Free Double Cross [2] by Carolyn Crane Page B

my car, taking my sweet time. Halfway back, I treat my glorying self to a candy bar; I eat it on a bus stop bench while I watch pigeons tear at some garbage. Most enjoyable.
    Glory hour is mostly over by the time I near Mongolian Delites. I can tell mainly because the reverse emotional vampire thing doesn’t seem quite so amusing anymore. It seems horrible.
    I recognize Carter’s hair, like gleaming metal hay, from a block and a half away. He’s leaning on the brick wall outside the restaurant building, talking to somebody. As I draw closer, I see that it’s Daryl. They’ve positioned themselves in one of the few spots where the sun isn’t blocked by buildings.
    Daryl is one of Packard’s thugs—a telepath and a jerk, which is an extremely unpleasant combination.
    As I approach, I make a point of lodging the song “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” firmly into my head as a way of masking my thoughts from Daryl. Skunking your thoughts, it’s called. Telepaths hate when you do that. They can still get in, but it’s a whole lot murkier.
    Carter’s expression is calm. He’s zinged a target recently. It’s always a relief when Carter’s had a zing.
    “What’s up?” I ask.
    “Dorks got another one,” Carter says. “Trio. Hoodies. Gunned a woman down about an hour ago.”
    “Is she—”
    “Dead,” Daryl says. Daryl wears a beret over his longish blond hair—the Otto look, which tons of men are sporting these days. If he feels vulnerable as a highcap standing out on the street, he doesn’t show it. With so many highcaps in hiding now, the ones who do venture out are extravulnerable.
    “Woman named Fern,” Carter adds. “Telepath over in the university corridor.”
    “Packard said they got a suspect this morning,” I say. “But if there was a shooting an hour ago with three Dorks present, it means the suspect is the wrong guy.”
    “Not necessarily,” Daryl says. “There could be more than three Dorks and they switch off.”
    “That seems a stretch,” I say.
    “Daryl was just there,” Carter says. “At HQ.”
    “That’s right,” Daryl says. “And the guy can’t be read, just like the Dorks. And he recognizes us, too. He won’t say how. Hell of a coincidence.”
    “Another guy with the powers of the Dorks, huh.” I lean on a parking meter and twirl my car keys around my finger, making a bright silver blur, keeping the song going. “Huh.”
    Carter says, “Not good.”
    Daryl eyes a couple clipping up the sidewalk across the street. The couple eyes us back, maybe thinking we’re the Dorks. We’re three people, though we don’t have the hoodies. “Won’t say how he has the powers, but we’ll get it out of him,” Daryl continues. “We’ll make him sorry he withheld.”
    I grasp my keys, stopping their bright orbit. “What do you mean,
make him sorry
?”
    “He’s gotta be one of the Dorks,” Daryl says.
    “He wasn’t even at the last attack, but you want to make him sorry? This suspect gonna need a nurse?”
    Daryl gives me the fish-eye.
    Carter says, “Packard won’t let a guy get really roughed up.” Carter, of course, is Packard’s number one fan.
    “As opposed to partially roughed up?” I say. “I’m going over there.”
    “You’re not a nurse,” Carter says.
    “But I’m
like
a nurse.”
    Carter gives me a pitying look.
    “Sometimes,” I add, turning back to my car.
    I drive through the former industrial heart of Midcity. Years ago this was a bustling, prosperous area, but over the past decade it’s become a ghost town.
    I position Gumby so that his arms are crossed. Annoyed Gumby. “I
am
like a nurse sometimes,” I say to him.
    Gumby communes with me in his silent, silly way.
    “Make a guy sorry?” I say. “When he wasn’t even at the last Dorks attack? Screw that!” I drive deeper north, past long, low buildings crouching behind empty loading docks, and faceless factories full of machinery carcasses. Life in this neighborhood is centered around the