The Superhero's Murder

by James Damm

  When Juliet next awoke her head was clearer, and the darkness had lifted. A wide window to the side had by this point illuminated the room somewhat. Rather than a hotel, she was in a hospital and judging by the faint granite sheen over the outside world, she gathered the day was just about breaking. Five or six in the morning was her best guess.

  Agony swept through her body as soon as Juliet dared to lean forward. Her chest tightly bandaged, she guessed she’d broken a rib or two. Letting a hand slide over her body, Juliet found her head similarly wrapped and a cast on her right arm. Left eye swollen, lips dry and cracked, Juliet was a hell of a state. Without a mobile phone or screen in reach, she felt useless and limp where she lay.

  In immense pain, Juliet hauled herself to her feet and staggered away from the bed. There was no private room, and in her open ward the other five patients looked fast asleep. Yet as she manoeuvred her way out of the main door, a startled Tom jumped to his feet. In a chair outside, he’d been snoozing.

  “What are you doing up?” he half-yelled before stifling his voice. “You should be in bed.”

  “My legs work just fine,” Juliet sneered. “We’re going for a coffee.”

  Knowing the battle probably wasn’t worth happening, Tom acquiesced as Juliet dragged herself down the empty corridors. Her estimation of five in the morning proved correct. The odd nurse on night duty wandered the halls, but they had the place to themselves aside from that.

  “So what happened?” Juliet said, breaching the subject. “I heard a bomb.”

  “No bomb,” replied Tom as he ambled by her side. “Someone left a bag unattended. A member of the public swore blind they saw wires. Everybody was tense, on alert and in a panic. Emotions running that high. It was foolish to have something so public and so soon. One soldier with a gun misfired his weapon at nobody and in error, and the whole circus exploded. Crushes, trampling as everyone tried to escape what turned out to be a figment of their imagination. Eighty injured ranging from severe to critical conditions, luckily no dead. It was madness.”

  Eighty injured over nothing. Juliet had no words. Earlier she had wanted to joke about her bandages and cast, but not now. Remembrance of the weight, the rushing feet over her body and the sensation of air being trampled out her lungs remained. Pure isolated luck left her alive.

  The pair took residence on some hard, plastic seats. “Coffee, white with two sugars,” Juliet joked to a stone-faced Tom. “Enough to make you sick.”

  “They’ve got the killer,” Tom stated as he choked down a sip of vending machine coffee, still hardened to any attempt at humour. “Pretty much certain at this stage.”

  “Who was it?” Juliet replied, deflating a little with the news.

  “A drug addict, by the name of Casper Smith,” Tom answered. “Police arrested him in this hospital a few hours ago. A member of the public reported a dead body. They had found him overdosed in an alleyway soaked in blood. Turned out he was very much alive and when paramedics found no deep wounds on him, they got in touch with the police.”

  “John Fitzgerald’s blood?” Juliet questioned.

  Tom nodded before chugging down another mouthful. “Next thing that nabbed him was an image on CCTV of him in the area. This corroborated an eyewitness account placing having him sleeping rough in an empty office building the last week nearby. When nurses first sobered him up enough, he sobbed and drooled enough of an apology for what he did. Guy was so strung out he didn’t know his victim was John Fitzgerald.”

  “You really buy that?” Juliet scorned. “That some strung-out drug addict with a broken bottle could kill John Fitzgerald?”

  “It’s both anticlimactic and implausible,” Tom admitted. “And yet believable at the same time.”

  When Juliet raised a surprised eyebrow behind the bandages, Tom continued.

  “All along the murder scene didn’t sit right. Even if it was an inside job or an assassination, the murder was sloppy, brutal, slow and barbaric. If you would kill someone famed for being able to deflect bullets and regenerate, you would not take your time, not chance a broken bottle in some alleyway. There’s more to it, no doubt about it, and the murderer we have in our midst is not the same man responsible for John’s powers being switched off. But as for the act itself? I think we have him.”

  “I want to see him,” Juliet stated. “I don’t care who you have to talk to, I want to get inside that head and see for myself.”

  “And nobody will stop you,” Tom acknowledged. “It was one of the first things I asked, and I’ve heard nothing but encouragement since.”

  The answer fell flat in Juliet’s stomach. There should not have been the surprise in part of her they had got the killer so soon, the manpower and attention like no case before it. Yet disappointment weighed inside her. The victory was sealed elsewhere before Juliet contributed to it. The climax was less thrilling, less monumental than she could have predicted. Doubt still plagued her, yet the government’s willingness to read the alleged offender’s mind diluted the concern.

  “Take me outside?” Juliet quizzed after a moment of continued silence.

  “I don’t think you should.”

  “Let’s go anyway,” Juliet said, swallowing the last of her coffee and scanning up and down the corridor in search of an exit sign.

  The walk was a silent affair. There was something on Tom’s mind and Juliet knew it was brewing, threatening to spill out. As he offered his sheepskin coat to cover Juliet’s gown she complied without objection and let whatever was to come happen. Outside, the early morning was cool, the air light and clear as it filled Juliet’s lungs. Summer would turn into autumn before too long, and with it the light, early mornings would disappear.

  “I’m going to request a transfer,” Tom said after a long inhale of air. “Once you’re back on your feet.”

  The words took Juliet by surprise, something of a rarity with her ability. A clanging headache, fatigue and the general battering were taking their toll.

  “It’s something I’ve been mulling over a while, even before this case,” Tom continued. “I think it’d be good for both of us.”

  Somewhat stunned, Juliet’s follow-up took a second. “So what’s the plan? Go back to being a frustrated detective?”

  “Frustrated maybe,” Tom acknowledged, sweeping an arm in front of him. “But as a detective, at least I knew my place in all this.”

  “Is it because of what happened with Mike?”

  “Maybe it’s an age thing, a midlife crisis of sorts. I look back on why I joined the force in the first place. I was an idealist at heart. I believed in the police, I still do, that the uniform and institution meant something more than the individuals who wore it. To protect people in their own lives, uphold the rule of law and maybe, just maybe, leave the country in a better place than what I inherited. As a detective, reality tainted that optimism. Too long spent in case files of murders, rapes and violent crime. I needed something bigger, hope, and then you came along.”

  For a moment Juliet stared forward, out at the hospital car park and the far beyond green. “I’m not sure what you want me to say,” she finally stated. “Do you want me to convince you not to transfer, to continue working with me?”

  “I think we’re way past that,” Tom confirmed, a saddened tone in his voice. “This has been coming a while.”

  “The end of an era,” Juliet smiled, though the tension in the air was not one of pleasant nostalgia.

  “Why do you do it, Juliet?” Tom asked, the bitterness clear. “The actions that move beyond the acceptable line.”

  Bandaged up, black and blue from bruises, Juliet tried to joke the statement away. “Sometimes it happens to me, you know?”

  “I mean it, Juliet,” Tom stated. “Nearly a decade we’ve worked together, yet now and then, when I finally think I understand you, something comes out the woodwork to surprise me.”

  “What happened with Mike shouldn’t have surprised you,” Juliet replied. “I will do everything
I can to solve a case. Even if that means stepping over the line.”

  “And what about the cost of it?” Tom pressed. “Say they pull you off the case, you never work with Ethan again. What then? You’ll have forced yourself into a place where you can’t help anymore.”

  “I can read minds, Tom,” Juliet responded. “There’s never a case of this size they won’t want me involved in.”

  “Are you sure about that? What about Will Bowman?”

  Will Bowman, the reason for the distance in the last year between Juliet and Tom. The case that had changed everything. Hayley Wilson, a girl no older than five, was taken from her mum in a park. They interviewed witnesses, checked CCTV and scrutinised the local sex offenders list to no progress. Twenty-four hours turned into a week, which turned into two, and everyone involved in the case knew it was a body they were looking for. The girl was impossibly cute, her image haunting the front pages of newspapers. Freckles, enormous auburn eyes and a smile in every photo. Joy. Juliet looked at this girl and knew she was somebody who brought joy to all those around her.

  “I became obsessed with it. I couldn’t sleep knowing this kid was out there. Usually I slept just fine, but something about those innocent eyes drew me in too deep,” Juliet admitted. “But you tell a member of the public what I did, nine out of ten would accept it.”

  “And what evidence do we have that he did it, Juliet?” Tom questioned. “Bar your account, how do we know Will was responsible? How do we know your actions were justice against the right person?”

  Bowman was the man brought in and fitted up by the police. A cleaner at the nursery Hayley attended most mornings. It had to be somebody Hayley knew and trusted, or there would have been a scene. He’d been giving the detectives nothing, an iron defence and his house, car and place of work said nothing either. To the untrained eye, he was clean, so they sent Juliet in to be sure. As soon as she saw the suspect Juliet knew, spotting an instinct and a darkness in Bowman’s eyes.

  “We found the body, right?”

  Anything mentioned in the interview drew a blank. Bowman knew the girl and recognised her, but there was nothing violent and nothing sexual in his thoughts. That’s when the image of Hayley kept popping up in her head. Juliet saw this guy sat there, an almost self-satisfied look on his face.

  “You dug deeper than you should. People’s brains are wired tight and the longer you were in there, the more pressure he was under. You squeezed him until he soiled his pants, and he was verbally unresponsive. Well, your instinct was right, and the police gained the location of the body. But at what cost Juliet?”

  “Are you forgetting he tried to burn the body and chopped her limbs off? A body so charred up the parents couldn’t identify it as little Hayley. They had to use dental records.”

  “And yet Will Bowman was still innocent until proved guilty. The evidence of a body gained when the suspect became temporarily comatose meant nothing. The entire case was about to be thrown out, the man walking free. So while he’s sat there in court, you went a step further than mind-reading. Didn’t you?”

  “I get in his head right there and then in court. No digging this time, I carve right in and dump that image in the front and centre of that sick fuck’s head.”

  Tom’s face darkened. He knew what was coming next.

  “It meant he couldn’t bury her face. Every object reminded him of her, every face created that image of the burnt-out body and it twisted him up inside. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. A week later he hanged himself in his cell.”

  “You murdered him, Juliet,” Tom stated. “You forced a man to kill himself and I lied to protect you.”

  “It was justice,” Juliet insisted.

  “Revenge,” Tom replied firmly. “One potential child murderer got what he deserved, but what was the cost?”

  “There was no potential about it,” was Juliet’s retort. “How else did he know where the body was?”

  “We’ll never know,” Tom confirmed. “Because he killed himself before any court case could finish or due process could take place. Just because you can read a man’s mind, doesn’t know you know the man.”

  “I brought Will Bowman down when the justice system was about to fail,” Juliet answered.

  “What did Hayley’s parents think? Did you ever read their minds to find out?”

  Juliet’s face momentarily flushed beet-red. “If you felt so passionately about it, why lie?”

  “My sin to own,” Tom admitted. “I could have killed your career, but what would I have achieved? Robbed the world of what it had left to gain of a special talent? I believe in redemption, second chances. Watching you burn out into nothing would have been a waste.”

  “So you made the same judgement I did,” Juliet confirmed. “You broke the rules for your own interpretation of right and wrong.”

  “True,” Tom agreed. “But I will not be a part of it again. I believe in the justice system, every right and every wrong within it. I can’t be complicit in eroding its core again.”

  “What I did with John’s father wasn’t the same,” Juliet insisted.

  “Wasn’t it? Mike may have gone away and gathered us a piece of information that helped the case,” Tom explained. “But you told a vulnerable individual he had failed as a father and his dead son was a drug addict. Until the day he dies, that knowledge is a part of him. Who were you to judge and who were you to decide?”

  Juliet remained silent for a considerable length of time as Tom offered nothing further. She willed him to move, but he looked at her with his mind blank.

  “The power you have to read minds, it’s special,” Tom mulled aloud. “Whatever comes next for you, all I ask is don’t abuse it. Don’t waste it. Used in the right way, it’s a force for good, far more than anybody like me can ever offer. Continue down this wrong path and the public out there will fear it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “The drink is killing you,” the doctor stated, his voice grave and accompanied with judgement. In a gown stripped of any dignity, Mike had awoken in a hospital bed. There’d been another collapse, a blackout, and once again another doctor, another face he’d forget, gave him familiar advice. The medical world had long ago stopped begging Mike, only resigned advice left to offer. Over the years, Mike had discarded the pamphlets he’d received a thousand times. The meetings, the stories, and the advice meant well. But such advice held little sway with Mike. He didn’t want their help.

  How long had it been since John died, since the events in London? Days, weeks, a month? Mike could no longer say. The drink robbed time, any anchoring to it or memory of it. One drink followed another, and by god had he hit the bottle hard.

  In London, Mike had awoken to the sound of a police officer’s voice. Curled up on a park bench, head banging and wearing a suit, the officer had asked him if he was okay. Mike explained he wasn’t, that he was John Fitzgerald’s father and that in the chaos at the eulogy he had become separated from his escort. The officer radioed, and it wasn’t long before a car picked him up. A distraught Charlotte met him at a police station, apologising for losing him. Mike explained it wasn’t the young lady’s fault. Charlotte explained in return that there had been an accidental gunshot, a crush and injured people. She thought he might have been one of them.

  More figures appeared, more senior than Charlotte. The black man introduced as the senior investigating officer offered his joy first. The delight was bright in his eyes; Ethan, if Mike remembered his name correctly.

  “We got him,” he said, a firm hand landing on Mike’s shoulder. “We got the bastard that killed your son.”

  A sea of beaming faces, gritted teeth and vengeful smiles. Mike could not join them in their pleasure. As they moved away, the floor beneath Mike fell away, his knees crumpled like he had heard the news all over again and he clenched a hand to his chest. Faces blurred, and the surroundings softened. Mike’s eyes opened again only when he was in a hospital. That was the first time. A handful since.
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br />   The face of John’s killer, a mugshot from a previous stint in prison, sat front and centre of every channel. A scrawny man, gaunt features with greasy, wiry hair stared back at him. A face ugly and yellowed. Broken teeth and gums. The face of Casper Smith was one you didn’t want to look at for too long. The man didn’t look like a murderer; he looked like the man huddled in a sleeping bag you flicked your eyes away from as he begged for change. A person who had slipped off the edge of the surface, Mike found himself hard-pressed to hate the face before him. Maybe it’s because he saw himself in the expression too. Part of him wanted a pantomime villain, an evil face that encouraged revulsion. A foreign world leader or conspiracy would have been easier to stomach. But just as the killing was amateurish, so was its artist. Mike could barely believe it had ended so cheaply.

  After a full night’s rest, followed by some blood samples and swabs, the doctors and Charlotte said Mike could go – there was a chauffeur-driven car to take him home. Talk of the court case, and a public funeral fell on empty ears. Mike just wanted to go home.

  On his return Mike entered a tidy house, as the police officer had promised, with a fully stocked fridge thrown in. Almost as soon as Mike had reached London, he was on his way back the same way, Charlotte’s business card and his house keys in his pocket.

  For countless days Mike hit the drink hard. As if out of practice, he tore through whatever he could get his hands on. Pale ales to whiskey to bottles of wine in a sitting. Every few drinks he’d crawl to the toilet, sometimes not even that far, and empty his stomach in time for another round. Curtains drawn, the poisons flowed through him. Between the drink there was sleep and scraping together of meals, but Mike quickly forgot what life without hangovers and headaches felt like.