Paducah, KY, 26th April.
Paducah was a twelve-hour drive from New Millennium City and its most notable feature appeared to be the National Quilt Museum. There were posters up in various places for ‘QuiltWeek Paducah’ which would be happening in April. Aside from that point of interest, the city looked like many American cities, but a bit more parched. The streets were broad, the houses, and most other buildings, set back from the road. There were trees and a lot of places where the grass was trying its best to keep growing despite what appeared to be a severe lack of water.
Jolene Beck had lived in a house on Alabama Street before vanishing off the face of the planet. It was a squat, wooden building, low enough that Jacob would have had to bend to get through the front door. There was a big garage/workshop at the back of the property, complete with a tarmacked drive leading up to it. There was also a path to the door, but it was hard to tell it from the baked soil on either side: the grass here was doing an even worse job than elsewhere.
Heather walked up to the door and knocked. After about a minute, the door opened and a woman peered at Heather with a look of profound distrust. ‘I ain’t buying whatever you’re selling,’ the woman said. She was no more than five-foot-five and slim. Ash-blonde hair fell to her shoulders and she had green eyes set in a pretty face which was not aging especially well. Worry lines marked her forehead.
‘Mrs Hauser?’ Heather asked, producing her ID. ‘I’m not selling. I’m looking for your daughter, Jolene Beck.’
‘I ain’t seen her in months,’ Hauser replied quickly. ‘Whatever she’s done–’
‘I’m a PI, Mrs Hauser, not the police. It seems that your daughter might be the beneficiary of an inheritance, and I’ve been asked to track her down.’ Heather had the funny feeling that mentioning money might provoke a better reaction than the real reason, or any other reason for that matter.
The change in Mrs Hauser’s attitude was immediate. ‘Oh. Well, you’d better come in, I guess. I don’t recall any relatives of mine dying recently.’
‘It’s a distant relative on her father’s side,’ Heather lied. ‘There are some pretty weird stipulations in the will and we’re trying to find anyone who might meet them.’ The lounge beyond the door was… lived-in. Yes, that was probably the kindest word for it. Nothing was new, but the newest thing in the room was a reclining chair set in front of a TV screen which, from the general design, had to be almost a decade old. The sofa set near to the chair had that lumpy quality that suggested its cushions needed restuffing. There was a fake fire on one wall; none of the pictures on the mantelpiece appeared to include Jolene. ‘When did you last see Jolene, Mrs Hauser?’
‘May first last year. At least, that’s when we found out she was gone. Must’ve packed a bag and gone through the window in the night. I went to get her out of bed for church and her room was empty. Bed hadn’t been slept in.’ Mrs Hauser had a southern accent: who would have guessed?
‘So, that was just about a year after you took her to see Jonas Harrison?’
‘Just about. You know about that?’
‘It came up in the background research. It was in the local newspapers.’
‘Sure was. She’d been hearing voices. In her head, you know? None of the doctors knew what was up with her. One of them suggested we take her to see a psychologist. He said how maybe she was reacting to the divorce, but that was just stupid. The divorce was four years before the voices started. She was fourteen when she started hearing them voices. So, we took her to see Pastor Harrison and he saw what was wrong with her just as soon as he saw her. She was struggling with a demon, and he cast it out of her and she didn’t hear those voices again. Did better in school. Got a job at the Walmart like Jed wanted.’
‘That’s Jedediah Hauser, your second husband?’
‘That’s right. Been married going on six years now. Jed said that Jolene should get herself a job when she was sixteen. She said she couldn’t work around so many people because the voices were louder when she was around a lot of people.’ Which, from what Heather had learned in UID courses, sounded about right for an oversensitive telepath. ‘Probably that demon was telling her to kill folks,’ Mrs Hauser opined.
‘Did she ever show any violent tendencies?’
‘Well, no. Now, about this inheritance.’
‘Did she have any friends she might have confided in, Mrs Hauser? Anyone she might have told where she was going? What about her father? Might she have gone there?’
‘Cletus moved back to Illinois when we split up,’ Mrs Hauser said. ‘He’s living in Metropolis now. I don’t think she’d have gone there. They didn’t get along too well. She didn’t get along too well with Jed for that matter. She told me, she said, “If you knew what he was thinking, Mom, you wouldn’t like him either.” That was just the demon talking.’
Heather smiled. ‘Perhaps you have an address for Mister Beck? And maybe you could write down a few names of friends Jolene might have talked to? That would be very helpful.’
‘Well, don’t see why not.’ Mrs Hauser got up from the sofa and started for one of the rooms at the back of the house. ‘You be sure to tell me if you find her. It’d be nice to have my little girl back in the family home.’
Especially if she had a fat inheritance, Heather figured. ‘Of course, Mrs Hauser,’ Heather said, intending to do no such thing.
Metropolis, IL.
Jolene’s friends had been of relatively little help. Most of those Heather had found were unwilling to talk. The couple who were had said that Jolene had been distracted for the last month she had spent in Paducah. It had been kind of like when she had heard the voices in her head, but she had said nothing about them coming back. They figured that if the voices had returned, Jolene would head off somewhere away from people. None of them believed that Jolene had been possessed, but the possibility that she was an Ultra had not sat too well with them either.
Cletus Beck – Mrs Hauser really had a thing for stereotypical southern names – had gone back to Metropolis, Illinois, as Mrs Hauser had said, where he worked as a janitor in a hotel. Metropolis was a good bit smaller than Paducah, and no more than half an hour’s drive away. It was famous for, and Heather was truly amazed by, its giant statue of Superman outside the county courthouse, and the Super Museum nearby which featured all sorts of Superman memorabilia. There was also a rather more life-size statue of Lois Lane a couple of blocks away at Market and West 8th complete with pen, notepad, and handbag. Heather wondered where the statue of Jimmy Olsen was but decided not to go looking to see if there was one.
Instead, she went searching for the address Mrs Hauser had given for her ex-husband. It turned out to be a somewhat sprawling building on Gibbons Street. The wooden exterior was unpainted, and it looked like people had been adding sections to the back of the place over the generations; the tiled roof had about three different design methodologies to it as you went from front to back. All the doors and windows had screens over them, and some of them had boards nailed over them for good measure. There was a station wagon parked on the grass – grass that was a lot greener than the stuff in Paducah – which had rust eating its way into a couple of the wheel arches.
Heather walked up the partially sunken flag path to the door, opened the screen, and knocked. The door was opened by a blonde woman in a cropped T-shirt and short shorts. Her bust was trying very hard to rip its way out of her shirt. If she was older than twenty-one, Heather would have traded in her gun, and the detective began to wonder whether Mrs Hauser had given her the wrong address.
‘Hi,’ the woman said, beaming. She had an accent you could have used to carve stone; the one word was drawn out into at least three syllables.
‘Hello,’ Heather said. ‘I’m looking for Cletus Beck?’
‘Oh, he’s inside, watching Jeopardy! on the catch-up. Come on in.’
‘Right. And you are?’
‘I’m May, but you can call me Sparkles. Everyone does. It’s my professional name.
’
That explained a lot, but not how the rumpled, slightly balding man sprawled on a recliner in front of a large flat-screen TV had managed to land the pneumatic blonde in the first place. She had to be almost thirty years younger than he was, and so far out of his class it was almost criminal.
‘Now, Sparkles, I told you not to just invite these salespeople into our home,’ Mister Beck said as soon as he spotted Heather in her skirt suit. Then he looked back at the screen. ‘What is Amazonia?’
‘What is Amazonia?’ one of the contestants said from the TV.
‘Told ya,’ Beck said and hit the pause button on his remote. ‘Now look here–’
‘I’m not selling anything, Mister Beck. My name is Heather Bryant and I’m a PI. I’ve been engaged by a law firm in New Millennium City to find your daughter, Jolene. She’s not in any trouble. We believe she may be a possible recipient of an inheritance.’
‘Jolene? Haven’t seen Jolene since she was ten. Her mother wouldn’t let me near her. I had a drinking problem, you see. Been clean and clear for six years, ain’t I, Sparkles?’
‘Sure have,’ Sparkles replied. ‘Would you like some coffee, Miss Bryant? Or lemonade?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Heather said with a smile. ‘Your daughter ran away from home last May, Mister Beck. I was wondering whether you had any idea where she might have gone.’
‘Oh, I know she ran away. Mary, her mother, called me up out of the blue, asking whether she was with me. How would she be with me? Doesn’t even know where I live as far as I know. Heard about that preacher too. Not that Mary was going to tell me about that, but it was in the papers. Mary always was an idiot when it came to them evangelical types.’
‘You don’t believe your daughter was possessed by a demon then?’
‘Only demons in this world are in politics. Harrison should exorcise a few of them and then they’d not be taking so much of my pay check each month.’
‘Mm. Thank you for your time, Mister Beck. I’ll let you get back to your programme.’
Beck gave a nod and unfroze the channel. The contestant selected ‘Ultras for a thousand’ and the presenter read out the clue: ‘This mysterious heroine went missing in China for eighteen months.’ Beck scowled at the screen.
‘Who is Twilight?’ Heather said. Then she turned and headed for the door. Apparently, Twilight’s sojourn was not as well known as Heather had thought, because she heard the compère confirming her answer as she stepped outside.
‘How’d you know that?’ Sparkles asked. ‘Cletus didn’t, and he knows everything.’
Heather smiled. ‘My business partner is her boyfriend.’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘You know Ultras?’
‘One or two. Have a good evening, Sparkles.’ And Heather set off for her car. She was no closer to finding Jolene than she had been earlier. She would go back to the hotel and plot out some potential locations nearby where the girl might have holed up. Some place where she would be exposed to as few people as possible. She sighed: this was America, it was full of places like that.
Lexington, KY, 27th April.
Lexington had a lot of history, but Miss Liberty had no time to consider it as she flew in at around five times the speed of sound and began searching for the location in her vision. She had seen a large, flattened sort of building being blown apart and she had to locate it fast. She had seen that building in an industrial park of some kind, but that park was surrounded by housing. The explosion might not cause much damage outside the park, but then again, maybe it would.
She spotted the rows of warehouses after only a minute and powered down toward them. It was a Thursday and the place was busy. Trucks and vans were everywhere. People were everywhere. At least she knew which building was going to blow: the last in a row of four large structures which she headed right for.
‘Clear this area!’ she yelled as she flew over the heads of workers toward the large doors which had to be used for loading and unloading. ‘There’s going to be an explosion. Get out of here!’ Again, her warnings did not seem to be having quite the effect she wanted. Maybe the costume had been a bad idea. Too much leg? She spotted a lever switch on a wall just inside the door. It was painted red and had ‘FIRE!’ in white letters over it, and that would have to do. She yanked the lever down and alarms started going off all over the place.
People looked around, momentarily confused, and then common sense kicked in and they began to file out of the building. Miss Liberty took to the air and began to work her way through the tall stacks of shelving units which took up pretty much the entire interior of the building. She swept down the rows of shelves, shouting at people to get out whenever she saw them. If she could get everyone out, even if she could not stop the explosion, then there would be far fewer casualties at least. She was not entirely sure how long she had, but it was looking good. There was every possibility that the building would be empty before–
There was someone standing at the end of a row of shelves. He was just standing there, not leaving, not doing anything else. She figured he was in his teens. Brown hair and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. He was just… standing there, maybe fifty or sixty feet away.
‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Hey, you have to–’
And then her entire world was filled with heat and battering pressure.
New Millennium City, MD.
‘I think this constitutes some form of sexual harassment,’ Jacob commented as he squared up to fight June. The latter was wearing athletics shorts and a sort of skimpy sports bra, along with light sparring gloves and instep protectors.
‘June needs to learn to fight people bigger than her,’ Andrea replied. She was quite visibly trying to force the smirk off her face. ‘And you are learning to ignore obvious distractions.’
Jacob was in his light bodysuit and June was just human. ‘I’m having to ignore obvious distractions too,’ she said. ‘And my distraction is lower so it has more effect. Seriously, Jacob, that suit leaves nothing to the imagination.’
‘Ha ha,’ he responded. ‘Neither does yours.’
‘Stop with the verbal sparring and start with the physical,’ Cygnus suggested.
Jacob set his jaw, lifted his fists, and… that was when Denny chose to interrupt. ‘There has been an explosion in a warehouse in Lexington, Kentucky,’ the computer announced. ‘Miss Liberty was seen prior to the detonation and is believed to have got everyone out, but she is now missing.’
Cygnus’s expression went from a grin to flat in no time at all. ‘Sparring’s cancelled. June, let’s get changed.’ June was, in fact, already heading for the hole which led down to the ground floor. ‘How does the time match with your prediction, Denny?’
‘Accounting for time zone differences, this perfectly fits the pattern. It also follows the general flow of spatial coordinates, continuing in this direction.’
‘That’s something, I guess.’ Cygnus vanished down the hole after June.
‘I guess it’s you and me for sparring then,’ Andrea said. She was wearing her working outfit of leggings and bra, without the over-the-knee boots. Jacob was genuinely happy she was not wearing the boots.
‘Here come the bruises,’ he muttered as Andrea stepped forward.
Lexington, KY.
Cygnus dropped Astraea over the ambulances and other emergency vehicles and flew straight in to hover over the wrecked warehouse building. Her control field immediately doused the flames around her, but the building was too big for her to cover all of it. Flames continued to push up through the cracked and fallen roofing as she scanned for bodies.
Astraea flew up beside Cygnus as she worked over a grid pattern. ‘The site foreman thinks everyone got out,’ Astraea said, ‘but they have a few day workers who might not have been on the list.’
‘Huh,’ Cygnus responded. ‘I’m not seeing anything yet. I can’t keep the fire down over the whole area, but the building’s a total loss anyway.’
‘Sure looks like it
. The foreman said no one saw Miss Liberty leave before the blast.’
‘If she was in here when it happened… I don’t know. National heroes tend to be pretty resilient, but– There!’ Cygnus darted across toward one of the rear corners of the building. A huge slab of fallen roofing was directly under her, uncracked and whole. ‘It looks like she’s in a void of some sort. Maybe some shelving is propping up this roof section. Take the other side and we’ll try to lift it.’
It took their combined efforts, with Cygnus’s strength cut to provide fire suppression, but they lifted the huge chunk of metalwork and roofing felt and tossed it to one side. Astraea was in and at Miss Liberty’s side almost before the slab had landed. ‘She’s breathing,’ Astraea said. ‘There’s a pulse. She doesn’t look like she’s hurt at all.’ It was true; Miss Liberty was covered in dust and bits of debris, but there were no signs of injury and her costume was immaculate.
‘If she’s what I think she is,’ Cygnus said, ‘I’m not surprised. I am surprised she breathes or has a pulse.’
‘Huh?’ Astraea shook her head. ‘Never mind.’ She closed her eyes and focused on healing the woman whose wrist she was holding. She blinked. ‘I can’t… It’s like there’s nothing there to heal.’
‘Mm,’ Cygnus replied.
That was when Miss Liberty’s eyes flickered open. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I… I need to get home.’
‘You need medical attention,’ Astraea replied. ‘You were in an explosion. You were lucky these shelves fell around you and held the roof off you. I want to heal you but–’
‘You can’t. You can’t heal me. No one can heal… I need to get home.’
‘You’re in no shape to fly,’ Cygnus said, dropping down beside them.
‘I have to. I have to get home. If I get home everything will be…’ Miss Liberty’s voice faltered, and she trailed off, her hand going to her head.
‘We’ll get you there,’ Cygnus said.
‘No. I can’t…’
‘I think secret identities are insignificant right now. If it bothers you that much, we’ll tell you ours when you’re fit enough to fly again.’
Liberty Page 15
