I need to find something that would keep attention on the case. I swung by public records to see if I could find a pattern in the records of deaths by emergence. Under current laws, identities would be redacted, but the events would be disclosed to an extent. Politicians knew voters didn’t necessarily want to know everything, but they hated secrets being kept from them. It didn’t take long to figure out that I wouldn’t find an answer that way. With so many people with so many weird powers, you’d never find a pattern.
So, I switched over to the files on Tireface, Big Gun, Glowy Hands, and their timid friend. They were easy to find. The Goons were a well-known, if loose, group of variant thugs with about twenty members who thought they were owed more than society gave them. They took odd jobs that let them flex their powers for whoever could pay them what they thought was interesting. Usually, a more powerful variant criminal. This meant that the goons as a group ended up with a lot of accessory charges, but the individual goons usually only got misdemeanors. And because they were too loosely organized, the police couldn’t spend the time to figure out which goons were being henchmen to which supervillain of the week to charge them with “conspiracy to commit whatever”. Before long I found the members that jumped me.
Tireface and Glowy hands had rather obvious powers. Big Gun had the confusing ability to “increase velocity and inertia of small objects”. I guess to him a rock became a bullet, and a bullet became a meteor. None of them could have killed the girl without making way more of a mess than was at the crime scene. Even in the rain… I moved on to the fourth guy, Mr. Timid. Apparently, he could make a small number of clones of himself. Like five at a time. Handy for a street thug, but he wasn’t going to be a big-time supervillain anytime soon…
And then I gave Frank another call. There was only one way to make sure that the department kept their attention on the case. I had to make them question their, very reasonable, conclusions about the evidence. If I did that and was wrong, I was done.
“Hey Leo, you find something?” Frank said politely. Had to be careful now. I prayed (yes I’m one of the people that still does that when our backs are to the wall) that I hadn’t misjudged my relationship with Frank.
“Hey Frank, real quick. The goons that got arrested today. There were four at the Diner. Did they all make it to the station?”
“Ah. There were four arrests. But only three made it to holding and processing. Yeah, your Mr. Timid only made it to holding about once. After that, if one of our guys catches him, he melts on the way to the station. Makes a mess. Why do you ask?”
“Just remembered Jollene talking about her missing AMP case.” I paused there. “Frank. I need some help, and this may be the last favor you ever agree to do for me. The girl’s body. I think there’s something fishy with it. When the coroner is able, he should check it.”
“Leo he already did an autopsy.”
“I know. But there is more going on here. I have a hunch that the Mr. Timid goon used AMP to power himself up but instead of making more dups of himself he made a copy of the girl. Can you push to keep the case open?”
Frank paused, “Leo are you saying you have some evidence of this?”
“I’ll say I’m willing to bet my reputation on something being off with that girl’s body.”
“Alright Leo, I let him know when he gets back in.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
That was the end of what I could ask Frank to do. He’d have to run most of that by Det. Connally. I doubted that I’d find anything else at the station. The best I could hope for was they would analyze the girl’s body a little more closely. I suspected there was something else, but needed to prove it. That would be a dangerous and (judging by how my day had gone so far) expensive question to answer.
It was almost evening now. I needed some kind of lead. Some info to work with. The clinic had been relocated to a new building four blocks over while the old lot was being investigated. I drove past on the way to my apartment for a small cup of Ramen and green tea reviewing what I knew. The girl had been almost chronically online but then went dark for just a little bit. No explanation. However, if she could feel the change happening, it may have shaken her enough to sneak into one without anyone noticing. A lot of the kids avoided the variant observation clinics and shunned the ones that went. Even the ones that were overseen privately. If she wanted to go, it wouldn’t be too strange for her to try and hide it. I couldn’t prove or disprove that with the records destroyed from the clinic, but I could check if it was plausible.
I walked in and asked if anyone remembered the girl in the photo. The nurse was the kind of person used to following the rules but hadn’t been in the job long enough to keep going through the motions when things got crazy. So, I let it slip that the question was part of a murder case. The nurse stammered “Possibly” before officially answering that the records were private. I took that as confirmation, otherwise, she’d have just said no. I now had a guess of how this all started. The girl went to the clinic and was put in the system. Then the goons decided to steal a bunch of data and trash the place. They across her file, and took an interest. They then went to extreme lengths to keep me from drawing attention to a case regarding her.
I was bone tired by the time I got back to my apartment. Just wanted to heat up some ramen to soothe the ache, then there was a buzz on my phone that alerted an incoming video message. I assumed it was Jollene, so I answered without checking. I froze for a sec. Instead of JJ, it was my very young client. Looking worried, and very very young.
“Mr. Leo….I need to tell you something.”
I told her that I needed to tell her something too. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but” There is never a good way to break this news to kid. I went through the ways that I had planned to word this in the back of my mind as I had dreaded the morning all day. I couldn’t keep it a secret for very long. Chances were the parents had been informed since noon. And they would tell their friends when they were ready. I had hoped that maybe someone else would tell the girl that her friend was dead and after she had mourned or processed, I could give her some closure on why.
I took a deep breath and began to tell her about how a body was found that morning that matched the description of her friend. And the parents confirmed the identity. The girl looked confused, and I braced for the breakdown. I tried to give a brief account of the events to help her process. But she interrupted me.
“Mr. Leo. I know about the girl they found in the street. But I need you to believe me. That isn’t her.”
I was about to go into how it might be hard to accept but she interrupted again.
“I heard that the police think it was a death by emergence, but that can’t be. She went with me to the clinic a week ago. The doctors told her that she was safe. But she went to that clinic because I told her about how I went without my parents finding out. And that’s why I know that the girl they found in the street today isn’t my friend. I can tell she is still alive because of my ability.”
I asked for some explanation about that.
The clinic told me I’m a kind of empath. I can keep track of a set number of people’s emotional conditions. Like how I know my Dad is stressed about something at work even though he told Mom not to worry about it.”
It clicked in my head. “That’s why you asked me for help. You needed to come to someone you could get to listen to you for money you could scrape together without your parents finding out, and someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions about why you were worried. I suppose you hoped that I’d find her before you had to explain too many things to your parents or the police.”
“Yes, but I know she is still alive. And I know she’s afraid something is about to happen.”
I made a call to Jollene and rushed out the door. If the Goons thought that the girl would get a power that they could use, that would be motivation enough to snatch her. And faking her death would be a good way to keep the police and other ‘do-gooders’ from looking for her. They weren’t a big gang, for all their bluster. And they made a lot of noise about where they could be found at any given time. For the last couple of weeks, they had been hanging around an old factory building that had recently been destroyed in some alien attack. Planning to stay there until the insurance company was forced to shell out the capital to rebuild the complex. So, they could probably stay there for another month before anyone was going to bother about that location.
Once I got to the place, I could see why it appealed to them. That old industrial building feel. Fences, open buildings, lots of stuff to break, barbwire, and cameras. Luckily, after a while on the job, you can tell when a camera is working and when it is broken. For instance, if the power grid has been disconnected from the building for safety and the only electricity is coming from a small generator that they brought themselves, chances are they didn’t hook it up to the surveillance system.
So, I was able to sneak up pretty close to the building without too much trouble. It’s nice how even cheap phones have cameras now. They make handy periscopes. There weren’t too many of the Goons left in the room. There was just one guy. Most of their capable fighters got scooped up in the fight at the diner with Jolene. But there was one troublemaker left. Mr. Timid. Right now, he only had a few copies milling about to fill in for the other Goons waiting in holding. Supposedly, he could only make about half a dozen, max. I expect he could do more with a little AMP in his system.
Luckily if I could find the original, I could take them all out. Unfortunately, he’d likely be hiding somewhere in the back, coordinating the copies. The room wasn’t overly spacious because of their setup. Some garbage couches and recycled tables cluttered the space making it small. They had the girl chained up in the corner disguised in scavenged clothes.
As soon as I panned to her, she looked up. Ok. Then she turned to Mr. Timid sitting in a corner, behind some good cover. Getting to him would not be easy. Even with a gun. And if I spooked him, he’d make more copies. I needed help. I texted Frank and Jollene praying that they would get there soon.
I had to move quietly. The crunch of the gravel set my teeth on edge. Fortunately, punks typically don’t pay attention to anything beyond metal music. I took a quick look again. And spotted their generator in the corner, Maybe I could take out the lights, but most likely it would only dim the room. I had a flashlight, not night vision goggles. By the second options and plans were disappearing, and something bad was going to happen.
I could see where there was an open door around the back and managed to get there without being spotted. Every step on the crunchy gravel threatened to give me away. Moving stealthily is a waiting game, like a stakeout. You have to sit until your moment comes. I took out my gun (a six-shot snub nose) and my telescopic baton. I went through the door and smashed the nearest copy in the back of the room, dropping him to goo.
The girl snapped up and shouted “Behind!”.
I managed to turn in time, taking another down. But the other two managed to get close enough to tackle me with a bone-rattling hit. A close-range shot splattered the one on top before he could pin me. But I only got to my knees before the other grabbed me with a bear hug and slammed me back on the ground. I struggled for a moment, it took half a dozen baton swings to his head and body to give me an opening for another shot with the gun, but by that time Mr. Timid had made two more clones.
I was three bullets down, facing four guys, soon to be 6 all over again.
“Rollback! ” the girl shouted.
I did what she said and saw an option that I hoped would work.
As the closest goon clone came at me, he slipped in the predecessor’s residue. Its head went down and forward, like a slow softball pitch, and I swung for the fences. More goo covered the floor in front of me.
“Clear shot on your right!”
I baseball slid to where she said and lined up a clear shot at Mr. Timid under a table.
“Melt your copies or I put you down, Goon!”
“Ok! Okay.”
Then I heard the sirens coming. Finally.
A moment later, a reserve squad rushed into the building and restrained the last member of the Goons. In a few minutes, the girl was wrapped up in a blanket sipping tea while getting checked out in the back of an ambulance. Jolene came up behind me.
“What made you think it is a good idea to go in there?”
“I had a hunch that time was running short when I thought about your case with the AMP. Just a possibility, but a pressing one. If they were counting on the girl having a useful power and hooking her on AMP, I had to get to her before they could start using her power. ”
“What power did you think she had?”
“Well, there are only a couple of, power types that would make her useful to the Goons and still let them coerce her. I assume they took the data from the Clinic before they trashed it?”
“Looks like it was them, but you never know if someone else put them up to it.”
“Anyway, I figured she’d be a psychic of some kind. They’d be able to hold her after her power emerged and force her to take the AMP. Then the Goons would have a psychic in the group. Big Trouble.”
“You’re not wrong. Turns out it’s worse than that though.”
“Really?”
Jollene explained, “Yep. It turns out she’ll have full precognition when she emerges.”
“The Goons with a precog. Not good.” They could’ve committed dozens of high-profile crimes with a precog telling them where to go and when to run. Not to mention, eventually, one of the villains they worked for would probably take her and use them for a much worse scheme, or just to be impossible to catch.
“How did you figure out that she was alive in the first place?” she asked.
“I could say that I had a gut feeling, but that was only because with as weird as the world’s gotten, faking a death isn’t nearly as complicated as it used to be. The real break wasn’t until an informant gave me the info confirming the girl was still alive. Then all I could do was check. Worst case scenario I was too late and would have to hope that I could find enough evidence to get either the police or you and one of the psychic detectives to hunt for her. Turns out I got to them before they could get the AMP to her. Which meant I couldn’t wait around.”
“Well. I’m glad you saved the girl. But turns out your bluff on the fake body was a bit off. They did find signs that the body was a fake, but it wasn’t made by the goons. Looks like some other player in the city is capable of making quick fakes. That’ll be trouble. The police aren’t happy about some unknown distracting them or you bluffing them.”
“Guess I’m not going to be welcome at police crime scenes for a while.”
JJ put her ‘too heavy for its size’ hand on my very bruised shoulder. “Don’t worry, Leo. Some of the other PI’s know what you do. We’ll give you some good deals on mutual referrals.” I grimaced from the shoulder and the thought of dealing with the kinds of cases referred from Jollene.