Wonder Guy

by Stone, Naomi

  Levinson’s had a vise-like grip, and had caused many a man to wince, but he might as well shake hands with a marble statue for all the give in this character’s clasp.

  “Right, then.” The police chief pressed the intercom on his desk phone, “Betty, call over to the precincts handling the “superhero” cases. Tell them to send the detectives in charge up here.”

  * * * *

  Detective Algerson, a tall, middle-aged man with slightly balding dark hair, greeted Gloria in the lobby at ABM. He flashed his badge and gave her a nod and the dour look of a basset hound.

  “I’ll want to interview Ms. Willard’s other co-workers,” he said as Gloria escorted him to the security desk to check in. As they waited their turn, she told him the same thing she’d told him earlier over the phone. She hadn’t seen Jo again after they’d returned from lunch yesterday.

  “I confirmed her presence at the parade yesterday. We did find her image in some of the footage. What time did you arrive back at this location?”

  “It was nearly 1:30. We were late. I’ll bet security can confirm the time we used our passes.”

  “Good.” He spoke to her over his shoulder as he presented his badge at the security desk and turned to sign the register. “I might have more questions for you later, after we’ve checked that out.”

  Gloria wouldn’t let go of him that easily. She had questions of her own. She turned toward the elevators, leading the way. “I can bring you up to HR and introduce you there. Then I’ll head home. The boss gave me the afternoon off.”

  “Men have died for less.” He spoke dryly enough to confuse her.

  “I beg your pardon?” She hit the call button for the elevators.

  “Sorry, Ma’am. Police humor.” The lines of his face drooped, in no way suggesting anything related to what she’d call humor.

  “That’s not very funny.”

  His tone turned apologetic. “This has been confirmed as a murder investigation, and we have to consider every possible motive.”

  Gloria gaped at him as they stood waiting for the elevator doors to open. Was he suggesting she might kill Jo for an afternoon off? Why would anyone want to murder Jo? It must have been some random thing, a mugging gone awry. “It couldn’t be murder. Everyone loves Jo.”

  “Apparently someone felt otherwise,” the detective said as they entered the elevator.

  “It must have been some stranger.” Gloria used undue force to punch the button for the fourth floor. “No one who knew her would do it. Where did you find her?”

  “We’re not disclosing that information at this time. The body was moved from the scene of the killing, so we can’t discount the possibility the attack occurred here at her workplace, or anywhere else she many have been since she was last seen alive.”

  Leading the way from the elevator to the HR reception desk, Gloria tried to digest this latest disclosure. None of it seemed real. Jo couldn’t be dead.

  She waited until Mary finished a call and turned to them with a smile, then introduced the detective.

  Gloria lingered nearby while the detective tersely explained his business.

  “That’s not possible,” Mary exclaimed on hearing the news. “Jo called in this morning, said she was sick.”

  “We believe the person you spoke with was the murderer, hoping to delay discovery of the crime.”

  “Oh no.” Mary looked stricken, her eyes wide and face pale. “Oh, this is horrible.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’ll need your help to see that the killer is brought to justice. Please think back and tell me anything you can remember.”

  “Of course.” Mary dabbed at her eyes. “But I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary.”

  The detective pulled out a notepad and pencil. “Would you describe the voice of the caller for me?”

  “She said she had a cold. She sounded so hoarse I’m not even sure it was a ‘she.’ It might have been a man, disguising his voice, talking a bit high, you know?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He scratched beside his ear with the pencil. “I don’t suppose you folks record incoming calls?”

  Mary paused, pursing her lips. “Why, I don’t know. You’d have to talk to someone in security about that.”

  “I’ll take him back and introduce him, show him Jo’s cubicle after he’s done here.” Gloria led Algerson through the security door, past the break room and back to the payroll section where Jo worked. Had worked. Jo’s cubicle stood between Patty and Anne’s and the alcove housing the fax, printers and the mail station. Now the two women from neighboring cubicles hovered at the edge of Jo’s empty space, talking in low voices. Mary must have called them from the front desk.

  “You heard?” Gloria asked as she drew near.

  “It’s awful.” Anne choked on the words. Her eyes shone damp. Reddened eyes and nose did little good for her pale redhead’s complexion. The evidence of tears threatened Gloria’s grasp on her own. They pressed heavily behind her face. She had to hold herself together. At least until she got home. First, find out everything possible about what had happened to Jo.

  “I can’t believe it.” Patty looked stunned, as dazed as if she’d run smack into a wall. The whites of her dark eyes showed stark against her chocolate skin.

  “I know.” Gloria shared a commiserating look with the two before turning to present the detective waiting behind her. “This is Detective Algerson. He’s investigating Jo’s death and wants to ask some questions.”

  “That’s right.” Algerson stepped forward and Gloria made herself inconspicuous, taking a step back and to the side, near the fax machine. “Just a few basic questions. We want to establish Ms. Willard’s whereabouts prior to the time of her death.” He pulled out his notepad. “First, would you spell out your full names for me?”

  Gloria looked into Jo’s cubicle. Not empty, really. Printouts lay splayed across the work area beside her keyboard. Her collection of calendars decked the bland gray walls like garlands of kittens and nosegays of Far Side cartoons. Jo’s favorite Dilbert mug sat to one side, still holding a couple inches of yesterday’s coffee. Odd, Jo never left the office without washing her coffee mug. Gloria frowned.

  “When did you last see Ms. Willard?” Algerson went on.

  “She was still here when I left for the day,” Patty said.

  “Yeah. She usually comes in early and leaves early, but yesterday she said she wanted to finish up her project.” Anne stood with her arms crossed, holding tightly to her elbows. “She was so responsible.”

  Yes and tidy.

  “Do you know anything about the project she was working on?” Algerson pursued. “Or what time she left?”

  “She was wrapping up reports on last year’s payroll taxes,” Patty answered. “She said she had a couple items to follow up on. I don’t know how late she stayed.”

  “I don’t think she left at all, not on her own. Look.” Gloria pointed to the mug on Jo’s desk. “Jo always washed her mug out at the end of the day. Always. She liked having it clean and ready for coffee first thing when she came in.”

  Patty gasped. “That’s right.”

  “Oh my God.” Anne shuddered visibly. “Do you think something happened to her here?”

  “No,” Algerson said, scanning the area. “I don’t see any signs of violence here, presuming your desks are always this cluttered.”

  Gloria swallowed hard against a sour surge in her gut. She felt light-headed.

  “The clutter’s normal.” Anne’s pale complexion flushed. “We get a lot of paperwork.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  Gloria had missed the approach of the stout, gray-haired woman in a gray suit-dress, and so had Patty and Anne, judging by their guilty starts.

  Patty recovered first. “Oh, Ms. Dexter. This is Detective Algerson. He’s here about Jo.” She turned to the detective. “Ms. Dexter supervises HR.”

  “Yes, and you should have come to me first before disturbing my workers.” Th
e older woman’s eyes narrowed at the detective as if pinpointing strike zones.

  The detective turned to Ms. Dexter. “Of course. Perhaps you’ll tell me more about the projects Ms. Willard was working on before her death?”

  “Certainly. Why don’t we step into my office so these two can get back to work.” Ms. Dexter cast a significant look at Patty and Anne, and a questioning one at Gloria as if to ask what business she had being there. All business. As if the woman hadn’t known and worked with Jo on a daily basis for a couple years.

  “I guess I’d better be going.” Gloria turned toward the elevators. She wouldn’t learn any more while the detective stayed closeted with Ms. Dexter.

  She had to get away. Away from the reminders of Jo’s death. She still couldn’t digest it, or accept it as real. From the look of things, Jo might return to her empty cubicle at any moment, turn on the computer and take her usual seat. It seemed impossible for the world to have changed so completely in one short day.

  * * * *

  For the next half hour, Levinson fired off a seemingly endless stream of questions about Wonder Guy’s powers, under the claim of anticipating cases in which the hero might be of particular use to the police.

  “X-Ray vision?” The chief leaned across his desk as though he might lunge at his visitor on the least provocation.

  Greg, still standing, uneasy in the man’s presence, focused hard on the outer wall of the office, and sure enough, the shadowy form of the neighboring Government Center building emerged, like a giant, elongated stone toaster.

  “Yep.”

  “Hmm. What do you think of taking a look through the walls of suspect meth houses to verify whether there’s drug dealing in progress?”

  “I wouldn’t be comfortable with that unless you had a search warrant, and if you did, you wouldn’t need me.”

  The police chief grunted, eased back in his padded chair. “Thought you’d say something like that.”

  The representatives from the precincts arrived, and Levinson turned to them.

  “Wonder Guy, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Rognby, Precinct 5 and Detective Sergeant Diaz, Precinct 3. Gentlemen, meet Wonder Guy.”

  Greg nodded to the two men, taking courage from the clinging fabric of the mask concealing his features. “Hello.”

  “We’ll be treating Mr. Wonder Guy here as a special case. Think of him as a cross between an informant and someone in witness protection. We protect his identity and he helps us out where he can.” The chief leaned across his desk, extending his hand to Greg. “It’s been good to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” They shook, Greg careful not to exert any pressure at all. Wonder Guy’s strength took some getting used to, and crushing the chief’s hand would get things off to a bad start.

  Before turning back to the papers on his desk, Levinson addressed Rognby and Diaz. “Gentlemen, take his statements and send him back out where he can do some good.”

  Greg followed the two detectives from the chief’s office to the elevators. The secretary, a woman wearing a conservatively styled dark suit dress and severely cut gray hair, stared as he passed. Greg gave her a smile and nod.

  “So.” Diaz, tall and dark, in an impeccable suit, looking like a younger Ricardo Montalban, turned to him when the elevator doors had closed behind them. “You know that other guy, the one in red, who ran across the lake the other day?”

  “Oh yeah. That was me too.”

  “How many costumes you got?” Rognby, tall, blond, and built like a linebacker, tossed the question straight and hard as a football.

  “Do you wear the same suit every day?” Greg flung one back at him.

  “No,” Rognby admitted. “But I’m showing my face so people know who I am.”

  “Good point,” Greg said.

  “Makes me wonder.” Diaz spoke as they reached a marble-tiled hallway on the basement level and conducted Greg to an interview room. “Did Batman, Superman and Spiderman have a whole set of identical costumes so they weren’t wearing the same one every day?”

  “Think of the laundry they’d have to do every night if they only had the one costume,” Rognby said, wincing.

  “Superman could walk through fire, completely sterilizing his costume anytime he wanted,” Greg mused aloud. “Bruce Wayne was a millionaire with the money to afford a lot of backup costumes. Poor Peter Parker’d have had a lot of laundry, though.”

  * * * *

  Later, his witness statements complete, Greg couldn’t fly directly out of City Hall from the basement without destroying parts of the building and surrounding streets and sidewalk. Instead, he walked to the Government Center through the wide, well-lit, tiled tunnel under Fourth Street.

  Everyone around him wore either business dress or everyday jeans and slacks. Well, some Somali immigrants wore long robes and head coverings, and the policemen wore uniforms, but all the stares at his costumed form made him self-conscious. Weren’t business suits, uniforms, robes, jeans and everything else some kind of costume too? Why should he feel weird? His costume made at least as much sense as the guy wearing his leather jacket on such a warm spring day.

  What good did it do him being a superhero if he only felt like more of an oddball than ever? Maybe that was his real problem. One thing to be said for Gloria’s fiancé, Pete fit in. No one would stare at Pete while he did nothing stranger than walk between City Hall and the Government Center.

  Greg paused at the glass wall shielding the sheets of water falling from the reflecting pool in the Government Center Plaza above. The fountain seemed as wonderful as any of the magical events he’d encountered these past few days. Water flowed like skeins of glass and silver over the stone lip above, catching the sunshine as it fell into the basin a level below the plaza. Tempting, to break through the glass, take flight up and out, through the pool’s well and into the open air. But witnesses surrounded him and, most importantly, he had no desire to face Chief Levinson if he damaged public property.

  Greg took the escalator up to ground level and exited the building before giving in to the urge to take flight. He made a running leap to the high blue yonder and people who’d been only staring before gasped and cried out in astonishment below him. He twisted in midair to wave to the crowd of school children clustered around the circular reflecting pool.

  He positioned himself above the center of the pool, where he’d earlier seen water flowing to the well from below. He understood why people threw coins into a fountain. Especially now. In a world where fairy godmothers wielded magical powers, why not make wishes? He might not know what underpinnings of quantum connectivity or super strings, what sub-atomic manipulations made such magic real, but he knew more to be possible in the world than he’d allowed for in any of his previous philosophies.

  He flew high above the pool before he dropped as if falling, to cries of alarm, diving to the bottom of the well. Entering the well surrounded him in the water’s magic of silver and song. There, in the enlivening mists, Greg caught himself and leapt high again, careful not to damage the tiled flooring on liftoff. He arrowed up and out, meeting the cheers of children.

  What a rush! Even as the air burned his bare jaw with acceleration, Greg’s heart lifted. Maybe drawing stares could be some fun after all. Greg turned and waved again before heading home.

  * * * *

  Zzzz. The buzz in his ear grew shrill, turning to a high-pitched squeal. Greg slapped his head, and then shook off the effects of the mighty blow.

  “Agh! What the–what was that?” A feedback signal?

  The squeal sounded again like a nail through his ear. Greg banked to a hasty landing on the flat rooftop of a red brick apartment building in South Minneapolis.

  “Serafina,” he called.

  “Yes, dear?” The tidy, white-haired figure stood beside him. “I’m sorry about that. There seems to be some interference with our signal. I don’t know much regarding these technologies with the metal bits and electricity. I plugged one of those radio devic
es into the costume.”

  She circled Greg as she spoke, peering closely at the costume. She seemed almost to sniff at it.

  “Ah, yes. It seems someone gave you a gift.” She reached up, plucked at his shoulder and handed him what looked like a pin, for very broad definitions of pin. It had a bulging over-large head trailing a length of long fine wire.

  He’d watched enough TV to know a tracking device when he saw one. Detective Diaz had clapped him there on the shoulder as they’d parted earlier.

  “Someone wants to know where Wonder Guy goes, where I live.” So much for establishing trust with the police department. He sighed, envying Batman’s relationship with Commissioner Gordon.

  Serafina tsked. “Well, I’m afraid we must disappoint them.”

  Greg held up the tiny device before his eyes and turned on the heat vision. Without ever having tried to apply it before, he knew how to activate it. He turned the heat of his anger on the object before his eyes. Heat shimmered around the tiny device until the filament slumped into the head, and the head collapse into a shiny bead of metal. He flicked the bead to the gravel underfoot.

  Serafina smiled a prim smile. “I attempted to call you just now in order to draw your attention to a pair of young men who are presently breaking into cars in the parking ramps at the large market complex to the south of us.”

  “The Mall of America?”

  “Yes, dear. Once there you can follow the sound of breaking glass.”

  Chapter 10

  Gloria made it home in half the usual time. Amazing what a difference driving home at noon made, compared to rush hour. When she approached it, she balked at going into her own house. She got enough of Dad during her regular schedule. She couldn’t deal with him now, not with her world reeling and strange around her. She headed straight for Aggie’s, opened the back screen door, and stopped short, finding the inner door closed and unaccountably locked. It took a moment to digest the fact of this barrier between her and her goal.