“Molly,” she corrected instantly.
“I thought only active members of the Defender Squad were allowed in the headquarters.”
Molly shrunk in on herself. She felt oddly hollow inside as she stared at her surroundings. The control room was so familiar. The computer had gone through some updates in five years, but the chair where Grim sat still squeaked slightly. There was a dark spot on one of the ceiling tiles where they had never been able to get the char mark from an errant plasma blast fully cleaned. Standing here felt so much like being in a dream. Everything was as it should be, but she had no business being here.
“Don’t be a jerk, Grim.” Hustle looked up at the monitor. “You want to fill her in?”
Without a word, Grim split the screen so that half the monitor displayed a video. It took her a moment to follow exactly what was happening. The footage was from the night of the debate. Charlie Church was transforming into Stomper.
“Someone’s cell phone posted on the internet,” Hustle explained. “Look here.”
The frames of the video were looping every few seconds. Molly followed Hustle’s finger to the lower part of the screen. In the moment where Stomper’s body began to shift, a small object fell from his side.
“His pockets burst?” Molly guessed.
“Exactly.” Grim pushed another button and the falling object was isolated and enlarged on the screen.
“Kind of fuzzy, but I’m guessing a set of keys?” Molly squinted. “What is that, some kind of smiley face on the keychain?”
“It is, yes.” Hustle was smiling smugly.
“Did the police find those afterwards?”
In the exact same tone, Hustle said, “They did not, no.”
“I can get in touch with Sean and have them search if you think it would help.”
Hustle’s grin went up a notch. “Oh, they wouldn’t find the keys, because they’re not missing any longer.”
Grim reached into a pocket and tossed something metallic into the air. Hustle caught it and, sure enough, it was the same set of keys.
“Where did you get those?”
“That,” said Grim, “is the second most interesting part of this entire thing.”
“When it became pretty clear Damselfly and I weren’t going to be able to bring The Aerialist down, I tried a different tactic and picked his pocket.”
Molly started. “The Aerialist had Stomper’s keys?”
Hustle’s grin took up most of his face. “Interesting, no? But that’s not even the best part. There was a flash drive attached to the keychain.”
“A flash drive? What was on it?”
“We don’t know yet,” replied Grim, “Someone put some encrypted data on this, and then put an access code requirement on top of that. Without that access code, trying to look at the data inside would not only wipe the data, but it would install a nasty virus on the computer it was plugged into. I only recently managed to bypass that code, or I’d have more to tell you.”
“So no idea what the data is?”
“I don’t have the specifics, but I have a guess. It’s using almost the same encryption as the data I stole from the weapons smuggling ring I mentioned last time we spoke.” He spun in his chair, and Molly had to bite back a squeak of surprise. The right side of Grim’s face was covered in a gauze pad which was soaked through with dried blood.
“I took them on last night, and as you can see, it wasn’t entirely successful. I managed to get the data, but I only stopped part of the shipment. There were three trucks loaded with weapons that do not belong in anyone’s hands. I stopped one of them.”
Molly frowned. “So Stomper was part of the ring of weapon’s smugglers? That doesn’t make sense. Who in their right mind takes sensitive data like this and puts it into the hands of a man with a history of being easily tricked or distracted?”
“A point to be sure, but you’re forgetting the other half of Stomper.” Grim pointed at the still-repeating video.
“Charlie Church?” Molly shook her head. “I’m not following. I didn’t get the sense this was one of those ‘superior intellect with a thuggish alternate persona’ situations. Charlie Church seemed like he was barely literate.”
“Literate or no, he had two appealing characteristics if you wanted someone to act as a courier. The first was being completely unknown, which is an accomplishment. I assumed Stomper had somewhere he could reliably go to ground since he would be impossible to hide in a crowd. Charlie Church on the other hand was a non-entity. There was no reason to suspect he was a courier, or really anyone of importance.”
“And what was the other appealing characteristic?”
The Grim Detective let a little disappointment out in his tone. He’d expected she could figure this out. “If his cover of anonymity were to be pierced and someone did try to take something from Charlie Church, Stomper would make taking it spectacularly difficult.”
“The more important question,” interjected Hustle, “is who hired him, and where this data came from.”
Molly pursed her lips. The shipment of weapons had been destined for the city, so why had Charlie Church been carrying it all the way out in Capetown?
“That truck full of weapons you mentioned, it didn’t come through Capetown by any chance?”
Grim shook his head. “It did not.”
“Then what was Stomper doing in Capetown?”
“An interesting question. This should bring back memories for you.” Grim turned back to the computer and brought up a photo which Molly could tell was the group shot of the campaign workers for Matt Nelson’s campaign. Her mother stood proudly right up front.
Grim zoomed into a man standing at the back. He was not looking at the camera directly, and the brim of his baseball cap was angled to make it difficult to see all of his face.
Nevertheless, Molly instantly recognized the man depicted. She felt slightly guilty for smiling, but she couldn’t help herself. “Second Story Steve!”
Steve Wilson was a genuinely nice man in most respects. He’d spent several years teaching yoga to senior citizens and worked in an adventure sports facility at the rock-climbing wall. It just so happened he was also one of the most talented cat burglars in the trade.
Cat burglary was the perfect crime for Steve. First, he had a knack for meticulous planning and feats of physical adroitness. He had once spent four hours hiding in a museum ventilation shaft cramped into insanely uncomfortable conditions, and then five minutes after emerging, had broken into a jewel case while suspended upside-down from a tether line.
Moreover, he was a soft-hearted man who never wished harm to anyone, so the “get in, get out, leave no trace” elements of burglary were right up his alley. He was scrupulous in planning his escapades to be sure no one would be hurt, and he didn’t hesitate to scrap a million-dollar heist rather than risk injuring a security guard who wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
Etherya had frankly enjoyed the times she’d tangled with Second Story Steve. He was clever in devising his getaway strategies. In their games of cat and mouse, she hadn’t always been the winner, despite the advantages her powers gave her. Steve had been gracious on the occasions when he’d been caught. He’d enjoyed the challenge as much as she had, and he didn’t honestly mind losing if he felt she’d made the chase worthwhile.
“Your old friend was in Capetown the day of the debate. He came in on the same bus as your mother, in fact.”
Molly ignored the momentary disappointment that she’d missed seeing him. “He was working for Nelson’s campaign?”
‘Not under his given name.” Grim pushed a few more buttons on the keyboard. “This sort of thing is much easier in the city where there’s a camera on every ATM on every corner, but the one bank you do have was set in just about the right location.”
The screen changed again, and Molly might have missed it if Grim hadn’t directed her where she should be watching. She recognized Matt Nelson’s trailer and watched the late district
attorney step out of the building with Hunter Baxter. Less than a second after he’d stepped through the door, a figure dropped from the roof and slipped inside the trailer. It happened so quickly that the figure had disappeared before the door shut and Nelson had turned around to make sure it was locked.
“Technically, we don’t know that was Steve,” Hustle pointed out.
“Occam’s Razor,” Grim replied. “The alternative is that there were two people in Capetown capable of climbing on top of the trailer without the men inside noticing and then making that precision maneuver to drop inside.”
Molly was willing to take it on faith. “How long was he inside?”
“Four minutes, and when he leaves, he’s not carrying anything noticeable. The next time I caught him on a camera connected a lot of dots.”
Another picture showed up on the screen. Molly realized she probably needed to eat out less considering she instantly recognized the Capetown pizza joint where the couple were eating and celebrating a birthday. She looked past the young woman in the paper cone hat and clearly saw Second Story Steve sitting at the next table with Charlie Church.
“Let me process this,” Molly said after a moment. “So information about the truck full of enhanced weaponry was on this USB, and we think Charlie Church got it from Second Story Steve, who stole it from Matt Nelson.” Her eyes widened as she followed the logic. “So Matt Nelson was shipping in heavy duty weaponry?”
“That’s where everything points,” Grim confirmed. “If you want to drum up support for a political initiative to reign in the capes and all the property damage that happens when they work, you could do worse than to stage a massive attack with the goal of wanton destruction.”
Hustle piped in. “But word seems to have gotten out. Someone else knows about the weaponry, and they hired Steve and Stomper to get them the intel. That combination doesn’t point to someone we want to have access to those weapons.”
Molly nodded, but they were missing a part of the chain. She looked back and forth from Hustle to Grim. “Wait, how did The Aerialist wind up with the keys?”
Grim tilted his head. It was his way to indicate Molly should figure it out for herself.
Molly frowned, but slowly talked herself through it. “He found them. But they’re just a set of keys, which means he wouldn’t have found them unless he knew to look for them. The only reason to look for them was the flash drive, and only the people who wanted to steal the weapons from Nelson would have known it existed.”
“And therefore?” The Grim Detective encouraged her to finish the thought.
“The Aerialist is part of the group that wants to steal these weapons.” Her eyes popped open as she made one more connection. “And he killed Stomper to keep him quiet about the whole thing.”
✽✽✽
Erasmus shook his head as he stared at the keys in the plastic bag. “This information is more or less useless.”
Molly tried to keep her face neutral, but she knew Sandra was looking at how tight her jaw was. “So I can’t even show it to Sean?’
“You can, but he can do nothing with this. The information came to you from one vigilante who got it from another, who in turn got it from a murderer, who supposedly picked it up after a thief might have used it to steal information, but it was then dropped by the known supervillain who he handed it off to. Did I get all that right? Furthermore, none of it happened while you were watching. This cannot be considered evidence because the chain of custody has been obliterated.”
Molly took a steadying breath. The little conference room felt cramped with her, Hustle, Sandra and Erasmus. “All right then. But if I show this to Sean, he’ll at least have an idea of where these weapons are coming into the city. If the police know that—”
“Then nothing changes. They absolutely cannot act on this.”
Hustle placed his hand on her back. “Grim’s got this, babe. Even if he can’t break the encryption, since we know where the data came from, he can follow the money and figure out where those weapons ended up.”
Molly turned to look at him. Hustle was making some big assumptions. She remembered a time when his optimism was one of the most appealing features. He never once lost his certainty that, working with his friends, the world would be safe. Now, as she looked at his reassuring smile, Molly felt only sadness. She longed for the days when that smile could bring her comfort.
She put a hand on his arm. “In which case, he can use your help, can’t he?”
“Well, duh.” He grinned at her.
“Go.” She kissed his cheek. He replied with a kiss of his own, hot and full of desire. She arched her head back reflexively, stretching onto tiptoes. It was familiar, friendly…
And it left her strangely hollow.
She was unsurprised when he disappeared in mid-kiss, tearing away at superhuman speeds. It was a showboating move he’d used before. He loved to leave her wanting more. She just didn’t understand why she didn’t.
Sandra cleared her throat. Molly turned to see her lawyer’s expression of embarrassment. “So… I feel a little stupid for suggesting the mountain cabin.”
Molly gave a guilty grimace. She shook her head. “Sean knows. They both know about each other. It’s been awkward at times, but we’ve mostly been adults about it.”
“Mostly?”
“I’ve been an adult about it.” She changed the subject. “And part of being an adult is being a good team player. Sean might not be able to act on this, but I need to keep him in the loop.” So saying, she scooped up the keys. Grim was working with his own copy of the data, so he hadn’t minded her bringing back the original to the police.
Sandra let her shoulders slump. “If you insist. It seems like a waste of time, but I don’t see what else you can do either.”
Molly wondered what was the cause of her smile and the spring in her step. She could paint Sean a picture of the situation with the weapons Nelson had purchased. It pointed quite clearly at The Aerialist as Nelson’s murderer. If he was involved in the group that wanted to steal the weapons, killing off Matt Nelson would probably make that a good deal easier.
There were a lot of assumptions and guesses, far more than she was comfortable with, in their theory. Charlie Church as a courier made sense, but if that were the case, why had he stayed behind to speak at the debate? If The Aerialist had killed Nelson, why had he used Hunter Baxter’s pistol instead of the rifle he carried with him?
So why was she so excited to bring this handful of mostly-not-much to Sean?
As she knocked on his office door and opened it, the answer came to her. It had nothing to do with the information she was bringing. Everything she was feeling had to do with seeing Sean again.
She’d almost lost him the night before. Since then, he’d been in her thoughts quite a bit. As she looked back, there was probably another way to have distracted him in the diner than putting him in a liplock. Also, after finding Heather with Tony, Molly’s first thought was that she wanted to be with Sean.
It had taken an assassin’s bullet to do it, but she’d finally made up her mind. She loved Frank, and she probably always would. But her future was with Sean, if they could make it work. Frank loved her for the woman she had been. Sean loved the woman she was now.
All in all, it was a heck of an epiphany to reach in about one second’s time.
Her heart skipped a beat when he looked up at her from his desk, but she forced the sensation down. Now was not the time to talk about romance.
“Got a present for you,” she said. “Or possibly more of a white elephant.”
She dropped the keys and the flash drive on his desk, took a seat, and told him the whole story behind them.
It took a while, but he took in the situation with his usual aplomb. “That’s one of the more convoluted stories I’ve ever heard.”
“I concede that point,” Molly agreed. “And I know you can’t use much of this in terms of building a case, but I hoped it would give you an idea
of where to start throwing punches.”
“And none of this bothers you? The Grim Detective hacked security cameras and people’s social media to cobble together this information. You’re not at all concerned about the implications of that kind of violation of someone’s privacy?”
Molly shrugged.
“I’m going to need more than that.”
“In the interest of setting expectations, we are probably not going to end up agreeing on this topic.” She held his gaze, silently asking him if he really wanted to continue. At his nod, she continued. “It comes down to trust. The Grim Detective is probably the world’s most talented criminologist, but more than that, his motives are understandable. I told you once that someone close to him was killed by a dirty cop.”
“I remember. So he’s out for revenge?”
Molly shook her head. “That’s an oversimplification. He wants the bad guys to be stopped, sure, but not because he gets his kicks out of beating them up.”
Sean’s eyebrow twitched.
“Okay, it’s not only because of that. He’s not just in the game for the thrill or the revenge. He’s not even mostly doing it for those reasons. When you get right down to it, the real reason he fights so hard against criminals is so that no one else has to suffer like he did.” She shrugged again. “I know his methods are a problem for you as a policeman, but because of what happened to Grim, he can’t work with the police. He hates you too much. It might not be fair to lump you all in the same boat, but it’s understandable. So, the way I see it, we can either have The Grim Detective as we know him fighting the good fight, or he can just disappear into the night and tell the world to pound sand. There’s never going to be a reality where Grim works with the police and plays by the rules, so I’m grateful for what we do have.”
Sean considered what she had said. “I think you’re right. We are going to have to disagree here. As someone who has put away more than one dirty cop in my time, there are other — and I would maintain better — ways to deal with one’s anger toward them.”
“Will you get mad at me if I shrug again?”
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 24