by Nick Svolos
“What?” My blood chilled several degrees, but my mind couldn’t quite square the details. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I thought aloud.
Dawson picked up on my muttering. “How you figure?”
“The kid could fly.” I thought about it for a second while the detective processed this bit of information. “Is he over at County?”
“Yeah.” He muttered for a bit. “I guess I’m gonna have to send a guy over there to look into it.”
I didn’t want to wait around for this to be settled through proper channels. “Maybe I can help. I’m here at the beach right now. How ‘bout you let me go over there with someone who knows him and see if we can ID the kid? Might be able to save you the trip if it turns out it’s not him.”
“Aw, I don’t know, Conway. You’d have to be on your best behavior.” He quickly added, “Scratch that. Your behavior’s never been that good. You’d have to be on somebody else’s best behavior. You know, somebody who doesn’t spend half his day lookin’ for ways to get arrested.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to be helpful. I’ll be good, Captain. Promise.” I knew I was going to win this one and was already checking my text messages for Panhandler’s number.
“Color me reassured. Alright, I’ll let ‘em know you’re coming over. Don’t make me regret this.”
I told him I wouldn’t and tried Panhandler’s number. He answered on the second ring and I explained what I’d learned, leaving out the information from the girl at Karl’s tent for the moment. Panhandler sounded crestfallen at the prospect of finding his protégé in the morgue, but he agreed to come with me to ID the remains. I picked him up outside of St. John’s Hospital, where he’d been fruitlessly searching the ER.
On the way over, he mercifully insisted on riding in the truck’s bed. This left me alone with my thoughts, which made for lousy company. On the one hand, I felt charged by that strange, excited energy I always get when I’m running down a story and my instincts tell me I’m on the right track. On the other hand, I was praying I was wrong. I really didn’t want this story to end with a dead teenager. I was holding out for a happy ending, even though my experience told me it was unlikely I’d get one. I could only imagine what Panhandler was feeling, but I didn’t think it was good.
Afternoon traffic on the freeway was starting to back up, and it took us a little longer than I’d hoped to make the trip. Still, we managed to make it to the county morgue by four o’clock. The Coroner Building is an ornate red and white brick affair that I’d guess was built in the late 1800’s, and it’s actually quite impressive. You don’t see old buildings in Los Angeles very often, and by old, I’m talking about a structure that’s more than one hundred years old. I know that’s nothing compared to most of the world, but in a city that seems to take a perverse delight in tearing down and reconstructing itself, finding a building this old is pretty cool.
We parked and walked to the squat, depressing, off-white annex building labeled “Forensics”. I saw Panhandler’s brow furrow in concentration as he strained to control his odor. By the time we entered the chilly air of the building’s lobby, he had it down to just a really bad case of BO.
After a few minutes wait, one of the forensic technicians escorted us back to a big refrigerated room lined with steel doors where they keep unclaimed bodies. The pit in my stomach grew as I saw a sheet-covered body lying on a wheeled aluminum table. The tech led us over to the table, gave us a moment to prepare ourselves and pulled the sheet back.
The revealed body was about five feet tall, male, and had curly, blond hair. There was a slight bluish tint to his pale skin. His head lay at an odd angle, and I couldn’t quite figure out why until I noticed the bones in his neck were poking out from the side. I knew, even before Panhandler nodded in ashen-faced confirmation, that it was Karl Jorgensen.
The homeless man gripped my arm. He looked like he was about to lose control, and the stench was starting to get to the technician. “Can you handle the paperwork? I need to get out of here.”
“No problem,” I said quietly. “I’ll meet you at the truck when I’m done.”
The superhero muttered, “Thanks,” and quickly strode from the room.
“So, that was Panhandler, huh?” the Coroner’s man asked as he moved closer to one of the air conditioner registers for relief.
“Yeah,” I absently replied, my eyes glued to the corpse before me. The pit in my stomach underwent a transformation into a red throb of anger. This kid should be home. He should be with his family.
He shouldn’t be laying on a gurney in the morgue.
The tech broke my dark thoughts. “How do you get used to it? The smell.”
The question momentarily left me boggled. Considering what this guy dealt with on a daily basis, I’d have thought he’d have a stronger tolerance for such things. I shrugged.
“You don’t.” I didn’t want to talk about Panhandler. I nodded at the boy on the table. “What happened to him?”
The tech consulted the clipboard hanging from a hook at the end of the table. “Says here he took a header out a sixth floor window. Broke his neck and both arms when he hit. Toxicology came back negative, and the Coroner ruled it a suicide.”
“Nothing else? No signs of a struggle or anything?”
“Uh, let me see,” he said as he paged through the Coroner’s notes. “Ah, here’s something.” He walked back to the table and tugged the sheet down a little farther. “It looks like he had some chafing on the wrists. See? Here, and here.” He pointed out some ugly red welts encircling the kid’s shattered lower forearms. “Like he was strapped down to something at some point before death. They did an exam of his…” he hesitated, “Well, they checked to see if he’d been raped or something, but that was negative.” He went back to the notes and continued, “The only other thing they found was this mark on his back.” He set the clipboard back on the hook and rolled the body onto its side. I came around to his side of the table to see what he was talking about. Between his shoulder blades was a little red scab of coagulated blood, surrounded by a thin red circle of raw skin about an inch in diameter. “At first, the examiner thought it might be some sort of bug bite or a tattoo attempt gone wrong, but the results were inconclusive. No idea what caused it.” He laid the body back down on the table with a gentle thump.
I noticed a little clanking rattle from the other end of the table when he did this. I had overlooked it before, but there was one of those cardboard storage boxes on a shelf below the body. I took a closer look and saw that it had Karl’s personal effects and a zip lock bag containing what looked to be lab samples. I filed that little bit of info away for the moment.
“So, help me out here,” I began, “because this isn’t adding up. The kid’s got marks on him that you gotta think someone else made. I’m not trained like you guys are, but even so, it seems someone did something to him before he went out that window. What makes the Coroner so sure it’s a suicide?”
The tech’s face reddened. “It’s pretty much standard procedure nowadays. Look, the M.E. only gets about fifteen minutes with the body before he’s gotta go on to the next one. If forensics doesn’t find evidence of drugs or sex or anything else that would make him dig deeper, he’s just got to play the odds. The street kids that end up here are usually overdose victims, homicides or suicides. Once you rule out the first two…”
“OK, I get that he’s not an overdose case, but why’d he rule out homicide?”
He shrugged. “No bruises, no witnesses, the only real injuries he has are consistent with a fall. Occam’s razor.”
“Did the M.E. know this kid was a super?”
The tech looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Yeah. He was sidekicking for Panhandler. He could fly. Strong, too. I would think it would take a lot of determination for someone like that to kill himself this way.”
“Shit. OK, let me get this down.” He grabbed the clipboard and flipped to a page, “So, super-strength and f
lying. Anything else?”
“Not that I know of. That enough to get the Coroner to reopen the case?”
“I doubt it. It would make the Examiner look bad if he missed something, but you never know. I’ll pass this info along. Maybe something will come of it.”
I felt my blood pulsing in my ears, and I knew I was close to suffering some control issues of my own. I’d had about enough of bureaucracy for one day. They were going to let someone get away with murder because it might make one of their guys look bad. I made Dawson a promise, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bring a little pressure to bear. There’s more than one way to get something done in this town.
“So, when I write my piece on this, I’m supposed to tell my readers the Coroner’s not going to reopen the case because it would ‘make someone look bad’? Do I have that right?”
Maybe it was something in my eyes, or maybe I didn’t moderate my tone well, but the tech suddenly looked like he was staring down the barrel of a shotgun. He held up his hands in a calming gesture. “Woah, don’t kill the messenger. That’s all way above my pay grade.”
He was right, and I might have felt bad about leaning on the tech if I wasn’t standing next to a dead teenager that the authorities couldn’t be bothered with. Instead, I fished out a business card and handed it to him. “Make sure someone at the appropriate pay grade gets that. Let ‘em know I’ll be filing my story tonight. If they have anything to add, my number’s on the card.”
The tech attached the card to the clipboard. “Yeah, sure. No prob.”
Forcing myself to calm down, I switched back into helpful mode. “OK. So do you need the next of kin info or anything?”
“Oh, yeah. That’d be a big help. Hang on a sec. Gotta get the forms.” He left the room, leaving me alone in the cold room with only the dead for company. I remembered the box beneath the table, and took a quick look around to see if there were any cameras in the area. I spotted one, but noticed that it was unplugged, the cable dangling limp from a corner of the room’s ceiling. I wondered why the hell would they have that unplugged, and immediately regretted it as disgusting visions of what might be going on in here after hours came to mind.
With a shudder, I shook the disturbing thoughts out of my head and started going through the box. I had to hurry before the tech got back. Inside the box, I found Karl’s personal effects, which weren’t much. A pair of jeans, jogging shoes, a little bag that held the contents of his pockets, a couple bucks in small change, an uncharged phone, and a scrap of paper with a downtown address. Below the address were the words “Ask for Sledge”. I thought it strange that there was no shirt in the box, but I set that aside as I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of the address and put everything back. I was about to put the box back, when I noticed blood samples in little test tubes in the zip locked plastic bag. I looked up at the door, and decided it was time to commit my felony for the day. I opened the bag and grabbed one of the blood samples. I slipped the sample in my pocket, replaced the box, and stood up, just a second or two before the technician returned with the paperwork.
It only took a minute or two to fill out the forms the tech brought. Not that I had a lot of information, but at least they would be able to notify the Jorgensens. I wondered if there was something more I could do, but I figured the city had people with more experience in breaking this kind of news to families than I did. Probably best if I didn’t interfere.
Besides, I had something else to do. With grim clarity, my mind was set on finding out who did this to Karl and making sure they paid for it in full. I thanked the technician for his help and left to find Panhandler sitting in the back of my dad’s truck, his head cradled in his hands. His reserves spent, he was having a hard time controlling his power, and the parking lot reeked.
I steeled myself, forcing down a gag, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You alright, man?”
Grief edged his gaunt features as he raised his head. “What the hell was I thinking, Conway? He was just a kid, for Christ’s sake!” He balled up a fist and punched the side of his head. “Dammit!” He sagged and shook his head, “I should have just dragged him back home the day he showed up at the camp.”
I just let him vent for a while. He blamed himself, and I wasn’t sure whether he was right or wrong. The kid needed someone to teach him control, and Panhandler had been there for him. The student found his teacher. Hard to blame the hero for taking him under his wing. There were a few “Institutes” that trained people like this, but in almost every case these were really just fronts for the local government or something worse, and most of their graduates wind up as “assets”, serving what amounts to a life sentence on a government-sponsored superteam for the crime of being a superhuman. I know. It happened to a friend of mine. She got free, but she’s still looking over her shoulder. No, most of the time, these kids either figured out their abilities on their own or found a mentor.
“Panhandler, look, you could play the ‘what if?’ game all night. I can’t tell you Karl would have been better or worse off if he’d found another teacher or if you’d forced him to go home. You saw an opportunity to help a boy who needed it, and you did what you thought was best. You’ve got every right to grieve. But you got to get yourself together. We have work to do. There are people who depend on you. And quite frankly, I’m about to pass out.”
That startled the hero back to himself. “Oh, what? Oh! I’m sorry, Mr. Conway.” He quickly re-established control over his power and the odor diminished to tolerable levels. “I’m just, I don’t know. I can’t figger why he’d kill himself.”
I shook my head grimly. “He didn’t. The Coroner’s report is bullshit.”
Panhandler’s head shot up. “What?”
“This is all conjecture, but it looks to me like someone strapped him to a chair and did something to his spine. Then, I’m guessing he fell or was pushed out a window—I don’t know which—but it’s clear his powers weren’t working when it happened.”
His eyes took on a hard edge and his hands balled into fists. “You’re saying he was murdered.”
“That might be going too far. It could have been an accident. But, someone’s responsible for this, and I’m going to find out who. And why.”
The hero nodded. “OK, where do we start? I’m not much in the detective department.”
“That’s OK. Leave that to me. You’ll be the muscle when I need it, OK?”
He smiled in feral anticipation. “Damned straight. So, where to?”
“I’m going to drop you off at the beach. Take care of your people. Make sure cooler heads prevail when word of what happened to Karl starts getting around. I don’t want to spook whoever’s behind all this. Me, I’ve got a blood sample I want to get checked out.” He opened his mouth, and I stopped him from asking the obvious question with a held up hand. “Don’t ask. I’ll be in touch when I know something.”
He nodded in agreement, and we set off back to his community on the beach. After dropping him off, I took a quick whiff of my clothing and decided I’d be better off if I changed and took a quick shower before my next stop. Hanging around with Panhandler did that to you. My apartment was close enough that it wouldn’t set me back that much. Thirty minutes later, my aroma much improved, I found myself sitting in rush hour traffic on the I-10 heading back downtown to the Angel Tower.
It was about six, so I took a break from my hobby of leaving messages in the SFPD’s voicemail, and instead decided to check in with Dawson. He didn’t pick up, so I left him a message to let him know that we’d positively ID’d the body at the morgue. I also shared my opinion of the Coroner’s suicide ruling and suggested he might want to take a closer look. I didn’t hold a lot of hope that he’d follow up on that—I wasn’t even sure if a cop could overrule a Coroner’s ruling—but he’d done me a pretty good favor by getting me access to the morgue and I didn’t want to hold out on him.
After another twenty minutes or so, I’d managed to make it to
the street level parking entrance at the Angel Tower. The building and the street outside had long since been repaired from the battle last August, and the street level entrance sported several new security improvements. Ever since the previous summer, The Angels have pretty much let me have the run of the place, much to the consternation of their PR department. I guess letting a reporter, even one that you could classify as a “friendly”, run around on the loose in the headquarters of a high-profile team of costumed vigilantes is considered bad form in their circles. I could see their point: if the day ever came where the team crossed the line, I could be a real problem for them. I didn’t let it bother me too much. In my opinion, The Angels liked having someone around to keep them honest. For my part, access to some of the team’s resources came in handy from time to time. Like when I needed someone to analyze a stolen blood sample on the QT.
I dropped off my truck with the valet and checked in at the security desk. Alicia, the security woman on duty, smiled and greeted me with a pleasant,“Good evening, Mr. Conway. Welcome back.” as she handed me my ID badge. It was one of those RFID badges that you see everywhere, but unlike most other places, not wearing it here could result in the building’s defenses kicking in and knocking me into next week with a stunner beam. Having received a jolt from one of those things, I wasn’t eager to get another dose. It was like playing patty-cake with defibrillator paddles. I made sure the badge was securely clipped to my shirt pocket.
“Thanks,” I said. “Say, can you tell me if anyone’s on duty in the lab? I got some science that needs doin’.”
She glanced at a monitor mounted into her side of the desk and nodded. “Yes, Dr. Austin is up there now.”
Cool. Dr. Curtis Austin was a good guy. He headed up the science division, one of the many civilian support staffers The Angels employ. I took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor and stepped into a science nerd’s wet dream. I didn’t know what eighty percent of the stuff in the lab did. I mean, I was kind of a smart guy. I read a lot of books, took a few classes, and I can generally figure out which end of the microscope you’re supposed to look into. But the stuff in this room blew my mind. Made me want to put on a lab coat, cackle madly and shout something about this being a great day for “SCIENCE!”
