Killer Karma

6

Racing for the garage exit, Cole tried to decide the fastest route to her apartment. Instant travel would be nice. If not to her apartment, at least somewhere close. He knew the Marina…well enough to walk mentally down every street, even the one outside Sara’s apartment building. It had been part of his old Patrol territory and Razor lived there with his first wife Jessica. Razor and Denise moored the Chimera in the Small Craft Harbor.

Suddenly the garage blurred…and became a Marina street. Sara’s street. Her building lay just ahead of him, wrapped in fog.

Cole blinked. Son of a bitch. Nothing happened when he willed it, yet here he had made no real effort and…

He shook away his frustration. Puzzle over that later. Right now, think about Sara. He hurried into her building

Up on the third floor, her livingroom and little kitchen looked no different than they had Monday night. They still had all the butterflies he remembered. A file sorter sat at the back of a small desk. He frowned at the envelopes and papers visible in its slots. What a drag not being able to look through them, or open and operate the laptop lying in the middle of the desk. Talk about being restricted to an in-plain-sight search!

He grimaced in frustration. Nothing in plain sight indicated whether Sara made it home.

Until he walked into the bedroom. There he stopped cold. The closet door stood ajar and two dresser drawers hung partially open. Plastic hangers lay scattered on the butterfly pattern comforter. Peering into the closet, he noted empty slots in the double-decker shoe rack running the length of the floor. The bathroom had an empty toothbrush holder. A plastic caddy like one Sherrie used for cosmetics, brush, and comb sat empty and askew in the middle of the counter.

Cole returned to the bedroom and eyed the hangers. So she did make it home…in a panic. The state of the room screamed flight.

Where might she run to? Kenisha Hayes and Joy Quon probably had ideas. Except he had no way to ask them. He had to find a way to communicate!

His fingers itched for the tools in his basement workshop at home. The endless repairs the house needed not only gave him the satisfaction of finite tasks with visible results, the physical activity helped him think. Lacking the workshop, Cole walked back out to the livingroom and paced around it.

On his second circuit, the lamp on one of the couch’s end tables brought back a memory. Coming in Monday night, Sara turned it on by tapping the base. The girl who walked through him at the mall remarked she felt zapped. That implied the presence of some energy charge in him.

He touched for the lamp. And grinned when it came on. “Call me Electric Man.”

Two more touches brightened the light. A third turned the lamp off.

He ran it through its cycle three more times for the pleasure of being able to affect something. The question was how to use this ability. While turning lights on and off made a nice ghost trick he saw no way to use it for communication. SOS being as much Morse Code as he knew.

The laptop on Sara’s desk caught his attention. Might affecting current let him operate a computer? That would be great. Then he could worry less about being seen, just talk to Razor with something like instant messaging.

Cole left the apartment and headed east toward Russian Hill. He probably had a while before Razor came home…time enough to play with Razor’s computer. If that worked, he would write up a message and have it waiting.

Fog in the street had thickened, turning car lights into fuzzy glows and pedestrians into figures as ghostly as himself. A couple down the block moved to the outside of the sidewalk as they approached.

He blinked. Did they see him?

As they came closer, the male gave a surprised frown, then returned to the middle of the sidewalk. Cole stepped to the curb to let them pass.

“What was that about?” the woman asked.

The man shrugged. “For a minute I thought I saw someone coming toward us.”

Cole wheeled after the couple. If the man glimpsed him, maybe he could hear, too. “Excuse me, sir,” he called.

“I didn’t see anyone,” the woman said.

“It was probably just a spot where the fog was thinner.”

Mulling over the encounter, Cole continued on toward Razor’s apartment. The fog let him appear as a negative density? Since the guy almost saw him, might he have heard if spoken to while still thinking someone was there?

Cole tried that approach with other pedestrians he met, calling, “Excuse me, what bus goes to North Beach?”

Like the male half of the first couple, one woman seemed to notice him at a distance, then as they neared each other, her gaze shifted from looking at him to through him.

A man answered, “What did you say?”…tilting his head to hear better. Only to grimace as he came closer and give a furtive glance around that said: Did anyone see me making a fool of myself?

While no one else reacted, two responses out of maybe a dozen tries gave Cole hope that a rational individual might see and hear him. An encouraging thought to take to Razor’s place with him.

Which would be a faster trip if he could figure out that instant travel thing. Why had he jumped home and to Sara’s apartment building, but not the Flaxx offices? As far as he could remember, he did the same thing each time…picturing somewhere he wanted to go and wanting to go there right now. If it took familiarity with the destination, Razor’s apartment qualified.

Cole stopped by a light pole and, shutting off all his vision, pulled up a mental image of Razor’s front room. When he opened his eyes, however, he had not moved.

Crap. The successful trips had to be more than a fluke. So, where else to try? Burglary came to mind. He certainly knew it thoroughly enough.

He carefully pictured the office…crowded with desks, half of them unoccupied…the big poster for the Kurt Russell movie Tombstone tacked above Stan Fontaine’s desk on the wall separating them from Fencing…his own desk with one end against the outside wall and a map of his Mission District taped beside his window. He tried to feel himself standing at the door.

The street blurred and…he was in the office.

Cole shot his hands toward the ceiling in triumph. Score! So…what did this tell him? Since he felt no urgent need to be here, yet arrived, a clear picture of his destination seemed more important than the strength of desire to be there. So now maybe he could make it to Razor’s place. And find a snappier name than the instant travel thing. Ziptrip?

He pulled up an image of Razor’s front room again, this time concentrating on details…the kitchen nook at one end; the bookcase at the other — one he built for Razor and Lauren’s wedding, to replace the boards-on- cinder blocks Razor had been using until then — the big futon that folded down for Razor’s bed when Holly stayed overnight. He pictured himself at the front door.

Instead he remained standing inside Burglary’s door. Zip…no ziptrip. Setting his jaw, Cole started to try again…then noticed that across the room, Phil Braff’s laptop sat open and running. Braff himself was nowhere in sight. Why not try communicating with him? Braff could pass information on to Homicide, too…such as where the shooting took place, a description of the shooter, and the likelihood of Sara being a witness.

Cole made his way to the desk. There, taking a mental breath, he ran a finger across the notebook’s touchpad.

The screen saver cleared! Cole grinned. Feeling like a kid with a new toy, he zig-zagged his finger around the touchpad and watched the cursor trace the same pattern across the screen. When he dragged his finger down the scroll side of the touchpad, the page obediently rolled up or down. Presently he noted the image on the screen, a hand-drawn room diagram with accompanying scrawled notes, and remembered how proud Braff was that his laptop could also be used as a PC tablet, letting him draw or write directly on the screen. Cole felt a prickle of