Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape) Read online

  “So let’s see!” She held out her hands.

  “Grabby, much?” I teased, but handed her the box. She tore the lid off and gasped.

  “They’re beautiful!” She pulled the top sheet out. Two hundred near-parchment quality invitations, raised print protected by fine laminate. The Bees had pledged Phi Mu last fall, and were already helping organize sorority events. The invitations were for the Spring Social, to be sent out to two hundred high school seniors, the scholastic cream of the incoming crop who’d already won acceptance by College Admissions. They wanted to have most of the sorority’s new sisters in hand long before next fall’s Pledge Week, and had trusted me with the invitation design.

  “The Foundation paid for the printing,” I said, laughing again when she leaped up and hugged me. Annabeth was as generous with her emotions as she was with everything else, showering them freely on all around her.

  “They’re perfect!” She looked at the one she still held, and her eyes went a bit misty.

  “Hey,” I said. “I didn’t do that good a job.”

  “You did.” She sniffed. “I was just wishing you’d pledged with us.”

  “I spend too much time in a mask.”

  That got a giggle and she smiled. We’d all intended to live together in Palevsky Commons and rule the school—or at least the sorority—but my breakthrough last fall had changed all my plans. I’d had to disappear till I learned to be safe with my super-strength, and hadn’t been able to start school with them. Now I lived off-campus so others wouldn’t notice how often I had to duck out. I looked over her shoulder at The Dane.

  Even Dane’s plans were changing; he’d gotten an offer to go pro already, and if he signed a contract and left Chicago that would be it for him and Annabeth. She loved him like she breathed—every moment and without thought—but if he was her air, she could never hold her breath that long.

  I worried about what would happen then.

  “And stop that,” I said. Rising on my toes I kissed her cheek en passant. “We’re texting and facebooking, doing kamikaze lunches at least three times a week, and Brennan, Bauman, and Brock will be on every Foundation guest list forever.” I nudge her towards the door. “And you’d better get back out there before you have to redo half of the job yourself, you’re so picky.”

  “Detail-oriented.” She sniffed again, but with a real smile. “And we could use your help—”

  My cell-phone launched into the William Tell Overture, and she sighed. “Better see what they want.”

  I flipped it open and looked at the screen. 911-Yellow. That meant, “Emergency, don’t kill yourself getting here.” Orange would have meant “Get Here Now!”, and red—which I’d never seen yet—”Don’t Bother Changing.”

  I closed it with a sigh of my own. “Emergency. Race you out.” She started first, but I won.

  * * *

  I parked in the garage on Wabash and Jackson to take the “back door” in to the Dome. I was currently the only Sentinel besides Artemis to keep a secret identity, but the Dome’s designers had planned on it and included several sneaky backdoors. Personally, I thought they’d just succumbed to their inner child and went crazy—we had an honest-to-God telephone booth entrance. Stepping out of the sideways elevator, I caught Blackstone and Chakra arm in arm on their way through the lobby, Blackstone in a coat and tails as usual, Chakra in a beautiful satin sari. I guessed dinner and the opera.

  The crisis of the past year had pulled him and Chakra even closer, and they didn’t even bother hiding their relationship anymore. I’d been grateful; it took some of the media-heat off my “affair.”

  Now the tantric sorceress looked me over, probably reading my chakras. She smiled.

  “Good evening, my dear,” Blackstone said. “What brings you to the Dome tonight?”

  “A yellow 911. What’s going on?”

  He looked nonplussed. “Bob?”

  Bob glanced up from his station screen. “Code CPD1; superhuman homicide call.”

  Blackstone grimaced. “How long ago?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Details?”

  “Through Dispatch, please.” He turned to me, tapping his shoe with his cane. “I’m sorry, my dear. We’ll switch out your days, and in the future we’ll send Galatea when you’re off—Vulcan has her forensic analysis routines close to fieldable.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, she’d be so reassuring. It’s okay boss, really.”

  Chakra covered her mouth with a henna-decorated hand.

  Galatea was a gynoid (female android) robot, the work of our team’s new Verne-type mad scientist. Vulcan had made her out of The Stuff—polymorphic molecules, his specialty—and he was a true artist; she moved like a human being, even looked like one from a distance, but human expression was beyond her.

  “If you’re sure,” Blackstone said. “Carry on then.” He gave me a mock-salute and I scampered. Five minutes later I was changed and in the air headed west.

  “Shell?” I said as I flew over Michigan Avenue. “I don’t want you to use our neural link at the scene.”

  “Why not?” She’d passed the address to me, with no comments about the cute Detective Fisher this time.

  “Because this could be really messy.”

  The quantum-ghost of my best friend, Shelly had been left to me by the Teatime Anarchist when he arranged his own murder-suicide. He’d gone back in my past, made a quantum-copy of Shelly just before she stupidly killed herself origin-chasing, and plugged her into the operating system of his future-tech computer system. Our bioneural link let Shelly experience the world through all my senses, and even appear and talk to me by direct stimulation of my aural and ocular nerves. Yes, I heard voices in my head. They told me to eat Skittles.

  Blackstone had arranged for Shelly to become my Dispatch wingman (the fact that our neural link couldn’t be interfered with, and that Shell could multitask like the fastest supercomputer, was a huge factor in his decision-making). But, super-genius computer brain or not, she died when we were both fifteen and emotionally she still was. No way was I letting a kid too young to get into an R-rated movie see a homicide scene. Especially a superhuman homicide scene.

  “It’s not like I haven’t seen bodies before,” she objected.

  “I know, but you don’t have to. I don’t want to. So, no link. Only the earbug.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “Shelly?”

  “Okay…” she sighed. She had to accept it; the Anarchist had made it part of her privacy protocols. But though I heard token sulking I could tell she wasn’t too disappointed. Like me, she’d already seen things that made her want to bleach her brain.

  The address for the call took us to one of the luxury condo towers on Ohio and Dearborn. Detective Fisher simply had one of the uniforms, Officer Wyatt, stand out on the fifteenth floor balcony where I could see him as I came in. Landing and peering inside, I whistled.

  It looked like someone had gone through the condo and fed every piece of furniture into a wood-chipper; bits and pieces of frame and upholstery covered the floor. A hardwood box about the size of a wine crate sat in the center of the mess. Fisher stood in the separated kitchen, talking to Phelps. Though thankfully I couldn’t see evidence of anything beyond extreme vandalism, I could smell the copper tang of blood. Lots of it. Maybe in the bedroom?

  “Detective?”

  He cut off his argument with Phelps and waved me in. Carefully picking his way through the mess, he handed me some foot covers to slip on. I was getting too used to them.

  An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He looked uncomfortable, and I realized he might have the same problem with my viewing the crime scene as I did with Shelly. He might actually be more comfortable with Galatea for scenes like this.

  “What are we looking at?” I asked quietly.

  “Ralph Moffat’s apartment.”

  “Ralph—the banker?”

  He nodded. “You were righ
t about the lady in the vault footage being his date; he confirmed it when we questioned him. Never seen her before, brought her home for coffee, woke up when we knocked on his door the next morning. She roofied him.”

  “Then why—”

  “The enhanced vault footage gave us the contents of the document case. Bearer bonds. Japanese treasuries, hundred thousand dollar denominations.”

  “Oh.” I wanted to sit down. It had been a thick document case. Assuming at least a hundred sheets... “How much, do you think?”

  “Jenny figures, assuming all the bonds are the same, close to ten million dollars. That’s a big if, but regardless we’re still talking about millions.”

  “Any luck finding the owner of the deposit box?”

  “Not yet. Mr. Ross’s office is closed while he’s ‘on vacation.’”

  Phelps coughed behind us, and Fisher grimaced.

  “The crime-scene photographers have recorded every inch of the place, but I wanted you here before we started moving anything around.”

  “Where should I start?”

  “Start here—you can look at the other rooms later. And leave the box alone.”

  I nodded, lifting high enough to make sure my feet stayed a couple of inches off the mess. Air-walking was easy if I wasn’t trying for speed.

  The long living room probably took up half of the condo’s square footage. A huge plasma TV on one wall told me where the entertainment area had been, and the ceiling along the inner wall had been rigged with track lights to illuminate a row of paintings (mostly impressionistic, but colorful—Mr. Moffat had good taste). A bar separated the kitchen from the dining area at the far end.

  Focusing on the piles of chips and pieces, I frowned. I looked at the walls again, then, holding my short cape aside, touched down and squatted to study what had to have been a couch.

  Fisher removed his unlit cigarette. “What do you see?”

  “I don’t know. I...” I shook my head, at a loss. Phelps snorted, but this time Fisher ignored him.

  “Can you tell me what’s bugging you?”

  I looked at the walls again. “I don’t... The first thing is, this was a heavy couch. Good leather, thick stuffing, heavy springs and wood. Someone shredded it like tissue.” I groped for the thought.

  “Go on.”

  “Whoever did this was strong. He had to use a lot of force. But there’s not a mark on the TV or the walls and you’d think pieces of couch flying everywhere would at least scratch the wallpaper. Especially the metal bits.”

  “And?”

  I moved back a couple of feet. “The couch-pieces are all where the couch was. And right here there was a coffee table? All the bits of glass are right where it was. It looks like there were two more chairs, an end table, maybe a couple of tall lamps? All their bits are right where they should be, no spread.”

  The unmarked walls suddenly seemed unnerving as I tried to picture it.

  “I can’t imagine what did this. And why? It’s so organized, methodical. None of this was exploded—there’s no scatter. It was shredded in place, everything contained.” I had a nightmare image of some kind of flying wood-chipper. “Where’s Mr. Moffat?”

  “We think he’s in the box. Astra?”

  I realized I’d started to hyperventilate. Folding my arms, I breathed slowly.

  “No. He’d have to be...”

  Fisher nodded. “In as many pieces as the furniture. Actually it’s worse; he’s soup. And there’s not a piece of bone bigger than a toothpick.”

  I had never fainted in my life, but thought I might be about to have the experience; I stared at the evil box, and my face felt icy.

  “Then how do you know it’s him?”

  “We don’t; we’re going to have to wait on DNA analysis and that’ll take a few days. But security footage shows him coming in and not going out.”

  “But did the cameras see what got in here after him?”

  He shook his head. “No. And if he’s really in the wind we’re going to lose days.”

  I swallowed. “I think I can help you with that.”

  “Oh, come on!” Phelps protested. “Your nose isn’t that good!”

  Fisher scowled. “Shut up Phelps.”

  “No—just, no!” The thought of opening that box and sniffing its contents made me go wobbly again. I looked outside; night had fallen. “But I know someone who can tell you what’s—who’s—in there.”

  Chapter Four

  Breakthrough (noun, often attributive): in warfare, an offensive thrust that penetrates and carries beyond a defensive line, an act or instance of breaking through an obstacle, a sudden advance especially in knowledge or technique. In modern usage, the spontaneous display of superhuman powers, usually triggered by traumatic or life-threatening events, but sometimes in response to extreme emotional states.

  Webster’s Dictionary

  * * *

  I made the call through Shelly, and Fisher filled me in while we waited. A downstairs neighbor out on his balcony had heard a noise, something like an explosion that took longer, and called 911. Mr. Moffat being a Person of Interest, when his neighbor gave the address a flag went up with Fisher’s department. They arrived right after the patrolman sent to check it out.

  The detective had me do a quick walk-through of the rest of the condo, but it looked like all the action had happened in the living room and we were back there when Officer Wyatt swore and Artemis stepped in from the balcony.

  A vampire, Artemis traveled as a cloud of mist nearly invisible in the open air. Vampires hadn’t really existed before the Event, aside from a few sad, sick souls who believed themselves to be nosferatu. But then, godzillas hadn’t either.

  “Detective Fisher,” I said. “Allow me to introduce Artemis. Artemis, Detective Ron Fisher.”

  “Detective.” She nodded, looking him over as he did the same. Tall, pale, and model-thin, she dressed in a black leather catsuit with lots of straps and buckles. A deep hood cast her face in shadow, and she wore a half-mask sculpted to suggest the sharp planes of a skull. She also wore four guns—two in shoulder-holsters and one low on each hip. Standing next to her, I looked like a schoolgirl playing superhero. She looked sexy and dangerous as hell.

  “Pleased to meet you, Artemis.” Fisher extended his hand. “Astra tells me you can answer a question for us.”

  She smiled thinly as they shook. “I do have a nose for blood. You want to identify a victim?”

  “What will you need?”

  “Was it a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see his razor.”

  I waved Mr. Moffat’s shaving kit, giving her a cautious smile. “I got it.”

  She accepted it without expression, and pulled out a twin-blade razor. Holding it to her nose, she inhaled thoughtfully.

  “Well?” Phelps asked impatiently. Fisher winced, but Artemis just looked amused.

  “He cut himself recently. Blood type A positive. Heavy meat-eater, likes to drink. Not in great shape, developing kidney problems.”

  Fisher laughed. “No need to show off, but how can you tell?”

  “Blood type’s easy, his iron is really high, and his kidneys aren’t filtering his blood properly.”

  “Could you tell me if he’d been taking drugs?”

  “Depends on how recent, but his blood smells clean. So where is he?”

  Fisher pointed to the box.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Before we open it, since you’re here could you tell me if you can smell any blood traces anywhere else?”

  “Show me around?”

  “Right this way.” He politely waved her towards the door leading to the hall leading to the den and bedrooms.

  That left me alone with Detective Phelps and Officer Wyatt. Phelps turned away. I shrugged.

  “How are the kids, Jimmy?” I asked Wyatt. His face lit up.

  “Little Madison’s walking,” he reported proudly. “And Johnny’s on the honor roll this yea
r. He still puts up drawings of you.”

  “Meeting his class was fun.”

  Before my popularity crashed Quin had had me doing all sorts of public-relations events; I’d especially liked the school visits and tours. I smiled, reminded I’d made a good impression on somebody. He took out his wallet to show me the family pictures, and I made the obligatory but sincere compliments before handing them back.