Superhero Detective Series (Book 5): Accused Hero Read online

  “Nobody has seen these pictures of how Mrs. Lamb was found in her house yet but the police,” he said, “but since we have to turn all this evidence over to Lamb’s defense attorney anyway, there’s no harm in showing you now. Maybe they will convince you that you’re wasting your time trying to prove your boy’s innocence.”

  After a few more keystrokes, several pictures filled Glenn’s desktop computer screen. My Scotch-marinated breakfast gurgled in my stomach at the sight of them. I had been around the block a few times and had seen some grisly sights before, but nothing like the pictures of Mrs. Lamb.

  She did not have a stitch of clothing on her voluptuous body. She lay on her back. The beige carpet underneath her was blood-soaked. Her thick brown hair was swirled on the carpet around her head, making it look a little like she was wearing a halo. Blood was splattered all over her pale white skin, like a demented artist had used her body as a canvas. Her brown eyes were wide open, staring into infinity. Even in death, there was a look of horror in them, as if she were looking at a monster. The left side of her face was untouched. The right side had been repeatedly slashed and cut deeply, so much so that there was exposed bone.

  Though splattered with blood, her milky white arms, legs, hands, and feet were otherwise unmarred. I wished I could say the same about the rest of her body. Her large left breast was pancaked thanks to gravity and was slumped a little to the side. Her right breast had been cut off. Another photo on Glenn’s screen showed that the breast had been flung into the kitchen. It lay on the white ceramic tile floor nipple up, surrounded by a pool of blood like a grotesque island.

  From her rib cage down, Mrs. Lamb had been cut open, like a clumsily dissected frog. Her abdomen had been spread wide open. Some of her entrails hung from her abdominal cavity, trailing down her side and onto the carpet.

  Though I didn’t want to, I peered closer, looking for something I didn’t really want to see. Mrs. Lamb had been seven months pregnant, yet I saw no evidence of it in the pictures.

  “Where’s the baby?” I asked in a near whisper. To speak louder seemed a sacrilege. It was bad enough I was looking at one.

  Without a word, Glenn pressed a key, bringing up pictures from the Lambs’ bathroom. Bile rose to my throat. The baby, almost fully formed with the umbilical cord still attached, was stuffed headfirst into the open toilet. It was obvious the baby was a boy. Blood dripped down the sides of the toilet, as if the porcelain fixture was crying.

  Mrs. Lamb had not merely been stabbed. She had been butchered.

  “Good God!” I said.

  “Sometimes I wonder how good He is when I see stuff like this,” Glenn said. He went back to the screen with the pictures showing Mrs. Lamb’s mutilated body. “Do you see it?”

  I had seen far more than I wanted to, but I knew what he meant. “Her arms, legs, hands and feet are untouched,” I said. “If someone is being stabbed, they’re going to defend themselves. There should be defensive wounds on her arms and legs, but there aren’t. Why? Was she knocked out before she was cut? Maybe drugs or alcohol?”

  “There’s no evidence of any blunt force trauma that could have knocked her out before she was stabbed and cut up. Also, the toxicology report shows she had nothing stronger than prenatal vitamins in her system. As far as we can tell, Mrs. Lamb was very much awake and alert when this was being done to her.” Glenn shook his head ruefully. “I sure wish she hadn’t been.”

  “Mrs. Lamb was conscious and able to defend herself. Or so you would think. And yet, she obviously didn’t.” I let out a long breath. I wanted another drink. “So you all think Massive Force used one of his energy fields to pin his wife down to keep her from resisting while he did this to her.”

  “Bingo. It turns out that your head is more than just a hat rack after all.” Glenn hit a button on his keyboard and the screen full of crime scene photos thankfully disappeared. He turned in his chair a little, lacing his thick fingers over his expansive belly. “Do we have a picture of your guy standing over his wife’s dead body as he’s clutching the murder weapon, with a sign hanging around his neck reading ‘I’m the dickless wonder who did this’? No. It would be easier if we did. But we’ve got enough. A Hero isn’t accused of a major crime every day. Massive Force has done a lot of good in this city over the years and helped a lot of people. There’s pressure on us from the politicians to the Heroes’ Guild all the way down to Joe Public to get this case right and point the finger at the right man. I think we have.”

  “It sure looks like it.”

  “You gonna drop this guy as a client then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told him I’d look into it, and I’ve already taken his money.” I shrugged. “Besides, it’s not like you cops haven’t made mistakes before. Despite the evidence you have, maybe I’ll find out he really didn’t kill his wife.”

  Glenn impaled me with his bulbous eyes. “And if you find out he did?”

  I thought of the gruesome photos I’d just seen. Whoever had killed Mrs. Lamb was a monster. “Then Ethan ought to be put under the jail, and I’ll be the first to show up with a shovel to help.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I pulled up in front of Maureen Jansen’s house. I had an appointment to talk to her about her relationship with Ethan and the night his wife was murdered.

  I parked my Nissan Altima on the street behind a silver sedan which had seen better days. Then again, so had I. There was a lot of that going around. My parents had died when I was a kid, and I had wound up driving an Altima. Batman’s parents had also died when he was a kid, and he had wound up driving the Batmobile. The life of a real superhero was not as glamorous as comic books led people to believe.

  As I got out of my non-Batmobile, trying not to resent it, I comforted myself by thinking it must cost an arm and a leg to get the Batmobile serviced. It was cold comfort, almost as cold as the morning was. I took care to zip my jacket all the way up. Who would be intimidated by a Hero with the sniffles? It was a cloudy, dreary Saturday. The sky was the color of steel, and it was not likely the sun would show its face all day. The sun had the right idea. If I did not have a case to work on, I would have followed its lead.

  I took a moment to soak in my surroundings. Sections of well-maintained rowhouses were interspersed with houses in various states of disrepair. Maureen lived in Monroe Heights, a once undesirable part of Astor City that, like many of the city’s neighborhoods, was undergoing rapid gentrification thanks to the booming local economy. Before you knew it, there would be a Starbucks on the corner and fedora-wearing hipsters underfoot. I didn’t know which was worse: the drug dealers who still peddled their wares in the neighborhood, or coffee-swilling hipsters. Sure, the hipsters were less likely to shoot at you, but the drug dealers were less annoying and sanctimonious. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  I walked across Ms. Jansen’s front yard. It was so small I could have spit across it. Only my Heroic dignity kept me from trying. I mounted the steps of her rowhouse and knocked on the faded red door. While I waited for someone to answer, I found myself examining the door’s lock. It was an old habit. Lock picking was a hobby of mine, a pursuit which often came in handy in my line of work. I automatically checked out locks the way gemologists checked out jewelry and the way gold diggers checked out rich guys.

  This particular lock was a Charity 3000, a common enough lock for those who hoped to keep their valuables in, and thieves and non-spitting Heroes out. The brochure that came with the Charity described it as “The Thieves’ Lament.” It was pretty good ad copy, but a pretty bad lie. The Charity could be unlocked readily enough by those of us who knew what we were doing. I could have opened it as easily as a hooker’s legs, and a lot less expensively. All I needed was my lock picking tools. Or, in a pinch, I could simply use any long, thin, strong piece of metal, like the one that came as an attachment to my pocketknife.

  Despite the fact I sensed the water signature of someone approaching the o
ther side of the door, I considered unlocking the door and letting myself in just to make sure my lock picking skills had not gotten rusty. I resisted the temptation. Cops and trigger-happy homeowners tended to frown on such things. Spoilsports.

  My breaking and entering daydreams were interrupted by Maureen opening the door. We introduced ourselves, she asked to see some identification, and she let me in. We paused in the home’s narrow vestibule as she looked me up and down. Maureen knew I was a Hero, and me being stared at like a zoo animal was nothing new. That was fine with me, as it let me give her the once over too without being rude.

  Maureen was tall, almost as tall as I in her high heels. She was thin with small breasts, boyish hips, and the long, slender fingers of an artist. She was blonde, and a natural one unless I missed my guess. She had high cheekbones which were augmented and emphasized by subtle makeup. Her right eye was blue as a clear summer’s day, and her left was green as an emerald.

  “My, you’re a big one, aren’t you?” Maureen concluded approvingly after giving me the once over with her mis-matched eyes.

  “It’s because I soak my Wheaties in the blood of my enemies.”

  Maureen laughed, flashing teeth that could have starred in a toothpaste ad. She was a very attractive woman. I would have called her beautiful if not for her patrician air which made her slightly off-putting, like she was better than you, she knew it, and you’d better know it too buster. The way she moved, sounded, and looked, you would think she was a duchess in a castle somewhere rather than a draftswoman at a local architectural firm. She wore a tight, russet-colored skirt and a loose untucked white silk top. Her open-toed heels’ dark red color matched that of her lipstick and the paint on her toes and fingernails. I admired her color-coordination, and imitated it in my small way—the silver-plated gun I carried under my jacket matched the color of my belt buckle. It was Maureen’s too tall heels and too short skirt that made me think she had dressed specially for me, as if she were putting on a show. After all, who wore high heels and a skirt to knock around the house unless you were June Cleaver in Leave It To Beaver?

  Maureen led me deeper into the house. The interior of the well-appointed house matched its neighborhood the way a pearl matched an oyster’s crusty shell. It deepened my impression Maureen came from money, but not too much of it, or else she would have bought property in a wealthier area. Examining the house’s interior forced me to stop thinking about June Cleaver. It was hard to not think about Mrs. Cleaver. I had a crush on her when I watched her show’s reruns as a kid. What red-blooded American male wouldn’t? Beaver was right there in her show’s title.

  I sat in the living room at Maureen’s invitation, she served me gourmet cookies and expensive green tea on good china, we lounged across from one another in tasteful upholstered French armchairs under the glow of twin roof windows, and we had a very civilized conversation about how she and Ethan had boinked like rabbits.

  “Ethan and I met eleven months ago at a Rotary Club luncheon,” Maureen said. My focus shifted from one of her oddly arresting eyes to the other as she spoke. Heterochromia was rare, and startling when you encountered it unexpectedly. “He was there as Massive Force, giving a speech to the Rotarians about Metahuman crime in the city. I was there as a representative of my firm. After Ethan’s speech was over, he walked up, fed me some line that probably sounded clichéd to even Eve when Adam first tried it on her, and asked for my number. I gave it to him of course. How could I not? Massive Force was a beloved Hero, powerful, and gorgeous on top of that.” Her face flushed at the memory. “I was flattered right down to my underwear.”

  “And how long before you two were . . .” I hesitated a beat before settling on “intimate with one another?” I had been tempted to say, doing the horizontal mambo, but one aims for refinement while sitting on fine furniture and sipping high-end tea. Truman the Tactful.

  Maureen smiled. Her cheeks dimpled. “About ten seconds after I let him in the front door that night.” She shrugged, showing not a trace of embarrassment. “He wanted me, I wanted him, and we both knew it. So why beat around the bush?” She smiled again, naughtily this time. “No pun intended. The first few times we were together, Ethan did not even take his mask off. If anything, him being masked added to the excitement of the experience. Having him masked reminded me I was in bed with an icon. After the first few times we were together, he felt comfortable enough with me to take his mask off and reveal his true identity.” Her eyes twinkled. “Though sometimes after that I would make him wear it when we were together. It added a certain . . . spice to things.”

  The almost feral look in her eye made me glad I did not wear a mask. I did not want to risk getting Maureen even more excited than she already was. She was licking her lips as she recounted her adventures with Ethan, and she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs. I got the feeling she wanted me to get a good look at them. The experience of sleeping with a Hero seemed quite the turn on to her. I feared she was a cape chaser, someone aroused by the power we Heroes wielded. I’ve had to shoo away a few such women in my time. Don’t dip your cape in cray-cray, was the expression I had coined in the hopes of steering younger Heroes clear of cape chasers, but it hadn’t caught on yet. Popularizing superhero catchphrases was hard. Yet another way comic books were misleading.

  “And how often were you and Ethan together after that first time?” I asked.

  “At least once a week after we met, sometimes more when we could arrange it. As a Hero, he had reason to be gone from his house at night a lot. Ethan told me his wife didn’t suspect a thing.” Based on my conversation with Glenn, I knew Ethan had been wrong since Sabrina had been thinking about leaving him over his repeated indiscretions. “The way Ethan tells it, Sabrina was a traditional woman. One man for one woman, sex only on your birthday and other special occasions, but only in the dark and in the missionary position, that sort of thing.”

  “When did you find out Ethan was married?”

  “The first night we slept together,” Maureen said. “To his credit, he told me before we did the deed. Just seconds before he entered me, as a matter of fact.” Unprompted, Maureen went on to tell me in explicit detail what she and Ethan liked to do together. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable under Maureen’s frank gaze and franker words. My discomfort seemed to amuse her. Maureen was as unashamed to talk about the intimate details of her sex life as a porn star would be.

  “And did the fact Ethan was married bother you?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from X-rated territory.

  She shrugged. “Ethan was the one who took the marriage vows, not me. The fact he was cheating on his wife was between him and her. As far as I was concerned, it was none of my business. You must understand, I was not interested in having a serious relationship with Ethan. I liked having sex with him, and he liked having sex with me. With him married to a prude, I can hardly blame him. I couldn’t have cared less about what he did or who he was with when he wasn’t in bed with me.”

  “Were you the only one Ethan was having an affair with?”

  Maureen snorted in disbelief. “A guy like Ethan has more genitals presented to him than a public bathroom. A man is only as faithful as his options, and Ethan has a lot of them. Even when he was with me, I wasn’t foolish enough to think that he was mine. It was just my turn. He’d fuck a dog if it had a shiny coat and held still long enough. Pardon my French.”

  I wondered when Ethan found time to be a Hero if what Maureen said was true. I would have thought he’d be too exhausted to fight crime. Maybe it was his super strength. I said, “So tell me about the night Mrs. Lamb was killed, the night you and Ethan were last together.”

  The gist of what Maureen told me was this:

  Ethan had come over for his weekly visit the night Mrs. Lamb was killed. He arrived around 7:30 p.m. and did not leave until shortly after 1 a.m. He and Maureen made love most of that time, stopping only to get something to eat. I admired their stamina. Maybe what they stopped to eat
was oysters. The only time Ethan had been out of Maureen’s sight that whole evening was a couple of times when he’d gone to the bathroom. She assured me Ethan had not been in there long enough to drive or fly or hop on his erect penis like it was a pogo stick across the city to his house, cut his wife to pieces, and then return to Maureen’s warm embrace and warmer orifices.

  Maureen had heard of Mrs. Lamb’s murder on the news later in the day, after Ethan had left her place. The news accounts told her Ethan was sought by the police as a person of interest in the murder. Since Ethan had been with her when the murder had occurred, she knew Ethan was innocent and she figured the police would eventually realize that, so she initially kept her mouth shut. When Ethan turned himself in to the authorities and was charged with murder, she knew she had no choice then but to step forward and clear Ethan of the crime by telling the police Ethan had been stabbing her in a good way and not his wife in a bad way the night of Mrs. Lamb’s murder.

  Since Ethan wasn’t the Hero Carbon Copy, he couldn’t be in two places at once. Maureen’s tale exonerated Ethan.

  The problem was, I didn’t believe Maureen’s story.

  Oh sure, I believed that Maureen was hornier than a cat in heat doused with a love potion and that she and Ethan habitually swung from chandeliers together like they were training to be circus acrobats. Maureen radiated sexual energy like a stove radiated heat. Both my Metahuman lie detector and my non-Metahuman bullshit detector told me that the affair part of her story was true.

  What I didn’t believe was that she and Ethan were together the night of Mrs. Lamb’s murder. I came at her several different ways about that night, and the story Maureen told was always the same in almost the exact same language. Her tale about her and Ethan being together that night was a little too pat, a little too scripted, like she was an actress reading lines. She gave the impression she was lying to protect Ethan. I understood why Glenn hadn’t believed her.