“If you’re not going to do the sensible thing and get the information we need directly from Shrapnel,” Shadow said as I turned the pages, “at least have the decency to focus.” She was still clearly pissed at me.
“I’m looking for clues,” I said.
“I know what you’re looking for, and it’s not a clue,” she said. I put the magazines down reluctantly. Inspired by one of them that featured some highly specialized erotic images, I wanted to ask Shadow if she had ever considered doing hucow porn. She certainly had the busty body for it. But, Shadow was still irritated with me. Now did not seem the best time to poke the bear. Or the boob.
The things we found of interest that might have related to Killshot were a cell phone, a laptop, and two memory sticks. I found the memory sticks in a waterproof container taped to the inside of Shrapnel’s toilet tank. People needed to learn better places to hide things. Experience had taught me people’s toilets were a good place to look for stuff they wanted to hide, and Shrapnel’s toilet had been one of the first places I had looked. I almost said to Shadow that toilets were a shitty place to hide things. Since she was still irritated with me, I feared she would punch me for the pun.
Perhaps the memory sticks contained porn too. But, Shrapnel’s pornographic magazines and videos had been unconcealed in a bedroom drawer. If the memory sticks contained something as inconsequential as more porn, why had he hidden them?
I put the laptop and the memory sticks on the bed in Shrapnel’s bedroom. I opened the laptop and turned it on. After a few seconds, the computer demanded I enter a password. Of course it did. The computer not being password protected would make things too easy.
“I don’t suppose computer hacking is a part of your skill set?” I asked Shadow. She was looking over my shoulder as I knelt by the bed in front of the computer.
“By computer hacking, are you asking if I can hack a computer in half with my bare hands?”
I sighed.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I said.
Since the average person was not as security-minded as he should be, the most common computer passwords were 123456, querty, and password. I typed each of them into Shrapnel’s computer. Unsurprisingly, none of them worked.
“Nothing is ever easy,” Shadow said.
“Unfortunately not,” I said. I turned my attention to the cell phone. There was a multitude of numbers in the call history, none of which meant anything to me. There was no “Killshot” or “Brooke Cantrell” listed on the phone’s contact list, either. We could call each number and if a woman picked up ask, “Excuse me, but are you a Metahuman named Killshot who is a professional assassin for hire?” If she said yes, we could ask for her address and then go to her house and subdue her at our leisure. It was not much of a plan. I immediately rejected it.
“We’ll take the phone and computer and the memory sticks with us,” I said to Shadow. “We’ve already committed several crimes today. We might as well add larceny to the list. I’ll find someone to hack into the computer for us. Hopefully it and the memory sticks will contain some information we can use.”
“What do you want to do with Shrapnel? We can’t just let him loose when we leave. He might follow us. Or, if he has a well-developed sense of irony, he might call the cops.”
“When we’re back at the airport, I’ll call the police and leave an anonymous tip that someone broke into Shrapnel’s place and tied him up,” I said. “They’ll come in and rescue him.”
Shadow looked frustrated.
“So that’s it, then? We just let him go? Even though know he was involved in Eugene’s death and Lord knows how many others?” she said.
“What would you rather do? We broke in illegally, assaulted him, tied him up, searched his place, damaged some of his property, and are about to walk off with more of it. If we report what he and Killshot have been doing to the police, it will be our word against his. We have no hard evidence that Shrapnel is guilty of littering, much less that he’s involved in assassinations for hire. Even if there is hard evidence on this computer, we obtained it illegally. The police won’t be able to use it. The police would arrest us instead of Shrapnel, and they’d be right to do so.”
“If you let me kill him, it puts an end to Shrapnel’s activities permanently.”
“We’ve been over this,” I said. “We’re not going to torture him, and we’re not going to kill him.”
Shadow did not respond. She just looked at me silently. The look was a combination of disbelief and pity, like I was a mentally challenged Boy Scout. Oh well. I’ve gotten worse looks before. Being judged by Shadow was better than being judged by my own conscience.
Shadow and I left Shrapnel’s apartment. I was careful to make sure Shadow walked out before I did. I did not think she would go behind my back and snap Shrapnel’s neck if I walked out first, but why take a chance?
Shrapnel craned his neck to look at me as I closed the front door behind myself. His eyes looked at me imploringly as he made a low moaning sound. I suspected he was trying to remind me I had promised to let him loose if he answered my questions.
So I had lied. Lying to an assassin was not the worst thing I had ever done. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
We got back into our rental car. Shadow started it up. We started the drive back to the airport. We were silent. It was still raining. The only sounds in the car were that of the engine, water splashing, and the windshield wipers humming. From time to time Shadow shook her head. I knew she was thinking I was letting a prime opportunity to get a further lead on Killshot slip through my fingers. Maybe it was our last opportunity.
“Truman, I love you like a brother, but you’re a fool,” Shadow suddenly said.
“You love me? I knew you would not be able to resist my charms forever.”
“Did you even hear the other part?” she asked, exasperated.
“No,” I said. “I tune out the stuff I don’t like.”
CHAPTER 28
Shadow and I stood behind my office’s desk. Jasmine Wiley sat in front of us at my desk. She pulled a cable from her laptop and plugged it into one of the ports on the laptop we had taken from Shrapnel. Her thin, gangly arms reminded me of a stork’s legs. Jasmine’s hair was long, tangled, and multicolored. If her hairstyle had a name, it would be Bird’s Nest. The smell of weed coming from Jasmine was so strong I suspected it was oozing from her pores.
Despite the fact Jasmine looked and smelled like a time-traveler from 1960s Woodstock, she was the best computer person I knew. I suspected the money I paid her to help me with computer issues from time to time went directly from her hand to her drug dealer’s. But who was I to judge? Alcohol was a drug too, and I had had no problem using it before Eugene died. We all do what we have to do to make it through the day. Maybe if I continued to drink, my hair would eventually look like Jasmine’s. The thought of it was enough to make me want to swear off liquor forever.
Jasmine was attempting to get past Shrapnel’s password protection to access the information on the computer.
“Why don’t you walk me and Shadow through what you’re doing, Jasmine?” I said. “Since we’re standing here, we might as well learn something.”
Jasmine glanced up at me. One of her eyes was green; the other was blue. She either had heterochromia or she had smoked so much weed her eyes had forgotten they should be the same color.
“How much do you two know about computers?” Jasmine asked. She was in her late teens, and sounded it. Her vocal fry was like nails on a blackboard. If she had not been a computer genius, I would be tempted to tape her mouth shut.
Shadow and I looked at each other. “I can spell computers,” Shadow offered.
“Me too. As long as you spot me the first few letters,” I said.
Jasmine rolled her eyes at us.
“Just think of what I’m doing as magic, then,” she said, turning her attention back to the laptop computers on my desk. “It’s not, of course. As dumb as you two are,
it might as well as be.” Insults from someone I was paying? It was hard to get good help these days.
Shadow looked at me. She stepped closer.
“Not too many people can call me dumb and get away with it,” she murmured in my ear. “Come to think of it, no one can call me dumb and get away with it. You wouldn’t let me hurt Shrapnel, but what about this one?” she asked, gesturing at Jasmine with her chin.
“We need her right now,” I said. “Maybe after.”
“I can hear you,” Jasmine said without turning around or looking up from the computer screens. “You two aren’t funny.” Shadow looked at me again. She had not been kidding. I thought it best to not tell Jasmine that until after she was finished.
After only a few minutes, Jasmine got past Shrapnel’s log-in screen.
“So easy, a child could do it,” Jasmine said. She looked pointedly at Shadow. Shadow did not strangle her to death. It was a minor miracle. I was proud of her self-restraint.
“So lead us through what’s on the computer and the two memory sticks,” I said before Shadow changed her mind about strangling Jasmine. Jasmine’s hands flew over the keys to Shrapnel’s computer while Shadow and I watched and directed her from file to file.
We found nothing of interest on the computer itself other than evidence of a voracious appetite for online porn, a very healthy bank balance, and a diverse investment portfolio. We hit the jackpot when we looked at the two memory sticks. There we found records regarding Shrapnel’s and Killshot’s assassination business. That was what it clearly was based on a quick skim of the records as Jasmine scrolled through them—a business, and a lucrative one at that. I had Jasmine print two copies of the records out.
I paid Jasmine. I gave her cash, of course. Her weed supplier probably would not accept a check. I sent her on her way out the front door before Shadow decided to throw her out the window instead. The smell of marijuana, patchouli oil, body odor, and technological arrogance swirled in her wake.
Shadow picked up one of the printouts.
“Useful person to know,” she said, crinkling her nose in disgust. “A bit smelly, though. Did you find her in the gutter behind some tech company?”
“Behind a weed dispensary, actually,” I said. I picked up my own copy of the printouts. I settled in the chair behind my desk to start to review the records carefully. Shadow sat in one of the chairs across from me to do the same.
“If you had told me when I was a kid that being a Hero and private detective involved a lot of document reviewing, I would have laughed in your face,” I said. “If I had known the truth of the matter, I might have become an accountant instead. They get shot at and beaten up less.”
“The naiveté of youth,” Shadow agreed.
For a while, the only sound in my office was the turning of pages. The records from the memory sticks included a bunch of information: who hired Killshot through Shrapnel, including the contact information for the various clients; a listing of whom the targets were; how much Shrapnel and Killshot were paid; if the contract was carried out successfully, the records reflected when, where, and how the death of the target had taken place; and, if the contract was not carried out successfully, the records noted why it was not and if the money was refunded to the client. Many of the targets were killed by a blast from Killshot’s plasma eye beam. Not all, though. Some were killed by strangulation, some were beaten to death, some were flown up into the sky by Killshot and then dropped to their deaths, others were killed in staged car accidents, a few were killed by gunshot, and a handful were poisoned. One unlucky soul was forced-fed by Killshot seeds from peach pits until he died. I did not realize before peach pit seeds contained cyanide. With the front row seat to depravity being a private eye and Hero gave me, I learned something new about death and destruction almost every day.
As I studied the records and took some notes, I downed a couple of cups of coffee from my office’s small coffeepot. I drank so much coffee these days I might be mistaken for Juan Valdez. It was not lost on me I had replaced alcohol with a coffee addiction. Being over-caffeinated never made someone knock himself out in an alley, though. At least as far as I knew.
I downed the last of my second cup as I finished the documents. I got a paper cut thanks to the last page. It smarted.
“Ouch!” I said. Shadow looked up to see me sucking the blood off my finger. She smiled slightly.
“Ah, the trials and tribulations you fearless Heroes have to face,” she said. “First Shrapnel cuts your head, now this.”
“If you prick us, do we not bleed?” I said, speaking around the finger in my mouth. Shadow cocked her head at me.
“You’re a constant source of amazement to me,” she said. “You look like you’re nothing but a dumb fighter, yet you’re smart enough to quote Shakespeare.
“What amazes me is your ability to insult and compliment me all in the same sentence.”
“It’s a gift.” She lifted the papers in her hand. “As is apparently the bloodthirstiness of Killshot. Attila the Hun might have killed more people than her. If so, it’s a close call. I thought my mercenary services were in high demand. Killshot makes me look like a lazy bitch.”
“So here’s what I’ve concluded by reviewing these records,” I said. “Shrapnel gets twenty percent of the fee to kill someone. Call it a finder’s fee. Killshot gets the rest. Killing has made both of them rich. Killshot has killed dozens of people for hire, not to mention the Metas who killed her family we already knew about. She is such a prolific serial killer, I’m tempted to call her a mass murderer. Did you see how creatively she killed some of her victims? I mean, just look at the force-feeding peach pits thing. In another instance, she dropped someone with a fear of snakes into a pit filled with poisonous vipers.”
Shadow nodded.
“Yeah, I saw that. When I kill someone, I do it in the quickest and most efficient way possible. And, it’s always a bad guy. Or gal. There are other people like me. People who kill, but do it because it needs to be done.” Shadow shook her head. “Killshot isn’t like that. She kills whomever someone pays her to kill. She gets creative in how she does it. It seems like she really enjoys her work, that she takes great pleasure in it.”
“She’s a sociopath,” I said. “Just as her Hero file predicted.”
“Seems like it.”
I was restless. I stood up and started pacing.
“It’s bad enough Killshot killed Eugene,” I said. “We knew she is an assassin. You’re an assassin, too. You’re not a monster, though.” I gestured at the records on my desk. “This all makes it clear Killshot is a monster. She seems to delight in killing people. How many people we don’t even know about has she killed for fun and not for pay? Dozens? More than that?” I stopped in front of where Shadow sat. “It has to stop. We have to stop her.”
“I can’t argue with you on that. But how? You won’t let me wring further information about how to locate Killshot from Shrapnel. Assuming he even knows how to locate her. It looks like they transacted all their business with each other through coded emails.”
I continued to pace. We had been chasing after Killshot for weeks. Though I certainly knew more about her than when I started, I did not know enough to find her. The only times I had seen her, she had come to me.
I stopped my pacing. I had an idea.
“If Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed,” I said.
“Translation, please. I don’t speak crazy.”
“What I mean is, if we can’t figure out where Killshot is so we can go to her, we make her come to us.”
“How? Rent out a billboard? Write notes to her on women’s bathroom stalls reading ‘For a good time, call Truman Lord’?”
“Interesting ideas. I don’t know why they didn’t occur to me before now. Why you haven’t quit being a mercenary and turned your skills to private detection is beyond me.”
“Sarcasm is most unbecoming in a Hero, Truman.”
; “It’s just as well. I might not be a Hero too much longer anyway depending on what the Guild decides to do with me,” I said. I dwelled on the idea for a moment. Then, with an effort, I dismissed the prospect from my mind. There was nothing I could do about it right now. First things first. “When I said we should make Killshot come to us, what I meant was we can get her to do it by hitting her where it hurts.” I pointed at the documents spread on my desk. “Her wallet. Killshot’s made a ton of money by killing people over the years since she washed out of the Hero Trials. I’m guessing she and Shrapnel get new clients mostly through word of mouth. Being a killer-for-hire is not the sort of thing you advertise on television between daytime soaps. If I take this list of clients Killshot has done jobs for in the past and tell them I know they hired an assassin and that I know it because of records kept by Shrapnel, what do you suppose would happen?”
Shrapnel looked thoughtful.
“A few things,” she said. “For one, a lot of those people would probably move to another country to avoid prosecution. For another, they would complain to Shrapnel about their names being publicized. Word would soon get out Shrapnel and Killshot can’t be trusted to keep a secret. Their business would dry up.”
“Unless, of course, Killshot takes steps to eliminate the threat,” I said. “Namely me.”
“Why not just tell Shrapnel you’ll ruin his and Killshot’s business if she doesn’t show her face?”
“If I do that, Killshot will know for a fact I’m expecting her to make an appearance,” I said. “If we do it the other way, she won’t know that I’m expecting her. I’ll have the element of surprise on my side. In light of how my past encounters with her went, I need every advantage I can get.”
“The problem with your plan is Killshot might kill you before you can subdue her,” Shadow said.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 3): Killshot Page 21