"Ground level: block entrances and exit," the automated voice of the elevator trilled in electronic contentment as the doors opened at his destination. "We hope you enjoyed your time at William Friedkin Block. Please come again."
Emerging into the foyer, Whitby made his way through the outside doors to the block forecourt where he and Anderson had parked their bikes. He mounted his Lawmaster and keyed the ignition, feeling a sudden pain in his broken shoulder from the vibrations rattling through him as the engine hummed into life.
"Judge Whitby to Sector Control," he said, still wincing as he patched his helmet mike into the sector frequency.
"Sector Control, receiving," the voice came over the comm. "Reported break-in at Mistress Sindy's Rubber-o-Rama, off De Sade Plaza. Please advise as to your ETA."
"Negative, Control. Request to be taken off active roster until further notice. Have sustained a line-of-duty injury and I am inbound to Sector House for treatment."
"Understood. Do you require a med-wagon or other assistance?"
"Negative, Control. I can make it in on my own. ETA to Sector House: seven minutes."
"Acknowledged. Will advise med-bay you're on your way. Sector Control out."
Adjusting the bike computer so he would not need to use his left arm to manipulate the controls, Whitby was about to set off for the Sector House when he heard a voice calling after him.
"Hey, Whitby, wait up!"
Anderson jogged towards him and jumped onto her Lawmaster. "You lit out of there pretty fast," she said. "I take it you thought with the job done it was time to ride off into the sunset."
"Sunset?" he said, confused. "It's after midnight, Anderson."
"It's an expression, Whitby," she smiled. "Never mind. I guess I should know better than to joke with a Street Judge. I swear they must surgically remove your senses of humour in the Academy. Either that, or they teach extra classes in scowling. You know, we do have reason to be cheerful. We saved a boy's life and kicked a demon in the can besides. That's a good night's work by anybody's standards. Lighten up."
"I've got to get back to my Sector House," he said, not sure if it was the right thing to say, but having to say something. "Better get this shoulder fixed."
"Sector House 12, right?" Anderson said, keying in her own ignition code and activating her bike. "That's why I came after you. I'm coming with you. Just got a call from Central Dispatch. There's been a suspicious death in custody there and they want a Psi-Judge to help with the investigation. Smile, Whitby. The good news is, it looks like you're going to be having the pleasure of my company a little while longer."
"They've called in a Psi-Judge?" SJS Judge Vernon Hass's voice was aghast with outrage. "They can't do that; this is
my
investigation."
Hass was seated at his desk inside the converted storage room that had served as his makeshift office at Sector House 12 for the past two weeks, a secure channel to SJS headquarters open on his comms terminal and the face of his supervisor Judge Myers flickering with the occasional static burst on the screen before him. When the terminal had registered an incoming call from Myers a minute earlier, Hass had known bad news was in the offing, only to learn that what Myers had to say was even worse than he had imagined.
"You have any complaints, you'll have to take them up with Sector Chief Franklin," Myers shrugged. "The old man went over your head and called in some favours. Looks like he's still got some juice left at the Grand Hall of Justice. More than we gave him credit for, anyway."
"But you told me Franklin was a dinosaur." Hass fumed. "A tired old man, you said. How could he-"
"Even dinosaurs have their contacts, Hass," Myers said. "Back in the Jurassic it seems Franklin served with a young Street Judge named Ramos."
"Ramos?" Hass said. "You mean
the
Judge Ramos? Head of Street Division and a member of the Council of Five?"
"One and the same. Apparently, Franklin called Ramos an hour ago to complain about the slow pace of your investigation. Of course, it didn't help that you've been on the case for nearly two weeks with nothing to show for it. Franklin suggested that bringing in some outside assistance might help speed things along. Ramos agreed. He called Shenker at Psi Division and between the two of them they decided to assign a heavy hitter to the case. Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson. And yes, Hass, before you ask, that's
the
Judge Anderson."
"But I still don't see how they can get away with this," Hass sulked. "We're SJS. We're supposed to be autonomous."
"Politics, Hass," Myers said. "We can't afford to fight a turf war over this, not with the heads of two separate divisions involved and with one of them being a Council member to boot. Could be Ramos and Shenker are looking to get into a pissing contest with SJS and they're just using this business as an excuse." His voice grew hard. "Either way, I should tell you Judge Buell isn't happy."
"Judge Buell?" Hass said weakly. Even the thought he had somehow earned the displeasure of the head of SJS was enough to give him a shiver. "You've spoken to him?"
"Fifteen minutes ago," Myers said. "He told me to tell you that given your upward career trajectory to date, he has every faith you will handle this situation with sensitivity and dispatch in the best traditions of the SJS. And you know what that means. Solve this case, Hass. Myers, out."
The screen went black as Myers severed the connection. Reeling from the news, Hass sat in brooding silence and stared at the blank screen, his mind replaying the course of their conversation for the meanings hidden within the words. Most of all, he brooded on the message Myers had relayed from Judge Buell. "Upward career trajectory," Judge Buell had said. "Every faith." "Sensitivity and dispatch." "The best traditions of the SJS."
Translation: continue your own investigation and don't cooperate with Anderson any more than you have to. Stonewall her. Make her life difficult. Withhold information if need be. Above all else, don't let her solve the case before you. No matter what else happens, you have to be the one who brings in the perps. If not, we'll bust you out of SJS and make sure you end up as a Street Judge in the worst sector we can find. And you know what happens to SJS Judges who get bounced into Street Division, don't you, Hass?
It's a nightmare, he thought, as he saw a light blinking on his terminal indicating an incoming message. This entire case has had "career-breaker" written all over it right from the beginning.
"Hass here," he said, tapping a key on the comms-terminal and doing his best to compose himself as a new face appeared on the screen. It was Scranton, C Watch duty manager of the Sector House's Check-In Area. "What can I do for you, Judge Scranton?"
"This is a courtesy call, Hass," Scranton said frostily, his expression anything but courteous. "Psi-Judge Anderson just checked in on-site. Apparently she's been assigned to investigate the prisoner deaths."
"I see," Hass said, smoothly adopting his best bureaucratic manner. "I'm very busy at the moment. Have her directed to the waiting area and tell her I'll be with her as soon as possible."
"You're too late," Scranton said. "Anderson said she wanted to get started ASAP, so I sent her down to the holding pens to see Chief Sykes. I knew you wouldn't mind," he added, his tone indicating he knew precisely the opposite was true. "Scranton out."
The screen went black, leaving Hass fuming. He stood and made for the door, pausing only to glance at his reflection in the screen of the comms-terminal. As ever, the sight of himself in the forbidding colours and skull-headed insignia of the SJS uniform served to stiffen his resolve.
I'm SJS, he thought. The Special Judicial Squad. We judge the Judges. We can break anyone, even a legend like Anderson. It occurred to him that perhaps the fact that another Judge had been assigned to his case was not such a bad thing after all. There might even be an advantage to it. The case was a career-breaker. It had been that way from the very beginning. Now though, if there was a career to be broken, it would no longer necessarily have to be his.
FOUR
A MESSAGE IN BLOOD
"All right," said Anderson. "Tell me how it happened. From the beginning."
"It's all in the report," Chief Warder Sykes said. They were standing outside the open door of Holding Cube Two-Thirteen where Leland Barclay died. "Everything that happened. You can be sure we didn't leave anything out."
"Humour me," Anderson said, smiling to try to put the man at his ease. "I just want to find out what happened."
"You're the psychic, Anderson, why don't you tell us?" The chief warder was stone-faced.
A hard case, thought Anderson. And he doesn't like having strangers on his turf.
"It doesn't work that way," she told him. "First, I need you to go through the sequence of events for me so I can get them straight." She nodded towards the holding cube. "Then, I'll go in there and try to scan the room. But for the scan to be of any use to us, I need to have some kind of idea of the context."
Grimacing, Sykes looked at her as though considering a decision. "There was a power cut affecting the entire Sector House," he said. "The Teks say an EM surge caused it, though they also say they can't tell where it came from. It knocked out the surveillance cameras, door locks, and everything else down here. The emergency lights came on, but after about a minute they went out too. Then, we heard screaming from Cube Two-Thirteen. Leland Barclay, sentenced to eighteen years for an ARV. We used crowbars to force the cube door open, but it was too late. Barclay was dead. Burned to death in his cell, just like the others."
"This wasn't the first killing?" Anderson asked.
"That's right," Sykes said. "There have been five others over the last two weeks. Every time the pattern's the same. The power cuts, then screams and finally, a toasted perp in one of the holding cubes. SJS sent one of their men in after the second death. Hass, his name is, but he hasn't found anything wrong down here. I run a tight ship."
"Nothing wrong except the fact six men are dead," Anderson thought aloud, and as soon as she had she realised she had made a mistake.
"You think I don't know that?" Sykes growled. "I'm a twenty-five year man, Anderson. You think I don't know Justice Department are looking for somebody to blame? But I told you: I run a tight ship. I followed procedure on this all the way. So did my men. Whatever in the name of Grud is going on down here, we didn't have anything to do with it."
"Nobody's saying you did, chief," Anderson tried to be soothing. "The way I see it, we both want the same things. We want to find out the truth about what's been going on. Right?"
"Right." Sykes's tone was grudging.
"All the same, I get the feeling there's something you haven't told me," she said, looking from Sykes to the faces of the men around her long enough to see them shift uneasily beneath her gaze. "You don't have to be psychic to know there's something else."
"It's all in the report, Anderson." Sykes paused with a look of discomfort. "When we broke into the cube there was something written on the wall. The word 'Judged', written in blood. Then..." he paused again, his discomfort seeming to grow. "We all saw it, Anderson. All of us. We saw the word 'Judged' written on that cube wall as clear as I can see you now. Then, some time between the discovery of the body and the arrival of the Tek-Judges' forensics team, the word disappeared."
"Disappeared? You mean someone erased it?"
"That's exactly what I
don't
mean." The chief warder's tone was forceful. "Forensics couldn't find any trace of blood on the wall, or for that matter any sign of writing. It was like the word had never been there, but it
was
, Anderson. Or it had been. We all saw it. Same as the other times."
"The same?" Anderson said, glancing at the faces of the rest of the warders and seeing agreement there. "You mean with all the other killings, you saw this same word written there each time?"
"That's right," Sykes said. "Exactly the same. And every time it had disappeared by the time the forensics boys came to do their analysis."
Digesting all she had heard, Anderson became aware that Sykes and his men were looking at her intently. Their faces were expectant; it was as though they were waiting for her to conjure an answer out of thin air like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. She was accustomed to such looks; for a Psi-Judge it went with the territory. Centuries might have passed since people with her abilities were routinely burned at the stake, but there was no diminishing the aura of mystery surrounding psychic powers in the minds of non-psychics. From experience, she knew that mystery was a sword that could cut two ways. On one hand, it caused people to shy away from her, afraid of what she might see of their true faces beneath the masks they wore to confront the world. On the other, when they needed help they would turn to her with all the desperate faith of religious believers expecting miracles. And when you couldn't give them their miracles, sometimes the believers could turn ugly.
"Thanks," she said. "I figure that should give me enough to go on. If I need anything else, or I learn anything of use, I'll call you."
Disappointed, the Judges began to drift away to return to their duties. All except Chief Warder Sykes. Arms crossed, face set in a determined line, he stood staring at Anderson. Waiting.
"No offence, chief," Anderson said, "but the last thing I need is an audience watching me when I go in to scan the cube, even an audience of one. It can interfere with the process."
"You will tell me what comes out of the scan," Sykes said. It was a demand, not a question.
"You'll be the first to know if I make any progress, chief," Anderson said. Strictly speaking, a chief warder had no right to demand anything of a Psi-Judge, but she could see no reason to make an issue of it. "You needn't have any worries on that account."
"All right then." Sykes seemed satisfied. "If you have any news, I'll be in the Custody Command Room."