Superhero Detective Series (Book 1): Superhero Detective For Hire

by Brasher, Darius

  “No,” she said. “I understand you have been investigating the murder of a man named George Chase.”

  “That is correct. I see that word of my investigatory prowess has spread far and wide,” I said.

  “Indeed,” she said. The way she said it, it did not sound at all as though she had heard of my investigatory prowess. If she had, she did not seem overly impressed by it. I tried to contain my disappointment. Lady Justice’s holier-than-thou attitude was bothering me more and more. Plus, there was something familiar about her I could not quite put my finger on. It was the way she held her head and carried herself.

  “I am here to ask you what you have found out about Mr. Chase’s murder,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? Okay, what?”

  “Okay, go ahead and ask me,” I said. The crush I had on the idea of Lady Justice was fading in the face of the reality of her.

  I thought I saw the muscles in Lady Justice’s jaw clench a bit.

  “Mr. Lord, are you being deliberately obstinate?” she asked. I was tempted to tell her I did not know what obstinate meant, but I was afraid she would believe me.

  “Heavens no,” I said instead with wide-eyed innocence. I was Truman the Tyro.

  The muscles in Lady Justice’s jaw were definitely clenched now.

  “All right,” she said, “we’ll do this your way. Tell me what you have learned about the murder of George Chase.”

  “What’s the magic word?” I asked.

  “What?” Lady Justice said. She was exasperated.

  “Tell me what you have learned about the murder of George Chase, please,” I said, putting emphasis on the last word. “‘Please’ is the magic word.”

  Lady Justice looked at me like she wanted to belt me.

  “Tell me what you have learned about the murder of George Chase, please,” she said. There was venom in her tone when she said the last word.

  “Why do you want to know?” I asked.

  “I am working on a matter which appears to be somewhat related,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, “tell me about what you are working on.”

  “No,” she said. “What I’m working on is confidential and of a sensitive nature. It involves matters of national security.” She gave me a slight, smug, tight smile. “I’m sure you understand.” Her manner spoke louder than words. What her manner was saying was I was not important enough for her to tell me about what she was working on.

  I shook my head.

  “If you can’t help me, I can’t help you. What I have discovered is confidential and of a sensitive nature,” I said. I mirrored her smile. “I’m sure you understand.”

  Anger played on Lady Justice’s face. She suppressed it with a visible effort. She forced a smile.

  “Let us be reasonable, Mr. Lord. I am a powerful woman with powerful friends. I understand you do most of your work here in Astor City. I am close personal friends with both the mayor and the chief of police. I am sure both they and I can do much to make your life much easier.” Her eyes glittered. “Or more difficult.”

  “You’re friends with the mayor, you say? Zowie! He’s my favorite singer. He’s so dreamy. I have all his records,” I said. I leaned forward in my chair. “Can you get me his autograph?” I asked earnestly.

  Lady Justice stood up so quickly she knocked her chair over. Her eyes flashed with anger. For one fateful moment, I thought she was going to attack me. Then, the moment passed. She spun on her heel and strode to the door. She turned and faced me again.

  “I hope your wife finds you amusing, Mr. Lord. For I do not,” Lady Justice said.

  She stalked out, leaving my office door open. What did people who visited me have against closing my door?

  I watched Lady Justice leave. The closeness with which I watched her might have had something to do with the fact that, despite whatever other flaws she might have, Lady Justice was a sight to behold from behind.

  With my powers, I tracked Lady Justice until she had left the building. I was suspicious of her, and thought about following her. I abandoned the notion. It was not easy to trail a Hero like her without being seen. I had little doubt I could do it if I had prepared first, but doing it on the fly was trickier. So, I just let her go.

  Why had she come to see me? Why was someone like her so interested in George Chase’s case? I did not believe her when she said she was working on a related matter. Though I was as much of a Hero as she was, Heroes like her and the Sentinels operated on a different level than Heroes like me. They wrestled with big issues, planet-destroying type issues. I dealt with the grime and the muck and the ugliness of the street. They were like Greek gods who lived on Mount Olympus, letting Heroes like me tend to the issues of mere mortals.

  I normally put my feet up on the windowsill. I instead put my feet up on the desk as I thought about Lady Justice’s visit. Radical changes of environment and perspective often work wonders on the thought process. I read that in a psychology book once. Or, maybe it was on a fortune cookie. I could not remember.

  I thought about why Lady Justice assumed I was married. I did not wear any jewelry at all, much less a ring that looked like a wedding band. I did not have pictures on my desk of the old ball and chain with two point five kids, a picket fence, and a dog. I was very much not married. So, why had Lady Justice thought I was?

  I had recently lied to Claire Morganthal about being married. Thinking of Claire made me remember that I had not yet made some calls about her I had intended to make. I picked up the phone. As I dialed, I thought again about how helpful a sidekick might be. I bet a Hero like Avatar did not have to make his own phone calls.

  I spoke to the people I needed to speak to and hung up the phone.

  “Eureka!” I said. It was not very satisfying to say it to an empty room. It was times like this I definitely needed a sidekick. Not only could he make my calls, but he could admire my detecting brilliance.

  CHAPTER 23

  I knocked on the Morganthal’s front door. A housekeeper answered the door. I knew she was a housekeeper because the dark-haired, middle-aged woman was dressed in a maid outfit, like someone you see in a movie. There was the possibility she was a movie extra and they were filming the remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but I went with the more obvious guess and surmised she was the housekeeper.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked. She did not have an English accent like high-toned help really ought to. Perhaps it was hard to find good help those days. I would not have known. Not only did I have to place my own phone calls, but I scrubbed my own toilet, too.

  “I’m here to see Claire Morganthal,” I said. I almost said the mistress of the house, but that sounded like I was coming to see a dominatrix.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. The woman’s face had a slightly suspicious cast to it. Perhaps it was my broken nose. Maybe I looked like a hardened criminal.

  “No,” I said, “but I think she will want to see me, anyway. Tell her Truman Lord wants to talk to her about Lady Justice.”

  “Just a minute,” the woman said. “I’ll check to see if Mrs. Morganthal is available.” She closed the door in my face and left me waiting on the porch. Perhaps she was afraid I would steal something if she invited me in. The devil in me wanted to break in and pilfer the china as punishment for being left to wait outside. I resisted the impulse.

  I waited for several minutes. I occupied myself by humming Rossini’s William Tell Overture. I had just gotten to the best part when the door opened again.

  “Mrs. Morganthal will see you,” the housekeeper said.

  “But I just got to the best part,” I protested. “It’s really the emotional climax of the piece.”

  “Excuse me sir?” she said, confused.

  “Never mind,” I said. I stepped inside. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

  The woman shot me another perplexed look before turning to lead me through the house. She took me to the living room where Claire aw
aited me. Claire stood. She looked as plastically over the top sexy as I remembered. She was wearing a tight red, thin sweater and no bra. The lack of the bra was obvious from her very visible and pronounced nipples. She also had on tight black pants. Her feet were bare, and I could see the crimson red of her nail polish. I was mildly surprised she did not wear sky-high stilettos around the house. I wondered if there was ever a time Claire did not dress like a sex goddess.

  “Thank you, Trudy,” Claire said in dismissal to the housekeeper. Trudy nodded, and shot me another look of perplexity before leaving. She did not know what to make of me. She was not alone. Half the time I did not know what to make of me, either.

  Claire swept into my arms. It was like being hugged by two torpedoes.

  “Truman, I’m so glad to see you again,” she said. She looked up at me breathlessly. “You should have called first, though.” She made a slight pout. “I would have put different clothes on. A girl should look her best when a big, strong, handsome man is around.” Claire as sex kitten was back with a vengeance.

  With a slight effort, I disengaged from her. It was like breaking away from an octopus.

  “Have a seat,” I said. “There have been some developments in George Chase’s murder case I want to discuss with you.”

  Claire sat on the sofa. I sat in the chair across the glass table from her. I had learned my lesson from the last time I was there. I did not want to sit next to her and tempt her to grope me to death.

  “What’s going on?” Claire asked. She was all wide-eyed innocence. “Did you find George’s killer? Trudy said something about you wanting to talk about Lady Justice.”

  I nodded.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “A lot of people think crimes get solved because of how smart and clever and dogged the investigators are. Though all those things help, they are not usually how a case gets solved. Usually a case gets solved because the criminal does something stupid. He brags to a friend about the jewelry he stole; he doesn’t dispose of the murder weapon; he’s on the run and calls a family member who in turn reports the call to the police, that sort of thing.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Claire asked.

  “Patience is a virtue,” I said with a slight smile. “All will become clear shortly.

  “There were several mistakes George’s killer made, but I did not recognize them as such at first.” I said. “The fatal mistake that revealed all the others was when Lady Justice visited my office earlier this week. When she left, she made a reference to my wife. As it turns out, to the delight of single women everywhere, I am not married. Why, I wondered, had Lady Justice thought otherwise? Then, I remembered when I came here to interview you. I lied to you then and told you I was married.

  “That little slip from Lady Justice told me there must be a connection between you and her. Our dearly departed George was quite the ladies’ man and prolific blackmailer, so his death left me a gaggle of women to investigate. Lady Justice’s remark, though, focused my attention on you. I remembered your statement that neither you nor your husband owned a gun. After Lady Justice left my office, I called the state gun licensing board. You are not a registered gun owner. But, it turns out your husband is. He is the licensed owner of a .45 handgun. As coincidence would have it, it was a .45 that shot both George Chase and a small-time criminal named David Hoff,” I said.

  “I wasn’t lying to you when I told you neither I nor my husband owned a gun,” Claire said. “I had no idea Edgar owned a gun. He must have bought it without telling me.”

  I nodded. I was Truman the Trusting.

  “I thought that might be the case. But, your husband happening to own a .45, you not telling me about it, and a .45 being used to shoot both George and Mr. Hoff were way too many coincidences for me. I am not a big believer in coincidences. I suppose they can happen, but more often than not, when things look like they might be related, they are in fact related.

  “Your husband owning the same caliber gun as the one that shot George and David made me take a harder look at both of you. I am fortunate enough to have in my possession records of the money paid to George by the women he was blackmailing. I also have a list of the phone calls made to and from the disposable phone George used to transact his business with those women. For several months, there were calls to and from his number to and from both your cell and home numbers. For much of the same period, there were regular payments from you to him. Then, about a month before George died, the payments stopped. So did the calls from you to George. He called you a few times, but you apparently did not call him back, at least not from a telephone number I could recognize.

  “Then, while looking at the phone records, there was a number I did recognize. There was a call made by George to Sentinels headquarters. The Sentinels have a public number they use as a tip line. I can only imagine the number of crazy calls they must get. I only recognized the number because I am a bit of a Sentinels fanboy. Interestingly, your payments to George resumed two days after that call of George’s to the Sentinels’ mansion. Your regular calls to and from him resumed around the same time.

  “‘Another coincidence?’ I thought to myself. Like I said before, I am not a big believer in coincidences. So, I started thinking some more about how you seem to be connected to Lady Justice and the Sentinels. Then, I remembered how Lady Justice had reminded me of someone when she was in my office.” I paused. I smiled at Claire. She just looked back at me. Her face was inscrutable.

  “She reminded me of you,” I said. “It wasn’t anything overt, which is why it did not hit me immediately. It was something about her body language and the way she held herself. It reminded me of you. Then I thought, what if Lady Justice was, in fact, you? Just because I’m a Hero who doesn’t wear a mask and a costume, that doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t. And, what if your mask and costume were not just a few scraps of clothing? What if you were able to completely transform into Lady Justice to hide your true identity? Maybe such a transformation is a part of your powers; maybe you use some sort of advanced tech; hell, maybe it’s magic. I don’t know. But, whatever it is you use to transform, I’m guessing George’s powers of recording let him somehow see that you are in fact, Lady Justice.”

  Claire was now looking at me with an air of amused disbelief. I continued.

  “The idea of you being Lady Justice explained a few things. David Hoff, for instance. David sent a couple of thugs to scare me away from George. Unsuccessfully, as it turns out. When I asked David who had gotten him to do that, he refused to say. ‘She’ll kill me,’ he told me. There aren’t too many lion females who would scare someone like David Hoff, much less a human female. I’m guessing a Hero as powerful as Lady Justice was one such human female, though. Also, two Metahumans called Thunder and Lightning tried to waylay me in my office. Again, unsuccessfully. Who, I asked myself, would have the connections to the Metahuman world to line up two mercenaries like Thunder and Lightning? The answer was, again, someone like Lady Justice.”

  I paused. My mouth felt dry. I wanted a glass of water, but now did not seem like a good time to ask for one. I would power through with a dry mouth. I was a superhero, after all.

  “So, here’s how I think it all happened,” I continued. “After I approached George, he told you about it. Whether he did so for the purpose of finding someone to get me off his back, or if it was a pillow talk kind of situation, I don’t know. In any event, you used your famous connections with the underworld to hire David Hoff to get me off of George’s back. Again, I’m not sure if you did this as a favor to George, or because you feared I would discover you and he had a thing going. It little matters why.

  “Then, you and George had a falling out,” I said. “Perhaps you wanted to stop paying him, and he insisted the payments continue. Maybe you just had a lovers’ spat. At any rate, you took your husband’s gun and shot George. You didn’t use your powers to kill him because if you did, the police would know a Metahuman was involved. They would call in
the Heroes’ Guild for assistance with the investigation, and God only knew where that might lead for you.

  “After you killed George, you searched his place. You found photos of him with his lovers as well as a notebook containing records of George’s extortion. Because they contained information about Claire Morganthal, you took them with you when you left. Presumably you destroyed them. What you did not know at the time was I had copies of that material. When I first interviewed you, I indicated I knew of George blackmailing you. You were afraid of how much I knew. Unfortunately for me, I told you I was the only one who knew of the blackmailing. That made me a target you could get rid of and keep anyone else from learning about your connection to George.

  “When you learned I was investigating George’s murder, you decided to tie up loose ends,” I said. “David Hoff knew of the connection between George, you, and me, so you used the same gun that shot George on David.”

  Claire said nothing. She crossed her legs, and continued to look at me with disbelief.

  “I was the last of the loose ends,” I said. “You again turned to your underworld contacts. You hired Thunder and Lightning to take me out.” I smiled modestly. “Because I am a Hero without fear and beyond reproach, they were unsuccessful. Then, that is when you eventually make your appearance in my office, both to find out what I had discovered in the course of my investigation and, perhaps, to take me out yourself. But, there were too many people around when you showed up, so you left, both without the information you sought and without taking action against me. I have little doubt you would take another run at me soon enough.”

  I took a breath. Talking was thirsty work.

  “That about sum everything up?” I asked.

  There was no immediate response. Claire was silent. The room was still except for a grandfather clock marking down the seconds. In the quiet room, the tic-toc sounded like a countdown.

  After a few moments, Claire smiled a grim smile. There was no mirth in it. She crossed her legs again. Her crimson painted toenails were the color of blood.