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Authors: Kaine Andrews
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least—but like almost all people on the face of this tiny planet, he knew a few people who had claimed to have genuine psychic experiences, people he trusted, people who would have no reason to lie—people like Ed Marco.
Marco’d been a detective, something of a mentor figure to both Drakanis and Parker, though in truth he hadn’t been out of his training for much longer than they had. He’d come to the calling later in life, and so by the time they’d met him, he’d already been pushing fifty, but Marco could still kick the shit out of any recruit just coming in off his POST. He also could just find whatever he needed, and that was how he had managed to attain near mythic status during his brief time with the Reno Police Department. Before departing his position after only five years, Marco had taken the number of unsolved crimes in the files down from two hundred and eighty to just forty-five. Nobody really understood how he’d done it, least of all Marco himself; though a few of the old-timers who didn’t care to have their records being caught up to by a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, fifty years old or no, used to joke that he’d spent the first forty-five years of his life committing crimes so he could solve them himself. He used to say that if he sat and thought about things real hard, the answer would just come to him or people would just spit out whatever he needed to hear from them.
It was Marco that Drakanis was thinking of now and how he could just sit and look at a guy and that guy—no matter if he was some sixteen-year-old caught filching a dime pack of gum or a hard-ass lifer still running on appeals and waiting to shiv the first dolt who forgot to search him—would just crumple and spill his guts on any subject he cared to hear about. Drakanis had watched him do it a time or two and still couldn’t tell how the hell he managed it. He was wondering if you could do something like that to a person from a distance—like from a pay phone in a casino, say—and if you could, if you could do it hard enough, if that was the right way to think about it, to kill somebody.
The rational part of his mind would have dismissed bullshit like that immediately and had been doing so for a couple of days now, but the somewhat drunken and superstitious part wanted to brood on it, turn it over and over in his mind like some precious jewel, and consider it from all angles, and that part of him had ultimately decided that, yes, you could. There was stranger shit out there than that, and some of it spoken of by men he trusted and believed.
Parker had continued to look at him with those wide eyes, waiting for an answer, while he’d sat there and thought it out. Drakanis shook his head.
“You don’t look like you wanna hear what I think, but I’ll tell you anyway. Yeah, I think that shit exists. And I’ll even answer your next question, since I know you’ve got one. Yes, I think it could have happened to the captain, and yes, I think it really was our boy that did it. Now can we go back to drinking and fucking forget about it for ten minutes, please ? Because I could really give a shit about it at the moment.”
Drakanis hadn’t realized that the volume control on his voice box had apparently been slowly twisting toward the maximum as he spoke, but the sudden tingling running down his spine and the muting of what was going on in the rest of the room clued him in rather quickly. Parker’s eyes flicked over his shoulder an instant before Drakanis turned to look himself and stared back into a sea of eyes and gaping mouths.
Perez was breaking through the crowd.
Jesus, what a bunch, Drakanis thought. Even the fucking janitors are down here partying. Don’t they realize the man’s fucking dead?
Perez was trying to turn the gawkers’ gazes back to their own affairs and only partially succeeding. Both Drakanis and Parker could see as the whispering started, could see as Brokov turned to Woods and with a secret
Marco’d been a detective, something of a mentor figure to both Drakanis and Parker, though in truth he hadn’t been out of his training for much longer than they had. He’d come to the calling later in life, and so by the time they’d met him, he’d already been pushing fifty, but Marco could still kick the shit out of any recruit just coming in off his POST. He also could just find whatever he needed, and that was how he had managed to attain near mythic status during his brief time with the Reno Police Department. Before departing his position after only five years, Marco had taken the number of unsolved crimes in the files down from two hundred and eighty to just forty-five. Nobody really understood how he’d done it, least of all Marco himself; though a few of the old-timers who didn’t care to have their records being caught up to by a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, fifty years old or no, used to joke that he’d spent the first forty-five years of his life committing crimes so he could solve them himself. He used to say that if he sat and thought about things real hard, the answer would just come to him or people would just spit out whatever he needed to hear from them.
It was Marco that Drakanis was thinking of now and how he could just sit and look at a guy and that guy—no matter if he was some sixteen-year-old caught filching a dime pack of gum or a hard-ass lifer still running on appeals and waiting to shiv the first dolt who forgot to search him—would just crumple and spill his guts on any subject he cared to hear about. Drakanis had watched him do it a time or two and still couldn’t tell how the hell he managed it. He was wondering if you could do something like that to a person from a distance—like from a pay phone in a casino, say—and if you could, if you could do it hard enough, if that was the right way to think about it, to kill somebody.
The rational part of his mind would have dismissed bullshit like that immediately and had been doing so for a couple of days now, but the somewhat drunken and superstitious part wanted to brood on it, turn it over and over in his mind like some precious jewel, and consider it from all angles, and that part of him had ultimately decided that, yes, you could. There was stranger shit out there than that, and some of it spoken of by men he trusted and believed.
Parker had continued to look at him with those wide eyes, waiting for an answer, while he’d sat there and thought it out. Drakanis shook his head.
“You don’t look like you wanna hear what I think, but I’ll tell you anyway. Yeah, I think that shit exists. And I’ll even answer your next question, since I know you’ve got one. Yes, I think it could have happened to the captain, and yes, I think it really was our boy that did it. Now can we go back to drinking and fucking forget about it for ten minutes, please ? Because I could really give a shit about it at the moment.”
Drakanis hadn’t realized that the volume control on his voice box had apparently been slowly twisting toward the maximum as he spoke, but the sudden tingling running down his spine and the muting of what was going on in the rest of the room clued him in rather quickly. Parker’s eyes flicked over his shoulder an instant before Drakanis turned to look himself and stared back into a sea of eyes and gaping mouths.
Perez was breaking through the crowd.
Jesus, what a bunch, Drakanis thought. Even the fucking janitors are down here partying. Don’t they realize the man’s fucking dead?
Perez was trying to turn the gawkers’ gazes back to their own affairs and only partially succeeding. Both Drakanis and Parker could see as the whispering started, could see as Brokov turned to Woods and with a secret
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