Superpowers (16 page)

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"She hit her head," Mary Beth said.

"Boom!" Caroline said. "Up, up, and bam! Bang! Pow!"

"I'm going to take her downstairs," Mary Beth said. "Charlie, will you help me?"

"Why would you need—oh. Sure." Charlie whispered something to Jack as they helped Caroline through the doorway and started down the stairs.

"Is she going to be OK?" Scott asked.

"Of course," Jack said. "Mary Beth's practically a doctor. She'll be fine."

"I hope so." Scott twisted open a bottle of beer, but the taste only made him realize how drunk he already was. "Seems like the party's kind of done," he said.

"Yeah," said Jack.

"Happy birthday, man." Scott remembered that he hadn't even given Jack a card. "You want this beer?"

"No thanks. I think I might walk up to Cap Centre and get a snack."

"OK. I guess I'm going to bed."

Scott waited until Jack was gone to check Charlie's room for magazines.

SUNDAY

Ray knew the doorbell was working—he could hear it ringing through the door. He fingered the button again.

Ed gave up on his cigarette and ground it out on the doorstep. "Maybe he's out," he said. "Maybe he's flying patrol."

Ed was grinning, which was something Ray often wished he wouldn't do. Ed was compact and kept his head shaved, which along with his blond eyebrows made him look sort of alien. He dressed better than he should be able to afford, in silk shirts and ties and Italian shoes and a leather jacket for every day of the week. He and Ray weren't partners, exactly. They worked their own cases but helped each other out when necessary.

"It's early," Ray said. "Let's give him a couple of minutes."

He rang the bell again and heard someone swearing inside the house. It was a nice split-level house, with a deck and a pool out back. Recently painted, with two cars—a Mercedes and a Toyota 4Runner—in the attached garage.

The man who answered the door was exactly what Ray had expected. Six-foot-three, about 270 pounds, forty-one years old, heavily bearded. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he yelled, launching spittle from his lips. "I became a goddamned atheist so I could sleep in on Sunday mornings. You'd better have a . . ."

He stopped talking when he saw their badges. "Sorry to disturb you so early, sir," Ray said, "but we have a few questions. Are you Dr. Frank Nelson?"

"What's this about?"

"Can we come in?"

"Is it necessary?"

"No. We can stand here on your doorstep while your neighbors come out their front doors to get their newspapers, and you can spend the next month trying to convince them that we weren't the police."

"I don't care what they think," Nelson said, but he stepped back to let them enter. "Is this going to take long?"

"We'll see." Ray pulled a plastic bag from his jacket. "Is this your driver's license?"

Nelson took the bag and squinted at the card inside. "Yes. I lost that three months ago. Where did you find it?"

"At the scene of a crime."

"Hey, I wasn't— When did this thing happen?"

"Last night."

"I was at a birthday party last night. My wife's aunt turned seventy." He handed the bag back to Ray. "I don't think I can help you."

"You've had your license replaced?"

"Yes."

"Can we see it?"

Nelson sighed. "Hold on. It's in the bedroom."

He left the room, which seemed empty in the absence of his bulk. Ed looked over the pictures on the mantel. "No capes here," he said.

"They don't wear capes," Ray said.

"Ray. You don't think this guy has anything to do with the All-Stars."

"I'm just following evidence."

"Why?"

"Ed, I don't want to have this conversation again."

"I think you're jealous because these All-Stars are doing our job better than we can. You want to be the supercop in town. You resent that they can do things you can't, and you want to put a stop to it."

"Spare me the psych evaluation, Ed. You're just lazy."

"OK. I'm lazy and I like the fact that I've got some superheroes helping me out with my job. They stop the bad guys, they catch the bad guys, they give us the leads we need to find the bad guys, and lock them up. Ray, nobody tries to lock up Spider-Man."

"Yes, they do."

"Well, Superman then. I say we let it lie. They're not hurting anyone who doesn't deserve it."

"Who decides who deserves it?" Ray asked, and was grateful that Dr. Nelson's reappearance stopped Ed from rattling off some pat answer. Ray knew that Ed wanted to find the All-Stars, too, but only because he was curious. The thing Ed loved about the job was finding out secrets, going through other people's dirty laundry. It wasn't a particularly admirable trait, but it made him a pretty good detective.

"Here," said Dr. Nelson. The license had been renewed on April 24. Ray didn't bother to call it in.

"You say you lost the other ID?"

"Yes. I was using an ATM downtown, I think it must have fallen out of my wallet."

"You're sure it wasn't stolen?"

"All my credit cards and cash were still there."

"This was in April?"

"Yes. My wife and I went to a concert at the Civic Center."

"Did your son go?" Ed asked.

Nelson turned to Ed as if he'd forgotten he was there. "No. He doesn't care for Bach."

Ed picked up a picture from the mantel. "How old is he?"

"Seventeen."

"Looks older. Looks a lot like you, actually."

"Yeah, a lot of people say that."

"So you don't suppose he might have slipped that license out of your wallet one night back in April? Maybe to buy some beer for his buddies?"

Nelson's jaw clenched. "No. Steven wouldn't do that."

"Here's the thing." Ed set the picture back up on the mantel. "Who'd carry around a driver's license that isn't their own? Unless you've got some security clearance that we don't know about, it would probably be in order to buy alcohol. That means a college student, maybe, or a high school kid."

"So that leaves you with, what, forty thousand suspects in the area?"

"Maybe. Except that I don't think many kids could pass for six-three, two-seventy. Which makes me wonder where Steven was last night."

"At the same birthday party with my wife and I."

"And he stayed there all night? He didn't leave a little early to hook up with his friends?"

"He left at about nine-thirty," said Nelson.

"You're sure of the time?" Ray asked.

"I'm sure." He looked from Ed to Ray and back again. "Any more questions?"

"Yes," Ray said. "I wonder if you know the date of the concert, the night you think you lost the license."

"Not offhand, I don't. I suppose I could find out."

"That would be very helpful," said Ray.

Nelson frowned and lumbered out of the room again.

Fifteen minutes later Ed was driving them back to the station. "This is a dead end," he said. "We're never going to know exactly what happened at that place last night. Those kids aren't going to tell us the truth, and the girl will never come forward."

"We don't even know if there was a girl," Ray said.

"You're just proving my point. Look at the evidence, Ray. Two shattered doors, five bruised engineering students and some underwear that may or may not have come from a rape victim who's nowhere to be found."

"And a driver's license."

"Which might belong to any number of possible accomplices, victims, or vigilantes. Which may have been lying in that basement for three months. Did you ask our victims about it?"

"Don't call them victims," Ray said.

"All right. Our righteously beaten possible rapists. Did you ask any of them about the ID?"

"Not yet. I wanted to have something to brace them with."

"Well, my friend, you've got nothing."

"I've got an eyewitness who claims he saw a girl fly through both those doors before nearly putting him and his housemates into a coma."

"The same eyewitness claims that the panties we found had been there for months, and that he and his well-behaved friends were just watching TV Let's see if his story changes when the lab comes back with a positive for semen on that couch."

"It probably will."

"You're damn right it will. And you'll have nothing. Ray, if Blue Star was there, she was doing some good."

"She put those kids in the hospital," Ray said.

"Fuck, Ray, they're rapists! We may never prove it, but we both know it. If I was the one with superpowers and a mask, those kids wouldn't be breathing."

"Would that make you a hero, or just a murderer?"

"Tell me that if some little prick raped Harriet, you wouldn't want him dead. Don't give me the Dukakis answer, either. I know you."

"Fine. I might kill him, yes. But then I'd expect you to arrest me."

Ed laughed so hard that Ray thought he was going to drive off the road. Ray shook his head, and then laughed, too.

"You're a hell of a guy, Ray." Ed turned into the station parking lot. "A hell of a guy."

There was too much to do at the station for them to be out chasing phantom leads, but they both had needed to get out for a while. Ray made some notes in his All-Stars file, then spent the rest of the shift writing reports and taking a confession from a grandmother who'd just been nailed for murdering a transient in the early 1960s. The mysterious know-it-all that all the detectives were calling Sherlock (whom Ray was convinced was somehow connected to the All-Stars) had fingered her in the latest mailing. Sherlock had provided a detailed account of the incident. Ray had to use every word to convince her that she was caught.

When she started talking it was in a monotone, not looking up from the purse in her lap. The transient had stayed with her one night while her husband was away on business. They'd had consensual sex, but in the morning she'd panicked, certain one of the neighbors would see him leaving. She'd drowned him in the tub, wrapped the body in old bedclothes, and dumped it in Lake Monona. The body had been recovered six weeks later, but was on record as an accidental drowning, possibly alcohol-related.

She asked if she would be out for her grandson's birthday on Thursday. Ray told her he didn't think so. She nodded calmly and put up no resistance as she was cuffed and led from the room.

Ray looked at his watch. It was four-thirty. He was supposed to have picked up Harriet at four.

He turned the old woman's file over to the desk sergeant and signed out.

"You have a phone message from your daughter," the desk sergeant said.

"I'm sure I do," Ray said. "I'm on my way right now."

He made the drive from the station to Harriet's place in ten minutes. Harriet was talking on the phone as she answered the door. "It sounds serious," she said, "but are you sure you need me? My dad's here. We're supposed to do a movie night."

Her editor, Ray decided. Some kind of story emergency? That seemed unlikely. The paper was publishing once a week for the summer. He sat down at the kitchen table and immediately wished he hadn't. Getting up again would be a chore.

"Can't Jack? ... I know, but this is supposed to be my night off."

Ray closed his eyes. This was karma, he supposed. Plenty of times he'd had to cancel on her, when a case was eating him up inside.

"Don't lay that guilt trip on me. I've been doing my part and— yes.
Fine.
I'll be out in a couple of minutes." Harriet lowered the phone and looked for someplace to slam it down, but it was a cordless, and the best she could do was to emphatically punch the button.

"You're canceling?" Ray said.

"I'm sorry, Daddy. It's ..."

"The paper," he finished for her. "I know. Should we try for later in the week?"

"Wednesday," Harriet said.

"Wednesday's good," said Ray and hauled himself out of the chair. "I'll let you go."

Harriet kissed him on the cheek. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too, honey."

Ray walked back to his car. Something about work was bobbing up from his subconscious. He knew from long practice not to think about it, to just let it emerge on its own.

He turned up the police radio as he started the car. "—peat, all vehicles in the vicinity of—"

A truck pulled out of the driveway next to Harriet's house and honked its horn.

"—hostage situation. Officers under fire, gunman believed to have three hostages. All vehicles proceed to corner of Harper and Grove."

Ray heard something slam and looked up to see the truck driving off, with Harriet in the passenger seat. A blond boy with a crew cut was driving.

Ray pulled into the street going the opposite way, half-listening to the radio. The hostage mess was on the other side of town, and the area would be swarming with police and sheriff's deputies in about thirty seconds. If he was needed, it would be somewhere else, while half the force was dealing with the gunman.

He stopped for gas. It wasn't the ID. Ed was right, that was a dead end. No fingerprints, a campus full of suspects. He'd have better luck finding the girl who'd been assaulted than he would finding the kid who'd been using Dr. Nelson's ID for the last three months.

He paid and pulled into the drive-thru line at the Taco Bell next door. It was fatty and it gave him gas, but he was too lazy to cook tonight and too hungry to even wait for microwave food.

"Stand by," said the dispatcher. "Stand by . . . the gunman is in custody. The hostages are unharmed. Gunman's accomplice also in custody. Green Star has been sighted in the area, other All-Stars may be nearby. The All-Stars are considered very dangerous. Do not attempt to engage the All-Stars. Report any sightings—"

Jack. Harriet had mentioned a Jack on the phone. Red Star's name was Jack. Green Star was a small woman with reddish brown hair. So was Harriet's roommate Mary Beth. Blue Star had dark hair and tanned skin, like Harriet's other roommate, Caroline.

The blond boy in the truck—a couple of witnesses had mentioned a Yellow Star, a skinny kid with moppish blond hair. And Ray realized now that he'd seen the kid before, in the barbershop.