“Ten minutes from the moment I walk out of your door, I will make those children jump off the building. If you try to force me to release my hold on them or try to prevent me from leaving, I will make them jump right now. If you are inclined to follow me to see where I go, you have a choice to make: follow me, or save the lives of three young Unevolveds,” he said. I turned back around to look at him. He smiled at me. “Since you’re a Hero, I think we both know what choice you will make. And, in case you’re inclined to send Shadow trailing after me while you rescue the kids, just know my powers let me see what they see. If only one of you shows up on that roof, I will make them jump.”
The Pied Piper smiled at me again. He looked smug. I wanted to wipe that smug look off of his face with a vat of acid. He touched his hand to his temple and flicked his hand at me in farewell.
“See you around,” he said.
“Count on it,” I said.
The Pied Piper walked out of my office. Bonebreaker was about to follow when Shadow stepped in front of him and barred his path. She was close enough to lick him. He was taller than she, but not by much. She stared into his eyes with a look of challenge.
“I look forward to seeing you again. Next time, I’m going to find out if you’re as tough as people say you are,” she said to him.
Bonebreaker snorted derisively under his mask.
“If you’re ever stupid enough to see me again, I’ll pull those big black titties of yours out, pin you down, and gorilla fuck you,” he rumbled.
Shadow smiled happily. She looked like a kid who had been told there was going to be a second Christmas.
“You’re welcome to try,” she said. “You’d have to borrow someone else’s cock and balls first, though.”
For a split second, I thought Bonebreaker was going to take a swing at her. Then, he barked out a laugh. He sidestepped Shadow, and walked out of the door after the Pied Piper. Shadow closed the door after him.
“I’m surprised you challenged him,” I said to Shadow. “It’s not like you to bluster like that.” Unlike a rattlesnake, Shadow usually struck without warning someone first.
Shadow shook her head at me. She looked pleased with herself.
“I wasn’t blustering. I was getting close enough to slip a tracking device into his jacket pocket. Since we couldn’t follow them directly, I thought that would be the next best thing,” she said.
I just looked at her for a moment. And here I was thinking I was the clever one.
“I’m impressed,” I said. And, I was. “Pretty nifty for someone who claims to just be hired muscle.”
“I’ve spent the last three days cooped up in this office with you,” she said. “Maybe your detective wiles are rubbing off on me.”
“That sounded suspiciously like a compliment,” I said.
Shadow looked aghast.
“You really are rubbing off on me, then,” she said. “If we don’t find Clara soon, before you know it I’ll be making stupid jokes and checking out women’s butts.”
We left to go fetch the kids from the roof across the street. In silent retaliation for Shadow’s words, I checked out her butt as she walked out before me.
CHAPTER 17
In the late evening after Bonebreaker and the Pied Piper visited my office, Shadow and I followed the signal from the bug she had planted on Bonebreaker to the southwest of town. The area we followed the signal to was in transition. For decades, the area had been mostly residential. But, over the years, money had changed hands, zoning laws had changed as a result, and industrial and manufacturing interests had moved in. That, in turn, had made more of the residential tenants move to areas that did not constantly smell of chemicals and job creation. By the time Shadow and I prowled the streets of the area on the hunt for the Pied Piper and Bonebreaker, it was almost all industrial.
Streetlights were sparse where we were, as was traffic. The night was overcast and dark. Shadow’s face was lit up from the glow of her cell phone. She was using an app on her phone to track the bug on Bonebreaker.
“Take a right here,” she said to me. I did so. I drove slowly, giving Shadow and her app a chance to triangulate Bonebreaker’s location. To the left of us, a huge building loomed out of the inky blackness of the night. There were no lights around it, but several of the windows of the big building glowed bright. The building took up much of the block it was on.
“He’s in there,” Shadow said, pointing at the big building on our left. I slowed, and pulled into a parking space across the street from the building. I shut off the car’s lights. In the dark area, having the lights on might draw too much attention to us.
“Where did you get that tech from, anyway?” I asked Shadow, referring to her bug and tracking app. “That’s not the kind of thing you get from RadioShack.”
“I appropriated it from the government during my last job,” she said.
“By ‘appropriate,’ I’m guessing you mean ‘stole.’”
Shadow shook her head.
“‘Steal’ sounds so harsh, and carries with it an espionage charge and a prison sentence. Appropriate I said, and that’s what I meant,” she said.
“It does my heart good to see my tax dollars at work,” I said. I nodded towards the building Shadow said Bonebreaker was in. “Just because Bonebreaker is in there, how do we know his boss is too?”
“In addition to having an itch for power,” Shadow said, “the Pied Piper is paranoid. He has reason to be. Politics via terrorism ain’t beanbag. Those two are like Mary and her little lamb—everywhere the Pied Piper goes, Bonebreaker is sure to go. The Pied Piper is in there, all right.”
I punched the building’s address into my own phone using a real estate app I utilized from time to time.
“The property is owned by Rainier Holding Company,” I said to Shadow. “Name mean anything to you?” She shook her head no. “Rainier is a privately held company, and there is no record here as to whom has an ownership interest. The building used to be an apartment complex before it was sold to Rainier. Rainier let the leases on the building’s few remaining tenants lapse, so God only knows what the building’s being used for now.”
“As headquarters for the Metahuman Liberation Front, maybe?” Shadow said.
“Maybe,” I said. I hesitated. “What in the world did superheroes do before smartphones and apps?” I asked.
Shadow shrugged.
“Probably just found someone to beat the info they needed out of,” she said.
We both looked at the building some more. We were positioned where we could see the front entrance. No one went in, and no one came out. Traffic was almost non-existent, and long periods of time would pass by before we saw a car drive past us.
I itched to find a clue as to Clara’s whereabouts, but none came in the time Shadow and I spent watching the building. There were no flashing neon signs on the building reading “Clara is here.” Such signs would have been very helpful. Supervillains can be most uncooperative.
“See anyone we can beat some info out of?” I asked.
“No,” Shadow said. “It’s almost as dark as the inside of a cow out here, though. There could be an army of supervillains out here to beat up on, but we wouldn’t know it.”
“My power tells me there are over a dozen people in that building right now,” I said.
“A dozen is not an army,” Shadow said, “but if they’re all Metas, it’s a lot of people to wade through while simultaneously searching for Clara.”
I nodded. We looked at the building some more. We had been looking at it for several hours by then. Still no one had come in, and no one had left. We had learned nothing new. I was not discouraged, though. Sometimes I went days without learning anything new. I was used to it.
“I think I liked waiting in your office better,” Shadow eventually said. “At least there, I had something to read.”
“What would you suggest instead? Barge in there? We might be walking into a nest of supervillains. You and I are a p
retty powerful combination, but there is a limit to what even we can handle.”
“Speak for yourself, Kemo Sabe,” she said.
“Kemo Sabe?” I said. “That means faithful friend. It’s what Tonto used to call the Lone Ranger. I knew you were the one who was the sidekick.”
“Faithful friend?” Shadow asked. “I thought it meant ‘white asshole who sits around on his butt too much.’ My mistake.” She sighed in frustration. “I’m sick of sitting here. I want to get out and scout around a bit.”
“How come you can call me a ‘white asshole,’ yet if I call you a black anything, suddenly I’m a racist and I have a race war on my hands? It hardly seems fair.”
“It’s because you get white privilege and in exchange I get to call you a white asshole. I agree it’s not fair. Let’s switch—I’ll get the privilege and you can call me a black asshole.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“No deal,” I said. Then I thought about her suggestion she go scout around. What could it hurt?
“Okay,” I said. “You go have a look around. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the front door. Don’t let anyone spot you.”
Shadow looked at me with a combination of insult and incredulity, as if I had asked her to believe the Easter Bunny was real and he was shacking up with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I held up my hands placatingly.
“Okay, okay, I withdraw the comment. You’re not going to let anyone spot you,” I said.
“You’re darned right I won’t.”
Shadow slipped out of the car and closed the door behind her. She disappeared as abruptly as if she had become invisible.
I continued to stare at the building. Was Clara in there? The longer Bonebreaker and the Pied Piper went without making an appearance, the more I was starting to think the building was where the two lived. But, that did not mean Clara was there, too. Maybe they kept her somewhere else. Perhaps they maintained an off-site supervillain lair for the purpose of holding bridge tournaments, plotting world domination, and storing kidnapped girls.
If Clara was in the building, how in the world would I find her? The building was four stories tall and very wide and long. It contained a lot of square footage. Judging from the number of windows I could see, the building had a lot of rooms. Would I have to go door to door through all the rooms looking for Clara, fighting off supervillains all the while? It would not do Clara much good if I got myself killed trying to liberate her.
As I continued to look at the building, I thought about how maybe I needed a lair of my own. Maybe the lack of one was what was holding me back from the next level of superherodom. That, and a proper sidekick. As much as I had kidded Shadow about her being my sidekick, she was not suited for the role. Too lippy.
A little over an hour after Shadow had left, she reappeared next to the car as if from out of thin air. If I had not been such an intrepid Hero and detective, I might have been startled. She opened the passenger door and slid back into her seat.
“I’ve decided you aren’t going to be my sidekick,” I said.
Shadow was expressionless as she looked at me.
“Imagine my dismay,” she said. “I took a look around the building. The place it huge. If Clara is in there, it’s going to take us a while to find her.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself,” I said.
“On the sides you can’t see from here, there are several windows with lights on. I got close enough to see inside of a couple of the ones that didn’t have blinds closed. The rooms looked like living quarters. I didn’t see either Bonebreaker or the Pied Piper, but one of the guys I did see I recognized as being a Meta,” she said.
“So, maybe this really is the place the MLF has its base,” I said.
“That would be my guess.”
“Still doesn’t mean Clara is inside though,” I said. “We need better intelligence before we go traipsing in and get our heads shot off by a bunch of supervillains.”
Shadow nodded.
“On that note, there’s an old building across the street from this one that’s empty,” she said, pointing at a large shadow across the way that was a dim, hulking presence in the darkness. “According to a sign out front, it’s scheduled to be knocked down a few weeks from now. A new factory is to take its place. I was thinking maybe we could set up shop there and reconnoiter this building from that one. See who comes and goes, get a better idea of what we’re up against, that kind of thing. If we stay in this car long enough, someone is bound to notice us, especially since this area doesn’t see a lot of traffic.”
Once again, I was impressed.
“That’s pretty good work and sound thinking,” I said. “Plus, a nice use of the word reconnoiter.”
I started my car and drove off. I headed back the way we had come so Shadow and I could grab some sleep before returning to continue to surveil the building Bonebreaker was in.
“Maybe I’ll reconsider having you as my sidekick after all,” I said thoughtfully.
“No,” Shadow said.
CHAPTER 18
Early the next morning after a few hours of sleep, Shadow and I approached the abandoned building she had referred to the night before. According to Shadow’s government tech, Bonebreaker was still in the building next door. I was tired, but had been sleep-deprived before. “We never sleep” was the slogan of the Pinkerton detective agency. I considered adding to my business card the slogan “I sometimes sleep,” but it did not have quite the same pizazz as the Pinkerton’s slogan.
I had thought about waiting until it got dark again before going to the abandoned building to help conceal our presence from the people in the building we were interested in. Then I realized sneaking around in the abandoned building in the dark would require us to use flashlights, and mysterious lights might attract the attention of the next door neighbors. To avoid being spotted in the light of day, Shadow and I parked far away from the building we planned on entering and approached it from a side that did not face the building Bonebreaker was in.
A large sign on the side of the abandoned building indicated it was scheduled for demolition in a couple of weeks. An even more prominent sign stated “No Trespassing.” I figured the sign could not possibly be referring to me. Who wouldn’t want to be visited by a superhero? Surely the sign referred to visits from non-superheroes.
“Stay close to me,” I said to Shadow. “I’m a Hero, but you’re not. You don’t want to be caught trespassing. As long as you stick by me, I’ll vouch for you.”
Shadow acted like she had not heard me. She was not an attentive audience. Despite my second thoughts the night before, she was not good sidekick material. Sidekicks were supposed to hang on your every word.
The double doors before us were chained shut, and a very large and sturdy-looking padlock locked the ends of the thick chain together. Shadow reached for the lock as if to rip it off the door by force. I stopped her.
“Easy there cowgirl,” I said. “This is a covert operation, not a riot. Keep your eyes peeled for any onlookers.”
I pulled out my lock-picking tools from my jacket pocket. I did a quick sweep of the building with my powers to see if I detected the water signature of any people. There were plenty of small lifeforms in the building—rats and the like, I imagined—but no people. I hummed happily to myself as I probed the interior of the padlock with my tools. I enjoyed picking locks, and did not have the occasion to do so nearly as much as I liked. It was like being a pro tennis player with no one to play against.
“I thought possessing burglary tools and breaking and entering were against the law,” Shadow said. “I also thought licensed Heroes were not supposed to break the law.” As she spoke, the lock clicked open. I pulled the chain off and pushed one of the doors open. I smiled at Shadow.
“Would you look at this? Someone foolishly left the door open. It’s not breaking and entering if you just stroll in through an open door,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure that’s
not how it works. I’m no lawyer, though.”
“Thank God for that. You’re hard enough to take as it is sometimes without you being a lawyer,” I said. I lifted the bag of equipment and supplies we had brought along. Then I thought better of it, and handed the bag to Shadow. “Wait, you’re the one who’s super-strong. Why should I be the one to lug this thing around?”
“It’s good to see chivalry is not dead,” Shadow said.
“The day you lose the ability to punch people’s heads off is the day I start carrying stuff around for you,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We stepped inside. I closed the door behind us. Since there were no windows to be seen and there were no lights as the electricity had been shut off in the building, we were engulfed in darkness. Shadow flicked on a flashlight. I secured the inside of the door with the chain and the padlock I had removed from the outside. I did not want someone coming into the building after us without us realizing it.
I straightened up from securing the door. Shadow handed me a second flashlight.
“I hope you’re not afraid of the dark,” I said as I turned the flashlight on and glanced around.
Shadow snorted.
“Of course not,” she said. She hesitated. “I do have a touch of musophobia, though,” she finally added. She sounded embarrassed, an emotion I had never seen Shadow exhibit before.
“Musophobia? What in the world is that? Fear of literary inspiration? Fear of running out of people to beat up?”
“It’s a fear of mice,” she said. Her voice sounded small. I almost laughed, but then I caught the look on Shadow’s face. She was serious. I smothered the laugh before it escaped from me.
“Don’t worry,” I said solemnly. “I’ll protect you.” It did not seem a good time to mention all the rodent life forms my power was detecting.
Shadow and I cast our flashlights about. Directly ahead was a stairwell leading up.
“Let’s go upstairs and find a good place to set up shop,” I said. Shadow nodded, and off we went. It took about thirty minutes of us looking around before we decided on the best spot. It was on the fourth floor, faced the building we had tracked Bonebreaker to. The large room we settled on took up most of the floor. It had several windows from which we could keep an eye on the front and side doors of the building.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 2): The Missing Exploding Girl Page 12
