“Oh, yes.”
“Would it help to remind you that I’m cute?”
He rolled his eyes. It made her feel better. “I was willing to accept some of the responsibility for railroading you into this, but after that crack, I’m just going to maintain the righteous high ground.”
“Frustrating, but fair. Are we good?”
“We’re not great, but we’re good.”
She nodded. “I have something for you on the case.”
He perked up. “You got a hold of Hustle and Damselfly?”
“Yes and no respectively.”
She told him what Hustle had told her.
Sean grumbled. “Right. Because when I don’t mean to kill someone, I always go for two in the head.”
“We don’t know her side of it, Sean. I haven’t been able to contact her yet.”
“I’m not sure there is a side to consider on this point, but we’ll talk about that later. Didn’t you tell me Damselfly had it in for Matt Nelson a few months ago?”
Molly nodded sadly.
“Can you give me more details?”
She glanced over at Erasmus. “He tells me I can’t, except to say that Matt Nelson knew Damselfly’s identity.”
Sean shot an annoyed glance at Erasmus who shrugged unapologetically. “All right then. Since she’s gone to ground, I don’t suppose the force will have much more luck finding her than we have already. Any chance you could find her?”
“I know where she lives, yes, but I don’t think we should be throwing all our eggs in her basket. I still have a hard time believing she did it.”
Sean frowned. “I’m not closing off the rest of the investigation based on hearsay from Hustle. Besides, clearing Damselfly gets a lot easier if she actually talks to us.”
“I’ll go see her, yes.” Molly nodded to show her willingness. “But I’d like to look into a few other angles first.”
Sean pursed his lips. “I’m listening, but only because I’m not crazy about letting you go talk to a potential killer when I can’t send men to keep you safe.”
Molly had been planning to take Wulfric and Fathi with her but figured that might not be the right thing to say to a man who distrusted capes as much as Sean did. “Thank you. I’d like to go talk to Hunter Baxter if you don’t mind.”
Sean’s eyebrows went up. “We’ve talked to him. He says Charlie Church knocked him down, and his gun went flying from his hands. He doesn’t remember much after that.”
“Charlie Church?” asked Sandra. “Oh! Stomper. Sorry, I forgot.”
“We try to avoid using codenames when the option is available.” Sean said in a dark tone.
Molly nodded. What Hunter said was probably true, but Hunter Baxter had a motive to kill Matt Nelson that Sean wasn’t aware of. He was Damselfly’s brother, and if she knew that Nelson was behind the killing of their parents, it was likely that he knew as well. He also might have just been tired of the candidate’s manipulation of his baby sister.
“That’s good to know, and I’d like to read the statements if I may, but I think I’m still going to need to talk to him.”
There was another pause on Sean’s part. “You’re not telling me something.”
Molly glanced at Erasmus. “I’m not allowed.” Her VAA agent had been firm on this point. Since Hunter’s motive would most likely reveal Damselfly’s identity, she couldn’t share that information with Sean.
Erasmus spoke up. “You suggested this working relationship, Detective Sergeant.”
Molly decided to change the subject for the sake of Sean’s blood pressure. “And he’s not the only suspect. If the gun went flying, who’s to say Stomper didn’t pick it up and kill Nelson?”
Sean shook his head. “Mr. Church,”— The emphasis was pointed. – “is still under sedation. However, while he has a lot to answer for, he is not a suspect in the murder of Matt Nelson.”
“What?” Molly was stunned. “How can you be sure?”
Sean got to his feet. “If we’re off to the hospital so you can talk to Hunter Baxter, why don’t I just show you?”
Chapter Eleven
Stomper was one of the five ugliest villains Etherya had ever faced down. That included some of the slimier alien races. Today he had graduated to number three.
To relieve the pressure on his skull, the doctors had ended up drilling a hole in the side of his head. It had taken a power drill from the contractors putting up sheetrock in another part of the hospital. The surgical drills had not had enough torque to pierce his thick skull. Even though the actual hole was covered with a bandage, that side of Stomper’s face was swollen and dark purple.
He had stayed in his colossal form and had not reverted to the skinny Charlie Church. It was probably instinctive. Stomper’s body probably wouldn’t be able to handle the trauma without his superhuman constitution.
Sean and Sandra were continuing an argument. Sean looked skeptical. “So you’re saying I can’t investigate Hunter Baxter?”
“I didn’t say can’t, I said it would be a waste of resources. Assuming we have reason to believe Hunter Baxter is the murderer – which you know I’m not confirming – if the only reason you start investigating him is that you know we were looking into him, it becomes an unlawful search. Anything you might allegedly discover would be fruit of the poisoned tree.”
“So I would need to have some other reason to start investigating him?”
Sandra sighed. “If, in your investigation you come across some evidence which indicates you should be looking into Hunter Baxter’s records, I would, of course, encourage you to do so. If you go looking for evidence which would give you that justification, it makes his potential defense team’s job much much easier.”
Sean sighed for himself. “All right. Unless something is glaringly obvious, I’ll have to hope one of the other investigators comes up with the idea that we should investigate Baxter. As long as they come up with the idea with no input from me, that should meet the rigor you’re talking about?”
“I wouldn’t want to tell you how to do your job, Detective.”
Molly felt like smacking her head. Sandra was telling Sean how to do his job, just not when he was asking for help. It must be another occupational hazard of being a defense attorney.
“What about him?” She pointed at Stomper. “Tell me why he isn’t on your suspect list.”
Sean nodded. He reached down, unholstered his gun and popped the clip out from it. He then checked the barrel to make sure there was no round in it and handed the weapon to Molly.
“Hunter Baxter and I use the same model of sidearm. Go ahead. Put it in Mr. Church’s hand.”
Stomper was still out cold. They were pumping enough sedative into him to keep an elephant unconscious. Molly wondered for a second how much the anesthesiologist would be charging for this.
She opened his hand and immediately saw the problem once the pistol was inside. Stomper’s hand was nearly four times the size of her own. His fingers were thicker than the sausages Molly had eaten for breakfast.
And not even his pinky finger would have fit inside the trigger guard.
Stomper was not the man who killed Matt Nelson. Molly stomped her foot in frustration. The only good part was the look of sympathy that crossed Sean’s face. He understood what it was like when the man you wanted to be guilty wasn’t the perpetrator, and he actually cared that she was upset.
✽✽✽
“Good morning, Hunter. How are you feeling?”
Hunter looked up as Sean came in the room. He gave a glance to Molly, Sandra, and Erasmus, but he mostly kept his eyes on Sean.
“I’m good, Detective. Honestly, most of the doctors can’t figure out how it is that I’m doing so well.”
Well, you were healed by a miraculous knight from the Crusades. That isn’t covered in most medical textbooks.
“This is Molly Martin. She’s consulting with us on the case. I know you’ve already gone through some interviews, but she’d
like to speak to you. Do you mind?”
Hunter shook his head. “No of course not. I told you, anything I can do to help.”
Sean turned to Molly. “I’ll be outside if there’s anything I’m able to do.”
Molly nodded to Sean, unable to do anything more. Her mouth had gone dry the minute she walked into the room, and she just hoped that Sean didn’t notice how freaked out she was.
It shouldn’t have been so unexpected, but sitting next to Hunter’s hospital bed was his sister, Beth.
Sean was out the door and Molly’s mind went into overdrive. She needed a game plan. She needed a way to handle this situation. In about four seconds, Hunter was going to introduce his sister. In so doing, he would reveal Beth’s identity to the two people who knew his sister was Damselfly.
Looking at Sandra gave Molly the answer. She needed to think like a lawyer.
“Hello, Hunter. Before we go any further, I need you to do me one favor. It’s extremely important that you do not introduce me to the young woman beside you.”
Everybody blinked in surprise. That included Erasmus, and Molly was proud of herself for that accomplishment.
“What?” responded Hunter.
“This young lady beside you? The one I’m assuming is a visiting school child getting her community service hours in before she graduates? I’d like you to make sure that you don’t introduce her to me in front of my attorney and this Federal Agent assigned to the VAA administration.”
That sunk in. Hunter sat up immediately.
“The VAA? So I guess that means you’re that Molly Martin?”
Molly felt a flash of irritation, but it died almost as quickly as it had sprung up. She really hadn’t expected Beth to keep her identity secret from her older brother, her cop older brother.
“I am.”
Beth stared from one person to another for a full ten seconds before she finally spoke up. “I guess I’ll go get myself a soda.”
“In the cafeteria?” Molly said pointedly. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll go do that later.”
Beth nodded, confirming that she understood the message to rendezvous. Molly watched her stand gingerly and limp from the room. She made a mental note to ask about the injury and then turned to Hunter. “I think you understand my consultant status a little more now.”
Hunter nodded. “I do.”
“So you know that I know your sister’s identity. I also know that Matt Nelson knew her identity, and that she believes he’s the man who murdered her – and by extension your – parents.”
“Is that a question?”
“No, but this is. Why would you go to work for such a man?”
He studied her for a long moment. “Let’s assume for the minute that I have the least idea of what you’re talking about. Why would I want to discuss this in front of you and your backup singers?”
“Sandra is my lawyer. Anything you say to me I would probably just repeat to her. This interview counts as attorney-client privilege.”
Erasmus spoke up without prompting. “And I am only here because you did not resign from the police force, but took a leave of absence. I need to be sure that Miss Martin doesn’t divulge the names of vigilante secret identities in exchange for your cooperation.”
Molly shook her head. Aside from the fact that such a strategy had never occurred to her, they were getting off topic.
“The question you should be asking yourself is what will happen to Damselfly.” Molly said definitively. “She’s smart and a lot tougher than I was at her age, but if she’s on the run from the police, she won’t last long. The list of suspects isn’t that big, and sooner or later they’ll come for her.”
“So what does that have to do with why I took the job with Nelson?”
“Hunter, if you’re the one who shot Nelson, then the best thing you can do for your sister is give yourself up. If you’re not, then the best thing you can do is give me the whole picture. If I’m satisfied you’re not a suspect, I can get Detective Cedar looking for the right person.”
“And if you’re not?”
The best answer was to say nothing. She raised her eyebrows and smiled enigmatically. Hunter frowned at her and narrowed his eyes. Always paint a picture of the carrot, but leave the stick quite vague. Grim had taught her that trick for interrogations, but it had been helpful for substitute teaching as well.
“Okay,” Hunter replied.
Molly nodded and pulled out the chair Beth had been sitting in for herself. She gestured for him to begin.
“Now, the first thing you need to understand is that I don’t know for certain that Nelson killed Peter and Mariah.” He evidently called his parents by their first names. “Intruders broke into our apartment and abducted them along with my baby sister, Pamela. It was the second time someone had broken into our house in the space of a year, but you know all about the first time.”
Truthfully, Molly barely remembered it. She had foiled the break in as Etherya, but it had been one of many such instances. There had been no shortage of crime to fight.
Hunter continued “Peter was an accountant at Matt Nelson’s law firm. He came across some questionable funds, and he started to dig deeper. His supervisor tried to shut him down, but that man caught the flu at around the same time. I will ask that you never share this with my sister, but all indications are that Peter decided not to go to the police with the information he found. Instead he was trying to blackmail someone at the firm.”
“Nelson?”
“Again, I don’t know that for sure.” Hunter replied. “It seems likely, but there were two other partners. My family was taken to a warehouse where some of the firm’s files were stored. There was a fire that night, and my family and the law partners all died of smoke inhalation. The police assumed the partners were behind the abduction and that the fire broke out spontaneously. That never sat well with me, and it went down even harder with my sister, but no one could prove Nelson was responsible. He came out of it with full ownership of the firm, a dead blackmailer, and the complete destruction of the evidence that might have incriminated him. But that’s not proof, only coincidence.”
Molly nodded again. The high burden of proof the justice system required was one of the reasons why so many capes got started.
“My sister got her powers a few months later. Of course she focused her vigilante efforts on Matt Nelson. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know if he killed my parents, but the man was crooked. She managed to interfere with his criminal activity enough that he had her tracked back to our home. He came to us and gave us a story about how someone in his organization was using his resources to commit crimes and how he was hoping she’d work with him to help bring that person down. We didn’t believe him, but there was an implied threat about revealing my sister’s identity. If he knew we suspected him of being behind the murders of our family, he never let on in any way.”
“Let’s fast forward a little to you coming to work for him.” Molly said.
It was Hunter’s turn to nod. “About six hours after Joe Horton’s accident, Nelson came to our house. He wanted Damselfly’s endorsement. Badly. The implied threats became less veiled. He was going to expose her identity if we didn’t help with the campaign. I told him I couldn’t let my baby sister go off on this without supervision, and he jumped on it like he’d been expecting me to say something like that. As easily as my request for leave of absence went through the department, I guess he was.”
Hunter grabbed the Styrofoam cup of water on his bedside tray and sipped from the straw. Molly took a moment to digest what she’d been told.
“I think you know my next question, Hunter.”
“Why should you believe that I didn’t kill him? Yeah, I can see where that would be a problem for you.” He pursed his lips. “There’s only a couple of reasons I can give you. The first is that everything happened so fast. Stomper could have killed me, and he was frankly the bigger threat. It never occurred to me that I had an opportuni
ty to get rid of Nelson that way. There just wasn’t time.”
Molly dismissed that. “You’re a beat cop. You make split second decisions all the time. What’s the other reason?”
“My two remaining sisters and my cousin both live with me. My cousin’s father is in jail, and the only other relative we have is an elderly aunt who just moved into assisted living. If I were to go to jail for murder, I’d be leaving three children out on the street. That’s not a price I’m willing to pay, no matter what Nelson might have done.”
That was a pretty compelling argument. Also, of the Baxter siblings, he wasn’t the one who had said something about not meaning to kill anyone. Molly thanked him for his time and left to go talk to the sibling that had.
✽✽✽
It had taken some finagling to leave Sandra behind. Erasmus didn’t seem to care, which meant if he had any suspicions about who she was meeting with, he found them irrelevant.
Beth sat at a table by herself. It was in the corner with her back to the wall like any woman of action should have. Molly brought the iced tea she’d grabbed from the counter and sat next to her and Beth launched right in, but she kept her voice low.
“You all but told those people my secret identity.”
“The ‘all but’ is the important point. They may suspect, but they don’t know. And you actually did tell Hunter mine so we can call it even.”
“Hunter is family,” Beth argued.
“Hunter is a cop. On the danger scale of people to know my identity, that puts him a half-step below a supervillain.” She held up her hand to forestall the teenager. “Sandra works for V. She’s not going to reveal your identity. And Erasmus works for the only government agency which has rules respecting secret identities. I trust them both. I’m sorry taking them into my confidence meant taking them into yours, but I don’t think this is the most important thing we have to talk about. Do you?”
Beth frowned and took a deep breath. “I guess not.”
“So tell me what happened.”
Beth looked down at the table. “I guess you were there for most of the excitement up until Stomper got into the trailer, right?”
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 15