Sentinels: The Omega Superhero Book Three (Omega Superhero Series 3) Page 13

  “He was arrested all those times, but not convicted?”

  “Not once since he started work for the Espositos. His cases never even went to trial. With each arrest, the authorities either dropped the charges because of lack of sufficient evidence or the people who witnessed Antonio’s crimes recanted their initial stories, refused to testify at trial, or turned up dead under suspicious circumstances. The Esposito crime family protects its own, especially when one of its soldiers is operating on its behalf, which apparently Antonio was doing in most of the instances he was arrested. The cops and the assistant State’s Attorneys I spoke to said there was definitely the invisible hand of the Esposito family at work in each instance the evidence against Antonio evaporated. For example, one of those murders Antonio was arrested for a couple of years ago was that of a Maryland judge. Judge Blake. The judge was scheduled to preside over the trial of one of the Esposito family’s top lieutenants. The Espositos were looking to tip the scales of justice in their favor a bit by influencing Judge Black. The problem was, unlike some of our other distinguished jurists, Judge Blake wasn’t already in the pocket of the Espositos or any of their allies. And he refused all of the Espositos’ subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to bribe him. His personal life was as clean as a hound’s tooth, so he wasn’t susceptible to being blackmailed either. Since the carrots hadn’t worked, the Espositos tried the stick. Literally. Judge Blake was beaten to death in his home three days before the trial was scheduled to start. They beat his wife too, but were careless and didn’t finish the job. She survived and, from her hospital bed using a photographic lineup, fingered Antonio and another known Esposito enforcer as her husband’s murderers.”

  Hannah’s death had erased any guilt I had been nursing over beating Antonio; what Truman said made me wish I had beaten him more. “So why isn’t Antonio in prison?”

  “Even though the judge’s wife and their two elementary aged kids were placed in protective custody, the Esposito family must’ve gotten to the wife somehow. Maybe they threatened her kids. Maybe they promised to set her and her kids up for life if she forgot what she saw. A judge doesn’t make very much money, you know, not if he’s honest like Judge Blake was. Regardless of why, a couple of weeks after she implicated Antonio and his buddy, Mrs. Blake changed her story. She said those two hadn’t killed her husband after all. She said she had been in so much pain from her injuries and so distraught over the loss of her husband that she picked Antonio and the other guy out of the lineup by accident. Everybody knew she was lying, but the cops and the prosecutor couldn’t get her to admit it and go back to her original story. That, combined with the fact that six people came forward and swore up and down they saw Antonio and his buddy in a bar watching the Astor City Stars get their butts stomped at the time the judge was beaten to death meant there was no way the state would be able to get a conviction. So, the charges were dropped and Antonio and the other guy went free.”

  I felt my jaw clench. “That’s not going to happen this time. I’m not going to let Antonio walk away scot-free from Hannah’s death.”

  “Though I understand the sentiment, you might not have much of a choice. I also spoke to the detective in charge of the investigation of Hannah’s death. Other than that 911 call you made which pointed the finger at Antonio, they have exactly zero leads on who killed Hannah. No one in her building saw anyone coming or going from her unit around the time of her death, nor did they hear anything. There’s also no forensic evidence at the scene which points toward Antonio. Like I said, it appears that Antonio has gotten his PhD in crime. Practice makes perfect, I guess.”

  “No forensic evidence,” I scoffed in disbelief. “How about that giant hole in Hannah’s chest?”

  “Yeah, but there’s no proof that Antonio did that. You say he has the power to spit balls of energy, but there’s no evidence that Antonio can do that. I checked with the Guild. Antonio is not registered as a Metahuman, energy-spitting or otherwise.”

  “A murderous mob enforcer isn’t a stickler for following the mandates of the Hero Act?” I said sarcastically. “I’m shocked. It doesn’t matter, though. If the authorities find Antonio, they can test him for the Metahuman gene and discover his powers. That’s how the USDMA determined I was telekinetic when I went to register as a Meta. They’ll realize Antonio is talking and eating out of the murder weapon.”

  Truman shook his head. “To draw his blood without his consent, they’ll need a court order. To get said court order, they’ll need probable cause connecting Antonio to the crime scene. Like I said before, there isn’t any. On top of all that, how much do you want to bet that when I find Antonio and ask him where he was when Hannah was killed, people will come out of the woodwork to swear on a stack of Bibles he was at church with them, praying to the baby Jesus and thinking pious thoughts?”

  I felt like punching something. “What you’re saying is that even if you find Antonio and I turn him over to the cops, he’s likely to go free. Again.”

  “The way things look right now, yes.”

  The car was silent for a while as I chewed that over. Despite my anger and frustration, it was impossible to not notice that Truman was driving us into Dog Cellar, one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Run-down and boarded-up buildings slowly collapsing in on themselves had taken the place of well-lit and thriving edifices.

  “How do you stand it?” I asked.

  “How do I stand what?”

  “This city. Being a Hero. How dirty and sordid it all is. I used to think being a Hero was a pretty simple matter: Find the bad guy. Punch the bad guy in the face. Take the bad guy to the cops. Thinking about how it really all works makes me want to take a bath.”

  Truman thought about that for a minute.

  “It’s not just this city, nor is it just being a Hero. It’s the world. You just didn’t realize it when you were young and in a small town because you were insulated from it all by age and by geography.”

  I felt my jaw tighten in frustration. “How a smart, educated women like Hannah could be with an animal like Antonio still boggles my mind.”

  Truman shrugged. “Hybristophilia,” he said.

  “Was that a word or a sneeze?”

  That got a slight smile out of Truman. “The former. It refers to the concept that a lot of people get off on being with dangerous folks. If that describes your friend Hannah, she’s hardly alone. A Rogue I helped put away a few years back named the Pied Piper was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. Despite that—or probably because of it—he got more fan mail than a boy band when I put him behind bars. The gallery of the courthouse during his trial was full of so many adoring women, it looked like a teenaged boy’s wet dream come true. You’d think they would’ve been there to see me. I am an intrepid Hero, after all.

  “You’d think. There’s no accounting for taste.”

  Truman glanced at me before returning his eyes to the road. “Sarcasm?”

  “Maybe. I think you’re rubbing off on me.”

  “You could’ve emulated my dashing good looks or my flair for modesty, but instead you’re imitating one of my worst traits. I hope you stop there. One of me is bad enough. Two would be more than the world could stand. To get back to hybristophilia, you have to remember that though humanity has moved from grunting around a fire to an age of smartphones and satellites in a relatively short amount of time, our genetic evolution hasn’t begun to catch up with our technological evolution. Our biological hardware and software are still pretty much the same as that of our cavemen ancestors. Because of that, despite their rational minds telling them it’s not a good idea, women are often viscerally attracted to big, strong, dangerous, dominant alphas. Guys like that were great to have around when you needed protection from saber-toothed tigers and the other scary predators that were stalking around in prehistory. Those guys and their dangerous, violent impulses are less great to have around in modern society where the ability to program a computer is more important than being a
ble to lift a log or outrun a bear. A lot of the guys who would be tribe chieftains tens of thousands of years ago because they were the biggest, baddest guys around are thugs and criminals now.”

  “Do you know how fast bears can run?” I interjected. “I used to see black bears every now and then back in South Carolina, and that got me interested in them. They can get up to thirty-five miles an hour for short distances. Grizzlies are even faster. I doubt even the fastest of cavemen could outrun a bear.”

  “Don’t interrupt my theorizing with facts. I’m giving you a brilliant theory that explains attraction and human sexuality, and you’re going all Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on me.”

  “Mutual of what?”

  Truman sighed. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. They shouldn’t let people become Heroes until they’ve lived through at least four Presidents and sprouted a couple of gray hairs. Maybe then you all would understand my references.”

  We passed a bright street light which illuminated the interior of the car for a few seconds. Truman’s shirt was tight around his big chest and arms. I wondered if he needed to get his shirts specially tailored to accommodate his musculature. Though Truman was dressed like a cowboy turned businessman out for a night on the town, a faint air of menace clung to him. Even when he was doing something as pedestrian as driving a car, something about Truman made you think he was capable of violence at any moment, like he was a coiled spring. That air of potential violence, combined with Truman’s battered face and scars, made him seem more than just a little dangerous. He reminded me a little of Antonio that way.

  “No offense,” I said, “but you’re a pretty scary looking guy yourself. Like Antonio, you look like half a caveman. And yet you’re not a murderous piece of crap like him.”

  “True. Then again, I’m more like Antonio and people like him than I’d care to advertise. Frankly, I think I have to be. We’re Heroes. To protect society from Antonio and people like him, sometimes we must act more like them than we want to. If you’re the sheep dog charged with protecting the sheep, you can’t simply appeal to the wolf’s better nature when he comes around to jack the sheep. If you do, you’re going to wind up with a lot of dead sheep on your hands. Wolves don’t have a better nature. They’re wolves. You can’t lecture or shame or guilt them into behaving like Golden Retrievers. The only thing they understand is a good, hard bite.”

  Truman’s words lightened a bit the guilty load I’d been carrying over Hannah’s death. “So you think I did the right thing by confronting Antonio.”

  “Oh no. That was incredibly stupid. You pissed into the wind, and now it’s blowing back into your face. Hannah’s face actually, which is infinitely worse. You voluntarily signed up for risking death when you donned a Hero’s cape. She didn’t.”

  So much for lightening the load. “Thanks for sugarcoating it for me.”

  “If you want sugarcoating, go to a confectioner instead of asking me. Look, I get that your heart was in the right place when you went to Antonio’s apartment to try to scare him away from Hannah, but if you had looked before you leapt, you might have realized that a guy like Antonio wasn’t going to take a threat lying down and just meekly do as you told him to do. If you had looked into Antonio’s background before confronting him, you might have seen that a guy with Antonio’s history wouldn’t back down. He’s a professional tough guy. Ninety percent of being a tough guy is making sure everyone thinks you’re a tough guy. Otherwise, no one’s going to fear you and do what you tell them. A guy like Antonio won’t meekly take his ball and go home when you punch him. His first instinct is to punch somebody back. You and your friend Myth weren’t available, so Antonio punched back at Hannah instead. Since Hannah was already Antonio’s personal punching bag before you lit the match to Antonio’s powder keg, it shouldn’t have been hard to guess that would happen.”

  I already had been feeling lower than a snake’s belly about Hannah’s death and my role in it. I felt lower still after Truman’s mini-lecture. Perhaps sensing my mood, Truman added, “With that said, try not to beat yourself up too much. You made a mistake. In this business, mistakes come with the job. Hell, they come with being human. Unfortunately, because we have superpowers, our mistakes often have outsized consequences. You’re young still, and new at this. You’ll learn. Once you know better, you can do better. Assuming you don’t get yourself killed beforehand.”

  “You’re saying if I dodge death long enough, I’ll start having a better idea of what the right thing to do is. Great. Very inspirational. You should quit the detective business and take up motivational speaking.” I was annoyed, but more at myself than at Truman. I knew he was right. “Have you made mistakes that have gotten someone killed?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “How did you cope with it?”

  “Well, one time it happened I consulted with Dr. Feelgood. He prescribed a strict diet of vodka for breakfast, scotch for lunch, bourbon for dinner, and beer for the in-between times when I got thirsty.”

  “I see. Did drinking help?”

  “In the short term, yes. But drinking is like taking a painkiller when you’ve got cancer—it dulls the pain, but doesn’t cure the underlying cause. So in the long term, no. In fact, it made things worse. Drinking led me to make yet another mistake that resulted in another death. It’s why I stopped. Guilt is a powerful motivator.”

  “You know how I’m feeling, then.”

  “I do.”

  I felt like a weak swimmer about to drown in a sea of guilt. It was almost more than I could stand. “When does the guilt go away?”

  Truman was silent for a moment. “It doesn’t,” he said frankly. “Time dulls the sharp edges of it, but you still carry it around inside of you the rest of your life. Like herpes.”

  Fantastic.

  I changed the subject before the impulse to slam my head through the windshield became too much to resist. “If Heroes and people like Antonio are just different sides of the same coin as you say, then what’s the difference between them and us?”

  “We don’t kill. It’s what separates us from them. But to be honest, if the dominos of my life had fallen a little differently, perhaps I’d be just like Antonio. After my family was killed, I certainly was on the path toward winding up being like Antonio before I met a Hero named Zookeeper. He helped keep me on the straight and narrow. He sponsored my admission to the Trials, as a matter of fact.”

  “Your family was killed too?” I had already told Truman about Dad’s murder at the hands of Iceburn. “By a supervillain?”

  Truman smiled grimly.

  “Unless that supervillain’s name is Jack Daniels, no,” he said. “My father drove drunk with my mother and sister in the car. He plowed into a tree, killing all of them. I was fourteen at the time.”

  “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why be sorry? It’s not like you poured the liquor down his throat.” Truman shrugged. “Besides, it was a long time ago.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Dad’s charred and smoking body as clearly now as I had over three years ago when I pulled his body out of the fire set by Iceburn. I couldn’t imagine that image ever fading or losing its grievous luster. Sadness whirled with anger inside of me, a potent cocktail of emotions over wrongs both past and present. “I don’t think it matters how long ago it happened,” I said.

  Silence.

  “You’re right,” Truman said. “It doesn’t.” Truman’s voice was uncharacteristically subdued. Then, the moment passed, like a swiftly moving dark cloud getting out of the way of the sun. “On the other hand, what kind of superhero doesn’t have a tragic backstory? The Flash, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Daredevil, you and me. We’re in good company.”

  “Yeah, we’re all orphans. What a fantastic thing to have in common.”

  “It’s better to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness,” Truman said. “But to go back to how women are often attracted to alpha males. That doesn’t apply to
just thugs and criminals. Male Heroes get their fair share of admirers. Female Heroes too, for that matter.”

  “Cape chasers,” I said, using the common vernacular for people who were Hero groupies. “Or for women specifically, sometimes Hero hags.” There was another two-word alliterative phrase that began with the word “cape” and ended with a vulgar word for female genitalia that was also often was used to describe women who were obsessed with Heroes. I was too much a product of the genteel South to actually say that phrase aloud, though. If I did, my mother would likely crawl out of her grave to wash my mouth out with soap.

  “Exactly. In fact, there’s even a website called Hero Hags. Ever checked it out?”

  “My friend Myth has told me about it, but no.”

  “The next time you’re feeling low, you should look at it. Ever since you became active in Astor City, there’s a section dedicated to you, just as there are sections devoted to just about every Hero who’s in the public spotlight. Fan art, fan fiction, comments on your adventures, that sort of thing.” Truman grinned. “There’s even a growing collection of erotica describing your . . . how shall I say? . . . exploits. The gist of it seems to be that your powers aren’t the only thing about you that are super.” He made a big show of looking over to my lap. His teeth flashed in the city’s lights as his grin got wider. “If what I’ve read is true, it’s amazing you’re able to walk without tripping over that thing.”