“Are you married?” Maureen abruptly asked.
“No.” If the question hadn’t caught me off guard, I would have said I was an old school Mormon and that I had sixteen wives as near as I could remember. Maureen’s obviously voracious appetites made me nervous.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do.” Her eyes roamed over me unabashedly. Now that Ethan was on ice, I had the feeling Maureen was in the market for a replacement Hero. I had the sudden urge to pull out my gun and lay it on my lap as a deterrent. “You ever cheat?”
“No,” I answered honestly.
“A shame.” Maureen leaned back in her chair, uncrossing and recrossing her legs again, deliberately spreading them a little more widely than she needed to. No underwear. I got a quick flash of pubic hair. It confirmed my earlier thought she was a natural blonde.
With Maureen smiling at me the way a lioness probably smiles at an impala, I thanked her for her time and beat a hasty retreat from her house before I was forced to pull out a whip and do my best lion taming impersonation. It was weird how an ordinary woman could be more terrifying than a Rogue.
I went back to my car, looking over my shoulder to make sure Maureen wasn’t stalking me. When I was safely locked inside, I noticed a skeletally thin young woman in heels too high and a skirt too short tottering down the sidewalk across the street. First Maureen, now this. Did anybody wear sensible clothes these days?
The young woman stopped to bend over and speak to a man sitting in his parked car. Discussing the cold weather, maybe, or perhaps pork futures. The bottom of the woman’s bare butt cheeks popped out of her skirt when she bent over. I could’ve looked away but didn’t for professional reasons: an investigator needed to keep his observational skills finely honed.
After a few moments, the woman got into the man’s car. The car drove away, passing me. A man with liver spots on his balding head was behind the wheel. I watched the car until it turned the corner and disappeared.
Had I just witnessed a grandfather picking up his inappropriately dressed granddaughter? Or was it a John picking up an appropriately dressed hooker? If the latter, I supposed the two had been discussing future porking rather than pork futures. A small business in operation. It was good to see that America’s entrepreneurial spirit was still alive and well. It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I bet the old man would get a warm and fuzzy feeling soon too.
My warm and fuzzy feeling dissipated as I contemplated Ethan’s case. Things did not look good for my fellow Hero. I sat in my car for a few minutes, going over in my mind what I had so far:
A stay-at-home wife had threatened to leave her Hero husband over his philandering. She also threatened to take with her valuable cash and prizes in the form of alimony, child support, and at least half of that Hero’s accumulated wealth. Shortly thereafter, she was brutalized and killed. The evidence indicated that the wife was immobilized by a Metahuman ability while she was stabbed to death, which happened to be just the sort of ability her husband possessed. The bloody murder weapon was found in the car of that same Hero husband, covered with his fingerprints. And, the husband’s alibi witness was about as believable as a porno.
The evidence didn’t look good for Ethan. Then again, I hadn’t yet done anything the police hadn’t already done. Maybe if I did something different, I would find something different.
But based on what I’d learned so far, if Ethan’s innocence were a race horse, I wouldn’t have bet on it.
CHAPTER 6
“I’m not guilty,” Ethan said, “but I’m not innocent, either.”
“You’ll have to be clearer,” I said. “I don’t speak gibberish.”
We sat on wooden stools next to a marble island in a brownstone Ethan owned on Kylie Street, in an affluent part of the city. It was the day after I had met with Maureen. I had called Ethan to meet with him after my discussion with her. I wanted to see if Ethan’s version of events the night Mrs. Lamb was killed jibed with Maureen’s.
Scaffolding, bare sheetrock, partially torn down walls, thick dust, and other evidence of construction surrounded us. This was an investment property Ethan had bought some time ago he was in the process of renovating and flipping. Out on bail, Ethan stayed here rather than the home across town he had shared with Mrs. Lamb. He lived here to avoid paparazzi and morbid members of the public who still buzzed around the Lambs’ house like flies around a corpse. Also, according to Ethan, he could not bear the thought of re-entering the place his wife had been butchered in.
Ethan had a tight, gold-colored metal collar around his neck, and a black band around his ankle. The collar was a Metahuman power nullifier, making Ethan as normal as the next guy. Assuming the next guy looked like a male model with a weight lifting addiction. The black band was an electronic monitor courtesy of the Department of Corrections. If Ethan stepped foot outside this house, the monitor would alert the police, the Heroes’ Guild, and maybe the United States Marines for all I knew. Having to wear both devices were conditions of Ethan being allowed out of jail pending his trial, along with the millions in bail he had posted. I had been surprised the court had let Ethan out of jail at all considering the heinousness of his alleged crime, but apparently Massive Force had once saved the life of the arraignment judge’s daughter, making the judge sympathetic toward Ethan. It was fortunate for Ethan he had restrained what I was coming to realize were his natural inclinations and that he had not slipped the judge’s daughter his sausage after rescuing her. She must’ve looked like a bucket of vomit for Ethan to keep his formidable libido under control.
The fact Ethan could post a multi-million dollar bail and could afford this investment property in this ritzy Astor City neighborhood tempted me to monetize being a Hero the way Ethan had. I could give up being a private eye, squeeze into some tights, call myself Water Whiz, and start slapping my name and likeness on lunch boxes, action figures, vibrators, and whatever other product would have me. I could be played with by both active kids and horny women far and wide. But, before I did anything else, first I would hire a branding expert. The code name Water Whiz needed work.
“I mean I’m guilty of cheating on Sabrina,” Ethan said, snapping me out of my dreams of strolling down easy street. He looked even more ragged than when I had first met him. He wore gray sweatpants and a soiled tee shirt. His hair was a mess, and his eyes had a haunted look to them. I smelled alcohol on his breath. Bourbon, an aroma I knew all too well. Ethan was not wearing being accused of murder well. Then again, who did? “But of killing her?” Ethan shook his head firmly. “That I’m completely innocent of. Despite the fact I cheated on her, I still loved her. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head, much less do to her what some monster did.”
“One might say cheating on her hurt her,” I said. “The police say she knew you had been stepping out on her. They say she threatened to leave you. They think that was your motive for killing her, to keep her from taking you to the cleaners financially.”
Ethan shook his head stubbornly. “Sabrina didn’t know about my infidelities. Or at least she didn’t know for sure. She would accuse me of cheating on her from time to time, but I’d always lie and deny it. I don’t know why she suspected me, anyway. I was so careful to keep my indiscretions, well, discrete. Was it women’s intuition? Did somebody I’d been with tell her? I don’t know.
“Regardless, cheating on Sabrina is not something I’m proud of. I guess that’s why I didn’t tell you when we first met where I was the night Sabrina died.” Ethan exhaled loudly. The smell of bourbon intensified. I wanted a drink so badly it was a physical ache. “I swore that after the baby was born, I’d stop completely and be one hundred percent faithful to her. Not that that would be easy. People throw themselves at me all the time, especially when I’m operating as Massive Force. As a Hero, you know how it is.” I didn’t. The way Maureen had behaved around me was an exception to the general rule. If women routinely threw themselves at me,
they did it so subtly that I didn’t notice it. It would be just my luck if the loose women I met were stealthy as well as slutty. Maybe my observational skills were not as sharp as I had thought. Or, maybe my scar tissue scared them off. “They’re attracted by the power, the excitement, and the danger that goes with being a Hero,” Ethan said. “I’d have to have superhuman restraint to say no every time somebody offered me a little strange on the side. The fact Sabrina was on the frigid side didn’t make things easier.” He shook his head ruefully. “You married?”
“No,” I said, getting a flashback from when Maureen had asked me. If Ethan flashed me his junk the way Maureen had, I was leaving.
“Then you don’t know what it’s like yet. When you’re just a couple, everything’s great. The sex flows like water before you’re married, but after the vows are recited and the champagne’s swallowed, the well runs dry. It’s like that saying: What food makes a woman stop having sex?”
“Wedding cake,” I said. “That’s an old joke.”
“For good reason. There’s a lot of truth said in jest.” Ethan shook his head again. “The baby was going to change everything. He or she was going to make everything better between me and Sabrina. He or she already was making things better. The bigger Sabrina’s belly got, the closer the two of us grew again. We were so excited about being parents. It was something we had dreamed about for years, but had grown resigned after ten years of marriage that parenthood simply wasn’t in the cards for us. The night Sabrina died, the night I cheated on her again, it was going to be my last hurrah. I knew she suspected I was stepping out on her and she was thinking about leaving me again. I wasn’t about to let that happen, not with a baby on the way. I swore to myself after that one last roll in the hay I would be the kind of husband I ought to be going forward. I didn’t want my kid being shipped back and forth between two households or, worse, growing up in a house where his or her parents hated each other.”
“You don’t have to keep saying ‘he or she’ and ‘his or her.’ I know the baby’s sex. I can tell you.”
Ethan shook his head emphatically. “I’d rather you didn’t. Knowing whether I was going to have a son or a daughter will make it all too real.” He started choking up. He looked around the wreck of the room we were in with tears trailing down his face. “Being trapped in this house like an animal in a cage is all too real as it is. The people who knew me as Ethan won’t speak to me. My friends, Sabrina’s family, my family . . . they all think I’m a monster. The people who knew me only as Massive Force won’t speak to me either. To them, I’m a superpowered killer. Meanwhile, the real monster, the one who butchered my family, is out there free as a bird.”
“Let’s talk more about what you were doing the night your wife died,” I said.
Ethan recounted to me his evening with Maureen. He thankfully left out the explicit details which Maureen had cheerfully included. Other than those salacious details, their accounts of what happened that night and where Ethan was matched exactly.
That was the problem. They were too exact. When two people experienced something and you later asked them to tell you about it, you normally got two different versions. Sometimes the differences in the details were vast, sometimes they were minor, but there were differences. It was why eyewitness testimony was known by cops, lawyers, and judges to be so unreliable—if ten people saw something happen, you’d get from them ten different versions of what happened, none of which would be one hundred percent accurate.
Not Ethan and Maureen, though. Their versions of their time together when Sabrina was killed were virtually identical, almost word for word the same. I did not believe either of them about where Ethan was the night of Sabrina’s death.
However, as the brownstone lapsed into silence as Ethan wept, I couldn’t shake the feeling he did not kill Sabrina. These were not crocodile tears. The fact his wife and child were dead seemed to cut him to his core. If Ethan was merely pretending to be grief-stricken, he deserved an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Bloodthirsty Role.
If my feeling was correct Ethan hadn’t killed his wife despite the evidence to the contrary, and I was also right that he and Maureen were lying, where the heck had Ethan been the night his wife was murdered?
Something was going on I didn’t understand. Unfortunately, that happened a lot.
The fact it was typical didn’t make it any less annoying.
CHAPTER 7
Maybe I was right that Maureen and Ethan were lying about where Ethan was the night of his wife’s murder. Or, maybe my ability to sniff out a lie was on the fritz. Maybe I had drowned it in all the liquor I had been drinking.
If I could find someone in Monroe Heights who could tell me they saw Ethan in or around Maureen’s place the night of Sabrina’s murder, that would tell me Maureen and Ethan were telling the truth and I was too much of a doubting Thomas. The only way I knew to try to find that someone was to wear out some shoe leather and go door-to-door. It wasn’t glamorous or particularly superheroic, but it was a tried and true method of detection.
That was why I found myself wandering around Maureen’s neighborhood, knocking on doors and stopping people on the street, showing them pictures of Ethan in and out of costume, asking them if they had seen him the night of Sabrina’s murder. Glenn had told me the police had already canvassed the area after Maureen stepped forward as an alibi witness, but they hadn’t found anyone who could corroborate Ethan had been in Maureen’s neighborhood the night of Sabrina’s murder. However, the fact the police had already plowed this ground didn’t mean I shouldn’t too. A lot of people didn’t like talking to cops, so I might uncover something they couldn’t.
Besides, I didn’t know what else to do to earn the money Ethan had paid me. I had already tried sticking my head out of my third-floor office window and shouting, “Is Ethan lying to me?” Nobody had answered or even bothered to look up. Rude, not to mention unhelpful.
A handful of people I spoke to in and around Monroe Heights had occasionally seen Ethan in his civilian clothes in the neighborhood, but not the night of Sabrina’s murder. Almost everyone I spoke to recognized Massive Force from the picture I showed them of Ethan in costume, but they had never seen the Hero in the neighborhood, either the night of Sabrina’s murder or any other time. They just knew Massive Force from seeing his Heroic exploits from time to time on the news. No one I spoke to recognized me or spontaneously brought up any of my Heroic exploits. If I had a publicist, I would have fired him.
I was heading back to my car, about to give up for the day and get dinner and a drink—and I might’ve skipped the dinner part—when I spotted someone walking toward me I recognized. It was the scantily clad young woman who had gotten into that elderly man’s car after I interviewed Maureen. Today the young woman had traded in her towering high heels for equally high wedges. She wore a tight, red, short-sleeved shirt with a plunging neckline and a short, faux leather skirt. Her clothing wasn’t substantial enough to keep an elf warm on this chilly day. Maybe, as the old song went, she had her love to keep her warm. Or maybe, based on how jittery she was and how glassy her eyes were, she was as high as Bob Marley on the space shuttle and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the cold.
The woman saw me looking at her as she approached. She smiled at me. A bit of her bright red lipstick had stained her front tooth. I altered my path slightly to stand in front of her.
“Hey baby. You lookin’ to party?” she purred at me. It confirmed my earlier suspicion about the woman’s occupation. She was either a hooker as I had thought, or a party planner.
It was weird to have this baby call me “baby.” Now that I was close to her and could mentally wipe away the makeup she had spackled on, I saw she was younger than I had first thought. I’d have been surprised if she was over the age of consent. I felt like a pedophile for looking at her butt earlier. She was white with brown eyes, limp brown hair, and a face marred by acne scars even her thick makeup couldn’t completely hide. She was so s
kinny, I could see the ridges of the bones in her chest. I surmised the swell under her shirt was mostly padding. She reminded me of Clara Barton a little, and was probably only a few years older than that thirteen-year-old Metahuman.
“No, I’m not looking to party. I’m looking for information,” I said.
Her sex kitten persona slipped away at my response. “What I look like, Google?” Her voice had a lot of street in it. One of her molars was dead and turning black.
“Google should be so lucky.” Even hookers liked being complimented. Maybe especially hookers as they rarely heard a compliment that wasn’t said in hopes of getting a free sexual favor. “I’m looking for some information on this guy. Have you seen him before?” I held up a picture of Ethan out of costume.
There was an unmistakable flash of recognition in her glassy eyes. “Maybe,” she said noncommittally.
“What would turn that maybe into a yes or a no?”
“You a cop?”
“No. Private detective.”
That appeared to puzzle her, as if I were a strange animal she had never seen before. “I dunno. You look like a cop to me.”
I pulled out my license and showed it to her. It was my PI license, not my Hero one. I didn’t want this child trying to sexually assault me if she was a cape chaser like Maureen. The girl studied my license with unfocused eyes for longer than necessary. I wondered if she could read.
“Maybe I seen that guy before,” she finally said, “and maybe I ain’t. I ain’t got time to study over it. Time is money.” That was a hint if I had ever heard one. Whoever said “the best things in life are free” had not dealt with hookers.
“How much do you charge for your time?” I asked. She told me, rattling off her per act and per hour rates like she was telling me the time and temperature. I couldn’t decide if she charged too much, or too little.
“What’s your name?”
Superhero Detective Series (Book 5): Accused Hero Page 5
