Book Four: HUNTED
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Turn the page for an excerpt from Superhero Detective For Hire, Book One of the Superhero Detective Series.
EXCERPT FROM SUPERHERO DETECTIVE FOR HIRE
Late one afternoon about a week and a half after David Hoff was killed, I returned to my office building after standing up for truth, justice, and the American way. Actually, that’s not true. Upholding truth, justice, and the American way was above my pay grade. I let world-renowned Heroes like the Sentinels and the other Heroes who flew around in tights worry about such things. My daily concerns were a lot more prosaic: doing the things my clients hired me to do. If truth and justice were a side effect of that, so much the better. What were truth and justice anyway? I might not recognize them if I tripped over them. I was a Hero, not a philosopher.
Unfortunately, as far as my client Eileen Rothbury was concerned, I was doing a pretty lousy job so far of doing what she was paying me to do. I still had no idea of who killed George Chase. By that point I had spoken to a slew of the women George had slept with and blackmailed. I had not even gotten to all of them yet. George had been quite prolific in his bedmates, and there were still women I needed to interview. I had also interviewed some of their husbands and the people who could attest to their alibis. The ones who had alibis, that is. I had also spoken to some of my contacts in the underworld to see if they knew anything about George’s death. I had consulted with the police. I had a bunch of facts and leads and things to follow up on. It was times like this I wished I had a staff to help me. Or, at least a young male sidekick who wore tights, exclaimed “Holy Toledo Truman!” periodically, and with whom I could have homoerotic tension.
I knew a lot, but not the thing I was most concerned about: Who had shot George Chase? I had so many details and facts from so many different people I felt like I was drowning in them. The more I learned, the less I knew. But, that was how it was in an investigation. You gathered information and facts and eventually, patterns began to emerge, and what you were looking for fitfully revealed itself. I hoped for my sake this would happen in George’s case before I was old and grey.
The frustration I was feeling almost made me put my key into my office door without consciously registering what my powers were telling me. But, before I slipped the key into the lock, I became aware of what my powers were saying: someone was in my office. No, not just a someone. Two someones.
The hand my key was in froze. I concentrated and confirmed it—there was the unmistakable water signature of two people in my office. Based on the amount of water, it was two men. One of them was on the far side of my office across from the door. The other was on the left, unhinged side of the door, leaning against the wall.
I had locked the office door as usual when I had left hours before. Without moving, I examined the door and lock. Everything looked normal. I was tempted to try the door to see if it was still locked, but I did not want to alert the men to my presence if they did not already know I was on the other side of the door.
Maybe the men were door-to-door salesmen of burglar alarms who had entered my locked office to demonstrate how easy it was to defeat a lock. Maybe they were especially pushy religious missionaries who knew how to pick locks. Maybe they were cops waiting to give me a Crimebuster of the Year award. Maybe the men were friends of mine who were surprising me for my birthday. But, my birthday was months away, and I did not have any friends stupid enough to break into my office to surprise me. Lurking in my office for the purpose of surprising me was a good way to get shot by me.
It seemed more likely the men were in my office awaiting my return with the intent to cause me harm. The fact anyone would bear me ill will showed exceedingly poor taste. Unfortunately, a lot of people had poor taste.
Or, maybe I was being paranoid. But, as I have said before, even paranoids had enemies.
Information was power. I needed to know who the men were in my office so I could act accordingly. I turned away from my door and walked back down the hallway to the flight of stairs. I went down to the ground floor and out of the front of my building. I stopped at my car and grabbed a small pair of binoculars I kept in the glove compartment. I also kept a spare gun in there, but I already had one holstered under my shoulder concealed by my jacket.
I was tempted to be a scofflaw in the interest of speed and cross to the other side of the road in the middle of the street. But, my office window directly overlooked that part of the street. If drivers blew their horns at me as I crossed the street illegally, it might draw the attention of whoever was in my office. So, like a good little law-abiding citizen, I went up to the crosswalk and waited for opposing traffic to have a red light before I crossed. As I crossed, I felt a faint itch between my shoulder blades, as if there was a bull’s-eye painted there. I knew it was just my imagination. Yet all the same I was happy to enter the building across the street from mine and to get from out in the open.
I took the stairs up to the third floor. I found the office directly across the street from mine. The name on the outer glass doors to the office read Sullivan and Keith, Attorneys at Law. I opened the door and went inside. The interior was bright, tidy, and modern. Sullivan and Keith appeared to be prospering. Maybe I should have consulted with them about updating my will before I went back into my building.
I breezed past the receptionist with a wave and a smile. I moved so quickly I was well past her by the time she reacted. She shouted “Hey! You can’t go back there!” to my already receding back.
Moments later, I located the office of secretaries I had observed so closely from time to time from my window directly across the street. I entered it, and strode to the window across from mine. I was faintly aware of several people looking at me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” one of the secretaries asked me. I recognized her as one of my favorites to look at from my office window. She had glossy black hair and was slightly overweight, but the weight was distributed in all the right places. I put a finger up to my lips.
“Be vewwy, vewwy quiet,” I said in my best Elmer Fudd impersonation. “I’m hunting wabbits.” I looked at her more closely. I jabbed my raised finger at her skirt.
“That’s my favorite color on you,” I said. “You should wear it more often.”
The woman blinked at me in confusion. She did not know whether to be flattered by the compliment or scared of the crazy man who had barged in.
I turned away from her back to the window. I raised my binoculars to look at my window across the street. As I did so, I was faintly aware of someone behind me calling the police. Two men were trespassing in my office, and yet I was the one the police were being called about. There really was no justice in the world.
I focused the binoculars. A part of the interior of my office came into view. There were two costumed men in my office. Their costumes covered them from head to toe. One man was leaning against the front of my desk facing the door. The other was still leaning against the wall by the door. The one by the door was husky, and shorter than his companion. Both of their costumes were a dull red and yellow, though in different patterns. Unless they were on their way to a costume party, they were Metas. I did not recognize either of them. That little mattered. A Meta I did not know could kill me just as dead as one I did.
I had confirmed what I had hoped to. I did not know those guys, and they almost certainly wished to do me an injury. I hoped to disappoint them.
I lowered the binoculars. A plan was already starting to form in my mind.
I turned around. The secretaries were all on their feet looking at me. I had seen most of them at one time or another through my window. From the look on their faces, they either thought I was crazy, a criminal, or a crazy criminal.
“
I’m off to set a wabbit trap,” I said. I waggled my fingers at them. “I’ll see you ladies around. I’m a big fan, by the way.” I suddenly noticed a man standing off to the side. I had never seen him before. Perhaps he was a recent hire.
“I’m a big fan of yours too, my man,” I said to him with a wink as I walked out of the office. My hormonal tendencies did not lean in his direction, but I did not want him to feel left out. I was no sexual bigot.
I walked quickly out of the office suite. The receptionist I had walked past on my way in looked like she wanted to tackle me, but she controlled the impulse. The fact I outweighed her by almost one hundred pounds probably stopped her.
“The police are on the way,” she said as I swept past her desk.
“Bully for them,” I said over my shoulder. “Tell them they’re needed across the street.”
I went back downstairs, across the street at the crosswalk again, and back up the stairs in my own building. Who needed to do cardio when you could instead stalk supervillains?
When I arrived at my own floor in my building, I paused before opening the stairwell door leading to my hallway. I unzipped and took off my jacket. I dropped it on the stair landing. I took my gun out of my shoulder holster. It was a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol. I knew there was a round in the chamber as I always kept one chambered. Even so, I moved back the gun’s slide to double-check. Readiness was all.
I sensed no one in the hallway beyond the door. With the gun in my right hand, I opened the stairwell door with my left hand. I peeked out. My eyes confirmed what my powers had already told me. The coast was clear. No one was in the hall. All appeared normal.
I walked towards my office. I felt my heart rate increasing. I could feel the pulse in my hand thumping against the gun. I took deep, deliberate, calming breaths as I crept closer to my office door. Thank God the people who shared my floor were all in their offices with the doors closed.
When I was about thirty feet or so away from my office, I stopped. I stretched out my water awareness again. The men were still in my office. Better yet, the water I kept in the glass bowl on my desk was still there. Perhaps the men were not aware of my powers. Or, perhaps they were aware of them but thought they would surprise me and neutralize me before I would be able to bring them to bear.
I flattened myself against the wall of the hallway, with the front of my body facing out and my extended right hand holding my gun out towards my door. I felt a sudden stab of fear and anxiety. I shoved the feeling to the side. I did not have time for it.
I summoned my will, holding clearly in my mind what I wanted to do with my powers. Then, I did it. Half of the water in the bowl in my office flew with lightning speed at the face of the man by the door; simultaneously, the other half flew the shorter distance to the face of the man by the desk. I engulfed the front of their faces with water. It did not take much water for a man to drown. I had much more than that necessary amount on the faces of the two men.
I sensed the men suddenly jolted into movement. If the men were amateurs or they panicked, they would run around blindly in the office until their air was depleted and they passed out. If they were pros and kept their cool, they would leave the office and try to neutralize whoever controlled the water that was drowning them. I knew that was what I would do. That was why I had flattened myself against the wall: to expose as little of my body as possible if the men burst out of the office and tried to take me out.
The men were pros. My office door flew open and the two men burst out of it. The taller, skinnier one came out first, followed by the stockier one. Water swam on the front of the men’s faces, blocking their noses and mouths and obscuring their vision. The men flailed about outside of my door for a moment, clearly panicking. Panic would make their bodies’ oxygen levels deplete sooner. The men would pass out soon.
The skinnier one must have caught a glimpse of my form in the hall despite his obscured vision. He raised his fist. It glowed. A blast of energy shot out of his fist towards me, missing me by inches. My skin tingled. I felt my hair stand out on end. The smell of ozone filled the air, like after a lightning strike. I heard an explosion behind me where the energy bolt hit the wall further down the hall.
I fired my gun. It was instinctual. The trigger jerked once, twice. The skinny one staggered and fell backwards. He was still.
The stockier one turned towards me at the sound of the gunshots. He moved towards me faster than a big man had any right to move. I shifted slightly. I fired again. I hit the center of his chest. The man fell to his knees. He then fell face forward. He shuddered for a moment. Then he was still.
It all only took a few seconds. I let out the breath I did not realize I had been holding. I stepped towards the men, still holding my gun out. I knelt over the stockier one. With my free left hand, I checked the pulse at his neck. He was dead. I checked the other man. He was dead too.
I released my hold on the water I had still kept on the men’s faces. The water soaked into the carpet of the hallway, darkening a circle around the men’s heads. In seconds, it looked like the men had cried a flood of tears.
I pulled the masks off the two of them. I did not recognize either of them. They were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. They looked young, too young to be bleeding out into the hallway of a man they did not know.
“Damn it,” I said aloud. My ears still rang from the sounds of gunfire. My voice sounded tinny. I did not intend to kill the men. My training had taken over. I had instinctively shot at the center of the men’s masses, just as I had always practiced doing at the gun range. I had hoped to capture them alive, though, so I could find out who had sent them. As I was not then working another case, I assumed they were connected to my investigation of George’s murder. But, now that the men were dead, how would I know?
The men were dead and I was alive. I liked it better that way than the reverse. But, despite all the death I had seen and sometimes had a hand in, I still viewed death—any death—as a tragedy. Even the most depraved evildoer could change his ways. But, he would never get a chance to do so if he was dead.
A couple of my neighbors opened their doors and stuck their heads out. Most of them quickly closed them again once they saw me holding a gun over two men lying on the floor.
I put my gun’s safety on. I put the gun back into my holster. I suddenly felt drained, as if I had just finished a long race. It was as if I had aged a few decades in a few seconds. I felt dirty. I wanted to take a bath and then a nap.
“Damn it,” I said again. I pulled out my cell phone. My hand shook a bit due to the adrenaline coursing through my body. A shaking hand was better than a deathly still one, though.
I called the police.
The first book in the series about Truman Lord can be found here: SUPERHERO DETECTIVE FOR HIRE
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