It did not take a master detective to figure out someone in the bar had recognized me after all.
CHAPTER 26
When blood did not circulate to a part of your body, it was like a car without gas—it did not work. Perhaps the SMART cops did not already know this. They were about to learn.
I exerted my will, bursting a water hydrant down the street open. Normally the water would have sprayed in all directions, but it was under my control. I sent it shooting toward the SMART cops. They obviously must have been briefed on my powers. One of them gave the order to open fire as the water rushed towards them. The men tried to shoot me. They tried, and failed. Their hands would not obey the commands of their brains. Like turning off the tap to a faucet, I had stopped the flow of blood to their hands, paralyzing them. If I did not resume the blood flow soon, the cops’ hands would be permanently damaged. I did not want to hurt them. They were good guys who had been misled was all. Hopefully the seconds I bought by stopping them from shooting me were all I needed.
With a dull roar, the stream of water hit the men forcefully, covering their legs from the calf down, as if they had all stepped into a shallow river. I quickly cooled the water, turning it into ice. Before the cops could get out of the stream of water, it was no longer a stream. It was now a solid chunk of ice that weighed the men down like they were wearing cement shoes.
That was my cue. I turned and ran, leaving the immobilized cops behind me. They shouted at me. I heard someone screaming my location and the direction I was headed, no doubt to his brethren over the radio. I turned the corner onto Shelby Street, out of the cops’ line of sight. I released my hold that prevented the blood from flowing to their hands. Their hands would probably feel like they had gone to sleep, but would soon be no worse for wear. I had not stopped the blood flow for long. I also encased the hydrant I had burst open in ice, preventing more water from gushing out, but not before taking some of the water and making it keep pace with me as I ran. It writhed and pulsated over my head like a watery snake.
I heard sirens again as I ran. I was getting closer to the rendezvous point with Shadow. I dodged pedestrians. No one tried to stop me. It was not terribly unusual to see runners on the streets of Astor City. People probably thought I was just an overdressed athlete out for an after work run to the degree they thought about me at all. They must have missed the water swirling over my head. If anyone recognized me as the alleged killer of Earth’s greatest Hero, they gave no indication of it. Or maybe some people did recognize me, but the bystander effect prevented them from taking action. For once I was grateful for big city apathy.
I was almost where I was to meet Shadow when I saw a ghost. It rose from the middle of the sidewalk directly in front of me like something out of a nightmare—first the head, then the shoulders, then the rest of its body until its feet hovered slightly above the pavement. Its milky white body was translucent, and I could see through it.
No, this was no ghost, though it certain was shaping up to be quite the nightmare. This was THE Ghost. Ghost was a Hero and the chief investigator for the Heroes’ Guild. I had dealings with him before when he had investigated me for alleged negligence in carrying out my Heroic duties. Seeing Ghost was like seeing a great white shark: though Ghost was a necessary part of the Heroic ecosystem, when you encountered him, you were not happy to see him.
I skidded to a halt about fifteen feet away from Ghost. The people around us screamed and ran, frightened by Ghost’s sudden and strange appearance. I knew how they felt. In his full-body costume and cape, he looked the way Darth Vader would look if Darth Vader wore all white. Directly ahead was where I was to meet with Shadow in just a few moments. With Ghost in front of me, the spot could just as well have been miles away.
“Can I give you crimefighting tips some other time Ghost?” I said, panting. My chest heaved with my recent exertion. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.” Ghost had found me amusing in the past. Though I could not see his face behind his full mask, he did not seem amused today.
“The crime you are accused of is most serious Mr. Lord,” he said in his deep voice. It sounded like the voice of God. “I am here to take you into custody.”
“I didn’t kill Avatar. I’ve been framed.”
“Whether or not you did it is not relevant right now. A warrant has been issued for your arrest. You must be turned over to the civilian authorities so that justice can take its course. We Heroes are not above the law. You know that. If you don’t, you should.”
Hoping to catch Ghost off guard, I pulled some water away from the mass hovering over my head. I sent it rocketing towards Ghost. The water split, becoming three ice daggers at my mental command. They passed harmlessly through Ghost. Based on how he had floated up through the sidewalk, I had suspected they would not affect him. You never know until you try.
“Really, Mr. Lord?” Ghost said. He sounded disgusted. Join the club. I was disgusted too. Before today I had not known what Ghost’s powers were, but they obviously included intangibility.
I sighed aloud.
“All right, I know when I’m licked,” I said. I raised my hands over my head in submission. I had done the same thing with the cops a bit earlier. Deja vu all over again. I let the water hovering over me splash down harmlessly onto the sidewalk right in front of me.
“That’s more like it,” Ghost said. He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the belt around his waist. He floated closer, reaching for me. Right before he touched me, he turned solid. I knew because I could no longer see through him. He was right over the water soaked sidewalk in front of me.
Ghost suddenly screamed, dropping the cuffs. I had turned the water on the sidewalk into superheated steam. Normal steam was visible, like the steam from a tea kettle. It really more properly should be called wet steam as what you saw was condensed water vapor. Superheated steam, on the other hand, was invisible. And, really, really hot. It could get so hot it could set things on fire. Ghost floating into my patch of superheated steam must have felt like entering an oven. The steam did not affect me at all as I had shielded myself from its effects.
Ghost became intangible again, no doubt so my steam would no longer affect him. I took off running again, straight through Ghost, passing through him like he was a hologram. Shadow should be here any second. I risked a glance back at Ghost, hoping I had not seriously hurt him. He was floating in the air, no longer screaming, but shaking his head back and forth as if to clear it.
A black car zoomed into view ahead of me where Shelby crossed Lexington. The car skidded to a halt at the corner. The windows were tinted black and were opaque. I did not recognize the make or model, but it looked the way a car would look if a BMW sports car had a baby with a black panther. The gull-wing door on the passenger side opened upward, revealing Shadow behind the wheel. I threw myself inside. The car took off before I was barely completely in. The gull-wing shut itself down behind me while we were already roaring down the street.
I untangled myself from my bag. I settled back into the passenger seat gratefully. My heart raced as fast as Shadow’s car did. As soon as I sat back, X-shaped seat belts snaked around me, locking into place and securing me in the seat. Everything in the car’s interior was sleek and had a futuristic look. It was unlike any other car I had seen. I felt like I sat in the cockpit of a rocket ship. The Sentinels had the stuff in their mansion, Avatar had the stuff in The Mountain, and Shadow had this car, plus who knew what else. Was I the only Metahuman who did not have cool gadgets? If I managed to get out of the fix I was in, I really needed to step up my Hero game.
One thing I did recognize in the car was a police scanner that was mounted in the middle of the car’s dashboard. It was on. All the talk was about me. If this was what fame was like, I wanted no parts of it.
I looked over at Shadow. As usual, she was in all black. Though she was driving fast and weaving in and out of traffic, she looked as calm and placid as a grandmother out for a peaceful Sunday drive. It must h
ave been nice to have superhuman reflexes. Hers eyes darted over to me before returning to the road. She smiled slightly.
“I hear you killed Avatar. You see what kind of a mess you get yourself into when I’m not around?” she said. Her teeth gleamed in her dark face. “I can’t leave you alone for a second.”
CHAPTER 27
I stood in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa smiled at me mysteriously, as if saying she knew all the answers, I did not, and she knew I did not. Smug. The painting was mounted on a wall in Shadow’s living room.
“I don’t know much about art, but this is the best reproduction of da Vinci’s masterpiece I have ever seen,” I said to Shadow. She came up to stand next to me.
“It’s not a reproduction,” she said.
“Oh come on. Even I know the original is permanently housed in the Louvre in Paris.”
“Is it?” Shadow said, her eyebrow cocked slightly. “Or is this the original and the one in the Louvre is the reproduction?” Shadow gave me the same smile Mona Lisa had. She turned and walked away. I studied the painting again. After a while, I shook my head. I did not know whether Shadow had been kidding or not. It was often hard to tell. But, if she had not been, who was I to judge? I was wanted for the murder of Earth’s greatest Hero. Those who lived in criminal glass houses should not throw stones.
I followed Shadow into her kitchen where she was preparing dinner. It was some Filipino dish the name of which I could not pronounce. However you said it, it smelled good. Unlike normally, I did not have much of an appetite though. Suddenly becoming the world’s public enemy number one had put a damper on my appetite. Imagine that.
It three days after I had escaped from the authorities. The day of my escape, Shadow had driven us to her home, a place I had never been to before as Shadow had kept where she lived a closely guarded secret. When I had asked her in the past where she lived, she had always told me that since what she did was not always strictly legal, it would never do to have a licensed Hero know where she lived, even if that Hero was me. She had brought me here now because it was the safest place for me to be outside of fleeing the city altogether since no one knew where she lived. And, though Shadow did not say this, perhaps she felt more comfortable with me knowing where she lived as I too was now a criminal. Kindred spirits.
Shadow’s place was located in the warehouse district of the city, not too far from the gym where she and I both worked out. That explained why Shadow belonged to that gym. Proximity. Her place was in an old warehouse. Actually, that was not quite accurate. Her place was under an old warehouse. The underground home was a reflection of Shadow—sleek, modern, and expensive-looking. She had a large room that was filled with books, many very rare. Her collection would be the envy of many libraries. She also had an armory filled with weapons that ranged from simple blowguns to the most advanced of modern firearms. She could read about the best way to kill someone and then arm herself to carry out that killing in a single location. Convenient.
Above her place, in the old warehouse itself, was a collection of vehicles ranging from high-end motorcycles to the futuristic car Shadow had picked me up in the day before. Whoever said crime did not pay had never seen Shadow’s collection of vehicles or her residence beneath them.
I sat at the kitchen counter and watched as Shadow chopped vegetables. I had already offered to help, an offer Shadow had declined. I felt useless sitting there watching her work. It was a microcosm of my life in general. I felt completely useless holed up like a rat while Avatar’s true killer roamed free and the world trashed my good name. Such as it was.
Even in her own home, Shadow wore black. She had on now black shorts and a short black tee shirt that left her stomach exposed and revealed ample cleavage. The fact I could not muster the energy to investigate whether or not she was wearing a bra was proof of how low I felt. It was just as well. Shadow was holding a knife. Leering at her might prompt her to use it on me.
“You come up with any brilliant ideas of how to get me out of this fix?” I asked. She looked up at me with surprise.
“Me?” Shadow said. “I’m just the muscle and the getaway driver. You’re the detective and the Hero. Coming up with brilliant ideas is your job.”
“So far the only idea I’ve got is to mount a frontal assault on the UWant building in an attempt to get up to the penthouse and access the safe in Lobb’s office Donna Marina told me about.” I had of course already told Shadow the full story of what I had learned and done in the course of investigating Avatar’s death. “Based on the number of Metas on Lobb’s security force according to Donna, that idea would almost surely get us captured or killed.”
“I’m too young to die, and too pretty to go to jail. You need a better idea.”
“I think so too.” I shook my head. “If we could go directly to the penthouse level instead of fighting our way up there, that would solve a lot of our problems. I don’t suppose you have a helicopter upstairs among your vehicles? Maybe a couple of jetpacks?”
“Sorry. Fresh out of jetpacks.”
“Then what good are you?”
“I pulled your nuts out of the fire a few days ago.” She pointed the knife at the chopped vegetables. “Plus, I’m making us dinner.”
“Excellent points. I withdraw the question.”
I stood and went back into the living room. I turned on the television, tuning it to an all-news station. I should say it was an all-Truman station. The fact Avatar was dead and that I was wanted in his murder was all anyone could talk about. I had spent much of the last few days watching the news coverage and feeling sorry for myself. A lot of the round-the-clock coverage was filler as the networks did not have much new to report. Every expert under the sun was being interviewed to help fill the airtime: experts on the psychology of murderers, experts on Heroes, experts on all the feats performed by Avatar over the years, experts on forensics, experts ad nauseam. I was hoping eventually the networks would interview an expert on getting yourself out of trouble when you were falsely accused of killing a world-famous Hero. So far, no dice.
As I watched the news coverage, a lot of the same facts were rehashed. The Chaos Gun—that was what one newscaster had called it, and the name had stuck—found in my condo by the police was indeed the weapon used to kill Avatar. The police and the Sentinels had collaborated in performing ballistic testing, comparing the bullets the Sentinels had pulled from Avatar’s body with the gun. The striations on the bullets matched the grooves inside the barrel of the Chaos Gun, indicating it had been used to kill Avatar. My fingerprints were on the Chaos Gun. That was only because I had stupidly picked it up when I discovered it in my clothes’ hamper, but the authorities did not know that. They assumed my fingerprints were there because I had fired the bullets into Avatar’s chest.
The Sentinels had held a news conference the day before in which Seer confirmed the Sentinels had hired me to track down Avatar’s killer. She also confirmed that Avatar’s secret identity was Byron Hennings. She neglected to mention the Sentinels knew that fact only because I had told them during one of my periodic progress reports. That was gratitude for you. Without actually coming right out and saying it, during the news conference Seer managed to imply that the Sentinels had known I was the killer the whole time, and that they had only hired me to trick me into implicating myself. She also implied I was the one who told the Sentinels to conceal from the public the fact Avatar was dead. I would have admired Seer’s subtle lies and misdirections had I not been so pissed off by them. Seer assured the public that the Sentinels, in conjunction with the entire Heroes’ Guild and law enforcement, would scour the four corners of the world to bring me to justice.
As with Willard Flushing, I resolved to drop Seer from my Christmas card list.
The news reported the police had issued a warrant for my arrest and had raided my apartment based on an anonymous tip they had received. The tip also indicated that Byron Hennings had been Avatar. That tip had been accompanied by
video footage of me breaking into Hennings’ apartment. Wherever the camera was that had recorded that footage, it had been well-hidden. I checked for cameras as a matter of course when I broke into a place. The date and time-stamp of the footage indicated I had broken into Hennings’ place before Avatar had been shot. Only I knew that the date-stamp had been doctored. Somehow I did not think the police would believe me if I told them.
No doubt after having been leaned on by the police, John Barrow admitted he had been paid by Antaeus to allow him access to Chaos. A hunt for Antaeus had ensued thereafter, but no one could find him. Some bright cop had then come up with the idea of showing Barrow pictures of murder victims who had turned up in Astor City’s morgues recently. Barrow pick a man out of those pictures, one Jonathan Strayhorn. His body had been found within easy walking distance of my office a couple of days after I had spoken to him in Maine. It was speculated I had hired Strayhorn to teleport into MetaHold for the purpose of stealing some of the Chaos energy. I myself speculated Lobb’s men had found Antaeus after I talked to him, killed him, and dumped his body near my office in Astor City to further make me look guilty.
Both John Barrow and Kierra Singleton were fired from MetaHold as a result of these revelations, the news reported. Both now faced charges for allowing Antaeus access to Chaos. Kierra was interviewed on air about when I visited her and her mother in Brooklyn. Her words were one of the few silver linings in otherwise very dark clouds.
“I know what everyone is saying about Mr. Lord,” she said to the reporter interviewing her. “And I only saw him twice. Once in MetaHold, and once at my house. But, I am around murderers and criminals all day every day. I looked into Mr. Lord’s eyes. I don’t think he killed Avatar any more than you or I did.”
If I ever managed to get myself out of this mess, I would find Kierra and kiss her. If Ginny were not in the picture, I would even consider marrying her. Few people had kind words to say about me.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 4): Hunted Page 29
