I run a hand through my hair, tilt the pinhole down to shade my eyes, and ring the bell.
“It is my understanding that you do not have an appointment?”
“That’s correct. My boss called your office about half an hour ago.”
“Normally we don’t take any visitors who do not have an appointment.”
“I understand that, ma’am.”
Our Acknowledged Expert on the Enforcement of the Laws looks exactly like her photograph. The bland, unlined face and short neat hair, the probing and studious expression. The office is orderly, lined with filing cabinets and bookshelves, a ceiling fan turning mutely overhead. There is one staff member in the corner, a man in a pressed gray suit at a desk covered in notebooks.
“Obviously this office respects the crucial work of the Speculative Service, and we are therefore willing to provide any aspects of our Expertise that might be useful to the reconciliation of any anomaly.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Having said that, and I apologize if there was a miscommunication in this regard, but the appropriate protocol requires you to put any such requests in writing and submit them to your supervisor, who would be—”
She pauses, eyebrows raised.
“Mr. Alvaro,” I say.
“Yes, at which point Mr. Alvaro would file a formal request for discussion, which would then be reviewed by myself or by my staff.” Ms. Petras angles her chin to the corner, where the man in his gray suit sits at his desk. Presumably there are more staff behind the inner-office door to his right. “They will then coordinate with… I do apologize.”
“Mr. Alvaro.”
“Right, to find the appropriate venue and time for us to provide our Expertise.”
“Right. That’s not going to work.”
She blinks. “And why is that?”
“We’re not here to take advantage of your Expertise.”
Petras’s brow furrows. She steeples her manicured fingers on the desk in front of her. I’m standing with my hands behind my back, with Aysa at my side in the same posture. I think I’ve cleaned all the blood off my face. I swapped my jacket for the backup I keep in the trunk of the car, but there wasn’t much I could do about my shirt.
“Oh no?” says Petras finally, tilting her head.
“No. The anomaly we are investigating—anomalies at this point, actually—intersects with this office.” She waits, her expression placid and indecipherable. “You might have relevant information, is what I mean.”
“Me, personally?”
“Yes. You or your office.”
The staffer, in his corner, continues writing. His desk is a slightly smaller version of his boss’s, angled upward like a drafting table. There are four notebooks open on the desk, one at each corner, and he writes constantly, shifting from book to book according to some system known only to him.
“You are here for a point of information,” says Petras.
“Possibly several,” I say.
She looks again to her staffer in his suit and he writes something in one of his notebooks and tears it free and walks it swiftly over to her. The wall behind them is lined with metal cabinets, arranged in stacks from floor to ceiling, an archive of documents and filings and transcripts. The Provisional Record of her department’s work. Directly behind Petras is a tall shelf weighted with volumes of procedure: the protocols of the court systems, the rules regulating the regular police and the Speculative Service. Statistical manuals, sentencing guidelines, treatises on ballistics and recidivism and forensics. All the areas of her Expertise.
Petras unfolds the slip of paper that her assistant has handed her. “Very good,” she says to him, and turns to us. “We are able to grant you three and a half minutes.” There is a clock behind her on the wall, above the filing cabinets, and another clock behind us, on the facing wall. “That time begins right now.”
I nod. “Thank you, ma’am. We’re here to ask about a judge.”
She frowns. “Mr. Speculator, this office is responsible for the conduct and caseloads of just over three hundred and fifty sitting judges, on a wide variety of courts, from the Court of Small Infelicities to Grave Assaults on the Objectively So. That is in addition to our oversight of the regular courts, meaning everything from traffic infractions—”
“Sampson,” says Ms. Paige. I give her a look, which she ignores. “Judge Barney Sampson. Does that sound familiar?”
“It—yes,” says Petras, and a swift-moving cloud of anxiety passes across her brow. I think it does. I watch it come and go, I see it, but as soon as it is gone I cannot be sure I saw it at all. Something has opened up in me that will not close. I shake my head to clear it, clench my teeth, and focus. The staffer in the corner, meanwhile, rises silently and brings the Expert a new scrap of paper, which she unfolds and reads.
“His court is in Aberrant Neural Phenomena, on Grand Avenue? Is that correct?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Earlier today—” says Ms. Paige, but I hold up my hand and she stops. If Petras has not yet heard about Sampson’s death, we don’t need to be the ones to fill her in. Not yet, anyway.
“Mr. Doonan?” Petras turns her head slightly toward the man in the corner. “Would you draw the judge’s file, please?”
“Of course.” Mr. Doonan rises and moves along the back wall of the office, brisk and efficient.
“Our line of inquiry,” I add warningly, “may touch on very sensitive matters. You may feel most comfortable speaking alone.”
Petras shakes her head tightly. “Mr. Doonan is my executive assistant.” He has found the file, and he hands it to her without looking at us or otherwise acknowledging that he is being discussed. “I cannot imagine there is anything you need to ask me to which he could not or
