Taylor vs. Tattletale

For the next five minutes both girls simply exchanged pleasantries. They talked like they were old school chums, even though there was an undercurrent of irritability in Tattletales tone and occasionally she'd scowl at Insight, seemingly for no reason at all.

“Shouldn't this part go at the first of the interview?” he asked Paul. “Getting the trust of the suspect, all of that?”

“It's a thinker thing,” Paul said. He was staring at both girls, frowning. “They're talking in some kind of code.”

“What?”

Jim had worked as a detective for years and he would never have caught on.

“I saw it once before,” Paul said. “Two Thinkers trying to out-thinker each other. People used to do it back in courts in Europe, too. They'd say one thing, and unless you understood the current situations, you wouldn't get that what they were saying meant something completely different than what what it sounded like.”

“Like talking about the King in ways that wouldn't get back to you. Is Insight turning on us, then?”

Paul shook his head.

“It's a pissing contest, I'd bet. Thinkers tend to be bitches when they think somebody's trying to be smarter than them. It's like dogs fighting for dominance, except that the less anybody else sees, the smarter they think they're being. It's a smug thing.”

***

By the time it was over, Jim couldn't tell who'd won. He hadn't even been able to tell they were having some sort of battle, even after he'd been told they were. Was a twitch of an eyebrow a message, or was it just the result of an itch. Did a shift in their seat mean something?

They both kept their faces impressively neutral by the time it was over.

***

Headache