by Matt Cowper
“Sounds good.”
I could feel my God Arm surging with strength. If my arm were bare, it would look like the concrete wall right in front of me, but of course I was wearing a jacket and a glove to hide my powers.
I grabbed the door and opened it easily, causing Burt to nearly tumble down.
“Thank you, Mr. Fairfield,” he said acidly. “You’re so kind.”
“Glad to be of service, gent,” I said in my fake accent.
We stepped inside, and the door clanged shut behind us. I could hear its innards grind as locks slid back into place.
We were in a room covered in thick red carpet, with a tinkling fountain in the center. Soothing music floated about, and the air smelled of springtime. On the far side of the room, there was a marble receptionist’s desk flanked by two statues of blind justice, and behind that a warren of cubicles.
“Welcome to the Superhuman Detention Center,” Burt said, spreading his arms wide. “These are the DSC’s offices. Looks like something out of Architectural Digest, doesn’t it?”
“And the other wing?”
“It’s checkerboard tile and cement blocks. That’s where the peons get sent when they come to visit our jailed villains – the few who Woodruff lets in, that is.”
We walked across the carpet and down a hallway, passing by some ballroom-sized offices. All of them had thin, waxy men scribbling on legal pads or talking shrilly into telephones. They all looked the same – just like Burt.
It was clear Damien Woodruff hired a certain type of person – specifically, someone destined to be an underling. But Burt had rejected that destiny, and for that I was grateful. His megalomaniacal dreams aside, he was a trusted ally, and my cases would be even harder slogs without him.
No need to shower him with praise and swell his head, though.
“Which one of these offices is yours?” I asked.
“Any of them, if I want one,” he said with the haughtiness of a czar. “I work in our mainland office, with all the other important people, but if I need to come out here and berate someone, I can put my feet up anywhere.”
We reached the end of the hallway, stopping by a smaller metal door labeled “INTERROGATION CHAMBERS – DIVISION OF SUPERHUMAN CRIME.” Below it was a warning sign plastered with skulls-and-crossbones, a radiation symbol, a biohazard symbol, and the words “DANGEROUS SUPER-CRIMINALS INSIDE. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.”
Burt swiped his ID badge again, and a buzzer sounded and the door opened.
A bulldozer-sized man in a black warden’s uniform stood in the center of the small room, his hands folded in front of him. To his right, a bank of computer screens covered the wall, manned by three geeky technicians. This room didn’t have the easy luxury I’d seen in the other parts of the DSC wing; it was all concrete, painted the color of snot.
“The prisoner is ready for questioning,” the bulldozer-sized man said, “but I’m still concerned that—”
“Don’t worry, Lonnie,” Burt said. “Everything’s kosher.”
Lonnie chewed his lip for a few moments. “Gray Squirrel’s in room four, and we’ve turned off the recording equipment, per you request.” He gave me a curt nod. “Just press the panic button if—”
“Thanks, you’re the best,” Burt said, stepping by the guard. One last swipe, and another metal door opened, and we were finally in the interrogation area.
The door slammed shut, and it felt like a coffin lid being dropped in place.
I tried to calm my pounding heart. I was in the heart of the DSC’s dungeon – one misstep, and all the defenses on Ironrock Island would be trained on me. With my God Arm, I could pound my way through several layers of security, but even if I made it down to the bay, I was still screwed. I doubted Dak would create a powerboat for me, no matter how destructive I made it sound.
But I again shook off the fear and doubt and kept moving.
We walked down the narrow hallway to another heavy metal door flanked by two more rockslab-guards. Burt pressed a button on a small console, and the door slid open. The guards glanced at us, but didn’t say anything.
Gray Squirrel was sitting at a metal table with a large red button in the center; likely the panic button. His arms locked into nullifier manacles, even though he didn’t have powers. Damien Woodruff was well-known for extending his jurisdiction to the far corners of the universe; Squirrel still counted as a supervillain to him, since he dressed up as a squirrel and fought superheroes.
Squirrel looked over at us timidly, like the school geek who was used to getting wedgied.
Which he was likely was, back in the day. He certainly looked like a born loser: his thinning hair was plastered to his head like seaweed, the armpits of his prison uniform were discolored by sweat marks, and a double chin wagged beneath a pink-skinned face.
“Here you are, Mr. Fairfield,” Burt said.
“Much obliged, Mr. Harrison,” I said. “I do believe this interview with be smashing, and will advance the psychiatric field by a few dozen kilometers.” I patted Burt on the shoulder. “If I need anything, I shall call.”
Burt masterfully kept a straight face. He pressed a button, and the door slid shut.
Chapter Seven
“How are you, Mr. Bollinger?” I said, discarding my accent and sitting down across from him. My legs immediately sighed in relief. “My name’s Johnny Wagner, not Reginald Fairfield. I’m a private investigator. Sorry about the subterfuge, but I couldn’t just walk in here as myself.”
I smiled broadly, hopefully like someone a man who dressed up in a squirrel suit would want to confide in. I’d debated whether to be myself or my alter ego for this meeting, and I’d eventually settled on Johnny Wagner, wagering that while sincerity may not help me with Damien Woodruff or DSC personnel, it would help me with this also-ran so-called supervillian.
Homer answered my greeting with a pudgy stare. Then again, maybe sincerity wouldn’t get me very far.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot. Been a stressful day. You haven’t talked since they locked you up, have you?”
Silence. Finally, a shake of the head.
“You feel guilty, don’t you? This is some sort of penance?”
Homer nodded, and a tear slid slowly down his cheek.
“A true weakling,” Dak rumbled. “I praised his decapitation of Captain Neptune, but if he feels regret for that action, then Dakroth’gannith’formaz rejects him utterly.”
“I thought you were blowing up monuments in your realm or whatever?” I thought-spoke.
“I am. I simply took a break.”
“Well, get back to work. A real god of destruction would have shattered five hundred battle-monuments by now.”
“Five hundred?” Dak roared. “Such a thing is not possible in the time that has spanned since our battle.”
“Not possible for you, maybe….”
“Silence! I will show you, John Wagner. Before we leave this Rock of Iron Island, I will have destroyed a thousand monuments, if not more!”
Good. That should keep him even busier. I returned my attention to Homer.
“I understand your guilt,” I said. “I really do. But we don’t have much time, and I need you to talk to me. Someone’s hired me to investigate the death of Captain Neptune.”
A quizzical look.
“Someone thinks you’ve been set up,” I said, leaning forward.
Homer’s jaw dropped, but then he clamped his mouth shut and shook his head furiously.
“You still don’t want to talk?” I said.
Another furious head-shake.
“Maybe if I tell you a story, you’ll see I’m telling the truth.” I locked eyes with Homer, willing him not to look away. “Once, a supervillain found out the identity of his superhero arch-nemesis. He attacked his home, apparently intent on terror and revenge. But the superhero had a family – especially a cute little girl. The cute little girl thought the guy in the squirrel costume was…well, she thought he was cute too. And—”
“Stop!” Homer croaked. “Just…stop.”
The tears started flowing in earnest.
“I…I didn’t….” He coughed and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I haven’t spoken in so long, my voice is rusty.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m just glad you are talking.”
“You…you said you’re a private eye?”
“Yup, Johnny Wagner, Godlike PI,” I repeated, standing up and offering my hand.
He put out a manacled hand, and we shook. “How did you know about that? About me…attacking them?”
“I’ve interviewed a lot of people,” I lied.
“But—”
“That bomb wasn’t meant to kill Captain Neptune, was it?”
“No,” Homer said vehemently. “But…please, who hired you?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” I said. “Listen, Homer – the clock is running pretty damn speedily. As soon as Damien Woodruff finds out I’m here, he’ll terminate this visit. We need to cover a lot of ground, and we need to do it fast.”
“Woodruff,” Homer snarled. It was high-pitched, and his chin was trembling, but it was a snarl nonetheless. “I hate him.”
“So do we all,” I said. “So, the bomb – you say it wasn’t meant to decapitate Neptune?”
“No, of course not. I…I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just wanted to….” He trailed off, staring down at his hands.
“You wanted to what, Homer?” I asked. “Come on, you have to help me. There are people out there who believe in you, people who barely know you. If they believe in you, you can damn sure believe in yourself.”
That got his attention. He stopped fidgeting and stared me in the eye, his mouth set.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know, and I don’t care about the consequences. There are some bad people in here, and they can get to me if I squeal, but if it’s my fate to have a shiv shoved into my neck, so be it.”
“Hold on, nothing’s going to—”
“You said time was running speedily, didn’t you?” Homer interrupted. “Don’t worry about me.” I opened my mouth to object again, but he didn’t stop talking. “That bomb was meant to be a mind-swapping device. It wasn’t supposed to be an explosive.”
“Swap minds? Why? So you could take over Captain Neptune’s body and tarnish his name?”
“No!” Homer yelled. “I knew that’s what you would think. It’s not like that. I didn’t want to tarnish anything about Patrick…about Captain Neptune. I wanted to…I wanted to be him.”
“Be him?” I echoed. “Why?”
“Mr. Wagner, you’re young, fit, and handsome,” Homer said. “I’m middle-aged and chubby, and every time I try to talk to a woman I stammer like an idiot. I’ve been a loser my whole life. Even as Gray Squirrel, no one took me seriously. I got in the news, sure, and for a while it felt good, but everyone knew I was a small fry. I’d walk into Tapper’s Tavern and all the other rogues would laugh at me. Said I was just a marshmallow. And they were right. So I decided to end my life as Homer Bollinger, alias Gray Squirrel and begin anew as Patrick Anderson, alias Captain Neptune.” He looked at me with surprising fierceness. “I would’ve been a better Captain Neptune, and a better Patrick Anderson.”
I didn’t know whether to yell at the guy or give him a comforting hug. His plan was insidious, but years of ridicule do take their toll; I could see why he would be desperate for what he thought Captain Neptune had.
“How was this plan of yours supposed to work?” I asked.
“After the bomb went off, my mind would be in Patrick’s body, and vice versa. Then, while Patrick was still figuring out what happened, I would knock out my old body – and Patrick, of course. I wouldn’t kill him, I don’t want you to think that. I would’ve locked him up in one of my hideouts, in case we needed to switch back, for whatever reason.”
“Were you planning to mimic Patrick for the rest of your life?” I asked. “It wouldn’t have worked. His wife would’ve noticed eventually.”
“If she did, she wouldn’t have cared,” Homer said. “I would’ve treated her better than Patrick ever did. I would’ve treated her like a…like a princess.”
“How do you know how Patrick treated his wife?”
“I…I spied on them, once I found out Captain Neptune was Patrick Anderson.” He looked down at the floor. “And Patrick didn’t mistreat Julia exactly – that’s his wife – he was just aloof.”
“Your evaluation of their marriage seems a little too self-serving,” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t just see what you wanted to see?”
“No, I’m being objective – really. People give away more than they think. Like, when the family was out in the yard, you could tell Patrick’s thoughts were elsewhere. And Julia – her hedge-clipping was sometimes pretty violent.”
“Didn’t anyone see you sneaking around during all this?”
“No,” Homer said. “After a few drive-bys I saw their home was protected by Comfortable Fortress security, so I set up a half-mile away on an old building and used a high-powered telescope.”
A headline flashed in mind: “TRYST WITH A SUPERVILLAIN: WIFE OF SUPERHERO TRADES FISH FOR SQUIRREL.” Yes, if Julia had had an affair with Homer, the tabloids would eat it up – but I didn’t think anything had gone on between them. Homer seemed infatuated with Julia, but it was infatuation from a distance, a stalking kind of love or lust. He could be acting, of course, but this didn’t seem like a guy who was filled with guile.
“How did you find out Captain Neptune’s identity?” I asked.
“You won’t believe me,” Homer whispered.
“Try me.”
“He…he told me.”
“What?” I said, furrowing my brow. “Why would he do that?”
“Well, he didn’t tell me directly. We were fighting – this was a few months ago – and he was wilder than usual. He was…on something. Some sort of drug. Or maybe he was just drunk.” Homer looked at me apologetically, like he thought he was being a dirty gossip. “Then he said something I’ll never forget: ‘Patrick used to be like you.’ It just kind of tumbled out. He was so out of it, I don’t think he knew what he was saying.”
“He revealed his name?” I said, stopping myself from calling the deceased super-hero a goddamn idiot. “Did you know what it meant at the time, or did you think he was talking about someone else?”
“I didn’t know what to think,” Homer said, “but I had plenty of time on my hands, so I started researching. I started looking up all the Patricks in Z City. I used the phone book, the Net, I spent hours at the courthouse. It was frustrating, and I didn’t know if I was missing something. I mean, I was looking for someone who had the same body type as Neptune, but he could have been using an image alterator, or maybe the transformation into Captain Neptune changed his body naturally, or—”
“So how did you find out he was Patrick Anderson?” I asked, cutting him off. I didn’t have time to listen to every detail.
“It was luck,” Homer said. “I was reading the Z City Times one day, and I saw him – they had a story about him winning some award at the school where he taught. It was just one paragraph, and a grainy black and white picture, but the name struck me: Patrick Anderson. If I hadn’t been thinking about the name ‘Patrick,’ I would’ve just skimmed through the story, but knowing what I knew, I looked closely at the picture. I thought I saw Captain Neptune in Patrick Anderson’s features, but I wasn’t certain.”
“What did you do then?”
“I…observed him,” Homer said guiltily, “and the more I observed him, the more I was sure he was Captain Neptune. He wore glasses and rumpled up his hair, but he was fit, and he had Neptune’s square jaw.” He looked down at his own belly and sighed. “I had to be absolutely sure, though. I monitored his home, but, as I told you, they had Comfortable Fortress tech, so I had to be careful. I set up in that building I told you about, bought some X-Zoom Binoculars, and tried to catch Patric
k going out to do his superheroics. He was very sneaky, though. Weeks went by, and I never saw him as Captain Neptune.”
He rubbed some sweat from his forehead. “Finally I got a break. I saw him stumbling through the back yard one night, in costume, probably coming home from a night of fighting crime. I saw blood on his arm, and he was muttering something. It looked like he was on whatever stuff he’d been on when he said that thing about Patrick; that’s probably why he was so careless. I only saw him for an instant, but it was enough to confirm he was, really, Captain Neptune.”
“And so you decided to attack him in his home,” I said.
“That…that was a mistake,” Homer said. “You know what happened, don’t you? You know I never went back there, you know I never hurt Julia or Molly.”
“Then why did you kick down their door in the first place?”
“I was…the guys at Tapper’s Tavern had been making fun of me. Well, they always made fun of me, but this time they were really vicious. I wanted to do something to show them I was a true supervillain.” He let out a deep sigh. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have let them bait me.”
Despite his dastardly mind-swapping plan, this guy still had a conscience – an inconsistent conscience, yes, but still a conscience.
Strange how genetics formed a person – a few tweaks and he would’ve been an upstanding citizen instead of a shunned loser.
“What did Neptune do after that?” I asked. “Wasn’t he furious you found out his identity?”
“He was, I guess, but it seemed forced,” Homer said. “He didn’t really do anything, actually. He told me one time to stay away from his family, and that was it. After that, it was just the usual patter: ‘Your time is over, Gray Squirrel,’ and so on.”
“Maybe he remembered he’d actually told you his name – sort of – and knew it was his own fault.”
“Maybe so,” Homer said. “I’ve considered that, but…I don’t know. It was all really strange. I still expected him to give me a terrible beating, or maybe finally capture me.”
