George held Amanda’s gaze. What she was propositioning wasn’t exactly legal, but it wasn’t illegal either. She was asking him to watch a fellow detective who might become a problem for the precinct. If anything came of his little side investigation, he would even get some credit. And if it turned out to be nothing—then IA wouldn’t be the wiser and Amanda still owed him a favor. It was win-win all around. He held his hand out to her.
“Deal.”
She shook his hand. “Deal.”
They both looked through the glass wall at Andrew Hayes, who was still standing in front of the printer, waiting for only God knew what.
Amanda rose from her chair. “I’d better get him. He won’t like this.”
Chapter 2—Pinned like a Bug
“DETECTIVE HAYES?Could you please come to my office?” Chief Norris’s voice grated on Andrew “Andi” Hayes’s nerves, but since the insufferable woman was his new boss, he had to play nice. The new chief reminded him of a botfly maggot that was trying to burrow into his skin. Why couldn’t she leave him alone like Chief Renard had done? He was doing the precinct a service, and everybody knew it, which was the reason his colleagues mostly left him to his own devices and accommodated him when needed. But no, Chief Norris had to be all suspicious of his success rate, which hehadto achieve through some sort of trickery. Of course she was right, but that wasn’t the point. He just wished Norris would leave him alone, because the “trick” he used wasn’t illegal or anything like that.
When he had been a small boy, Andi had thought hisgeschenk, as his mother called it—Andi himself now thought of it more as a curse—was absolutely cool and put him on a level with Spider-Man. Once he started elementary school, he had quickly found out hisgeschenkwas nothing but trouble. By the time he had reached high school, he was an introverted loner who didn’t even attempt to appear well-adjusted anymore. Being able to establish a link with every insect on the planet did that to a boy. Andi’s world was never silent. Even now, at thirty-two, when he had finally mastered the art of tuning all foreign impressions out, there was still a never-ending background of soft noises, strange smells, and odd vibrations swamping him with mostly useless information.
The first awkward stirrings of a butterfly whose wings had just dried after leaving the cocoon, the dry rasping of mandibles chewing through wood, a dragging sound of chitin forcing its way through a narrow gap in the wall, the overwhelming scent of the trash cans behind the building roasting in the sun, a feast for flies and their maggots, the indistinct taste of rain on the air, the tantalizing odors of human sweat, like a beacon for mosquitoes and fleas, the chirping and trilling and clicking accompanying the life of arthropods.And he was privy to it all, could feel it, hear it, sense it, without ever getting a break, without ever being able to make it stop, without ever daring to share it with anybody.
Insects were the largest class of animals on the planet, and they were literally everywhere. If his colleagues knew how many beetles, spiders, ticks, flies, ants, termites, and other creepy crawlers were living in the precinct, they would never set foot in it again. They wouldn’t be able to return to their homes either, because there they were as well. No matter where a person went, insects were already there. Which meant Andi had no place to hide.
When it came to police work, his connection with the world of arthropods was helpful, to put it mildly. It was the reason he could solve cases other detectives would never touch or had been forced to give up on, because his informants were omnipresent. Even years later, they could still help him, especially if a crime had happened close to insects with a hive mentality, like bees, ants, or termites. Scientists would be baffled at how much information these animals could store—and how long they could store it.
That he was able to help others with this curse of his was the only reason Andi got out of bed some days and the force that had driven him to law enforcement in the first place. The risk of exposure was greater in his line of work, since most people who joined the force were not known for being unobtrusive or inattentive, but Andi had found out early in life that being an ass kept people at bay and helped explain away some of his stranger quirks and habits, of which he had quite a lot.
Being constantly assaulted by myriad impressions was taking its toll on his mental health and made him antisocial at best, downright rude at worst, the upside being that it helped him keep others at bay. Meditating helped his state of mind, and he had developed strategies to deal with the worst excesses of his condition, but there were still days he wanted nothing more than to climb on a rocket and fly to the moon, because burying himself in the ground would only make matters worse.
And now Chief Norris had it out for him again. On his short trip to her office, Andi wondered briefly what she had come up with this time, but when he entered the room, he immediately knew. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that the stranger getting up from one of the chairs in front of Norris’s desk was a detective as well. Even though Andi didn’t interact a lot with his colleagues, he wasn’t deaf and always on top of office gossip out of necessity. When you had a secret to keep, knowledge about the goings-on in the precinct was pure self-defense. It was also amazing how a few well-placed rumors, spoken into the right ears, could completely derail unwanted attention. This system had its limits, though, and Andi feared he would now have to face the music in the form of a distrusting chief. Why, oh why did Chief Renard have to grow old and leave the precinct? And which vindictive god had sent Andi somebody like Chief Norris, who clearly valued her career above everything and everybody else?
He knew there was a new guy supposed to start today, as Michelle’s partner, but she’d had to leave due to a family emergency, and here they were, in the chief’s office. It wasn’t a hard guess where this would lead, and Andi racked his brain to figure out how to wiggle out of this one. If there was one thing he didn’t need, it was a partner. Even if said partner wasn’t too bad-looking in a gray suit that was too well-fitted to have been cheap. The man seemed like a blueprint for the perfect detective, if such an elusive creature even existed.
“Detective Andrew Hayes, this is Detective George Donovan. He’s the new transfer from Boston, where he worked in Narcotics, and is here to see how our Capital Crime Unit works. He was supposed to be Detective Stevenson’s partner, but as you probably already know, she’s no longer here. Since you don’t have a partner either, I want you to team up with Detective Donovan until he knows his way around the precinct and the city.”
Andi stared at Donovan. The man was taller than him, with a skin tone that hinted at a mixed Caucasian/African American heritage. He was bulky, but not so much that he had problems moving gracefully, as Andi could see when Donovan politely stepped aside to make room for him to take the other chair. He was also dressed impeccably, which made the contrast to Andi’s own rough exterior even more glaring. Not that Andi cared about how people saw him or the way they looked themselves. When they were forced on him as his new partner, though, he did take an interest, and so far, Detective George Donovan failed to impress Andi.
“You know I don’t do partners.” The words came out gruffer than he had intended, but it was Norris’s own fault. He hated being ganged up on.
The chief’s eyes narrowed in warning, which didn’t really faze Andi. The woman was tough, but she had nothing on his German grandmother, who could slice a person with a well-placed look. His grandmother—orOma, as she had insisted on being called—was also the one he had to thank for hisgeschenk, and without her teaching him how to handle it, he probably would be dead already, though this was not important at the moment. He had to get out of a partnership he neither needed nor wanted.
“As I said, it’s only temporary, two months tops, until I know for sure how long Detective Stevenson is going to be gone. Then I can find a new partner for Detective Donovan and you can go back to your reclusive ways.”
Andi stared at her intently. He knew she was suspecting something, like Chief Renard had. Only the old chief had been more direct about his suspicions.
“The way you solve your cases, is it illegal?”
“No, Chief. Definitely not.”
“Can you promise me that? There won’t be anything to come back and bite us in the ass?”
“Not only can I promise, I can swear. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Fine. Do your job.”
And that had been it. Renard had done a quick survey of the pros and cons to letting Andi have things his way and had decided the praise he got for his spotless statistics was worth being kept in the dark about Andi’s methods. Apparently Chief Norris didn’t share Renard’s pragmatic approach.
He knew he could dig in his heels and create quite the ruckus, but that would be tedious and only serve to feed her suspicions even more. If working with Donovan meant she would leave him alone in the future, he could put up with the man for some time. Maybe. Probably, if he remembered to use his rusted social skills. It wasn’t as if Donovan would be able to find anything out. Not if Andi didn’t want him to. If there was one thing Andi had learned over the years, it was how to keep his secret, well, secret. It came at the cost of being seen as an antisocial grump, which at the same time freed him of expending precious energy into social connections he couldn’t afford to have for fear of being found out. All his energy went into keeping the images the arthropods threw at him at bay, filtering out only those he needed for his cases. Technically, a partner would force him to redirect some of his attention, but since the goal was to lose the man as quickly as possible, Andi didn’t see a need to change his ways, apart from perhaps the most basic forms of politeness, which he was almost sure he could manage. And if the man went back to Chief Norris to complain? Then Andi could tell her it wasn’t his problem if the new guy couldn’t deal with his special brand of people skills.
“Fine. Two months. After that, I’m solo again. And no more attempts to partner me up.” He put enough of a growl into his words to show her he meant business. Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment; she had probably expected more of a fight.
“Two months. And watch the attitude.”
