The Untimely Death Box Set

by James Kipling

  “Where the hell are those two headed?” a woman in a skintight body suit wearing a corset over it said to a man in clown makeup as she watched them fade away. Her body suit fit her tiny five-foot frame and allowed her perky breasts to spill over the top of the corset. The woman looked forward to this night every year.

  “Beats me, Francine,” the clown said to her. His makeup was running a little after wearing it for so long. It was eleven in the evening and he needed to wash it off if he planned to compete in the big show tomorrow. The contest began promptly at eleven in the morning and he wanted to be registered by ten. His category, “Evil Clowns”, featured plenty of competition, but he wanted to take home the grand prize this year.

  Francine, who would be competing in the “Superheroines” category tomorrow, took out a polishing cloth and shined her boots. She knew plenty of men inside who would gladly tongue-polish those leather boots, but she didn’t want to see them messed up. Besides, this wasn’t the time or place for her clients from the day job to display a fetish. It was fine for one or two of them to join her today and tomorrow, but she didn’t need them creating a problem with the security staff. She had assigned one of her “slaves” to another woman she knew, an hour ago and he busied himself at her booth. She needed time to get outside and away from the crowds.

  There were a few of the other cosplay people standing outside the hotel. They didn’t venture too far from the lobby since it would attract the street people who orbited it. The last thing anyone of them wanted was to be labeled “insensitive” to the plight of the homeless.

  The annual Comic Book Superhero show was underway at the Triple Tree Hotel in Center City Philadelphia. It expected a draw of ten thousand visitors this year and one of the highlights was the costume contest and its various subcategories. Tomorrow, morning and afternoon, the ballroom of the hotel would fill with people in colorful outfits in imitation of the heroes who graced the printed pages and screen. Since the comic hero art first emerged in the 1930’s, it had a massive following that drew huge crowds.

  Hyenaman and Sunbear were among the most popular from the golden age. The two men who left the show earlier were “in character” as the invincible champions of justice. They’d spent the evening showing off their costumes and had decided to leave the event early.

  As they walked down a side street, a small figure hugged the walls and trash dumpsters behind them. Their shadow tailed them for five blocks before deciding that the time was right. As the two made their way down a side alley, their shadow moved in on them in the darkness.

  Detectives Lee Yuan and Mike Williams had their morning meeting at the diner where all the employees of the ninth district police station went. It was a small place in a converted storefront. The city of Philadelphia did everything possible to keep the appearance of a thriving economy, although the city was in another slump. They’d decided to meet at the diner after checking in at the station house. Both men held menus in front of them and studied the offerings. A waitress watched them and wondered why they bothered to read them. The owner, Tony, hadn’t changed it in years and they had it memorized.

  Yuan, whose parents emigrated from China when he was a child, resembled an ad in a men’s fashion magazine. Everything was neatly in place. His tie was knotted in the latest pattern and he wore an expensive single-needle tailored suit. He drove a flashy SUV and kept several doting women in rotation. He felt his reputation was made by his image and did everything he could to remain stylish. In his rare off hours, he browsed the clothing stores down in Old Town trying to find the latest in menswear. Today he was not happy as the Italian shoes he wore were scuffed. It would require another trip to the shoe repair place to get them fixed.

  Williams was the exact opposite in appearance. He had worn the same rumpled trench coat for the past five years and repaired it instead of buying a new one. People claimed you could tell what he had for dinner by the way it looked. As his partner, Williams never married, but he claimed no woman would put up with him. He was twenty years older than Yuan, who was assigned to him six months ago, and counted the days toward retirement. At the same time, he possessed the best conviction record of any detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. The only thing they had in common was an understanding of Mandarin Chinese, which Williams learned in the military.

  The people at the station house called them “The Odd Couple” after the Neil Simon movie of the same name about two dissimilar bachelors trying to make a go of it, after their divorces, in the same apartment. Their conviction record was impressive even at this early stage in the partnership. Already rookie detectives were sent down to work with them and learn their style of investigation. However, in truth, neither one gave much thought to what they did. It simply worked for the both of them.

  “I see there’s a comic convention in town,” Williams noted as he scanned the local paper. Reading the morning paper was a ritual, which he did every day. Although it was easier to get the up to date news over the Internet, Williams preferred the print version. He browsed the Internet for leads in the evening, but there was something real about a physical newspaper, which could be held.

  “I heard,” Yuan responded. Both men gave the waitress their orders and waited for them to be brought out.

  “Really?” Williams said as he looked up from the sports section. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who reads comics.”

  “I don’t. One of my girls is appearing at the costume convention tomorrow and wants me to go with her if I have the day off.”

  That explains it, Williams thought. Yuan had a relationship with several women, which involved all kinds of things he didn’t want to know about. So long as it happened behind closed doors, Williams felt, and didn’t involve minors or barnyard animals, it was his business. It took a while, but he eventually became accustomed to women showing up at the oddest moments to receive instructions from him with bowed heads.

  “It must be awful hard for them to get into those costumes,” Williams said as he looked at a photograph in the newspaper which illustrated the article about the show.

  “Not half as bad as getting it off them,” Yuan returned. “And the nipple rings show through tight latex.”

  William’s cell phone went off and he looked at his caller I.D. It was the station house. This one he had to take, thank God the diner wasn’t filled with customers.

  “Williams here,” he said. “Talk to me.”

  “Captain says they want you down at triple Tree Hotel in Center City,” the voice said on the other end. It was Young, the desk sergeant who was responsible for every member of the PPD who worked out of the ninth district office. “There have been two murders over there and both you and your partner need to attend.”

  “Why?” Williams demanded. “It’s not part of our territory. Can’t they get someone else?”

  “Captain says the regular guys who handle it are up north. So you get to handle it.”

  “Okay, we’ll be out there in five minutes.”

  “What was that about?” Yuan asked him. He noticed the waitress had their food on a platter. She headed in their direction.

  “Two stiffs in Center City and we’ve been tapped to handle it,” he explained. “Myrna, could you but our breakfast in one of those clam shells? We have to run. Put the bill on my partner’s tab.”

  “Thanks, Partner,” Yuan grumbled as he sat up from his chair.

  The costumed superheroes were lying in pools of their own blood. The outfit Hyenaman wore was splattered with his own blood and the contents of his skull. It didn’t match the striped orange outfit he had on. He was face down in the alley where he died. This wasn’t the best of neighborhoods, but the sheer brutality of the murder was evident for the investigators to see. When they arrived, a chalk line had already been sketched around the body.

  Sunbear was face down too and just a few paces ahead of his companion. His brown and gold outfit would no longer grace his small form. Like
his companion, the superhero was dead from a traumatic injury to the head. Unlike his companion, the first blow was not fatal. The ground showed evidence he’d crawled along the pavement for a few feet until another series of blows to the head sent him to the great special edition in the sky.

  Williams walked around the bodies and avoided the crime scene photographers and technicians who busied themselves compiling evidence. Privately, Williams wondered how this would play out in the media. He could visualize the kind of headlines and leads the murders would generate. This was a sensational killing, the kind that the national media would swarm over and find plenty of material for more stories. They didn’t care very much if a bunch of gangsters blew each other to pieces over territory, but put some victims in colorful outfits and the antennas would pop out.

  Williams remembered reading the Hyenaman and Sunbear comics as a kid. He continued reading them into his teens, but sports and girls took over as he hit fifteen. Every now and then, he’d see a comic in a barbershop or in a laundromat and pick one up to see how the story changed. The crowd who followed them was much older and he nearly chocked when he saw the price on one recent comic. The pair was still popular and Hollywood launched many successful movies based on their adventures.

  “I hope you managed to keep the kids out of here,” Williams said to one officer who was on the scene. “I’d hate for them to see this.”

  “I’d hate for anyone to see this,” the officer responded. “How am I going to tell my family I just saw the bodies of two of the world’s greatest heroes? Even Doctor Clocker couldn’t do this.”

  Williams looked up and saw Yuan with a slight smile on his face. This was odd as Yuan was the epitome of stoicism and rarely showed emotion.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked his picture-perfect partner.

  “The irony of it all,” he explained. “Two adult men who are so into their fictional role models they dress up like them. And what happens? The evil that these two fought catches up with them. Not a comic book or fictional evil, but a real one. And it kills them for real. No resurrections or plot devices. These two will not rise again to fight another day. It’s a commentary on the world.”

  “Has Doctor Stanford seen either of these two?” Williams asked one of the officers guarding the crime scene. There were five officers keeping a small crowd of spectators away. It was crucial the crime scene technicians had the opportunity to make all the measurements, take all the photographs and collect the samples they needed before the bodies were removed.

  “He’s on his way, oh there he is!” The officer turned and pointed to the coroner’s vehicle, which pulled up as he stood there.

  Doc Stanford stepped out of the van after it came to a stop. He’d been a medical examiner with the PPD for twenty years and had his eyed on early retirement. Originally from the north side of Philly, his family were city workers and Doc was the standout. He’d started with the police as a way of keeping the violent criminals off the streets: if he showed them how easy it was to get convicted, perhaps they would stop killing each other. Twenty years of crime scenes where fights over girlfriends, petty money owed on bad drug deals and someone’s lack of “respect” resulted in dead bodies made him want to retire as soon as he could. In the meantime, the only African American medical examiner in the city wanted to do his job to perfection and get home in one piece.

  Williams and Yuan watched Doc Stanford go to work as he took notes on a computer tablet and talked into a microphone attached to it. He spoke with the evidence crew and the other officers on the scene. No one had heard anything; the bodies were discovered by sanitation workers making their morning run. He took down their names and made a note to speak with the men later. After inspecting the evidence collected, he signed off on the forms and pronounced the bodies fit to be moved. Two employees of the morgue stepped out of the van with hazardous material suits on ready to deposit them in the back of it.

  “Hyenaman and Sunbear,” Doc Stanford said to the detectives. “I never thought I’d be called in to haul them away.”

  “Please, no comments about Doctor Clocker,” Williams said to him. I’m sick of them already and it’s not even noon.”

  “So what does it look like?” Yuan asked the medical examiner.

  “Force trauma to the head,” Stanford replied. “Again. Both of them. They appear to have been struck by the same tubular object with enough force to kill each of them. The tall one, the man playing Hyenaman, was killed first by one hard, well-placed blow. His partner, the short man playing Sunbear, was hit repeatedly by the same tubular object. The patterns are the same on both skulls and consistent with the first death. I’m guessing the second victim turned and tried to help the first, but he went down. The assailant then struck the second man and he fell to the pavement. The strike wasn’t enough to incapacitate him and the second victim tried to crawl away for help. When the assailant saw him move, he struck him repeatedly until he quit moving. I’ll know more when I perform an autopsy back at my lab.”

  The two detectives thanked him and watched as the bodies were loaded into the van. After the police left the scene, the crowd slowly dispersed and went on their way. The show was over and there was nothing left to see. Yuan and Williams stood off to one side and watched the gawkers as they came and went for a half hour. It was true that the criminal returned to the scene of the crime, however, it might be days before it happened. Or the perpetrator had already been there.

  “Didn’t you say something about a comic book convention at the Triple Tree Hotel?” Yuan asked his partner as they walked back to William’s old Volvo.

  “It’s happening all weekend,” Williams confirmed. “The paper said they expect ten thousand people to show up.”

  “It’s not too far away,” Yuan pointed out. “Why don’t we walk over there and see what can be learned?”

  “Works for me. My Saturday plans are blown anyway. Sometime I wish the criminals kept banker’s hours.”

  “You must be that guy who was the TV detective in the seventies,” said the young man behind the ticket booth as he and Yuan bought their day passes to the show. There was quite a long queue to get in. “I don’t recognize you friend, but I’m not into Hong Kong cinema.”

  William looked at Yuan who gave the young man his patent stone face. “We’re with the Philadelphia Police Department,” he told him flashing a badge. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Umh, Frank,” the young man stammered. “Sorry officer, there are a lot of people doing Cosplay here and I didn’t know a real police officer would make an appearance.” He handed him a ticket without charging.

  “Nice,” Williams told him. “And he was right. Inspector Columbo was my big role model. Too bad he couldn’t remember the name.”

  “You’ve told me,” Yuan said as he stopped to watch a woman dressed in bandages walk down the hall next to him. “I’ve never been to one of these. Have you?”

  “I took my nephew once. About five years ago. My sister wanted to do something for the weekend, so Uncle Mikey was tapped for duty. He was excited, but I couldn’t understand what a big deal it was. I guess everyone needs a hobby.” He paused to watch three young women in Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, complete with white hose, walk past them. “I don’t get this one but it can be easy on the eyes.”

  They walked through the exhibitors’ hall and checked out the booths. His eye caught a large vendor selling back issues of comic books and a few of them he remembered from his days reading them on lazy summer afternoons. Williams went over and found a whole selection of them for sale in a long box watched over by a young lady with blue hair and a nose ring. He found the section he wanted and pulled one out of the box. It was the Hyenaman Giant Special he remembered from his days on the farm where his cousins lived. The edition he pulled out of the lineup was encased in polypropylene and had a label stuck to it designating its condition and value.

  “Twenty-five bucks?” he said to the girl,
who wasn’t even born when this one came out. “Isn’t it a little steep for a comic which only sold for fifty cents when it first came out?”

  “It all depends on the demand and scarcity,” she explained to him. “The issue you’re holding was a limited edition because the company who printed it ran out of one of the colors they needed on the press. Hyenaman’s costume is a very transparent shade of yellow in this edition instead of the usual orange. I’m surprised I still have this one as I sold three of them yesterday.”

  “The yellow Hyenaman issue!” Williams heard someone exclaim. He turned and faced a man his own age in a buttoned down shirt and sweat pants. “Are you buying that one? I’ve looked everywhere for it and someone told me I could find it here today.” The man sported a full grey beard and a gleam in his eye.

  “You can have it,” he handed it to the man. He was definitely out of his league at this event.

  Williams joined Yuan and they continued on through the exhibitor’s room. Next, they entered a room where various comic book celebrities were busy signing autographs. Williams recognized a few old film stars who fit into the lineup, but didn’t stop when he spotted people who were giving money for their autographs.

  “First prize, Master!” a small blond woman suddenly announced herself to Yuan while she held a large trophy. She was barely dressed in a short skirt with matching cape and boots. The effect was magnified by a top she wore which showed her ample cleavage. Yuan examined the award and handed it back to her.

  “I will still expect you to present yourself to me this evening,” he informed her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. The blond woman bowed her head and walked away in silence.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Williams commented. “Seriously, you need to teach me the method someday.”