Xenopath (19 page)

"I've a
feeling you're going to tell me."

"It's a set
up, a buy out. The cops have been conned, either knowingly or not.
Kulpa probably believes all this—but his superior's in on it.
Why else do you think he's given us the commission? To shut us up.
for Chrissake."

"And who do
you think's behind the cover-up?"

"Come on.
Who else? Scheering-fucking-Lassiter, that's who."

"And
Nordquist?"

"Some poor
schmuck chosen as the decoy by the real assassin. And this," he
said, snatching up the pix of the three men, "you'll probably
find is a very clever fake."

"The case
is closed, Vaughan. We've been paid."

"Paid off,"
Vaughan said. He stared at her. "You're not going to sit back,
take their money, and forget about who killed Kormier and Travers,
are you?"

Kapinsky sighed.
"We're dealing with a professional, Vaughan. And, what's more, a
pro with multicoloniai backing."

"Christ,
and not one hour ago you were all for slicing this Denning exec and
seeing what he knew about Mallory. Listen, it's all the more
important that we do that, now."

"You've
changed your tune, Vaughan."

"Too right
I have. Back then we were going on a hunch."

"And we
aren't now?" Kapinsky said. "Seems to me your conspiracy
theory is just so much guesswork, Vaughan."

He thought about
it. "Okay, let's not jump into anything. I'll do some
investigating. If I find something that points to Nordquist being an
innocent party in all this, then we see what Denning and Scheering
are hiding, okay?"

Kapinsky held
his gaze. "For what, Vaughan? We've been paid. So we find out
that Scheering's behind the killings, what do we gain?"

Vaughan shook
his head. "Call me naive, but we gain the satisfaction of
bringing criminals to justice, of righting a wrong."

"You sound
like some kid's superhero," Kapinsky said. "So we find out
that Scheering hired an assassin, that he's covering up something on
some far away colony planet. It's not our ballpark, Vaughan. Get
real. We're bit-part players. We do what we're paid for, keep our
noses clean with those in power, and get on with our little lives."

"You don't
know how fucking cynical that sounds, Kapinsky."

She stared at
him. "It sounds," she said, "like the Vaughan I knew,
once upon a time."

"Yeah,
well, that Vaughan's dead and gone," he said. He let a silence
stretch. "So... there's nothing I can do to persuade you to look
a bit further into this?"

Kapinsky sighed.
"Vaughan, we're beat. Let's give up before we find ourselves in
deep shit, okay?"

Kulpa looked
into the room. "If you've a minute..."

As they joined
him on the patio, Vaughan activated his handset and scanned Kulpa.
The sergeant was on the level—he was merely taking orders to
close the case from his divisional commander.

He killed his
implant and stared up into the blue sky. A private air-car was
banking over the edge of the Station, a sleek silver coupe with a
grin like a shark. An insect-wing door hinged open and a tall woman
hauled herself our of the low-slung driver's seat.

Kapinsky said,
"Who's this?"

"Indira
Javinder," Kulpa replied, "She's another of your lot
working on the case."

"Our lot?"
Kapinsky echoed, eyeing him.

"A
telepath."

Vaughan watched
the woman as she strode around the shimmering pool, and he wondered
where he'd heard the name before.

She was, he had
to admit, striking: so tall as to appear attenuated, as thin as an
off-worlder from some low-grav planet, and dressed to maximise the
effect in a one-piece jet black bodysuit and a tri-corne perched on
the back of her shaven skull.

She was Indian,
flat chested and stooped, with a hawk-like beak of a nose and
pockmarked cheeks.

The impression
she gave, Vaughan thought, was that of the Grim Reaper customised for
the late twenty-first century, scythe replaced by a laser strapped to
her anorexic waist.

Javinder...
Vaughan knew, then, where he'd heard the name before.

"Kulpa?"
the woman said, ignoring both Kapinsky and Vaughan.

"Javinder...
My boss told me you were on your way." The big Sikh seemed
deferential, as if overawed in the presence of the telepath. He
indicated the corpse and escorted Javinder across the patio.

Vaughan turned
to Kapinsky. "Javinder. Ring a bell?"'

She shook her
head. "Should it?"

"Think back
to the interview with Shelenko. She said she was questioned by a
private investigator."

"Javinder,"
Kapinsky said.

"So
Javinder's linked Mulraney's killing and this one."

"Not
necessarily. It might just be coincidence." Kapinsky stopped,
then said, "What the hell's she doing?"

As Vaughan
watched, the Indian telepath stood beside the lounger containing the
corpse, then knelt. She reached out with long, black-nailed fingers
and laid her hand across the dead man's brow.

The she closed
her eyes as if in concentration.

Something turned
cold within Vaughan's stomach.

"What the
fuck's she doing?" Kapinsky hissed at him.

He knew very
well what she was doing—and at the same time he knew that what
she was doing was impossible, this long after the subject's death.

Not looking at
Kapinsky, but staring at the attenuated Indian as she bowed her head
as if in pain, he said, "She's a necropath."

"Come
again?"

"A
necropath. She can read the minds of the dead."

Kapinsky stared
at him. "How the hell do you know that?"

"Seen them
on the movies," he wisecracked. He almost told her that, years
ago, back in Canada, he'd been implanted with the hardware to read
dead minds, and had done so for the Toronto homicide division before
he'd burned out,

She said, "I've
read about them, of course. Knew they were around. Never thought I'd
see one in action."

You're not,
Vaughan thought. He knew that what they were witnessing here was
nothing more than an elaborate charade.

He looked at
Kapinsky. "How long's Nordquist bee;i dead?"

She glanced at
her handset. "Nearly three hours."

Indira was
putting on an act. He knew he was right, knew that he was onto
something.

The woman was
genuflecting before the corpse, her fingers spanning its head like
some psychic healer. She let out a low moan, then a sob, and broke
the connection.

She remained
kneeling, motionless, her head hanging, for perhaps a minute.

Around her,
Kulpa and the SoC team watched in silence like the chorus in a Greek
tragedy.

At length,
Javinder rose to her feet, towering over Kulpa, and took a long, deep
breath. The two conferred tor a while
_;
the sergeant
nodding from time to time. The expression on his face comprised awe
with supreme gratitude.

"Wonder
what the hell she read," Kapinsky murmured.

"I wonder,"
Vaughan echoed, sarcastic.

A minute later
the tall Indian turned on her heel and strode off towards the
air-car, something imperious in her disregard of the onlookers.

Kulpa joined
them. "I thought you might like to see that," he said, as
if he had personally stage-managed the private performance of a
world-famous diva.

Kapinsky said,
"She was a necropath, right?" Across the patio, the air-car
fired up and rose into the air, banking away over the ocean.

Kulpa nodded.
"'Right. Quite something, ah-cha?"

Aware of his
pulse, Vaughan said, "What did she tell you?"

"She said
she accessed his dying thoughts. T hey were weak, but readable. As we
knew, Nordquist was in financial difficulties. He owed a lot of
people a lot of money. He was the guy who killed Kormier and
Travers—but his other debtors were queuing up... he couldn't
think of another way out, except for..." He gestured towards the
suicide and fell silent.

Vaughan chose
his next question carefully. "And do you know who she was
working for, sergeant?"

Kulpa nodded.
"She was hired by the multicolonial, Scheering-Lassiter. The
murder victims Kormier and Travers were employed by S-L. They wanted
it cleared up."

And they've got
it cleared up, very neatly, Vaughan thought. But they'd staged this
little display of duplicity without reckoning that one of the
audience might know something about how necropaths worked.

He walked away
from Kulpa and Kapinsky, around the pool, and came to the balcony
rail. He gripped it, leaning over and staring at the scintillating
expanse of the Bay of Bengal.

He felt good,
secure in the knowledge that he was right, that he knew now, for
sure, who was responsible for the deaths of Kormier, Travers,
Nordquist, and before them Dana Mulraney.

Kapinsky joined
him. "Vaughan? What is it?"

His answering
smile turned to laughter.

Kapinsky said,
"You okay?"

"I'm fine.
Never felt better."

"You going
to explain yourself?"

He nodded.
"Sure. She, Javinder, was faking it."

"What?"

"She didn't
read Nordquist's dead mind."

She looked
dubious. "And you'd know, would you?"

He held her
gaze. "Too damned right I'd know, Kapinsky."

She sneered.
"The holo-movies, right? You've seen necros work on the movies?"

He ignored the
jibe. "She didn't read Nordquist," he said. "What she
told Kulpa was bullshit. She's working for Scheering, right? So of
course she'd tell him that Nordquist was in deep shit financially."

"Vaughan,
for Chrissake." She shook her head, exasperated. "What
makes you think—"

He interrupted,
reaching out suddenly and gripped her upper arm. She winced as he
pulled her to him and hissed, "She was bullshitting. That
performance, kneeling and pretending to read Nordquist, it was a
fake—"

"How the
hell do you know, Vaughan?"

"Because
you can't read dead minds after three fucking hours, Kapinsky. One
hour, maybe you can pick up weak signals, the odd deep memory, but
even then you'd be lucky. Three hours... forget it. The brain's so
much dead meat. Stone cold. There's nothing firing in there, the
synapses have long since given up the ghost."

"Like I
said, Vaughan. How the hell do you know this?"

He hesitated,
looking at her. Even if he told her, she wouldn't believe him. There
was only one way to prove that Javinder had faked the reading.

"Okay,
listen." He looked around. Kulpa and the SoC team were clearing
up around the corpse. "Years ago, before I came to the Station,
I worked for the Toronto Homicide Department. I was a necropath."

She stared at
him, her expression combining revulsion and respect. "Straight
up?"

"We got to
the scene an hour after the crime, and we might be lucky. Any later
and we were chasing shadows. Two hours and the investigating officer
wouldn't even call us in."

Kapinsky was
watching him, doubt in her eyes.

Vaughan said,
"There's one way I can prove it," he said.

He lifted his
handset. "I'll switch my shield off, okay? You can go in, access
my memories. You can read for yourself that necropaths are fucked if
the corpse is two hours cold."

She held his
gaze. "1 think I believe you," she said, her expression
indicating that she'd rather not access his memories of reading dead
minds.

"Like hell
you do," he said, and swiftly tapped in the code to kill his
shield.

He thought back
to his Toronto days, to the last corpse he'd scanned, then opened up
to her his knowledge of a working necropath.

Seconds later
she reeled away, holding her temple. "Christ, Vaughan," she
said, gripping the rail for support.

He activated his
shield, staring at her.

She took a
breath and straightened up. "Okay, okay... So Scheering is
hiding something."

He smiled. "It
isn't just a hunch any more. Now we know. Javinder was hired to put
us off the trail."

He paused, then
said, "We've got to scan Denning, Kapinsky. We've got to find
out what the bastards are up to on Mallory."

I AM HORTAVAN

Pham sat in the
gnarled root system of an old banyan tree on the edge of Gandhi Park,
Level Three, and stared out across the flat lawns and paths. It was a
smaller park than Ketsuwan, and not so busy—the perfect place
for Pham to hide from the killer. She had spent the past two nights
not on a bench, which was too open and obvious, but in the cover of
the banyan.

Yesterday, Khar
had helped her win more money. A card sharp in a nearby corridor had
set up a small table, taking money from gullible passers-by who
thought they could guess which card came next in a certain sequence.
Pham, guided by Khar, had guessed right three times running, and won
over two hundred baht, before the angry card sharp had refused to
allow her to play any more.

She had
celebrated with a big Thai meal in a proper restaurant overlooking
the park. Afterwards, in the shade of the banyan, she had tried to
question Khar, but the thing in her head had remained stubbornly
silent.

This morning,
she tried again.

"Khar,"
she said. "Please talk to me."

She waited.
There was no answering voice in her head.

She said, "Do
you realise that it's rude not to reply when you're spoken to, Khar?
There you are. living in my head, enjoying yourself thanks to me, and
you don't even have the good manners to be polite. What would your
mother say, if you had a mother?"

Silence. Pham
grew angry. "Khar! Why won't you talk to me?"

Just when she
thought Khar was not going to reply, the voice sounded in her head.
Because it's safer if 1 don't,
it said.