Powers

by Brian Michael Bendis

  It had to be him. Who else?

  Crane, perhaps? A slow-acting poison and a silent henchman at the door? Or maybe one of the other detectives, one who hadn’t gotten off like Waldo? They might have connections in jail, used an outside party to set it up. Or maybe her father had arranged it himself—an overly dramatic playact to win back his daughter and put the finger of blame on Aaron Boucher. No, that seemed unreasonable … she would have known if he’d been in town, killing Monroe and the Rammlers, and Waldo had seemed genuinely surprised to see her. Her mind reeled, spiraling as she waited for some kind of news, something she could use. Another hour lapsed until, finally, a surgeon called Deena’s name, and she followed him back into the ward.

  They evaded gurneys, slaloming through the ER until they arrived at a small anteroom in the far-right corner. A jolly-looking two-dimensional cartoon snowman winked down from above the door, giving Deena the thumbs-up. She ignored it, focusing instead on labored breathing from within. She knew that her father lay just beyond the threshold. She turned to the doctor, forcing out all other emotional quagmires, folded her arms, and tried to peek at her father’s chart.

  “Is he going to die?” she asked. “Am I here to sign a DNR or some kind of living will? Because, I’ll be honest, if—”

  “Your father will be fine, Detective Pilgrim. He’s been cooperating with local police and the APHD. He’s responding well to the medication.”

  “What happened?”

  The doctor held up a vial of blood. “We ran several tests, searching for known toxins and possible allergens. The gamut of potential reactants, you know. We checked his food, drink, and the police have swept the entire apartment—they’ll grant you access, I imagine. But we found only this.”

  Deena took the container. “What is it?”

  “Hep B.”

  She raised her eyebrows and nearly dropped the flask. “Excuse me?”

  The doctor laughed. “I thought that might be your response. Well, strictly speaking, it isn’t hepatitis B, exactly, but a concentrated—and highly mutated—strain. We found traces in his bloodstream, particularly around the arms and a number of minuscule tracks across his right forearm. Someone injected this deadly little cocktail. It was working its way toward your father’s liver—it might still, though I believe we’ve flushed most of it out. In the meantime, it infected his respiratory and circulatory passages, eating at his nerves and deteriorating glands and arteries. We’re lucky we caught it when we did; we were honestly concerned it was just a bad allergic reaction at first.”

  “I thought he was poisoned.”

  The doctor nodded. “Technically, he was. Did you see anyone puncture his arm, administer something into his bloodstream in any way that might lead you to believe he could have been infected?”

  She paused to consider, her mind a whirlwind. The fight. Aaron and Waldo, arms locked at the table, angry and resentful. Could Aaron have…?

  Deena put it out of her mind, shaking her head. He couldn’t have. She would have seen. He’d held no injector, no needle. It hadn’t been Aaron, despite her various theories otherwise. “No. No, I didn’t. What now?”

  “Now he recuperates and receives a series of antiviral medications—accelerated interferon and the like. I may zap him with something, depending on what this”—he retrieved the vial and gave it a shake—“turns up. Meanwhile, APHD will continue their investigation and bring you in whenever you like.”

  “And can I see him?”

  The doctor smiled. “You can. He’s resting, but I believe he’s ready to receive a visitor who isn’t wearing a badge … well, wearing a badge and is family. I’ll let you know what the lab turns up.”

  She nodded, and the doctor hurried away, carrying the vial of her father’s blood. Deena steeled herself, breathing deeply while processing the new information. Liberty—or someone pretending to be Liberty—had poisoned Waldo, and now once again, she was stuck holding a bag of crap. There were too many connections, too many threads between this case and the ones back home for it to be coincidental. Despite her exhaustion, Deena had to draw them together. Walker, fuck him, wasn’t returning calls. Kirk was laid up; Enki had her hands full; and Cross was overwhelmed by a maelstrom of lawyers, government officials, and reporters.

  And Aaron … she didn’t know what to do about Aaron yet. She didn’t trust him; still couldn’t believe that he was telling her the truth. In her heart, Deena was worried she’d let her father’s killer board a plane to kill again—maybe Crane this time, unless they were in cahoots. Maybe Kirk, to wrap up loose ends.

  Maybe Walker.

  Walker can take care of himself. He’s made that perfectly clear.

  Deena rubbed her eyes, putting it out of her mind. She stepped inside, toward the bed. Waldo, frail and hooked up to wires and blinking machines, slowly opened his eyes. His throat was red. Heavy bags weighed down his eyelids, and an IV tube snaked into his pasty wrist. Deena locked the door, shutting out the world, and double-checked to confirm it was secure. It was the two of them now—the first time they’d been alone in ten years.

  Waldo focused his gaze, staring at Deena, and then struggled to sit up. She moved to his bedside, pulling up a chair, gesturing for him to rest. She removed her coat and sat down. He settled back against the pillow, hair splayed out against the crisp, white sheets. Deena shifted in the chair, looking around for a chart. Some data or information she could use or with which she might distract herself. But there was nothing; it was just the two of them.

  The two of them alone.

  Waldo wet his cracked, bleeding lips, dryness having been induced by an intubation tube that had already been removed. He attempted to build up saliva, and his voice emerged from a crackling, reedy place deep inside his throat.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He reached out, hoping to take her hand. She hesitated and then decided to let him. He’d almost died, and though she hated what he’d done, he was still her father. Waldo seized her hand, clutching it in his clammy fingers, flexing, squirming as if unwilling to let go.

  Finally, he gathered enough strength and lifted himself off the pillow. She encouraged him to lie down, not to exert himself, but he waved her off. “No,” he wheezed. “No, I’m done taking it easy.”

  He glared at Deena, staring with fierce, clear-eyed determination.

  “There are things you need to hear, and things I need to say. So, Deena … Detective Pilgrim … I’m done avoiding this conversation. A discussion we should have had long ago. Before I pissed off your mom, before you headed off to college and I lost my little girl.”

  “Dad…”

  Waldo gripped her fingers. “No. No more bullshit. No more lies. For once in my misbegotten life…… it’s time I told you the truth.

  “It’s time I told you about the Liberty killer.”

  19

  December. Tuesday night. 7:48 P.M.

  “Joseph Monroe was Liberty.”

  The words hung between them for a moment. Deena sat back in her chair and assumed a skeptical expression. “Come on. Really?”

  Waldo adjusted the IV drip, moving the tubes aside. “Swear to god. The Soldier wasn’t the patriotic hero the media made him out to be. In fact, he was secretly aligned with other governments. In 1954, for instance, he joined the Communist Party.”

  Deena rolled her eyes. “Bullshit. This is just sad. You’re trying to pin this on a dead man?”

  “I’m fucking serious. Ask your pal Boucher; he knows.”

  Deena’s heart leaped. “What does that mean?”

  Waldo peered under the curtain, making sure no one was eavesdropping. “It’s like this: Monroe was a Commie; he wasn’t spying for the Russians or anything, nothing illegal, but he aligned himself with their beliefs through the remainder of the Cold War. Even after he returned to the home front, the Soldier surreptitiously fraternized with dozens of anti-American and anti-Powers organizations, mostly in defiance of the assholes who
filled him full of experimental drugs.”

  “Wait—he told you this?”

  Her father nodded. “Had no choice, not if he wanted my help. He revealed his secret to a select few, those of us with no … qualms, shall we say, about working with a traitor. He also worked with the Human Front, did you know? Big shock, right, after all the time they were at each other’s throats?”

  Deena started to respond but realized that Waldo hadn’t seen a television in several hours. She feigned surprise. “That’s … that’s amazing.”

  “You’re fucking right it is.” He leaned over, speaking conspiratorially. “He basically aided the enemy through Vietnam and then worked against Uncle Sam every chance he got. Now, I met him right when you were finishing high school, around the time the Human Front sank their teeth into Atlanta.”

  “The gang war, correct?”

  His lips thinned, and he shook his head. “Baby, there was no gang war. The Soldier put that together and hired some of us to play along.”

  “How do you mean?” She folded her arms, raising a foot onto the railing of the bed. “You started the gang war?”

  “Atlanta was an up-and-coming criminal destination, see. Close enough to Miami and Mexico, far enough away to steer clear of thriving cartels. Crane, several others wanted to turn Georgia into a launchpad for drugs, chemical weapons, and the like. The feds caught wind and installed Monroe, pairing him up with the APHD and me.”

  “This was before Aaron was a detective.”

  Waldo nodded. “Before he was even a cop. Monroe, understanding that graft and corruption had infiltrated the city, chose to create an opportunity in which he would not only set his enemies against one another—some to jail, others to the morgue—but also use the chaos to cover up a series of murders—”

  A light turned on in the back of Deena’s brain. “The gang war was orchestrated to hide the Liberty killings, in which Monroe bumped off everyone who knew his secrets.”

  “Exactly. The Rammlers, Blitzkrieg, several others—men and women who knew that Monroe was a secret traitor to his ‘people.’ He had Owens, me, some others release a number of convicted felons in exchange for them icing those in the know.”

  “But now they knew. Quince, the Rammlers. Why didn’t they squeal?”

  Waldo settled back, spreading his hands. “He threatened most of them, like Quince. The weak ones, convincing them they’d be excommunicated from Crane’s flock. The rest? He killed them, of course.”

  “That’s why there were two Liberty killers. He did his victims differently from Quince, you, and the others. But that doesn’t answer who killed Monroe. Who is the new Liberty, the one who tried to poison you?”

  He cocked his head and softened his expression. “Deena … you know.”

  No. No, fuck him. “You think Aaron did it.”

  “You were always the better detective. You knew how to uncover secrets, like finding hidden Christmas presents.”

  She rolled her eyes and tapped her heel. “All the secrets but the important ones, apparently.”

  “Look,” he answered quietly. “I don’t have proof that Aaron is the new Liberty … but he did know that Monroe was the original.”

  She felt light, buzzing and bubbly, as if she’d mainlined ginger ale. Waldo’s words rolled around in her skull, and she leaned forward. “What are you saying?”

  “Deena … you think I cared about what was happening between the two of you? I was high, sleeping with half a dozen of your mom’s friends. I couldn’t care less what you did. But still, I gave the two of you a hard time. Why?”

  “Because I was your daughter. You were protecting me.”

  He gave her a pointed look. “Does that sound like me?”

  “What, then? Why the fuck?”

  Waldo stroked his beard. His eyes, half-lidded, were barely focused. But still he went on, opening the floodgates for the first time in her life. “Because Aaron knew. He knew the truth and didn’t do anything about it. The criminals I put back on the street? Aaron’s father—the judge—he’d put them away. His rulings, his judgments, toss ’em in a cell and throw away the key. And here I was, flaunting my authority and recovering that key. I released men and women the judge had jailed in order to catch or kill the ones he hadn’t. As an added bonus, I set them after the only people who could finger Monroe, expose his secrets. And all the rest were intimidated, blackmailed, or hobbled.”

  “And Aaron knew.”

  “He felt violated at first, sure, threatening to turn me—us—in and put an end to it. But when Monroe spoke to him … I don’t know, the man had some kind of special connection with the Bouchers … and when he convinced Aaron that our actions were in service of cleaning up the judge’s spotty conviction rate and putting away those who’d slipped through the cracks, well…”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. You mean to tell me that Aaron looked the other way in order to tidy up his father’s record?”

  “At first. But then we paid him, like we did the crooks. He worked the Liberty cases to cover his own ass, to make sure nobody knew that he was involved. It removed suspicion. And we kept the judge’s record on the bench intact.”

  “I don’t believe you. That … no. Just no fucking way.” Her heart hurt. If she’d felt betrayed by Aaron before, now she felt devastated. That prick. That exceptional, lying, scumbag prick. He lied to me—and I slept with him. And the entire time, he was plotting to kill my father. Even back then, he was lying to me as we rolled around and fucked.

  “Believe me, Deen.” Waldo sat forward again, and she stood up, pacing the tiny antechamber. “At first, everything was fine. Aaron played the good cop; I played the asshole. But then he started hating himself for sacrificing his principles to protect the judge, and things got ugly. He became … distant. You remember that Thanksgiving.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, stunned and silent, both brain and heart in turmoil.

  “That speech he gave—that was real. That wasn’t an act, and I knew it. Wasn’t long after that Aaron learned the Soldier’s secret for himself.”

  Recollections of the last twenty-four hours swam inside Deena’s mind, snippets of conversation and what she now knew to be a carefully constructed fabrication. Aaron had known Monroe was a traitor. He knew about the Rammlers and about Quince, their connections to the original murder. And he’d played stupid, letting me swan about trying to fit slot A into tab X. That motherfucker, she thought, seething with rage.

  “Eventually,” Waldo concluded, “he told Ken what was happening. That’s why they moved, I’m sorry to say. The judge agreed to keep quiet as long as the killing stopped. As long as we submitted to an internal investigation and Aaron moved away. We agreed, and the judge forked over a handsome sum—which is how I kept the house and stayed out of jail. Course, that didn’t stop the Liberty killings—we had to toss out a few more once they were gone, just to throw off any suspicion that might have drifted their way. And also—”

  “What about Crane? He must have known … I mean, he was in charge of the Human Front the whole time. He must have been involved.”

  Waldo frowned and shook his head. “I dunno about that. Monroe never discussed Crane … who, by the way, was the only member of the Front to refuse our offer.”

  “How do you mean, ‘refuse’?” She paced, striding from one end of the curtain to the other, jarring and fluttering it in her wake.

  Her father shrugged. “He was the only one who didn’t take the deal. Stayed in prison until after the trials, until after the FBI and the Soldier moved out of town.”

  “Why do you think he did that?”

  “Search me. He and Monroe … there was something going on there that even Aaron and I didn’t understand. You should ask him. He’ll corroborate this entire story—that is, if he’s willing to admit that Monroe was his pal instead of a lifelong enemy.”

  She smiled. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Anyway, that’s what I know. I should have told you sooner. I wan
ted to tell you years ago, but you were so blinded by love that you never would have believed me.”

  “What makes you think I believe you now? I’m supposed to take your word, a man who’s lied to me my entire life? I’m supposed to swallow the fact that you were secret besties with the guy I was dating, the guy you hated, the guy you claimed ruined your life?”

  “Aaron only ruined my life inasmuch as he blabbed. The perks, the cash, everything else … once the judge threatened to expose Monroe and me, the entire house of cards came crashing down. Which was ironic, because—”

  Deena stopped pacing. “Because you kicked me out and told me to go to him.”

  “Well, yeah. I kinda hoped he’d take you away from all this, to be honest. Where you could be safe and sheltered from the things I’d done. From the shameful things I’d done.”

  “Well, look how that turned out. I’d say safe is the only thing I haven’t been since storming out the front door all those years ago.”

  He looked up, eyes wide and glazed. “What do you mean?”

  Deena glared at the hangdog expression upon Waldo’s face. He looked exhausted, spent. She wanted to kill him. Everything I knew was a lie. Even my half-assed college romance. My hatred for my father, that was a lie too because I should have been angry at him for something completely different. For keeping Aaron’s secrets from me, as well.

  Her phone rang, breaking the silence. Deena reached over and dug it out to check the caller ID. Motherfucking Walker. Finally—right at the worst possible time. Annoyed, she let it go to voice mail and stowed the cell phone deep into her jacket pocket.

  “Did you know that I had powers, Dad?”

  He laughed in response—a short, brittle bark. “You had powers? When? H-how did that happen … I mean, your mother and I…”

  Deena sat back down. “You were terrible together. Because of that, I had to depend on myself for support—you and Mom, you were too busy tearing into each other to care about raising me, so I raised myself. It made me cocky, reckless. Like I knew the only thing that could hurt or help me was me.”