The Superhero's Murder

by James Damm

  I hope you are well and that this letter hasn’t come too late. The last thing I wanted was to have you worrying about the last couple of years. I needed enough space and distance to start afresh and hopefully the small paragraphs show how much you helped me. To repeat what I said earlier, I can never repay you enough. I wish I had the confidence to deliver this in person, but Bellington still brings back too many evil memories for me. If I am ever in the area, I will knock on your door and thank you properly in person.

  I hope you are well and that we meet again soon. Thank you for everything.

  John

  Putting down the letter, Linda allowed Mike to let the words sink in for a moment. Leeds and a job as a cleaner. Somebody who Mike didn’t recognise, a quiet voice that was happy, wrote the letter. Yet this wasn’t the story that Mike knew, not the tale the media had told. Why the difference?

  “They said he joined the army at eighteen,” Linda interjected. “I’ve checked that several times. His military record is all up there online. But John wrote this letter at nineteen – there’s not even a hint of the military on there. I don’t know why, but I think the government or John made it up later.”

  “Have you ever told anyone else?”

  “My loyalty was to him and will continue to be,” Linda assured. “But if you’re to follow his story once he left here, a stint in the army is not the place to go. Leeds is the place to look.”

  Mike sat back in his seat. Why would the government and media lie? A cover-up? If John wasn’t in the military in those interim years, where was he?

  “Did you ever see him again, after that night?”

  For years Mike thought about reaching out, going for a coffee or a sandwich, but never did. There was always an excuse ready: he’d be too busy, it’d do more harm than good or that he’d not reply. The dilemma was one that felt like it would outlast Mike rather than John. The longer time went on, the less a reunion made sense.

  When Mike did not answer, Linda could only shake her head. “I’ve given up trying to understand how men like you work,” she sighed. “It’s obvious – pick up the phone, stop drinking, just stop trying to destroy yourself for no reason, but you know that and I do. The ideal time to make amends was any time in the past ten years. Now the moment has passed.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m thankful for what you’ve shared with me tonight,” Mike admitted as he finished his water and rose to his feet. “You owed me nothing.”

  Linda stayed sat at the table. Since the revelation about the illiteracy, her eyes had taken on a different look to the one that greeted him when he first entered. “I think you were a nasty piece of work Mike – whatever your demons there’s no excuse for what you did to those boys and Maggie. For a decade I’ve wanted to give you a piece of my mind. I saw you cross roads to avoid me or bury your head in shame. But now I’m here, it’s not all it lived up to be. You look ill, Mike, sick. You’ve killed yourself enough over it all.”

  “I’m not after anyone to save me,” Mike said as he left. “I want to find out about my boy.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her generation’s Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, or Gavrilo Princip. The man who murdered a superhero sat before Juliet. Would they ever know how much the world’s future had changed due to one person’s actions? Yet the figure of Casper Smith didn’t seem notable, a face not destined to be in the history books or one that had shaken every government the world over.

  Mousy hair, long and tangled, hung over Casper’s eyes, occasionally swept away with a timid hand to reveal even more nervous eyes. A lawyer sat beside him, a portly fellow who was court-appointed. With no money to his name, no lawyer wanted to stake their reputation on somebody so reviled. Already the whispers were that Casper planned to plead guilty early, not let the situation escalate to trial and thus face further damnation in the media. A drug addict with an extensive conviction list of theft and shoplifting, there weren’t any allies left for the man opposite.

  For Juliet the eulogy resulted in three broken ribs, and a fractured left wrist – a lucky escape. After another day, she could return home for some rest and, cooped up inside, away from work, she found herself bored. The shower water stung every cut and slice on her body, and Juliet clenched her teeth through the pain. She would repair, it’d take just a little time. Keen to get back to work, her first task was to meet with John Fitzgerald’s alleged killer.

  Part of the interview was to show a willingness of the client to make amends. Already the evidence pointed to a botched killing, a manslaughter that was unplanned rather than a trained assassin. Yet other mysteries remained, even now they had their killer. The drugs in the system, how John came to be in a rough end of town that fateful night, and the biggest unknown of all relating to how his abilities stopped working. Extensive blood tests and autopsies on anyone with abilities did not establish a link, or even a hint at some explanation. Already scientists ruled the heroin out of the equation for stopping the regenerative abilities, even in its large quantities.

  “What do you remember about the night he died?” Juliet asked as softly and tactfully as she could. There was little need for proof anymore.

  Casper, his skin pale like paper, looked nervous and worn. The file before Juliet described him being thirty years old, but realistically he looked over forty. Homelessness and drug abuse had taken their toll, a shadow hanging permanently in his eyes and words as he spoke. In his mind his thoughts were frantic, skipping and hard to pin down. Running low on both sleep and withdrawing from the drugs he usually relied on, Casper had spent the last night in fear. Fellow prisoners were heckling at him, and was therefore being kept separate. Even the worst criminals had time for John Fitzgerald. He saved lives.

  “For the past two years spice and heroin have been all I’ve chased,” Casper slurred as his eyes stared into Juliet’s shoulder rather than her face. “You’d know what it is better than me, but it works and it works so well my life has been skipping from one high to the next. I don’t remember what happened in between.”

  “So you don’t remember killing him?”

  Casper scratched his chest. “All I remember is waking up in hospital. They found me covered in blood and presumed someone had stabbed me. Turned out it wasn’t mine. It was his. They say I killed him.”

  Juliet stared at the dull eyes before her for any sense of a lie. “And do you think you killed him?”

  Casper shrugged. “It’s a blur. I remember lashing out, maybe with a bottle at someone. It’s where all the evidence points, spice makes you… me, violent and if I felt cornered or provoked it’s probably what went down. I guess you’re wanting to know how I did it? Well, it won’t have been my doing.”

  Juliet looked towards the glass with desperate eyes. Not a lie in his voice or a fib in his mind. The killer before Juliet was as much a part of the death of John Fitzgerald as the broken glass bottle. No memory of the event, the culprit answered for, the why now redundant but the how far from becoming clear.

  The face-to-face chat lasted ten minutes as Juliet breezed through every nook and cranny of the story. Police suspected John had confronted a drug-induced Casper attempting to break into a car. In a panic and with rising hostility, Casper had fled down an alleyway only to come face to face again with John again. High on drugs and in a bleak area, Casper found the nearest object he could, a bottle, and had vague recollections of smashing it against a wall before repeatedly stabbing someone with it. Only as he woke up the next day, covered in blood, did he have absent recollections of the night before.

  Slender in frame, clothes hanging off the body, Casper was an unremarkable figure. The truth beneath the surface, however, would become apparent to even the most untrained of eyes. Casper’s eyes were a little too wide as they rested, intense and forever flicking. A void lay slightly behind the mask as Juliet saw an individual broken and crazed by years of drug abuse. The toll they’d taken was clear in his speech and mental health, as through rotting teeth he
stumbled over simple sentences and ideas.

  “How could this man have killed John Fitzgerald?” Juliet stated to Ethan upon exiting the interview. With a certainty she knew that he had, the face that lingered in the mind was that of Lee Harvey Oswald. An unassuming-looking man whose actions would transcend and define the era they lived in.

  “DNA evidence, a motive, and a full confession,” Ethan beamed, the relief in his body language obvious. “We solved the case, Juliet, we’ve done our job. We caught the killer.”

  “Don’t you care about how?” Juliet exclaimed. “How one day John can go from deflecting bullets to dying from stab wounds?”

  “That’s not my job, Juliet,” Ethan confirmed. “They asked me to catch the killer, and that’s exactly what I have done, in just over a day.”

  “Just like the rest of them,” Juliet scorned, unheard as she stalked away. Ethan had been no different from the other detectives of the past, like Tom, obsessed with the system. The truth or pursuing a crime all the way to its conclusion, was an alien concept for those in the field. Police cracking down on easy wins to hit arrest numbers, prosecutors dropping risky cases in desperation to hit conviction targets, and detectives doing the bare minimum to ‘solve’ a case. A numbers game, the victims forgotten, the truth irrelevant.

  Tom had left sooner than either of them expected following the hospital visit, a new partner not yet assigned. Until then Juliet had requested some annual leave, to recover from her injuries and get back into shape. Helen Becton, the head of Juliet’s branch of employment, approved it herself.

  That was how Juliet came to find herself outside Middleton Court for the first time in two years. Sat in her rented car, Juliet had been in the car park for over ten minutes. The drive had been a continuous one from London, with little traffic and most of the day ahead of her. The grounds of the hall were beautiful and in bloom, a well-maintained path around the complex and a pond sat before her, the water shining in the summer sun. They forecasted it to be a scorcher. Yet Juliet willed herself to be anywhere else in the world.

  A part of Juliet hoped that the message at the desk would be that he was on a day trip. Juliet decided not to ring ahead. Yet he didn’t really go on day trips in recent years. The wheelchair and lack of mobility made such outings a burden for the staff. The home was no poor existence. A purpose-built nursing home for those requiring top levels of individual care, friendly, professional staff provided the patient-centred nursing care. There was a high ratio of staff to residents. All this Juliet had read in the pamphlet many years ago and picked this one. The government covered the bill.

  One step at a time Juliet pulled herself out of the car and in the reception’s direction. Her reaction was laughable, like a child nervous as they entered a new school year, yet the anxiety was thick and real. This was outside of her comfort zone.

  “Graham Reynolds?” Juliet asked softly to the lady at front desk. “Which is his room?”

  “Down the hall and on the right-hand side, past the dining room,” came the soft, smiling reply.

  As Juliet tensed, she began the lengthy walk down the corridors. The retirement home was still; those she passed, whether beaming nurses or delicate residents, took their time with every step. Little need to rush in an environment with no deadlines.

  During the drive, repeatedly, Juliet had imagined a knock and a nervous wait for a response. Yet when she reached her father’s door it was open, propped by a dog doorstop. Inside the room, it looked just as it had done in her memories. The furniture cut out of his bungalow home and pasted here in an alien room. White walls and cream carpets did little to blend with dark wooden furniture built for another life, time and place.

  The day he moved in came flooding back. The bungalow sold and any furniture not following Graham to the home sold with it. Her father had sobbed and begged not to leave, even after the sale. The old man had gripped her softly but as hard as he could muster on the sleeves. Please, his wide eyes willed with fear. He’d been found wandering in a dressing gown in the middle of the night, the forgetfulness getting worse and losing ability to even cook a proper meal. All the reasons were logical, but logic proved no answer to a man saying goodbye to his independence forever.

  Old then, and even older now. Her father was more fragile than Juliet could have once ever pictured him. On a comfy chair in the corner, a glaze to his eyes, they stared before him, his hands resting on his lap in a warm jumper and cord trousers. A pair of cosy slippers covered feet that had long since lost the ability to support him. Mouth agape to the point of drooling, Juliet flicked her eyes elsewhere. Anywhere.

  Shame dragged Juliet like a magnet towards her father. His eyesight had never been the best, and his senses were so dulled that it was only as she was right on top of him he realised he had a visitor.

  “Dad,” she whispered as she gripped his hands, internally wincing at how cold they felt in spite of his warm room.

  Head and eyes slowly moving to focus on the face before him, Graham raised a frail hand and stroked the side of her face. “Jane?” was the restful spoken word as his mouth stretched into a smile.

  “Your daughter, Juliet,” she corrected. The words were unaccompanied by an unexpected tremble.

  The face of Juliet’s father remained glazed. No thoughts stirred in response to her voice or name. The smile remained, however. Jane, he thought over and over. Jane.

  To pull away, Juliet grabbed a jug of water from the side, filling a glass. Raising it to her father’s lips, he gladly sipped it down. The silence was as it was last time as Juliet spoke. She made small talk about the weather and the home. Graham couldn’t grip onto her words anymore. He hadn’t been able to for a long time.

  With his thoughts loose and thin, Juliet did the talking for both of them. She told him about her life, her job, and the comings and goings with the John Fitzgerald case. Words stirred and developed in his head occasionally, recognition mostly. Words and sounds associated with long-forgotten moments fizzled to the surface before bubbling away a second later.

  “I was thinking about Mum the other day,” Juliet smiled before adding, “Jane.”

  “Jane,” Graham replied with a distant look in his eyes. “My beautiful wife.”

  “I was looking in the mirror and I reminded myself of her. Younger, like a photo that hung on the wall as a child. We never looked much alike, you and I, but I look back now and realise what a miniature version of her I was and still am. It’s funny how that works.”

  Graham nodded along with Juliet’s words, the association comforting. Her voice he recognised all right, her face sparking familiarity too. But like an object floating on the surface, the memory of Juliet was no longer rooted to anything solid – ever present but detached from the familiar day to day.

  Twelve years ago, it still felt so recent, but one look at her father reminded her how long ago it must have been. Once he had been strong, stern and a stable figure in her life. Conservative in both political ideology and life outlook, he had been firm on her need to be a lady, marry and settle down to raise a family. Christianity had been equally important, a moral compass was what society sorely lacked, he said, and a church visit every Sunday morning kept the soul in check.

  The news of her mother’s cancer had been a formal sit-down, the head of the family informing the daughter of the news. No comfort, no hugs. Graham had stiffened in his chair awkwardly as Juliet wept. It was Jane with the cancer, not them. They needed to be stronger, to allow for her to be weaker. Juliet had drawn back the tears, buried the emotion and been the solid foundation necessary for her mother.

  Yet cancer did not play according to any rules. It spread, and it had won. In the grief and the struggle afterwards, Juliet noticed a change within herself. Not the typical change that a sixteen-year-old went through, though there was that too. No, as Juliet isolated herself often in her room, alone in her own thoughts, she realised that she was accessing other people’s too. Emotions at first, then snippets of words and
the occasional sensation. No mother, a stern father, and an ability she had not yet understood since Juliet hid it from the world.

  On her birthday, Graham took Juliet for dinner. A fine, youthful woman now, her father wished for her to experience a lifestyle a strong and successful marriage could bring her. Alongside the multi-course meal and the fine wine was a box, a beautiful purple wrapped square with a bow.

  In the box was a cigar, a present from her father. The old man had loved them, a whisky and a cigar after dinner. The treats were his way of relaxing after a day in the city at work. Juliet recalled being sat at the table, fascinated, as her father watched as she twirled the cigar in her hand. After a moment he asked her, “Juliet, what country do you think makes the best cigars in the world?”

  “Cuba,” had been her answer after a moment’s thought. Everyone knew Cuban cigars were the best in the world.

  “Once,” her father nodded with a smile. “Then there was the revolution in Cuba and the country became communist, of sorts, and the United States put the country under a trade embargo. You are a woman now, Juliet. If you make the best product in the world and make lots of money, but suddenly one day you cannot even sell your product, what do you do?”

  “You move?” Juliet countered after a moment, pondering.

  “Exactly,” her father said with enthusiasm. “And that’s what the cigar-making masters did. Some to Florida, many to the Dominican Republic. Using their influence and connections, they left Cuba and took their business elsewhere. Yet today, if I was to ask the average person on the street who made the world’s best cigars, they would answer Cuba too. Even though for the past several decades, the masters that generated the reputation transferred elsewhere.”