Superhero Detective Series (Book 2): The Missing Exploding Girl

by Darius Brasher

  Shadow and I were silent as we sped back to the Western Shore and where we had seen the SUV Bonebreaker was in. But, the rage and sorrow Shadow and I felt was so thick in the air, you could cut it with a knife.

  When I pulled off the bridge, the SUV was still there. I sensed Bonebreaker inside and, once I was close enough, I could faintly see his hulking form behind the wheel. Someone was in the car with him, whom I could only assume was the Pied Piper. They were too far away and at the wrong angle to see the giant waterspout caused by Clara’s explosion. I supposed they were still waiting to see Clara blow up part of the bridge.

  I spun the wheel sharply to the left, pulling into the lane Bonebreaker was parked on the shoulder of. My tires squealed in protest. Cars skidded to a stop as I was now blocking the two lane eastbound road. A cacophony of horns rose. Shadow and I got out of the car. I drew my handgun. Shadow and I started walking towards the black SUV. Bonebreaker must have seen us as the SUV started to pull away. Without consciously thinking about it, I shot out the back tires as easily as if I was poking them with my finger. The SUV fishtailed with a horrendous squeal, bringing the driver’s side of the vehicle into view. I shot out the driver’s side front tire too. Three tires, three shots. I was a good shot, but not normally that good. But, I was operating on rage and instinct. Conscious thought was not getting in the way.

  Bonebreaker opened the door and got out. The SUV visibly shifted as Bonebreaker’s massive form got out. He has his costume on, but his mask was off and hanging from the back of his neck. It was the first time I had seen Bonebreaker’s face. He was young, somewhere in his twenties if I had to guess. He flashed us a feral smile before he pulled his mask over his face. I wanted to wipe the smile off of him with a crowbar. Bonebreaker started walking towards us.

  “I’ve got Bonebreaker,” Shadow said. Her voice was flatly grim. “You get the other one.” Before I could respond, Shadow was rocketing toward Bonebreaker faster than the fastest sprinter.

  Bonebreaker had good reaction speed, I had to admit that. A lot of people would not have even gotten a punch off before Shadow slammed into them. But, as fast as Bonebreaker was despite his hulking mass, Shadow was faster. When Bonebreaker swung a wild haymaker at Shadow’s head as she approached, she ducked under it almost faster than my eyes could follow. Then, she sprang up, punching Bonebreaker right under his jaw. There was a loud smack, not unlike the sound of a bat colliding with a fastball. Bonebreaker was launched into the air and over his SUV. He landed on the road with a crash. Shadow followed after him like a lion hunting a gazelle.

  I was about to go to the SUV and drag the Pied Piper out. I did not need to. He got out as I watched. He walked around the front of the vehicle until his back was to the driver’s side door. He faced me. As when I first met him, he was wearing a well-tailored expensive suit and tie. His tie was the color of blood.

  I had my gun pointed at him. The Pied Piper held his hands up a bit at his side.

  “I am assuming you somehow prevented Clara from exploding,” he said. He looked and sounded calm and unruffled, as if he was going to a boardroom meeting rather than having a gun pointed at him. The Pied Piper smiled. “Well done. It really is a shame you chose the wrong side. You would be quite helpful in advancing the cause of Metahuman freedom.”

  I said nothing. I steadily walked closer to him. My gun was still trained on him. He must have seen the look on my face.

  “I am not armed,” he said. “Surely a Hero such as yourself will not shoot an unarmed man.”

  I was less than ten feet away from him now. I holstered my gun.

  “I am going to shoot you,” I said. “But now that there are no children for you to hide behind, I’m going to beat the shit out of you first.”

  The Pied Piper smiled at me. He looked smugly confident.

  “You can try,” he said. The Pied Piper closed his hands, raised his arms, and got into a fighter’s stance. From the posture he assumed and the way he held himself, he looked like he knew how to fight.

  I was not in the mood to spar or trade blows with him or find out who the best standing striker was. I just wanted to hurt him. My leg shot out as I twisted, getting the full force and weight of my body into the kick. It landed on side of the Pied Piper. He was not expecting it. He rocked to the side and fell to his knees. I kicked him again, this time in the face. I heard bones break and teeth crack. He fell forward onto his face. I roughly rolled him over with my foot. He was moving. He was still conscious. Good. I knelt down, putting one knee onto Pied Piper’s stomach, pinning him down. He groaned. I started punching his face, over and over and over. He screamed. My hands hurt. A sharp pain shot through my left arm. It felt like I broke a bone in my hand. I did not care. I kept punching him. Soon, the Pied Piper’s once handsome face was a Rorschach test of blood and flesh and exposed broken teeth.

  The Pied Piper soon stopped screaming and moving. I stood up. I looked around. Off a little bit in the distance, Shadow was now on my side of the SUV. She was punching Bonebreaker’s head literally into the asphalt. His head was being driven into the road like a nail being pounded by a hammer. He was still faintly moving, though.

  Traffic all around us was stopped. Some people were out of their cars, staring at us. Despite the crowd of people, everyone was quiet like they were watching a movie. Some people were recording us with their smartphones. I could hear Shadow’s punches as she drove Bonebreaker’s head into the pavement.

  I leaned down to check the Pied Piper’s pulse. He was still alive. Good. I had told him I would beat him and then shoot him. I was a man of my word.

  I grabbed the Pied Piper by the knot of his tie. I lifted his prone upper body up with my left hand. Though my broken hand shrieked in protest, in my rage and anguish, the Pied Piper seemed to weigh nothing at all. I drew my gun with my right hand. I put the gun by his temple. I did not care that I was being recorded. My finger hovered over the trigger. I could have killed him with my powers. Perhaps a deprivation of the dissolving of oxygen into his blood, or a blood clot to the brain. But, this seemed less clinical. More brutal. More appropriate.

  “Truman!” The uncharacteristically sharp tone of Shadow’s voice pierced my consciousness. I looked over at her. She stood over Bonebreaker’s now limp body. Alarm was on her face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “He killed Clara, Shadow,” I said. Something was in my throat. I swallowed hard. “The people in Dupont Circle. God only knows how many others. How many more will die because of him? This ends now. He ends now.” My finger was on the trigger.

  “No,” Shadow said. She looked for a moment like she was going to run over and try to stop me. I think something in my face made her pause. My finger was on the trigger, and she was too far away. I could get the shot off. I would get the shot off.

  “No,” Shadow said again. “You’re not a murderer.”

  “I’ve killed before. So have you.”

  Shadow shook her head.

  “You’ve killed before, but you’ve never murdered before,” she said. “There’s a difference. I know. I’ve done both. You’re better than I am. You’re better than the Pied Piper is. It’s what makes you a Hero. Don’t throw that away over the likes of him.”

  I hesitated. The metal of the gun’s trigger felt cool and inviting.

  “Remember what you told Clara,” Shadow said. “‘A true Hero does what’s right even when what’s right is hard.’”

  Clara’s face floated before me. Her small face had been etched with fear before she dove down into the water. But, she had done it. She could have saved herself. It was the choice a lot of people would have made. That would have been the easy thing. She had instead chosen to save me and Shadow and countless others. She had done the hard—but right—thing.

  Killing the Pied Piper would have made me feel better. It would have been easy. But how could I sully the memory of Clara’s hard, selfless act with an easy, selfish one?

  I did not want to—God I d
id not want to—but I let go of the Pied Piper’s tie. He slumped to the ground.

  Suddenly, Shadow was in front of me. Then she—the woman who did not even shake hands—enveloped me in her arms. I put my arms around her. I held her tight. For such a hard woman, she felt surprisingly soft. I clung to her like a man who had nearly drowned clung to a life raft.

  Then the strangest thing happened, something that had not happened since I was a kid.

  I started to cry.

  CHAPTER 30

  Much later, I sat in my office. I was alone. It was night outside and I did not have the lights on. The darkness matched my mood.

  The Pied Piper and Bonebreaker were both in the custody of the police. They would no doubt be going to prison for a long time. It was still too good for the likes of them. Clara was dead and they were alive. How was that fair? It was not. But, it was what was right. Shadow had reminded me of that in time.

  It still did not make me feel better though.

  I reached for the phone with my left hand, winced, and instead picked it up with my right. I dialed the number for Stan Langley at the Astor City Times.

  “Stan Langley,” he said.

  “It’s Truman Lord,” I said. “Remember how I told you I would give you the exclusive scoop on what I turned up in my investigation of the Dupont Circle subway explosion?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, get your pen and paper ready,” I said. My vision got blurry. It had been doing that a lot lately.

  “I want to tell you the story of a young woman named Clara Barton,” I said into the phone. “And, not to tell you your business, but if I were you, I’d title it ‘Becoming a Hero.’”

  The End

  If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review on Amazon. Even a simple two word review such as “Loved it” helps so much. Reviews are a big aid in helping readers like you find books they might like.

  The other books in the series about Truman Lord can be found here:

  SUPERHERO DETECTIVE FOR HIRE

  KILLSHOT

  HUNTED

  Additionally, Mr. Brasher has begun another superhero series set in the same fictional world as Truman’s where Metahumans must become licensed Heroes to legally use their powers. Called the Omega Superhero Series, this series features Metas more powerful than those who appear in the Superhero Detective Series. The first in the series is CAPED, which tells the origin story of Theodore Conley, a seventeen-year-old who wrestles with his newfound powers. An excerpt from Caped is below.

  Additional superhero novels will be published soon. Click on the link below to sign up for Mr. Brasher’s e-mail newsletter for information on these new books and bonuses given exclusively to newsletter subscribers:

  DARIUS BRASHER’S NEWSLETTER

  Follow Darius Brasher on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dariusbrasher or feel free to drop him a line at darius.brasher@dbrasher.com.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Killshot, Book Three of the Superhero Detective Series and an excerpt from Caped, Book One of the Omega Superhero Series.

  EXCERPT FROM KILLSHOT

  What was my name again? A superhero really ought to know his name.

  Though I seemed to have misplaced my name, I was definitely a superhero. Of that I was certain. I just woke up seconds before, lying on my back in a dark alley between two buildings that rose on either side of me like two mute giants. It was nighttime. Rain fell, a steady cold wetness that soaked my clothes and pounded my head like Chinese water torture. Instinctively, I made the rain stop hitting me. It was like I was suddenly enshrouded in an invisible force field. The rain hit it, trickling off onto the ground instead of giving me an unwanted and unappreciated bath. Then I increased the temperature of the water in my clothing and on my body, making it evaporate into a mist of steam with a slight hiss. I immediately went from being cold to warm. I was as snug as a bug in a rug. Well, as snug as a bug could be lying in an alley surrounded by other bugs, rats, and God only knew what else.

  So, I was definitely a superhero. I could control water, its movement, and its temperature. I was a hydrokinetic. I could come up with the word hydrokinetic, but not my own name. That was strange. Why was that? My head seemed like it was full of cotton. Thinking and dredging up memories took a concentrated act of will. Regardless of not being able to recall my elusive name, due to my powers, it was clear I was a superhero. Who other than superheroes had superpowers? Well supervillains, I guess, but supervillains were bad guys. I did not feel like a bad guy. I felt like a good guy. So, until I had evidence otherwise, I would assume I was a superhero.

  I felt myself grin foolishly. I was a superhero. Hot damn! I clung to the assumption gratefully. It was a life raft in a dark sea of hazy memories and uncertainty.

  Though I felt like a good guy, I was a good guy who did not feel good. My grin faded off my face as I started to realize how uncomfortable I was. The concrete under me was hard, as concrete worth its salt tended to be. I felt sick. And, despite the rain no longer hitting my head, my head pounded. Though it felt like it was packed with cotton, the cotton on the inside was not dulling the pain that started on the outside and radiated inward like spokes of a wheel. Sharp, pointy, jagged, throbbing spokes. My head felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to it.

  I sat up. It was a mistake. The world tilted, my stomach somersaulted, and my head felt like it was sliding off my shoulders like a house sliding off the edge of a cliff during a mudslide. I lay back down, panting. Though my head still hurt, the world stopped spinning after a bit. Better. I learned my lesson. I would stay lying down. Sitting up was overrated anyway. If it was so awesome, people would sleep sitting up. Screw sitting.

  I smiled up at the night sky with satisfaction. I had accomplished something. I had struck a mighty blow against sitting. If sitting were a supervillain, I had just smacked the crap out of him. Then I frowned. I was still lying in an alley. My nose and increasingly nauseated stomach were telling me the alley was full of rotting trash. As accomplishments went, taking a courageous stand against sitting while sprawled in a filthy alley was not on the same level as walking on the Moon or splitting the atom.

  How had I gotten here? The pounding of my head, the roiling of my stomach, the furry thickness of my tongue, and the sour taste in my mouth were my first clues. I had been drinking. Not only that, I had been drunk. I thought hard about that. My memory was hazy, my thoughts were sluggish, and my body felt like death warmed over. I concluded I still was drunk. How could that be, though? I had a vague but strong impression I did not drink. Drinking and having superpowers were not a good combination.

  It slowly started coming back to me. The memories flowed back like a dam springing more and more leaks. I used to not drink, past tense. But then a young Metahuman—a person with superpowers, that is—named Clara Barton had died a few months ago because of me. I had sought solace in a bottle. Well, it started off as a bottle. It had become a lot of bottles. So many, I had lost track of them all. I had quickly gone from Truman the Teetotaler to Truman the Tippler; from Lord the Lightweight to Lord the Lush.

  Wait. That was it. That was my name. Truman Lord. I remembered now. Sweet. Truman Lord, Mr. Lord, Señor Lord, Monsieur Lord, Lord-san. It was a nice sounding name in all the languages I could think of. I liked it. Did I also have a superhero alias, something like Water Wizard, or Hydro Man, or Rainmaker, or Drip?

  I frowned up into the rain falling from the heavens at the thought.

  Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let my code name be Drip.

  There was no response. Typical. I chewed on the notion of code names for a bit. It slowly, fitfully, dawned on me: I had superpowers, yet I only went by my real name. Though my head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton, it was getting less thick. Less like durable flannel, more like wispy cotton candy. My already sensitive stomach threatened to revolt at the thought of food. I assured my stomach the cotton candy was staying in my brain and not making its way south.

  Hunh. Not goo
d. Not only was I lying in an alley talking to myself, I was talking to my stomach. What kind of weird-ass superhero was I? Schizophrenia Man?

  Like a light bulb had been flicked on, the answer soon came in a rush of memories. No code names or costumes or masks or capes or secret lairs or homoerotic sidekicks for me. No siree Bob. I wore regular clothes; I did not wear a mask or a cape, though most superheroes did; I did not have a secret lair, unless the condominium I lived in counted; I did not have a sidekick, homoerotic or otherwise; and, I went by my real name. And that real name was Truman Lord.

  So I knew my name and I knew I had no heroic alias. A step in the right direction. Not being named something lame like Drip was another fifteen steps in the right direction.

  I sat up despite the strenuous protests of my body. A private detective and licensed Hero really ought not lie in a filthy alley. I remembered that too, now. I worked as a private detective. And, I was not merely just a superhero. I was a licensed Hero, one of a small number of well-trained Metahumans who were permitted to use their powers because they had sworn to use them for the public benefit. Me using them for the public benefit was how I had wound up in this alley, I now remembered.

  I had been walking home in the wee hours of the morning to my Astor City condo after drinking more than I could remember in a bar. I had heard someone cry for help. A young woman was being dragged into an alley up ahead by two men. Being an intrepid Hero, I had rushed to help her. Though it would be embarrassing enough to say the two men had overpowered me, that was not what had happened. Being a drunk intrepid Hero, I had tripped on something in the alley before I had even gotten to the men. I had fallen, hitting my head on something hard. I now touched the back of my head with my hand. Sure enough, it came back bloody. Falling was the last thing I remembered before waking up in the rain a few minutes ago.