Free Rabbit Trick: A Mindspace Investigations Novella by Alex Hughes Page A

backseat, waiting for her. Strangled her to death on her way home from judo.” Her mind roiled with anger, with disturbance.
    Cherabino took jujitsu or something like that. She was out late, alone, a lot. She was a woman, and a cop. Like it or not, this had to be feeling real personal.
    “Did you know her?” I asked.  
    “No,” she said. “She’s North DeKalb, not out of headquarters.” I could feel the effort as she pulled it together again, the measured pace of her thoughts returning with bitter force. “But she’s blue. She’s one of us. We bring hell to stop this guy – fast. Who knows who else he’ll kill if we don’t. He clearly doesn’t have a fear of cops.”
    “If this is North DeKalb, why call us?”  
    “First priority,” she returned. “You’re the only telepath we’ve got. They want you to do your juju on the crime scene, get us a name. A description. Something. No way in hell this guy walks away. Supposedly I’m your handler. When the commissioner wakes me up, I move. I don’t care. Nobody kills a cop and gets away with it. Especially when we don’t have a reason.”
    I felt her heart, beating too fast, a presence in the whole car. “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “Fine.”  
    “You’re not…”  
    She made a face. “Ask me again when we catch this guy.” She didn’t like this situation. She didn’t like it at all.
    “Do you want me to—?”
    “Shut up,” she said. “You’re going to pull a rabbit out of your damn hat, we’re going to catch this guy, and then you can ask me whatever crappy thing you’ve got on your chest, okay?”
    We dropped two stories as she started the grounding procedure too fast. A shriek escaped my lips. I’ll admit it wasn’t a manly sound, but with my life flashing before my eyes that didn’t seem important.  
    Somehow we grounded without dying, with only a small bump, in a very dark neighborhood. As she turned the wheel and peeled us into an ancient parking garage, a blocky winding screw, level after level of concrete curled down into the ground and up into the sky. We circled up a level along the stained concrete ramp, and pulled into a circle of bright, bright lights. Row after row of police lights, flood lights, penlights, and one single, cheap car.
    In the distance, a dog barked furiously.

    Cherabino said hello to the detective in charge of the scene while I hung back. Detective Bull was a tall man, pale, who stood with a coiled lean power I associated with basketball. He frowned when he saw me, and checked his watch. He was angry, and nervous, and very aware of his surroundings. Cherabino and him got caught up in some kind of hail-fellow-well-met conversation, and I lost interest.  
    “Hello,” a deep voice said from behind me.  
    I turned. A grizzled fifty-something uniformed cop stood there, his meaty hands tucked around his equipment belt, the right hand all too close to the gun. He was only a few inches taller than me, maybe six-one, and bulky, mixed muscle and fat. His nose had been broken multiple times. Now, he emanated strong mixed emotions, anger and worry and sorrow and guilt in a tangled, shifting knot that I found stressful to even look at.
    “Hello,” I responded, holding onto calm only through training and will. I upped my shields and paid more attention to the guy – a lot more attention.  
    “You the teep?” the cop asked gruffly.
    “Telepathic expert,” I corrected. “Yes, I’m him.” I waited for him to pull away. Since the Tech Wars, normals feared telepaths, for good or ill. I didn’t wear a patch but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get a face-full of that same fear.  
    But instead of moving away, he looked me up and down as if judging me. “What color are my boxers?”
    I sighed, lowered the shields a bit, and skimmed the information off the surface of his troubled mind. Damn parlor tricks. “You wear briefs,” I said. “And that was a visual I could have done without, thanks bunches.” I