Superpowers (23 page)

THURSDAY

Jack was there almost faster than thought, and Charlie wondered how fast thought was, exactly, and whether there was a delay in transmission like on a satellite interview on a news show. He wondered if by the time he knew Jack was on the scene, running up alongside the stolen car and slowing down—he actually had to
slow down
to match speed with the car, which was somehow more amazing to Charlie than the fact that he could feel the exertion of Jack's muscles, the sweat, the pressure in his lungs, and not just Jack but the shock and fear of the driver and his passenger, just two kids, one of them—Hector—thinking that his dad was going to beat the hell out of him if he got caught doing this, the other—George, but everyone called him Gee, he once put out a smoke on the back of a kid's neck for calling him George—thinking that this fag in the red tights was going down, he's not getting caught, he just needs to make it to Chicago and a bus ride back and he's home free—by the time Charlie sensed Jack slowing down to match speed with the Camry and telling the boys to pull over, was it actually all over? Had the car already stopped, were the boys stepping out of the car, was Jack restraining them for the cops?

No. At least, of the possible scenarios Charlie might have been slow to perceive, this was not the one that happened, because George didn't believe Jack could do anything to him. Or he did believe but wouldn't admit it to himself, because that would mean admitting that he mattered to himself. Teachers and police and shop owners and everyone who ever looked at him and then looked away as if he were dangerous, and thought he didn't care, they all knew he didn't matter, that the world would be better off without him. And he
didn't
care, except that this fag in the red tights wasn't looking away, he wasn't scared, he was talking to him like there were options, and George knew that wasn't true. So he cranked the wheel and tried to sideswipe the guy.

Jack's thoughts overwhelmed Charlie's, a flash-forward of images. Jack saw George cranking the wheel years before the car started to turn, saw the oncoming van weeks before it sounded its horn. He stopped. If he were as strong as Mary Beth, he could stop the collision, but as it was he stood frozen, waiting. Steel shells careened toward each other, about to crumple into a hot embrace, planets whirling toward a collision of dust and sparks and meat.

Except that then he saw it wasn't going to happen. George slammed the accelerator, but the van turned just slightly, and they passed within an inch of each other, the van dopplering away. The man in the van didn't feel drunk, now that the adrenaline was flowing. He drove away.

But the Camry kept moving toward the house on the other side of the street. George couldn't let go of the wheel, his foot was stuck to the floor. The Camry launched up over the curb and came down hard and swerved across the lawn of a darkened house.

Jack was moving again, thinking about how to get George and Hector out of the car. (He didn't know their names were George and Hector.) He felt a bit shaky. He wondered if pulling them out of the car before the impact might actually be more injurious than just letting things take their course. He wondered if their bodies could handle the strain.

All this wondering didn't translate into hesitation, because before the car struck the house Jack made up his mind. He opened the passenger-side door, pulled Hector out, and set him on the lawn next door. He felt nauseated. He dashed to the driver's side and removed George—the seat belt slowed him down—as the car was about to strike the stove. He had just set George next to Hector when he felt the first creeping hint of the explosion and wondered how fast he could really move.

Charlie didn't hear the explosion himself, but he saw it through multiple pairs of eyes, heard it in conscious and subconscious thoughts, felt it in the terrified awakenings of the neighbors.

Their surroundings were more vivid than his own, in that moment. He sat at the kitchen table in the new apartment, his eyes closed, listening to Scott making spaghetti. Scott was so desperate to be involved that he'd finally offered to make Charlie some dinner. Charlie was trying not to worry about Scott. He sat straight as a board because the pieces of his broken rib ground together when he slouched. He wished he could tell Jack about the people upstairs. He was a radio station in reverse, an audience of one to an entire world of talking heads. He was useless.

Jack ran toward the explosion, looking for the stairs. The lower floor was just the living room and kitchen, so if anyone was home they must be upstairs. Flame ballooned out of the stove like a Hubble photograph of some far-off celestial furnace, eternally stoked with gas giants and cold fire. Heat tickled Jack's skin as he found the staircase and climbed.

There were three doors upstairs. The first led to an office, the second to a bathroom. The third was the bedroom. The man and woman there were just waking from dreams about estranged friends and TV stars and falling out of trees.

Jack swept the blankets off the man and lifted him into his arms, cradled him close. The man was sleeping and warm. Jack hunched over him as he ran, shielding him from the bonfire heat of the explosion spreading amoebalike through the kitchen.

Caroline was a half-mile away, thinking that looking for something from the air sounded simple to people who had never done it. At least this time she was needling with a general description of what she was looking for, but she'd rather be flying to Devil's Lake or Door County or even the fucking Dells.

Jack ran through the kitchen once more, breathing cobwebs, the flames so strong that he was sure his costume was burning. They raced him up the stairs, traveling up the wallpaper, sneaking through cracks in the walls to find air. Jack gasped for a lungful of his own.

Charlie yelled at Scott to call 911 from his cell, and Scott knocked the olive oil into the sink with the wooden spoon, looking everywhere for his phone. Jack's thoughts came sharp and immediate. Charlie's heart pounded underneath his sore ribs.

Jack was afraid for himself and for the woman he had just lifted from the bed, cradling her head to his chest. It was the first time since before his powers that he'd felt like he could be hurt by anything. He wished that he could make her move as fast as him, make all of them move as fast as him, snap his fingers and bring the whole world back to full speed, instead of frozen like it was now.

At the top of the staircase he realized he couldn't go out that way. Heat and glow were creeping up, burning insect bites against his skin. He froze. His head spun and his eyes flicked from door to door and he smelled flesh on fire.

He ran for the window at the front end of the upstairs hall, not looking at the woman's skin, trying not to think about how much pain she was going to be in, trying not to think that if he hadn't been so goddamned cocky with those kids in the Camry none of this would be happening and these people who were just sleeping here peacefully wouldn't be about to lose their home and more. His lungs were stuffed with cotton and his legs were made of lead and his knees were held together with toothpicks, but he couldn't stop, he ran through the window and he didn't hear it shatter, he made a nod to gravity and fell forward until his foot met the face of the house. He ran to the ground and kept running toward St. Mary's Hospital with the woman in his arms.

Charlie realized he was lying on the floor, listening to Scott on the phone, the pain in his chest a distant echo of the pain Jack and the woman felt, and Charlie could not process all the pain and he passed out.

MONDAY

Ray stomped out his cigarette on the asphalt and helped the prisoner out of the car. The nicotine buzz started to

fade immediately. He'd started smoking again. He'd had to.

"If you'd been nice," he said, "we could have left the handcuffs off. But you had to get mean."

The prisoner, a fifty-four-year-old white male named Augustus Jackson, bared his teeth. "You got no right," he said.

"I don't think you ought to start talking about rights, Gus," said Ed as he opened the station house door.

"I got 'em," said Gus. "I got rights, and you got no proof. That was thirteen years ago that happened, and there weren't no witnesses then."

"Thirteen years, was it?" Ray asked, steering Gus inside by his handcuffed wrists. "I don't remember mentioning that. Did you mention that, Ed?"

"Sure didn't, Ray."

"I thought you never heard of Sandy Grusin, Gus. I thought you didn't know what we were talking about."

"I don't," Gus said, but he said it in a much quieter voice.

"Then how'd you know she was killed thirteen years ago?" Ray asked.

"I didn't say nothing about no murder."

"It doesn't matter, Gus. You don't need to say a damn thing. We've got a dossier on you thick as my thumb."

"What's a dossier?"

"Detective Bishop?" Andrea, the lieutenant's assistant, stood in the doorway of the detective's room. "The lieutenant would like to see you as soon as possible."

"Go ahead," Ed said and took hold of Gus Jackson's arm. "I'll explain to Gus here what a dossier is and why we don't give a damn whether he confesses or not. You're going away for a long time, Gus. Hope you got laid this weekend, because it was your last as a free man."

Gus started to squirm, but a uniformed patrolman stepped in, and Ray followed Andrea to the lieutenant's office.

Lieutenant Harvey Bettencourt had been a scruffy patrolman, somehow always having a day or two of stubble on his cheeks, his uniform always wrinkled, his shoes never polished. But since becoming a lieutenant he'd grown a tidy mustache and kept his cheeks smooth, his shirts pressed. His shoes offered up such clear reflections that Harvey could have straightened his tie in them, if his tie ever needed straightening. Ray and Harvey had never gotten along when they were both patrolmen, and less so after Ray had made detective. Now that Harvey outranked him, they were almost friends.

"Have a seat, Ray," Harvey said, and Ray knew something was wrong. Visitors to the lieutenant's office sat: the chief, the DA, well-behaved reporters. Detectives didn't sit. It was a power thing.

"What is it, Lieu?"

"You picked up this Jackson, right?"

"Yeah. He's a reheat." That was what the detectives were calling them, reheats—cold cases reopened by the material provided by the anonymous informer who was helping put all of South Central Wisconsin's hidden rapists and murderers away.

"He cooperative?"

"No. Scared. Doesn't think we can put him away."

"If he's scared, we've got him. Get a confession, though. The D.A.'s complaining that there are too many cases on his dockets."

"The D.A. should be shining our shoes, Lieu. He could run for governor if this keeps up."

"You might be right. You still working the All-Stars case?" Harry didn't quite blurt out the question, but he said it abruptly, and it took Ray a moment to reply.

"I am. There isn't much to go on."

"So no progress?"

I cracked it wide open. Shut it tight. Case closed.
"Not much, Lieu."

Harvey puffed out his cheeks, making a sound like helium being released from a balloon. "Well, we need to step that up."

"How's that?"

"The bosses are getting a lot of pressure since this debacle on Thursday. This Raymond and his lawyers are trying to hold the city responsible for the All-Stars' negligence."

"That seems like sort of a harsh word."

"Harsh? Ray, a woman is in the hospital with burns over seventy percent of her body. She may be permanently disfigured."

"She's alive," Ray said.

"We wouldn't even be talking about her if the All-Stars hadn't caused that accident. They wouldn't have had to save her life if they hadn't fucked up."

"What about the kids who stole the car? Doesn't anybody think they might be accountable?"

"Don't worry about that, Ray. Worry about finding the All-Stars. It's not just local pressure now. The ACLU is all over this, saying that masked crime fighters are the equivalent of secret police. There are civil liberties suits popping up all over the place. You know it's bullshit and I know it's bullshit and the bosses know it's bullshit, but we can't hold them off anymore.

"I'm assigning Ed to back you up on this, and I'm going to try to pull Murdock off Narcotics to help you out. Get some answers. Lean on that Hatch kid who puts out that conspiracy rag. He just became a witness."

"I doubt he'll give us anything."

"If he doesn't, a night in jail should convince him."

"I think he'd love that, Lieu."

"Then find another way. You're the best detective we've got, Ray, and I need you to come through on this."

Ray's mouth was dry. "I'll do what I can."

"Do better."