Seven Wonders (16 page)

  He felt… well, he felt fine, although his feet were hot. He crossed one foot over his knee to examine his old shoes. The rubber, amazingly, hadn't melted, but the soles were worn. That was probably going to be the limiting factor. Footwear. He'd have to mention that to Jeannie, get her to program it into her design.

  Tony leaned back, enjoying the morning sun, and laughed then tempered his humor, glancing self-consciously to the left and right. For years, he'd felt apart, distanced from his home town. The Cowl held court, the Seven Wonders were never there, the city government was corrupt, the police force impotent.

  And then he'd woken up as the most powerful man in the city. Well…
one
of the most powerful, although he didn't really know what powers each of the Seven Wonders had. How this had happened to him, he had no fucking clue. It didn't matter. What did matter was that in the last week he felt part of San Ventura in a way he never had. No fear, no regrets. No limits.

  
No motherfucking goddamn limits.

  Feet restless and quadriceps pinging pleasantly, Tony stood. No limits? He looked across the beach, separated from the walkway by a concrete retaining wall and some elegantly arranged palm trees. The beach itself was deep yellow sand for maybe fifty feet, turning to harder wet sand for the next fifty before the breakers licked land. On his right, the great North Beach suspension bridge, based on the grand design of the Golden Gate of San Francisco far to the north. The sun glinted off the swanky North Beach suburbs that studded the hills across the bay, maybe a forty-minute drive away by car if you stuck to the coastline.

  But directly across the harbor it wasn't so far. A couple of miles? Maybe a bit more. And the harbor wasn't exactly deep. San Ventura was a pretty spot and a popular tourist destination, but the channel wasn't capable of letting cruise ships of any size into the port. And Tony could swim, and there was coastguard, and plenty of people around.

  Could he do it? Could he run fast enough across the water? Skip over it like a stone, and reach the other side? If he got across and then back he could meet up with Jeannie at the coffee shop like they'd agreed, only he'd have to step on the gas even more so he wouldn't be late. Even better, an incentive. And Tony hated being late,
hated
it. And he had time to spare. He needed to go to the bank, but he could run that errand tomorrow. Thanks to a change of shifts at Big Deal he had Thursday off too.

  Tony hopped the wall and landed ankle-deep in the sand of East Bay. Shaking his shoes, he trotted towards the sea.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The precinct house was air-conditioned as all modern buildings in San Ventura were. This was southern California. It was hot in June. Everyone knew this. But the SVPD were funded by the good taxpayers of the county… which meant the air-conditioning units, each individually working at maximum capacity, were inherently unable to cool the air inside the police offices due to their cheapness. Detective Sam Millar lamented this fact every day in summer, and was grateful that she at least had a window, and one that even opened. True enough, it did seem that all opening it did was funnel hotter air from outside
in
, but Sam figured that the psychological benefits of seeing the gently swayed blinds behind her desk outweighed the purely practical − if non-existent − effects.

  Joe was slumped at the desk facing hers. The two of them had shared the same corner of the open-plan floor for a handful of years now. She got the warm breeze, he got the view.

  Her partner was sagging a little too much in his chair, which he'd pumped low so he could put his feet up more comfortably on his desk. He was gingerly sipping a hot coffee while Sam sucked down an icecold mint frappé. She didn't quite believe his explanation of how a piping-hot drink actually cooled you down in summer, and had politely declined his offer of a jumbo grande Americano from the Apollo Coffee across the street, opting instead for something cooler. Joe certainly looked like he was suffering as he attempted to down the drink. Sam, on the other hand, was feeling remarkably refreshed.

  "I wonder why the FBI were interested in that shooting?" Joe lifted the lid on his drink, apparently admitting defeat as he gently blew across the surface of his coffee.

  Sam kept the straw of her milkshake in her mouth. "What shooting?" She took another delightfully chilled mouthful.

  "That black guy. The one we went to see this morning with Jackie."

  "Oh yeah." Sam thought as she pulled on the straw. How did she forget what she was doing that morning? The more she thought, the more her mind clouded over. She took another suck of milkshake. Boy, it was hot today. The heat made her fuzzy and tired. "What did the FBI report say?"

  Joe shrugged, and re-crossed his legs. "No clue. Jackie saw it and signed it."

  "Oh, OK then." Dammit, why was she so lethargic? This drink was supposed to wake her up. Perhaps Joe was right about the coffee.

  "Still." Joe stretched, swinging his legs off the desk and reaching to an evidence box with one hand, fingers dancing on the hot cardboard held in his other. "We did get this. I wonder if we should send it on to the bureau?"

  "What's that?" Sam sat up in her chair, the spring suddenly tilting her forward as she moved, making her realize she was slouched as lazily as her partner.

  Joe tossed the sealed plastic bag onto Sam's desk. She sat her halfdone drink on one of the few empty spaces on her crowded desk and picked it up. Inside was an elliptical strip of something black and plasticky. She moved it around through the bag between her thumb and forefinger. It was some kind of fabric that shone in the light coming in from the window behind her.

  "Material? A scrap? Did we pick this up from the scene?"

  Joe nodded quickly, then slowly as his eyes widened. "Yeah, yeah we did. Do you remember the dumpster, it was all… smashed in. That was on it, like it had been torn off. The dumpster had also been cut up, like with a knife."

  Fascinated with the tiny piece of scene evidence, Sam brought it right up to her eye to get a close look. She grabbed the frappé with her other hand and leant back in her chair.

  "What do you mean? What kind of weapon can slice into a metal dumpster?"

  Joe blinked, and rubbed his forehead. "I… can't remember. No, wait, a quantum knife. And that guy, he wasn't shot, he was sliced up." He took a quick gulp of coffee and coughed, shook his head, and took another. "What the fuck is going on?"

  Sam hadn't moved from her position. She thoughtfully pushed and pulled the straw in and out of the tiny hole in the transparent plastic dome that topped her cup with a sound not entirely unlike fingernails on a blackboard. Her mind was full of a montage of images from the morgue − the body of the victim, with gunshot wound to the abdomen… and the body of the victim, abdomen
intact
, but chest from ribcage to throat stitched up coarsely, a grid pattern that followed the incisions from a knife that passed right through from one side to the other.

  Sam squinted, not looking at the evidence bag, but searching the images in her mind for something else. Another person, just a blurry form, something at the edge of her vision. She took another sip. There. Blue and white, blonde and radiant, and standing in the morgue between her and Joe and Doctor Chan.

  Bluebell, The Seven Wonders' psychic warrior. Sam drained the remnants of her drink and slammed the cup down onto her desk, throwing the evidence bag down in frustration.

  Joe and Sam looked at each other for several seconds, mouths wide in surprise.

  "Bluebell! That bitch… Shit, Joe, the Seven Wonders only went and brain-baked us."

  Joe half-stood, then sat, face wide in surprise. Then he clicked his fingers and slapped his own desk.

  "Mother
fuckers
. Sorry."

  Sam waved away his apology. "Don't. That descriptor is entirely appropriate. Those interfering
motherfuckers."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Oh, that's easy, detective." Sam tapped her laptop awake and started the too-long process of getting the department intranet up. "The Seven Wonders have taken the body. We can't do anything about that, they'll have covered their asses good and proper. But, we have this." She pointed to the evidence bag. "If the murderer was the Cowl, it was unusual, totally out of character. Which might be why the precious Wonders are so interested. But if we can get anywhere with analyzing this scrap − components, manufacturing process, whatever − we might be able to get to the perp first, Cowl or no Cowl."

  Joe's smile dropped a degree.

  "Trying to track down the Cowl with a little piece of cloth? I don't think he buys his capes at Walmart. It's custom, high-tech. How are we gonna trace… well,
anything
from that scrap?"

  "Ever the optimist, detective."

  "Realist, detective. Realist."

  Sam folded the evidence bag in half, and again felt the black material between her fingers through the plastic. "We've got to start somewhere. So, what's logical? He probably uses the costume as some kind of light armor. So, ballistics, and ballistics textiles, we start there."

  Joe clapped his hands together, the smile reappearing. "Ballistics, yes! Let's get down and see Lansbury, she can take a look."

  "Detective Milano, you read my mind. Let's go."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Thanks, Mary, and good morning San Ventura for Monday the twentieth. I'm Sarah Nova and these are your headlines this morning.

  "Fifteen dead in the fourth high-tech raid this year. The Clarke Institute of Technology remains closed this morning after the high-security government energy research unit was attacked in the early hours. A fire later gutted the main office block. San Ventura PD have no leads but Seven Wonders' chairman Aurora's Light said the raid was clearly the work of his arch-nemesis the Cowl, and that the superteam would be assisting local and state law enforcement officials in their investigation.

  "Detectives from North Beach sheriff's department are searching for two teenage girls who disappeared from their home near Lee Springs Friday and haven't been seen since. The pair were last seen walking home from their local high school in the mid-afternoon. The parents of the pair said it would be completely out of character for their daughters to run off. SVPD are appealing for anyone who knows of the girls' whereabouts to come forward.

  "And later today, Geoffrey Conroy, CEO of Conroy Industries, will present the Build-A-Home Foundation with a check for $150,000, raised from the Police Benevolent Fund charity auction last month. The money will go towards upgrades of two community centers in El Simona. Mr Conroy hosted the auction himself in June at the annual San Ventura Police Department charity ball. The check handover will take place at a garden party hosted by Mr Conroy at his North Beach hillside residence.

  "And now our top story. Seven Wonders' chairman Aurora's Light has repeated his call for the supervillain known as the Cowl to give himself up, following the murders of fifteen personnel at CIT in a raid early today. The dead were a mix of security and research staff at the High Valley complex, which has been conducting defense research for the federal government since 1996. The brazen attack was, according to the Seven Wonders, masterminded by the supervillain and his accomplice, known only as Blackbird. While neither felon – both holding joint number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list – left any physical evidence, the leader of the city's superteam told
Good Morning San Ventura's
Leroy Martin earlier today that the raid is part of the Cowl's latest evil plan."

  
"There is no doubt that this is the work of the Cowl. This is the fourth raid on government and privately funded research institutes this year, with each attack bearing his hallmarks. We are continuing to investigate and are assisting the San Ventura Police Department in their investigation, with my team lending specialist equipment and personnel to try to trace the whereabouts of both the Cowl and Blackbird and of the stolen equipment and components."

  "When asked about what the Cowl's plans might be, Aurora's Light said the matter was still under investigation."

  
"I would like to personally reassure the people of San Ventura that the Seven Wonders exist only to serve and protect, with the cooperation of the SVPD and City Hall. We have been gathering intelligence on the Cowl's activities for some time now, and while we have no knowledge of credible, specific threats at the present, we must keep the city's terror level on red for the time being, and I've put all members of the Seven Wonders out on public patrol. I would also like to put a call out to the Cowl and to Blackbird: we may not know your true identities, but if you come forward and give yourselves up to the Seven Wonders or to a representative of the SVPD, this will count in your favor. Thank you, Mr Martin."

  "
Good Morning San Ventura
was unable to verify what has been taken from the institute, but a source close to the sheriff's department said that it fitted the pattern of the previous raids where high-tech experimental electronics had been snatched. The four raids in total have claimed twenty-seven lives.

  "Detectives say the disappearance of two teenage girls from Lee Springs is completely out of character. The two girls, aged fourteen and fifteen, have not been seen since Friday afternoon when they appeared on CCTV leaving their high school…"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

With a two-handed key combo, the message was replayed for perhaps the twentieth time. Two displays showed two graphs each, the points plotted and connecting lines drawn as the recorded data were analyzed again. A smaller readout projected a green circular grid with a wildly wavering orange line across the dark computer room, an abstract but highly mathematical interpolation of the transmission pulsing in time with the audio playback.