three days. Another man, Derek Larson, who lived in the same apartment building as Shiner, was briefly considered as a suspect — he also had a violent record — but investigators thought Rook was their man.
Rook stirred from his slouching position and the guards stiffened. But he only sat straighter, and mustered a vile dignity that said I may have power over him, but there was a part of him I could never touch.
We’ll see, I thought.
I stood and walked behind Rook. I placed my right index and middle fingers on his neck just behind the right ear — he started at my touch, but I kept control. I made contact —
“Goddam, Roberta, you just kept comin’ and comin.”
“I can’t help it, baby. I like it just as much as a man, I guess.”
“Good as you are, you could make yourself some money.”
“I ain’t whorin’ for nobody.”
“Not every man can make do with a virt. I’m tellin’ ya — ”
“Let go my arm.”
A good slap to the side of her face shut her up. It felt so good, it was time to give the bitch another one, with the fist this time. Then down the street to Eddie’s Bar for a drink.
Eddie’s was where the police had picked Rook up. The uniforms said he was nicely pickled when they arrived, and barely reacted when they told him Roberta was dead.
I kept my fingers on his neck and went deeper, back-tracking to the time of the murder — about eleven o’clock, looking for more detail.
Damn her, anyway — gimme another — make it a double. Tilt the tall glass back and feel the warmth spread down your throat, feel the bourbon work its magic on your brain, like a warm fuzz that enveloped you and kept you safe.
A hand on the right shoulder, shaking it. “Listen, buddy, it’s not even 10 at night, I can’t have drunks here this early.” A couple more shakes, and the hand went away.
Shocked, I almost broke free from Rook’s mind. Roberta Shiner was killed about 11. Could it be — ?
Rook turned his head and threw me the same steady stare he’d given me earlier. “I didn’t do it, man. You wanna know, keep on comin’.”
I did. Using the time frame the shoulder-shaking man — presumably a bartender — had established, I went deeper, exploring the next couple of hours of Rook’s consciousness. It was clear that an hour either side of the best estimate of Roberta Shiner’s death, Rook was barely able to form a coherent thought, let alone murder someone. Rook’s memories couldn’t lie.
Oughta just do her in, be rid of her —
Hello? Could Rook have found some sudden stamina that night?
Yeah, that’s it, just make her be gone. Just like Margaret.
Margaret? Margaret Weldon? The woman he’d been found not guilty of killing?
Man, that one felt so nice, to pop her on the steps that day. One shot, goddam, then seeing her bitch brains all over the pavement and no one around that had the guts to say anything at the trial. A free man.
Then I did break free of Rook’s mind and clasped my hands over my face.
Marietta Miller asked if I was OK.
“I’m fine.”
Rook stared at me wryly. I’d have to make sure someone questioned the bartender — how had this gotten past the original investigators?
Miller’s demeanor hardened into a stern professionalism. “What did you find?”
“He didn’t do the Shiner murder.” I didn’t dare mention that he’d killed Margaret Weldon. At least, not yet.
Miller’s eyebrows slowly raised. “Oh, really?” She looked at her client, whose forehead was furrowed in disgust.
Rook said, “You don’t have to look so surprised.”
“It’s just unusual for someone to be falsely accused of such a crime twice.”
Only once, I thought. Only once.
I touched the pink skin of Derek Larson’s neck. It was soft and smooth, just like his thoughts and memories. Within minutes, I left him and reported back to the Hamilton County prosecutors. “He’s your man,” I told them. “He was pissed that Shiner had dumped him the previous month and taken up with Rook.” I said nothing about the Weldon case. I left them while they were still trying to figure out why no one had talked to the bartender.
The use of telepaths in court had revolutionized the legal system. People accused of crimes were probed by a telepath acting for the state. They, in turn, could hire licensed telepaths in their own defense. The prosecution, however, could also have your telepath scanned — and report on whether he or she was withholding information that could harm their case. Efforts to bring such information gathered by telepathic means under guidelines against self-incrimination had not yet been fruitful. Our opponents said we were trying to circumvent the Constitution — ignoring the fact that it had become obsolete.
My boss Alice Glass’s anger was palpable even over my small hand-vid as I called from the main hall of the Hamilton County courthouse. “You were not authorized to investigate the Weldon murder, Nelson,” she said. “Only the Shiner case.”
“But Rook’s not guilty of the Shiner murder. Derek Larson is. Rook beat Shiner, yes. Eventually, he might have killed her. But we need to nail him on Weldon.”
“You know as well as I do why that won’t happen.”
I did. The Supreme Court had already ruled that protections against self-incrimination didn’t apply to telepathic evidence — it was considered the product of police investigation, not coerced testimony. Protections against double jeopardy had been slower to fall, though. But even if double jeopardy laws were repealed that very day, that would have no bearing on crimes committed earlier, like the murder of Margaret Weldon.
Alice said, “If you report this, I might have to suspend you, or even take your license.”
I said, “This isn’t about me. It’s about the truth.”
“Report your findings on the Shiner case — only the part about Rook being innocent — then get the hell back to Atlanta.” She clicked off. The hell of it was, I knew Alice was probably right. I didn’t want to think about what my grand-dad would’ve said. He’d have given me the stare, that dreaded look over his bifocals that didn’t need to be accompanied by words to demonstrate its depths of disappointment.
I filed the initial report and started for the train to Atlanta. Not two steps out of the prosecutor’s office, a woman’s voice echoed down the long corridor: “Excuse me!” A tall brown woman trotted up to me, almost out of breath.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I’m Estelle Rook. Artie’s mother. I came to pick him up. You’re the mind-reader.”
“We prefer telepath.”
“Well, I just wanted to say thank you, sir, for helping my boy. As one brown person to another. He’s been through some bad times, and he can be mean sometimes. He’s just — ”
“Misunderstood?” I’d heard similar pleas countless times through the years, sometimes purposely deceptive, sometimes sincere but mistaken. Mrs. Rook stood on tip-toe and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for giving my boy a second chance.”
Moisture dried on my cheek as she strolled away. That brief touch had allowed me to take a light empathic reading. Frowned-upon officially, but as accepted as jaywalking. Whatever her son’s crimes, this woman was an innocent. Perhaps it was best I stay silent, allow her the chance that her life could remain peaceful. Though with a son like Arthur Rook, that seemed a doubtful prospect.
I was in the Atlanta office early the next morning. Alice was there ahead of me, waiting. I fell into the seat before her desk. I waved away her offer of coffee. “I got the report from Tennessee. You did the right thing.”
I pounded my chair arm. “A killer running loose.”
Alice stared me down. “A killer we can’t charge.”
“Until he kills someone else.”
“I’ve settled for sentences that have let some pretty nasty fellas out years — decades — before they should have been. I’ve had plenty of people I’ve prosecuted to the best of my ability get right out and batter their wives, shoot store clerks — the very same activities that put them in jail in the first place.”
I sighed. “I just feel so helpless. There should be some way I could warn people about him.”
“Short of going public, I don’t know how.”
I stood so abruptly that Alice almost dropped her coffee cup. “That’s it! Let the press know about it — they’d pounce on the story!”
Alice said, “Then Rook sues you for defamation, what then?”
“He’d have to allow another telepath to verify his claims.”
Alice said, “Except his lawyer would stall, claiming invasion of privacy. That makes it your word against his. Meanwhile, the public coffers get smaller and the lawyer’s bank account grows larger. The most we could get is that Rook would lose the suit. We’ve spent a lot of money and he’s still free. Worst case scenario is we get tired of spending public money — and we would get tired of that very quickly — and settle out of court. Rook could end up profiting.”
I sat down. “You’re right, of course.”
“That’s why I sit on this side of the desk. Look, I admire your commitment. But I have a dozen other cases I need you for.”
The next morning, the vid rang about four. I fumbled with my right hand for the audio-only button. It was Alice. “Nelson?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re headed back to Tennessee. It’s Rook.”
My thoughts focused. I sat up. “What’s he done?”
“He’s accused of assault. The victim may not live.”
“A new girlfriend?”
“No. Estelle Rook. His mother.”
I made it to Chattanooga just inside of an hour, though I’d had to take a train through Nashville to get there. Dr. Mary Fitzgerald at Erlanger Medical Center was in charge of the case at that early hour. I found her just down the hallway from Mrs. Rook’s room. She looked at my ID, then at my face, warily. “Nelson M. Brooks? A telepath?”
“I’m investigating the assault at the request of local authorities, Doctor.”
“It doesn’t look good for her,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. She was a graying woman who’d obviously seen thousands of cases like this. “Her son is a big man, I understand.”
“Yes.”
“Well, his fists must be big, too. He did a good job on her. She’s in stasis, so her body isn’t deteriorating further, but — ” She met my eyes in a silent plea.
“She’s not going to get better,” I said.
“Do you need to interrogate her?”
“If it won’t harm her further.”
“Nothing can at this point. But I have a favor to ask.”
“Name it.”
“You’re going to find out if her son really did this.”
“That’s right.”
Dr. Fitzgerald said, “But you can also read her current thoughts and feelings.”
“You want to know if she wants life-support removed.”
Dr. Fitzgerald bowed her head. I could tell she was one of the good ones — she still treated patients, not injuries or diseases. I said, “I’ll need an official request from you.”
“You’ve got it. I’ll take you to her now.”
Dr. Fitzgerald turned off the stasis field and left the room. Mrs. Rook lay motionless. Her face was puffy as hell, what little of it I could see between the bandages. A portable monitoring device was fitted to her shaved head like a skullcap.
Contact, as I touched Estelle Rook’s neck, and, surprisingly, was greeted with recognition: Met you.
“Yes,” I muttered. “You did.” Vocalizing helped solidify the connection with a subject whose consciousness was buried so deeply. “Day before yesterday.”
The mind-reader.
“Yes.”
Tubes. Don’t like. Pain.
“I know.” Some of her discomfort was being transferred to me the longer I stayed in contact. And her consciousness was fading quickly — I needed to ask my questions while I could still reach her. “Who did this to you?”
Don’t want to tell.
“I don’t want to force it from you.”
Don’t hurt him.
“Who?”
Art. He didn’t mean to do this to me. He thought you was telling me.
“About what?”
Weldon murder.
“You knew about that?”
Not until he said he did it. Said you’d found out about it. I didn’t believe him.
“Your son told you he murdered someone and you didn’t believe him?”
Wants to look tough. I know better.
I closed my eyes tightly. They were moist. The irony was too much to bear — that Arthur Rook had misjudged his mother’s concept of him so badly —
Tired. Want to rest.
“One final question, Mrs. Rook — ”
I told Dr. Fitzgerald, “She wants to let go.” Fitzgerald only nodded. I left to find Rook.
Filtered through Estelle Rook’s memories of her son had come the image of a place that both comforted and haunted him. Arthur Rook’s late father had worked at the “drug” store, and died there — victim of a botched robbery attempt when Rook was only five years old. Estelle Rook wasn’t sure, but thought her son had been sleeping among the store’s empty aisles and barren shelves.
I checked the charges on my needler and phone even as I hopped a local. Once off the train, it was a twenty-minute walk to the complex. A relic of the days of easy single-person transport.
Having scanned Rook’s mind previously, I’d be aware of his presence and general emotional state if I came within half a block of him. I intended to determine at a safe distance whether Rook was there. If he was, I’d call for backup, and that would be the end of it.
Only it wasn’t. I fought for breath between the coughs wracking my body. Bile was sour in my mouth; I willed myself not to throw up. Rook chuckled. “Thought you’d surprise me, huh? Think I couldn’t hear you breathe? Yeah, you were stupid, tap. Just like you were stupid to think I wouldn’t know what you were telling my mom.”
“I didn’t . . . tell her anything.”
Rook cuffed me on the side of my face with his gun. “Don’t lie to me, man!” I couldn’t lift a hand to my wound without falling forward. I squinted my left eye against the flow of blood that ran down my face.
I gathered my wits about me enough to focus on Rook. Waves of anger and disgust poured from him. “Get up.”
I raised myself onto wobbly legs.
“You know the worst thing about your kind?”
“No,” I croaked.
“You took away the only good thing I had.”
I wiped blood from my face. “What do you mean?”
“My mother. You told her.”
“About Weldon? I didn’t say a word.”
“She was still pure, man. She always believed I was good.”
“She believed it to the end.”
“What do you mean — the end?” Rook stepped up just inches from my face — if he’d only touch me, I could read his intentions.
I said, “She . . . died.” I braced myself for another blow. It didn’t come. I could hear Rook’s rapid breathing and feel a new swirl of emotion within him. Where was that backup?
“I did what I had to, tap. So maybe you know what I’ve got to do now.”
Sirens screamed in the distance. How quickly could the officers find me?
Rook held an object before my eyes. My own needler, switched to the lethal setting. I sensed a profound fatalism — he’d made a big decision and felt peace at the prospect of carrying it out.
Something hard and heavy clattered to the floor next to my feet. “Pick it up.”
I reached down, fighting nausea. Rook’s handgun.
“Go ahead, pick it up!”
I did, as Rook stepped away from me. The sirens grew louder. “The safety’s off,” Rook told me. He raised my needler. “I’m going to count to three and shoot you. Unless you shoot me first.”
His emotions grew stronger each moment. “Don’t,” I pleaded. The handgun I held had no stun setting.
“One!”
“No, wait — ”
Anger and despair rose to a new peak within Rook. Great-granddad never had to deal with anything like this. “Two! You can tell I’ll do it!” He would. But could I even lift the weapon?
“Thr — ” The shot was both blinding and deafening, and its echoes seemed to take many seconds to die. When my vision cleared, Rook’s body was lying before me. The backup officers found me by following the sounds of my retching brought on by the sight of all that blood and brains.
Alice actually hugged me when I entered the office the next morning. “You idiot,” she said. “I thought you knew better than that — going in like a cowboy, with no backup.”
I wasn’t in a mood to be teased. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Alice’s grin faded. “I guess it was rough.”
“Let’s just say the beat cops have lost a competitor. I’m leaving the real police work to them from now on.”
“Rook was counting on you killing him.”
“He took the easy way out. And I have to live with it.”
“You didn’t have a choice.” Alice took my hand. “You have a counseling appointment later this morning.”
I managed a smile. “I appreciate that. You know, now may be the time to go public. Some of the background I got from Rook could change the debate about the use of telepathic evidence. Could help overturn double-jeopardy laws.”
I expected protestations, perhaps an outburst. Instead, Alice said, “I agree.”
I looked at her in wonderment. “What changed your mind?”
“The same thing that changed yours. Trying Rook isn’t a factor any more. But the price we paid is that Estelle Rook is dead.”
“It might not have made a difference before.”
“No,” Alice said, “But the point is it might have.”
This time, my smile was spontaneous and heartfelt. “Did I ever tell you about my grand-dad? I think he would’ve had a few ideas about the right thing to do . . . . “
END
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