Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town

by Wentzel, Daniel

  He chuckled. “Let’s get back to the matter at hand. I heard something on the news this morning about the weapons truck which The Grim Detective managed to bring down. Ultimately, I need to focus on one case at a time.” He gestured to the keys. “This I’m going to fob off onto whatever poor schmo pulled the investigation into the weapons truck. It’s not going to get me on his Christmas list since, like you say, it’s largely useless from a legal standpoint. Definitely not worth the effort to get the computer experts to decode it.”

  “So it’s no use to you at all?”

  Sean regarded her for a long moment. “You tell me.”

  In response to her raised eyebrow, Sean continued. “One thing I’ve learned about you since we met is that you’re brilliant, but you don’t always know that you’re brilliant.”

  She blinked. “I can’t tell if that was sweet or condescending.”

  “It’s an observation. Your mind works things out behind the scenes sometimes. Do you remember that date we went on where we stopped at the dollar store to grab some snacks for a beach picnic?”

  Molly melted a little inside. “That was a fun day.”

  “I can’t agree more, but you grabbed a pair of socks while we were there. It seemed like an odd impulse purchase. Keep in mind, you were wearing flip flops, and you couldn’t have put the socks on at the time. Then, just as we were parking, the skies opened up, and a beach day was suddenly out of the question. So we went to the bowling alley instead. Rented bowling shoes would not have been an option for you with no socks. My guess is that some part of your brain registered that the weather wouldn’t hold, and you’d already come up with a Plan B when you got to the dollar store.”

  She furrowed her brows. She’d thought of the socks as an impulse buy herself, but Sean had a point. The suggestion to go bowling had been hers, and she hadn’t taken much time to come up with it.

  Sean picked up the plastic bag with the keys and USB. “So if we follow that hypothesis, why did you bring me this flash drive when you know perfectly well that I can’t do anything with it?”

  She opened her mouth and turned off her inner filter. Whatever thoughts came to mind were going to be spoken out loud. “The data on that drive probably came from Nelson, and our theory is that The Aerialist and Stomper were working to steal that information.”

  “Yes?”

  She sat bolt upright in the chair. “And the fact that Hustle grabbed this from him means The Aerialist still doesn’t have that information. Sean, that’s it! You don’t need to build a case against The Aerialist. You watched him murder Stomper, and a dozen witnesses saw him shoot two kids. What you need is a way to catch him. There has to be a way to lure him in with this data.”

  Sean cocked his head, looking up at a space a few inches above her head. Molly watched the wheels turning in his brain and felt the hunter’s smile form on her lips.

  When he’d come up with his plan of attack, his eyes focused on her once again. He tapped the plastic bag with the keys. “Not with this data, but I have an idea.”

  ✽✽✽

  Mariah Nelson was a beautiful woman, even when her eyebrows were knit together in confusion.

  “Detective, you are asking me to have my lawyer go and speak to the press and demand that the laptop my husband had in his trailer be released from the evidence locker and returned to me?”

  Sean nodded. “I would appreciate it if you could do so, yes.”

  Maria held up the laptop, not yet out of the large plastic evidence bag it had been stored in. “You mean this laptop? The one you handed me not more than thirty seconds ago.”

  “That one exactly, Mrs. Nelson. There’s no physical evidence regarding your husband’s death on that laptop, so we have no right to keep it from you. I appreciate your coming down here to collect what we are able to release, and I thank you for your patience as we process the remaining—”

  “Detective.” Mariah cut him off. “Let us stay on topic, shall we? You want me to have my lawyer demand that you release my husband’s property even though you have already done so?”

  “Exactly. The department will then issue a statement saying that the only effects of your late husband we are keeping are related to the ongoing investigation, which will be a true statement, by the way.”

  Mariah tightened her jaw and took a slow breath. She looked over at Molly, but finding no help there, she addressed Sean once again. “I do not believe I am being in the least unreasonable when I ask you to explain why you wish me to do this.”

  “If I were to tell you I prefer not to say—”

  “Then I would respond with a much ruder version of ‘tough cookies.’” Mariah set her shoulders, obviously sending the signal that she would not budge on this point.

  Sean turned to Molly and gave her the nod to step in.

  “Mrs. Nelson, I believe there is data on that computer which The Aerialist and possibly some other parties want access to. This little subterfuge is for your safety. If those interested parties believe the laptop is still in police custody, they will have no reason to come after you for it.”

  There was a moment of silence as Mariah Nelson took in her words. Anyone else would have narrowed their eyes, but Molly knew this woman didn’t need to be so obvious about assessing her.

  “You’re telling me only part of the story. What exactly is the information on this laptop you believe may put me in danger.”

  Molly was impressed. She knew herself to be a good liar, but Mariah had seen through her immediately.

  “And who exactly are you?”

  “Miss Martin is acting as a consultant for the State Police,” Sean put in.

  “Which is, again, only a partial answer.”

  Molly spoke up before Mariah could launch into a tirade, which was clearly the next step. “For the sake of the investigation, we can’t provide complete information. I can tell you that we don’t even know for certain that the information we’re looking at is even on the laptop.”

  That last part was true. Second Story Steve could have deleted the information when he hacked the computer. It didn’t seem likely, though. There was no benefit to letting Matt Nelson know he’d been hacked.

  Mariah shook her head. “If my safety is the goal, it seems to me the best option is to take this laptop to a recycling center and put pictures of me destroying it and the hard drive all over my social media. I’m not an idiot, Detective Cedar. You clearly believe the information on this laptop implicates my husband in some illegal activity. Why else would a murderer like The Aerialist want anything to do with it?”

  Sean and Molly both inhaled to respond, but Mariah held up her hand.

  “You don’t need to answer. I know what you’re trying to do. I only have one question. Do you believe asking my lawyer to go to the press will bring this man out into the open?”

  Molly was amazed. Mariah Nelson was multiple steps ahead of them, but something in her tone gave Molly the right answer, which just happened to be the truth.

  “I’m not sure, Mrs. Nelson. However, right now I think it’s the best chance we have.”

  “You should have led with that.” The sudden transformation on her face was quite terrifying. She had gone from a passive expression of a woman showing mild interest into a mask of hatred and rage. Despite that, her voice stayed steady, almost flat. It made her words all the more chilling. “I want the man who killed my husband. I want him behind bars and rotting away. If you think this has any chance of catching that piece of filth, do it. I’ll call my lawyer and arrange with him to set this up for tomorrow.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I feel like we just got luckier than we had any right to be.”

  “You’re only saying that because we just got luckier than we had any right to be.” Sean glanced behind them to the evidence room they’d just left. Mariah Nelson stepped outside, some of her husband’s effects under one arm. Her other hand held a cellphone, and she spoke intensely into it.

  “She
’s almost certainly going to destroy that computer.”

  “True, but that was a fight we couldn’t win. I’d never have been able to get a warrant to search the data on the computer based on what we had. Also, as much as I love being a team player, the weapons truck is not my case. My job is to bring in The Aerialist for the deaths of Matt Nelson and Charlie Church.”

  Molly nodded. She was comfortable leaving the weapons for Grim and the other capes to handle, even though Sean almost certainly didn’t feel the same way. “Mrs. Nelson’s lawyer raises the stink about the laptop, and hopefully the press will carry it. That sets the bait for The Aerialist and whoever he’s working with to try to steal the laptop, but there’s no guarantee they will.”

  Sean shrugged. “If The Aerialist goes to ground, which is the smart play, then we lose. Considering the lengths he’s gone to so far, I think there’s a decent chance he’ll try for one last grab at the brass ring.”

  “The evidence locker at the State Police is a pretty difficult target to hit.”

  “It certainly is when proper precautions are being taken. My next job is setting it up with the men on duty to make it look like we’re not taking those precautions. After that, I need to place a requisition for some different ordinance.”

  Molly sucked in a little air. “You’re escalating this.”

  “I don’t see that I have much choice. We know The Aerialist is bulletproof. It’s not like we’ve never dealt with a criminal like that before. I’m requisitioning neural disruptors.”

  Neural disruptors interfered with the body’s nervous system. She’d seen them drop heavyweight fighters like Thunderfist, who could shrug off a bazooka shell. Even Major Maximum said enough of them concentrated on him at once would leave him with a nasty headache the next day.

  While effective, and technically non-lethal, the weapons often led to irreversible paralysis or brain damage. As such, they were highly regulated, and could only be used in extreme conditions.

  Molly kept her face as blank as possible. Her instinct was to frown, but Sean was right. He didn’t have a lot of options, and showing any kind of disappointment wasn’t fair to him. “What would you like me to do?”

  He hesitated, and she instantly knew the answer.

  “I get it,” she answered for him. “This is a cop thing, not a consultant thing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. She almost believed him, despite the relief on his face.

  She reached out and took his hand. “You can’t blame me for wanting to help. I’ve really enjoyed getting to spend so much time with you.”

  Sean’s eyes darted in a dozen directions to see if any of the officers in the building were looking his way. Molly bit her lip to stop from grinning. He was blushing.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. I know you were feeling a little boxed in by the whole thing.”

  “I started looking at the bright side.”

  ✽✽✽

  “This is a violation of my constitutional rights.”

  Etherya didn’t look up from the textbook in front of her. “Pretty sure there’s nothing in the Constitution that says you have the right to blast a hole in a wall and steal shiny rocks.”

  “Diamonds.”

  “You say tomato.”

  Gravel shook his head. “Maybe you’d be less uptight if there was a man in your life who wanted to give you a diamond.”

  The barb was too stupid to be worth the effort of rolling her eyes. She tried to focus on the difference between cations and anions. The chemistry test was tomorrow, after all.

  “Is that the problem, cutie? You need a real man to come and make you happy?”

  Ionic bonds were just not her thing. Covalent bonds made sense to her. There were open slots in the different rings of the electrons, so atom A and B shared electrons between them to fill those slots. It wasn’t exactly intuitive, but when she understood the rules (which she did), it was easy to see on the periodic chart which atoms could match up.

  “You’re not going to find what you need with that pretty little nose pressed into a book. Why don’t you come on over here, and I’ll show you what you really want.”

  Ionic bonds made their own sort of sense. Positive charges attracted to negative charges. It was basically magnetism. She just couldn’t see any rhyme or reason behind figuring out which atoms were likely to be negatively charged and which ones were positive.

  “Come on, sweetie pie. You know I got what you need.”

  He wasn’t going to give up any time soon.

  “You have four sisters. You really expect me to buy that you’re this much of a chauvinist pig?”

  He flinched. “How did you…?”

  Etherya said each word slowly, as though explaining it to a kindergartener. “You have been to jail.We know who you are, Andrew.”

  “Call me Gravel.”

  “I don’t think I will, especially now that I know how much it ticks you off.”

  He fumed and seemed like he was on the cusp of stamping his foot like a child, but he stopped talking. Etherya made a cursory glance at the monitor in front of her. The force field generator which kept him inside the holding cell was running optimally. More importantly, the dampener field keeping his powers inactive was in good shape.

  She focused on the textbook again. The next chapter was coming up, and it dealt with metallic bonds. She suppressed the desire to groan. When she should have been studying metallic bonds earlier this week, she’d instead been pummeling the ever-loving crap out of the Burrower. As a result, she only barely understood the concepts, and she knew she had a long night of studying in front of her.

  “Is this why they left you behind to guard me? None of your friends can stand your attitude either?”

  She knew this was just another ploy to rankle her. He was caught in the Defender Squad’s holding cell. Gravel’s earth-moving abilities were devastating, but he was all offense and no defense. Venusa had laid him out with a single punch. Considering how easily they’d captured him, it was understandable that he’d want to puff out his chest and try and repair his broken ego. If he could get a reaction out of her, he’d be getting some power back in this situation.

  The problem was that his last remark had come a little too close to a sore spot. She really did resent being left behind to babysit.

  Gravel hadn’t just gone after a jewelry store. He’d cracked open a diamond exchange, sort of a wholesale supply for the jewels. More importantly, he hadn’t done it alone.

  OxyJen and Gravel made a good team-up, though the relationship was fairly one-sided. OxyJen could turn herself into pure air, which made her a particularly slippery fish. She was also the brains behind the operations, picking the targets, scoping out the security, and selling the ill-gotten gains through an impressive set of underworld contacts. Gravel, on the other hand, was the muscle. What she couldn’t get by stealth and skill, he could break open like an eggshell.

  Whereas capturing Gravel was one punch and done, OxyJen had eluded the entire Defender Squad. She was possibly the most difficult person in the world to capture, with the possible exception of Etherya herself.

  Which made it all the more galling that the rest of the squad had gone to hunt OxyJen down while leaving Etherya behind. She still couldn’t believe they’d benched her to make her study for her test.

  Okay, that wasn’t true. Moondancer’s secret identity was a college professor — her college professor — and Etherya could totally believe she’d pulled rank and had her student relegated to guard duty.

  It still rankled. No hero on a super team wanted to be left off a mission. No college student wanted to be treated like a high schooler grounded for not doing her homework. She especially didn’t want to admit that if she weren’t cramming right now, her odds of passing the test would be sketchy at best.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Nobody wants to hang out with the boring little bookworm, right? I got some excitement for you right over here. Just come and get it.”

&
nbsp; She looked up from her book and met his eyes. “Trying to read here.”

  “I got something better.” His grin was perfectly designed to make her want to slug him.

  It was time for the nuclear option.

  She started hitting keys and clicking icons until she had patched the communication system into this room. When the dial tone and internal ringing came over the speakers, Gravel scrunched his face into an utterly comical look of confusion.

  “Hello?” said the female voice on the other end.

  “Hi, Mrs. Alvarez. My name is Etherya. I’m a member of the Defender Squad, and we’ve recently picked up your son Andrew. He’s here in one of our holding cells. We caught him with a few thousand dollars’ worth of stolen gemstones. Was there anything you wanted to say to him while he’s here?”

  Realization dawned on Gravel, and his machismo and smugness turned quickly into disbelief and horror.

  “You called my mother?!”

  “Andrew? Is that really you?” The woman’s voice quavered.

  “Mama, everything’s all right. I’ve got it under control.” He shot his eyes at Etherya and mouthed “Hang up.”

  She grinned fiercely, shook her head and went back to studying. Since most of the ensuing conversation was in Spanish, Mrs. Alvarez’s preferred language, it was easy to filter it out. Metallic bonds came and went, and Etherya was flipping through note cards when she heard Mrs. Alvarez hang up, seemingly in mid-tirade.

  “You unbelievable—”

  “Shut up or the next call will be to your sister, Grace.”

  He gasped. She looked up from her cards, giving him a look that said she absolutely wasn’t bluffing.

  “Okay! Okay! You win.”

  He looked haggard after being taken to task by his mother. Against her better judgement, she took a little pity on him.

  “Look, I know a little something about being a disappointment to your family. Not on your level of epic loserness, mind you, but we can’t all be convicted felons. Your mother wouldn’t have been screaming at you for the last…” She looked at the clock. “Wow, forty minutes? Anyway, she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t care about you. I don’t know if you’re interested, but there’s a pretty easy way to start patching up that relationship.”