Flash Page 4

  Barry shook his head. This kid didn’t even realize what Joe was hinting at, which made Barry pretty sure he had nothing to do with this. The security system was switched off and the doors were unlocked. No sign of forced entry. It could’ve been an inside job, but Peter Stingle seemed an unlikely suspect.

  Either that, or he should win an Oscar.

  Joe waved over a uniform cop. “Mr. Stingle, go with this officer and contact someone on the museum staff. If you still can’t reach the director, call someone else. We need them down here.” He turned to address the cop. “Get the address of the director, and send a unit over there to bring him here.” He glanced at Stingle again. “Okay?”

  “Sure.” Peter rubbed his forehead, and he looked at Barry. “I just wanted to arrange insects. You know?”

  “I do know.” Barry smiled to comfort the kid, who walked away with the police officer. “I think you’re on the right track, Joe. It definitely looks like an inside job. There was no evidence of forced entry. But I don’t think it was that kid. He just wants to, you know, arrange insects. He’s no criminal.”

  “We’ll see,” Joe replied. “Wouldn’t be the first time some harmless young kid snapped under pressure.”

  Barry hefted his crime scene kit.

  “Well, let me get to work.”

  * * *

  It was two hours later when a disgruntled Joe squatted next to Barry as he was dusting a display case for fingerprints. Barry looked up, surprised that the time had passed so quickly.

  Several people stood nearby in a shocked clutch—various members of the museum staff who had been summoned. The director wasn’t among them, however.

  “Kid was right,” Joe said. “Security cameras shut off, and erased back twenty-four hours. And you were right, too—no forced entry that we can see. We’ve got some of the staff in now, but it’s going to take time before they’ll know if anything was stolen.”

  “Looks more and more like an inside job,” Barry commented.

  “Yeah,” Joe muttered. “Any luck with the fingerprints?”

  “Yes and no.” Barry sat back on his heels. “Museums are notorious for grubby hands. Especially a hands-on, interactive museum like this one.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky with one of them.”

  “Our best bets are those.” He pointed to some red smears.

  “We’ve got bloodstains,” Joe said with excitement.

  Barry nodded. “Yeah. Looks like whoever did this cut their hands in the process of breaking displays.”

  Joe leaned in closer. “We’ll check all these museum guys for cuts,” he murmured.

  A uniformed officer came running up.

  “Detective West, we have a body.”

  Joe and Barry both stood.

  “Who?” Barry asked.

  “Where?” Joe demanded.

  “The director of the museum,” the cop answered. “The black-and-white sent to his home found him dead.”

  “Damn.” Joe shot Barry a glance.

  * * *

  They pulled up to a moderate split-level house in the suburbs, the home of Dr. Hugo Larson. It was one of those neighborhoods where violent crime seemed like a remote concept. Neighbors stood in yards and on sidewalks, holding a cup of coffee or a dog’s leash, staring in shock at the police cars and flashing blue lights gathered around one particular house.

  Another detective met Joe and Barry at the front door.

  “Joe,” he said. “Allen. The deceased is a male in his late sixties. Identified as Dr. Hugo Larson. He lives here alone. Wife deceased. He has two adult children, but they reside in Midway City.”

  “Cause of death?” Joe asked quickly.

  “None apparent.”

  The interior of the house looked as simple as the outside. On most every surface knickknacks and photographs crowded neatly. It didn’t look as if a crime had been committed here—until they reached the living room.

  A body slumped on an olive-green couch. The man wore dress pants and shoes. His white shirt was open at the neck, revealing part of his chest. Draped over a chair nearby were a suit coat and a necktie. He looked as if he had come in from work and sat down to relax.

  Barry frowned. “That is Hugo Larson, all right,” he said. “What a shame. He was a brilliant guy. A renowned expert in geochemistry.”

  “You mean like rocks?”

  “Yes.” Barry smiled at Joe. “Like rocks. He could’ve made a fortune working for one of the oil companies, but he preferred running a museum and teaching.” He put down his forensics kit, pulled on a new set of latex gloves, then knelt next to the body to get a good look. The face had a bluish tint. The tongue was swollen and distended. It was familiar, horrifyingly familiar.

  “Check his hands,” Joe said. Barry gave him a disappointed glance and lifted Larson’s right hand, turning it palm up.

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Glass fragments and blood. His hands are cut.”

  “Like someone who’d smashed some glass cases,” Joe said without gloating.

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Barry looked up. “I mean, Dr. Larson is one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met. He wouldn’t have done it. He loved his work. He was passionate about discovery and preservation.”

  “Evidence doesn’t lie.”

  Barry examined the man’s hands closer. “There’s something else.” He pulled out a lens and studied Larson’s palm. “There’s some dark particulate matter here. Fragments of something.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.” Barry took some samples.

  “How did he die?” Joe asked, studying the dead man’s face.

  “My first guess is that he succumbed to histotoxic hypoxia. There are signs of petechiae. Small hemorrhages in the eyes and on his skin.”

  “Is that a bruise on his chest?”

  Barry gently moved the dead man’s shirt aside. “I don’t think it is. Looks more like ecchymosis.”

  Joe waited for the explanation.

  “When veins lose oxygen, they turn blue. When someone asphyxiates, more oxygen is depleted and a dark discoloration of the skin and tissue develops. Cyanosis. I can’t be sure until I get autopsy results.” Barry stared at the body, lost in thought. “Joe, don’t you remember the Darbinyan crime family murders?”

  “Kyle Nimbus?” Joe replied. “The Mist? You’re saying the Mist killed this man?”

  “I don’t know,” Barry admitted. “There are plenty of other reasons for a body to present with cyanosis like this. It could be something else. We’ll find out when I get the blood toxicology report back. If it shows hydrogen cyanide, we’ll know. Nimbus is the only meta we know of who can transform himself into a cloud of poison gas—and his victims look just like Dr. Larson does.”

  Joe’s face remained grave. “That’s two possible metas today. Weather Wizard and the Mist. Is it a coincidence?” He jabbed his pen at Barry with a warning look. “If they’re working together, they’ll be out to get the Flash.”

  “And you,” Barry reminded him. Both Mark Mardon and Kyle Nimbus held a grudge against Joe, and both had tried to kill him in the past. Joe had shot and killed Mardon’s brother, a murderer himself, and he had been the arresting officer who put Nimbus in the death house. Both Mardon and Nimbus had transformed into terrifying metahumans, but that hadn’t kept them from retaining all their very human hatreds, and deep-seated desires for revenge.

  “I’ll finish up here,” he added. “Hopefully I can find enough evidence to make some sense of all this.”

  Joe patted him on the shoulder and gave a forced smile, his thoughts already miles away. Barry watched him exit the house. Even with all the burdens the man carried on his shoulders every day, he never once slouched. He always stood tall. The thought of adding to that burden, telling him about the glitches and hallucinations, well, now just wasn’t the time. It would have to wait, and in the meantime, he’d focus on trying to get ahead of the game.

  He’d turn in his report, then send a c
opy to S.T.A.R. Labs. Maybe if all of them put their heads together, they’d find a way to keep Joe safe—and the rest of the city, too.

  6

  Shawna Baez stared over the water at the colorful sunset sky. She stood at a long wall of glass, her favorite spot in this massive home that sat on a bluff high above the huge lake north of Central City. How wonderful it would be to own this house, and live here in its space and comfort, she thought.

  Rustling sounds interrupted the calm sunset. Men muttered and argued behind Shawna. She groaned quietly. She recognized again the telltale noises of precious gemstones scraping across an expensive marble tabletop.

  “Wait a minute, Mardon,” a voice snarled. “That diamond is worth three of the lousy emeralds in this mirror. You think you can cheat me?”

  Shawna tried to ignore yet another growling complaint from Kyle Nimbus. And she didn’t want to hear the angry retort from Mark Mardon.

  “You idiot! That mirror is Babylonian. It’s worth twice this diamond.”

  Unfortunately Shawna could see the reflection of the two men in the glass. Kyle Nimbus, the Mist, held a jewel-encrusted mirror in his hand. He was a grim, dark-featured scar of a man who made her nervous. His bald head gave him the look of a hardened prisoner—which he was. Or had been, before the particle accelerator explosion ripped through him at the very moment he had been receiving the state-mandated lethal injection.

  Now he was a metahuman, and a vile one.

  The other man was more presentable. In fact, quite handsome. Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard. He spoke well and came across as a man of some accomplishment. He didn’t look like an obvious criminal. His metahuman powers allowed him to control the weather. He could wield lightning and raise rain and control the winds.

  He was a man of limited intelligence, however, which meant that Mardon wielded those nearly godlike powers like a bully. It was a shame, really, because Mardon didn’t seem like a complete failure as a human.

  Which brought her back to Nimbus.

  Shawna looked at herself in the reflection, her face deeply shadowed in the fading sunlight. Dark skin and dark hair. Smart. Street smart, anyway, yet she was stuck with men like Nimbus and Mardon. How had it become her lot in life?

  She became a metahuman that same night, given the power to teleport herself instantaneously anywhere she could see. Still, she couldn’t blink herself out of her own life. Even with the particle accelerator explosion, she was trapped in a life with hustlers. She could have done so much more, and should have been living in a house like this.

  Instead she was broke and desperate.

  Kyle Nimbus jarred her out of her reverie by tossing the jewel-encrusted mirror on the table like so much junk. It landed with an alarming thunk.

  “I don’t want it,” he said. “Where do I find a Babylonian pawnshop? What the hell’s a Babylonian? I don’t want a mirror.”

  “I can see why you wouldn’t want one,” Shawna muttered.

  Mardon snickered, but Nimbus flew to his feet.

  “Don’t cross me, girl,” he bellowed. “You know what I can do.”

  Shawna did know, and it was unpleasant—even horrifying. Her skin crawled at the very thought of Nimbus shifting from a normal man to a disgusting cloud of toxic mist. Even in a world of metahumans, that was unnatural.

  She gave Nimbus a slow, calm stare before turning back to the sliver of orange over the water. The calm was gone, but she continued to stare at the fading sunset anyway.

  Mardon laughed. “She doesn’t seem scared.”

  “Well she should be.” Nimbus lunged across the room toward her.

  Instantly she was standing outside on the terrace. The chilly air slapped her. She turned to see Nimbus with his hands against the glass, glaring at her through the reflection of the now-purple sky. He pounded on the thick pane, shouting angrily at her, the sound mercifully muffled.

  Shawna looked at a spot inside the room near the sofa…

  …and then she was standing there. The air snapped around her as she rematerialized next to a table with an ornate chess set. Mardon twitched and looked up at her, grinning again, amused by the way she punked Nimbus. The dark-eyed murderer whirled around, glaring. His features began to waver.

  His face clouded and turned gray.

  “Stop it!” a voice said from the door. Two men entered, one of them pointing angrily at the quarrel across the room.

  Nimbus halted his transformation. Mardon stood, electricity flaring from his fingers, pretending he had been ready to leap to Shawna’s defense. She just rolled her eyes. She didn’t need his help—not even against a thug like Nimbus.

  One of the new arrivals glared in annoyance.

  Young and refined, a born Ivy League genius, Hartley Rathaway had an intensity that made him seem as if he was always struggling to keep anger in check. His pale features came off as bookish—the dictionary picture of a scientist. There was a reservoir of resentment in him, and of entitlement.

  His extraordinary relationship with sound waves made him a metahuman. He wore strange high-tech gauntlets, and carried an irregularly shaped rock about the size of a softball. It was another piece of the loot from the museum, and the only thing Rathaway seemed to care about. It glittered with crystals protruding from its surface.

  “And try not to wreck this house,” he said. “It belongs to an old colleague who is in Europe for an extended stay, and he doesn’t know we’re here.”

  Alongside Rathaway walked a forgettable man named Roy Bivolo, a hatchet-faced weasel with greasy hair and dark sunglasses. His metahuman power imposed uncontrollable rage—and perhaps other emotions—on his unwitting victims. He was the type of self-absorbed loser Shawna passed on the street countless times every day.

  Rathaway looked at Shawna. “Don’t touch that chessboard, please.”

  She felt a ripple of irritation. Again, however, she stayed quiet, shot him a dirty look, and merely clasped her hands behind her back.

  “Thank you,” he said succinctly. He kept watching her, though, as if he didn’t trust her to keep her fingers to herself. “We’re ready to make our next move.”

  “Good.” Mardon returned to his seat and stretched out his long legs. “When do we stomp the Flash?”

  “I’m for that,” Nimbus chimed in.

  “All in time.” Rathaway strolled over to the chessboard. He wore a cheap gray hoodie, a peculiar affectation, perhaps meant to make him seem more street and less millennial. Positioning himself between Shawna and the board, he removed his glasses and studied the game pieces. “We’re playing a more complicated game than just, er, ‘stomping the Flash.’ Never fear. We will put an end to his speedster days, but we want more, don’t we?”

  “Yeah,” Mardon said. “There’s a cop I want dead, too.”

  “Yeah,” Nimbus echoed enthusiastically. “Joe West needs to die.”

  Rathaway exhaled impatiently. “Gentlemen, by the time we’re done, we’ll have all of our collective grievances sorted out. The Flash will fall. Your police detective will die, and Central City will be split wide open like an overripe fruit.”

  “That’s nice and all, but I want money.” Bivolo stood impassively, with his black sunglasses hiding any emotion. “I don’t care about revenge or cops or rotten fruit. I want cash. Lots of it.”

  “Money isn’t a problem, Bivolo,” Rathaway replied. “I’ve already made all of you rich with the museum job—and there will be more.”

  “Me and Nimbus pulled the museum job.” Bivolo snorted. “You weren’t there.”

  “Yes.” Rathaway put a finger lightly on the top of a white pawn. “And you didn’t need to kill Dr. Larson, either. Perhaps you won’t get so… overenthusiastic in the future.” He looked up at Bivolo. “If you want money, Roy, you’ll have more than you can spend in a lifetime.” He started to lift the pawn.

  “I wouldn’t.” Shawna eyed the board over Rathaway’s shoulder. He was making a stupid move.

  Rathaway bristled at her, show
ing a rare flash of rage before suppressing it and trying to paste a look of curiosity on his reddening face.

  “Excuse me?”

  Shawna pointed at the board. “If you take the pawn,” she said, “it’s the wrong move. Look at their knight. Your bishop. And… mate.”

  “I sincerely doubt that you…” Rathaway trailed off and narrowed his eyes as he looked again at the board. Slowly he replaced the pawn in its original spot. “Oh. I see.” He glanced back at her with a mixture of surprise and admiration. “I didn’t know you played.”

  “I used to watch my grandfather. In the park when I was a little girl.” Shawna turned away and cranked up her accent, “You know, in between collectin’ welfare and cleanin’ the houses in your neighborhood.” With that she crouched in front of the fireplace, hands stretched out to the flames.

  “Hey!” Mardon called. “Can we forget about play time here? What’s our next move?”

  “What? Oh, yes.” Rathaway pulled his attention from the board. “We will continue to hammer the city’s infrastructure, robbing its citizens of their sense of safety. We’re going to create a new normal in Central City, making it a place where no one believes in the security of authority. Everyone will feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under their world.

  “Then they will pay,” he added. “Mardon, you and Bivolo will wreak some special havoc, as is your wont.”

  Mardon grinned savagely. “And when the Flash shows—”

  “You do nothing,” Rathaway cut him off. He tried hard to look firm and authoritative, but there was still something too prep school about him, and he didn’t quite pull it off. “You will withdraw. That’s where Ms. Baez enters the picture.”

  Mardon squinted. “But I’m gonna—”

  “No! Ms. Baez can teleport you faster than even the Flash can move,” he continued. “We will strike and move, over and over, until the city is weary and near a standstill. Then we will enter the endgame.” His eyes flicked toward the chessboard, and Shawna, causing her a slight smile.

  “Whatever.” Kyle Nimbus shrugged. “That’s all well and good, but I want the Flash and Joe West dead. And soon.”

  Rathaway took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes in frustration.