Vacant by Alex Hughes Page B

kid, to meet the kid. I had a chance to make that visionnot happen and I needed to take it. I also needed to call Cherabino, make sure she was okay, and make a good impression here and now, and figure out a way to survive as a Minder on old lessons over the next few days.
    But not now. Now I needed to focus on the bodyguard. I took a breath, and then another, forcing calm. I’d had plenty of time to settle in the car on the way over here, I reminded myself. Plenty of time. Now I had to handle this, another interrogation. I was good at interrogations.
    There was usually something I’d say in the beginning, something that would make the interviewee feel comfortable and want to open up. I couldn’t quite find what to say, and I finally settled on “I’m here to help the family figure out what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”
    She nodded, almost too sharply, and that guilt-sense intensified. Not that it proved anything at this point; she’d be a lousy bodyguard if she didn’t feel it when bad things happened on her watch. Her arm was also hurting her, a lot; it felt like a gunshot wound only partially patched up, and she’d likely need a doctor soon. Her gut also hurt, what felt like bad bruising. It said a lot about her that she sat here waiting anyway. Either that same false guilt was driving her to make sure the boy—and the family—were okay, or real guilt was preventing her from leaving the scene. Too early to tell. But I needed to decide. Soon.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” I asked, gently, in case it was the former possibility. “How long have you been employed by the judge?”
    â€œI’m Tanya,” she said, very slow. “It’s been about six months now.”
    â€œWhat happened to make the judge decide to hire you?” I asked.
    â€œI wasn’t there. What I was told when she hired Jason and me—”
    â€œJason?” I interrupted. I hadn’t expected the judge to be female, so that much was news to me, though I probably should have read it off Mendez. The bigger news was a partner who wasn’t present—they’d mentioned, I thought, that he was in bad shape somewhere.
    She nodded, jerkily, and the grief-sense intensified. “We’re partners with a private security firm. The sheriff’s department hired us to supplement after she started getting threats. Jason . . . he got shot, bad. He’s out of surgery in the critical care unit. They’re not allowing visitors, not unless you’re biologically related. I couldn’t just . . . I couldn’t sit there, doing nothing. So I came back here as soon as they’d let me go. Sooner, probably.” She met my eyes. “I want to help. I need to
do
something.”
    â€œI understand,” I said, the old mainstay in interrogations, but in this case, I actually did understand. I had that feeling eating at me too, especially right now.
    â€œThe hospital has this number if anything changes,” she said hurriedly, without prompting.
    â€œI’m sure they’ll let you know the second you can do something there,” I said in as kind a voice as I could manage. “Right now you can help me understand what happened. Let’s go back to the judge. What did she say when she hired you and Jason?”
    She took a breath and settled, getting that focus I associated with cops on duty. “She said she’d been getting death threats for years, but usually the threats were generic and handwritten. But the new ones were very specific, cut out of newspaper like an old movie, and threatened her son. And she had the case on her docket in a month. The media was already going crazy. So she hired us, but we’re getting paid through the sheriff’s department.”
    Interesting. There were no images attached to her description of the letters. “Have you seen the newspaper letter threats?” I