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Darby
Not only was I dizzy, but it felt like Irish step dancers had decided to hold a rehearsal in my head. That was the one thing I hadn’t told Mark or Dr. Jacoby. Of course, in the hospital, it had been a minor ache. Now as we headed to the DSHA, rehearsal was picking up steam.
With my partner focused on driving, I grabbed the first aid kit from behind his seat and found two things: the emergency supply of candy bars I’d stocked for occasional low blood sugar attacks, and the pain-killer injections. I didn’t like the slight fog the latter gave me, but if it could relieve the near-migraine, it would be okay.
Mark looked over when I uncapped the syringe, took a bracing breath, and plunged the needle into the side of my neck.
“That better not be a stimulant. It’s the last thing you need.”
“Don’t tell me what I need, Mark.”
“Hey, the doctor put me in charge of keeping an eye on you. You heard him.”
I glared and put the aid kit back, then unwrapped a candy bar. It was soft from sitting in the SUV, but it took the edge off. “You both can kiss my derriere.”
Mark coughed.
“Let’s just work our case.”
He nodded. “You may want to wipe off your neck. You’re bleeding.”
I scowled, but found a package of tissues among our other gear, and pressed one against the site, then finished my candy bar.
We were quiet while the Flexion took us toward downtown Kansas City. After several minutes, Mark said, “I need to know what you gave yourself.”
I growled a little. “It was a pain reliever, okay? My head is pounding.”
“Was it at the hospital?”
“Not like this.”
“Do we need to—”
“No. I want to focus on finding our killer.”
“You’re not going to be able to help if you’re incapacitated.”
“Shut up, Mark. I’m not in the world’s best mood.”
“You can say that again,” he said under his breath.
The silence dragged on until we got off the highway. I probably owed him an apology. He’d get one eventually, but I was feeling stubborn.
“Nice flower on your desk this morning.”
“Thanks.”
“Is it...for any particular thing?”
“It’s really none of your business.”
His scowl deepened. “All right, then.”
I folded my arms. Okay, maybe I was being a bit bitchy. I hated feeling weak, and most of my resuscitations lately made me feel that way. Couple that with having two so close together, and I was done for.
Plus the fact that Mark had been trying to be caring—and now I was being the jerk and biting his head off...what was wrong with me? Last night, I’d wanted to reconcile things, now I was pushing him away?
When I thought of the small gestures he’d made since he got in to work that morning, I mentally slapped myself. I was failing—badly—at being a partner and a friend already today.
One way or another, I’d need to start taking steps to fix this.
The Department of SuperHuman Affairs took up the fifth floor of a ten-story building on the edge of downtown. The building was across the street from the old police headquarters, the one from before privatization. It was now a city archive.
At the entry point for the floor, we flashed our badges. Mark took the lead. The receptionist looked up the data, then escorted us back to the unit.
In an office deep within a dizzying maze of cubicles, a balding man met our eyes as he got up and offered his hand to each of us. “Clark Hunt. Please, sit.”
If he recognized me, he didn’t show it.
I took the chair closest to the door, already having a cloying feeling being in the middle of the department which had caused me so much trouble over the last few years.
Mark said, “We’re here about Prairie Rasmussen.”
“Yes, Winifred told me. I haven’t said anything to the rest of the department. Such a sad case. Do you have any leads?”
“We can’t discuss an ongoing investigation, Mr. Hunt.”
“Please, call me Clark.”
Mark crossed a leg over the other with his ankle on his knee. He held it in place with his hand. “What was Prairie working on for the DSHA, Clark?”
“I assume you’re familiar with the function of the DSHA?”
“You could say that,” I said, a twist of lemon in my voice.
Hunt blew past my acidity. “Then you understand our job is to ensure compliance by superhumans. All supers have to register with the DSHA and keep their information current. Most of what we do here is investigating issues of supers using their powers for nefarious purposes. Peeping toms, mind manipulation, that sort of thing.”
“That’s fine and dandy,” Mark said. “But it doesn’t really tell us anything about Prairie. What did she do?”
“She was in our compliance department. Most regulatory changes occur at HQ in DC. She brought supers in, occasionally went to visit them, to ensure they had the powers they stated and were residing at and working at the locations they’d indicated. We take compliance very seriously.”
“So was she working on anything capable of getting her killed?”
“Most supers don’t like our interference. What we do is necessary to assure the general public that individuals like yourself are not going to do anything to cause panic and confusion.”
I held my tongue, but my thoughts were drifting to the history of the DSHA, whose forerunner was directly responsible for putting the early supers more than a half-century ago in prison camps across the country.
“On any given day,” Clark said, “Prairie would interview anywhere from two to five superhumans from the region. Sometimes she traveled. We’re a small office, and handle a significant territory in both Kansas and Missouri, plus we oversee the district offices in Wichita, Topeka, Salina, Omaha, Springfield, and Columbia. With the territory we cover, we’re lucky if we can visit every superhuman in five years. We cover over six million citizens, and with supers making up about one percent of the population, we can’t do it all with ten people in our department.”
“Had Prairie had any negative interactions with any superhumans recently?” Mark asked.
“We have negative interactions with supers nearly every day.” He shifted his gaze to me, his blue ice piercing. “Most supers realize we’re just doing our job. A few get a bit more...testy.”
I held my tongue, but with the dregs of a headache, a slight fog from the pain-killers, and hyping myself up on sugar and nuts, I found doing so difficult. Maybe Lieutenant Douglass should have taken me off the case this morning. Containing myself and not beating Clark Hunt or any of his staff to within an inch of their lives might prove to be a difficult task.
“How do you define testy?” Mark asked.
But Hunt didn’t look to my partner. Those eyes stayed on me. Apparently, he’d figured out who I was. “It can run the gamut. Lawsuits trying to get a restraining order against us. Hostile dogs, or meeting us at the door of their house or property with a firearm which they never take their hand off. Outright threats against our people. That kind of thing.”
“Have any of your people actually been in any danger?”
“A time or two. The supers involved were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and a few were placed in jail for a short period of time. Others faced fines and probation.”
Was this guy the height of rudeness or what? He wouldn’t even look at Mark, just stared at me. I wanted to scream at him to act like a human and direct his response to the person who asked the question.
Mark shifted in his seat. “What about Prairie? Was she ever the focus of any of these incidents?”
“Yes, she was. I pulled the file before you came.” He handed several digi-pages to Mark, but still didn’t look at him.
“Did Prairie have any problems with any co-workers?”
“Not to my direct knowledge. If she did, she never brought it to my attention.”
“We’d like to interview your employees in your division, and any others from other departments who interacted with Prairie on a regular basis.”
Hunt nodded. “I haven’t told the staff yet. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to make the announcement. We’re a small office, and very close.”
“Go ahead. We appreciate you waiting until we got here.”
“Not a problem, Detective.” Finally, Hunt looked at Mark. “I understand your need for secrecy at this point. Have you spoken to her parents? We’d like to contribute toward a service.”
“They’ve been informed,” I said. “No word on arrangements.”
Hunt’s piercing gaze returned to me upon my words.
We all got to our feet, and Clark whistled to his staff. “Could you come here? I need to tell everyone some news.”
Mark and I stood back against the wall to Hunt’s office.
I leaned over to my partner. He bent down. I whispered, “I’m not sure I can handle him.”
“You let me worry about him. I’ve already got a search running.”
“I’m glad one of us is doing our job.”
Mark patted my shoulder. “Let me take point.”
I nodded and was quiet for a moment. “Did you notice his complete lack of emotion about Prairie? I know he’d already been informed but...”
“Yeah, I noticed. Hence the reason I’m already running a background.”
“We got very little on Prairie. They could have their profiles scrubbed when they come here.”
“If that’s the case, we may be able to do something in the courts to get access to any additional information, but we’ll have to be careful because of your involvement.”
I nodded. “It could look like a witch hunt.”
Mark rubbed at the scruff on his jaw. “Let’s see what they have to say for themselves. Maybe it’s just Clark.”
I frowned, wondering if we should interview the coworkers together, or tag-team them.
“We’ve got a lot of people here,” Mark said, as though reading my thoughts. “But I think it might work better if we interview together.”
“We’ve already lost a good hour and a half with our excursion to Kansas,” I reminded. “We should probably split the list.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
He may have said that, but what I heard in my head was, “Do you feel up to it?”
I narrowed my gaze as Hunt pointed at us and introduced us. “Are you questioning my abilities again? I thought we were past that.”
He shrugged. “No one would blame you for being skittish about the DSHA, Darb.”
“Well, I’m fine.” I folded my arms and watched the play in front of us of Prairie’s boss and co-workers. We’d been asked to stay far enough back to not be able to hear. With days like this, being able to lip read would be nice. Too bad that wasn’t part of my skill set.
“Suit yourself.”
Hunt wrapped up and beckoned us over. Mark did a short spiel, mostly warning people not to compare notes while others were interviewed, encouraging them to return to work, if possible, but to stay available.
Mark selected a woman at random with red-rimmed eyes clutching a tissue to her mouth and they headed off to a nearby conference room.
I pointed to the man who had done my intake interviews. “Kozak? You’re up.”
He glanced back at his colleagues, made eye contact with Hunt, then crossed to where I stood. I pointed at another empty conference room. He sighed and led the course.
In some little way, it felt good to have the upper hand. The last time I’d sat down with Kozak, I’d been a new super, and a little scared.
Now, I’d settled in to my role, and my job.
“Have a seat, Kenny,” I said, standing near the end of the table. I spread my legs out a little and folded my arms over my chest, trying for obvious authority.
He sat and folded his hands on the table. He glanced up at me, then back down at his hands. “Detective Shaw, it’s been what? Two years since your intake?”
“Three, actually.”
Kenny shrugged. “Time gets away from you.”
“How long have you worked with Prairie?”
“Since she started, maybe fifteen years.”
“So, you knew her well?”
“As well as anyone. She came in, did her job, went home like the rest of us. She was good at it.”
I strode around the table slowly. “Any threats against her recently?”
He shook his head, his eyes following me. I didn’t have to look at him to feel them keeping track of my every move. “Honestly, after the first year or so, you don’t talk about the threats unless they’re exceptionally unusual or violent.”
“She on any special projects?”
Something shifted when I asked that question. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I lost the upper hand in the interview.
Kenny shifted slightly in his seat and darted his eyes at a spot behind me. I glanced back after a moment but saw no one through the glass.
When I turned back, he’d straightened even more and slid his hands under the table. “I’m not at liberty to divulge anything Prairie was working on.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Oh, really? Are you her superior?”
He shook his head. “No. But we don’t discuss our projects with anyone, especially superhumans.”
“You do realize you’re not just talking to a super, but a homicide investigator, right?”
“It’s a conflict of interest for you to be here, Detective Shaw.”
“If it was, don’t you think my superiors would have pulled me off this case?”
He clenched his jaw slightly and leaned forward. “Your superiors are in favor of anything that stirs up hostility between my department and yourself.”
I snorted. “Oh really? I don’t seem to recall Captain Moustakas or Chief Wilcox ordering anyone in our department kidnap someone from your office and experiment on them against their will.”
In my head, it was as though Mark was talking. Calm down, Shaw. He’s goading you.
I took a deep breath, centered, and came back again, ignoring the aghast look on Kozak’s face. “Prairie Rasmussen. Special projects, unusual threats. What do you know, Kozak?”
He folded his arms. “I can’t tell you any of that.”
“Do you want me to get a court order? Seriously, I’m not playing games here. You talk, or we force you to tell us what you know. Your colleague was murdered.”
“I realize that. But you just can’t waltz in here and demand privileged information.”
“Would you hand it over to my partner? To anyone else in my department?”
He scoffed. “Not hardly. Maybe to a department like Delta.”
Delta Police Enforcement was another company like Bendex who had a public protection division. Unlike Bendex, who was pretty liberal in their approach toward supers like myself, Delta took a hardline and refused to admit any supers into their force, with only rare exceptions. On my first day as a detective, I’d faced that hardline in the form of a bigoted higher-up at the Delta office in Independence on the east side of the metro.
I ground my teeth. “Do you know what the words ‘obstruction of justice’ mean?”
“Do you know what the words ‘no way in hell’ mean, Detective?”
* * *
Mark
MARK CAUGHT UP WITH Darby down at their Flexion nearly two hours after they’d entered the building. “You were supposed to wait upstairs for me.”
“Sorry. I had to get out of there. Belly of the beast, remember?” She slid off the front fender where she’d planted herself and climbed into the passenger seat.
He went around to the driver’s side and hopped in. “How’d things go?”
“Badly.” The safety restraint slid into place, and as it did, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I thought walking in there was a good idea.”
He frowned as he scanned his fingerprint for authorization and the engine fired up. “Did you learn anything?”
“Yeah, they hate the fact I can investigate them.” She dragged her hands down her face. “Check my recordings. It’s all in there.”
“Morgue,” he ordered the computer. The SUV began to roll as Mark pulled out his glass and started watching her first interview.
He scowled as it finished, then said, “Well, he has a history with you?”
She shrugged. “No excuse for unprofessionalism.”
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
“I was totally professional in that interview,” she insisted.
He cleared his throat. “If we’d tag teamed that one, I’d have been good cop, Darb.”
She let out a low growl.
“Hey, no one’s going to blame you after what they did,” he said, trying to shut down an outburst. “Just saying, they pushed your buttons, and you responded.”
“You haven’t even watched all the interviews.”
He rested his glass on his lap. “Do I need to? I’m guessing they all went about like this.”
She shrugged again. “Kozak’s was worse, but no one really gave me anything.”
Deep down, that tug of sympathy bit and bit hard. And he felt his heart softening a bit.
They needed to talk. He’d had the time to cool down from the betrayal. Maybe once they got a solid direction on this case, they could grab a beer. And wine. It would be wine only for her. He’d never seen her drink anything but vino.
She glanced at her hands. “Do you think we can get them on obstruction?”
He dragged his brain back to the case, kicking and screaming as it were. “I’ll run it past Douglass or Moustakas. I don’t know. You were pretty antagonistic, especially to Kozak.”
“Antagonistic—? I tried.”
He snorted. Five years ago, if his former partner had told him that he’d be the level-headed one in a partnership, not just himself, but everyone in the homicide division would have had a good belly laugh. Darby had her days, and most of the time, she was easy going. But there were certainly some times when she turned into a mama grizzly whose cubs were being messed with.
That switch got flipped when they’d learned Prairie Rasmussen had been DSHA.
“Okay, you tried. But could you have tried harder?”
She stared at him for a long moment. “Maybe I could have. But it doesn’t stop the fact that they stonewalled me. They did the DSHA equivalent of name, rank, and serial number. Did they really do much better with you?”
Mark frowned, setting the glass aside and retaking the controls from the computer. “No, not really. Difference is, I handled it better than you.”
“They admitted if I wasn’t a super, or if we were with Delta and not Bendex, they’d have been more free with information. Hunt told them not to talk to us. They didn’t come out and say it, but I know he ordered it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To spite me. Us. Bendex. I don’t know, it’s stupid. But they did it because I am on this case.”
“Is that your professional opinion, or just a gut feeling?”
She slumped in her seat and folded her arms. “I have no evidence if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”
She sighed and turned toward the window. “I wonder what they’d do if they knew about you.”
“Well, thanks to you, I didn’t even know what I was until a few weeks ago. I still don’t.”
She shifted again and scowled. “Did I say that aloud?”
“Seems that way.” He sent her a sidelong look. “Are we going to discuss this?”
Darby stiffened. Her reply came after a long moment. “We need to. But right now?”
They were a mere five minutes from the hospital. What he wanted to say would take a hell of a lot longer than the time they had. “Soon. But you’re right. Not now.”
She visibly relaxed. “Okay.”
Mark drove on autopilot, but now he found his mind drifting back to the turmoil between him and Darby more than focusing on the case, the confusion from her bombshell suddenly as fresh as though she’d just dropped it.
You’re not a normal. You’re not a super either. I’ve known for two years.
One doesn’t just recover from something like that.
If she’d come to him after finding out, two years ago, maybe he would have taken it better.
But hiding it like she’d done...
He didn’t know if that was as forgivable as taking a sample of his DNA to a lab to be tested without his knowledge. He couldn’t deny the curiosity factor. For Pete’s sake, they were detectives for a reason.
There was the electricity they shared, which had always mystified both of them. When he’d confronted her about it, he should have known something was different about himself. She’d said he was the only person it had ever happened with, outside of a resuscitation.
Of course, hindsight was always 20/20, as the saying went. Knowing what he knew now only led to more questions, ones he’d been too mad to ask yet.
The whole admission had made him so blind with near-rage, he’d...well, he’d found himself in the arms of Genova.
“I wonder what Genova would think?” Darby mused, as though his mere thought had provoked her to think of her friend and his one-night-stand, which she should know nothing about.
He took an unsettled breath, hoping to keep his voice even and not give on that anything was up on that front. “You haven’t talked to her?” His voice sounded steady enough to his own ears.
“Last night, I went over to her place for a while. She’s been out of town the last couple weeks.”
Mark’s spine iced up. “Oh, really?”
Darby nodded. “Actually, out of town since we got back from Costa Rica. Not sure why.”
Mark nearly choked, only barely managing to maintain visible composure. “Some SHS function?”
“She never really said.”
He shrugged. “Maybe she just needed to get away.”
Darby sighed. “I guess. But she left rather abruptly. I didn’t even get to see her after we got back from down south. Last night was the first time.”
“Huh.”
“I could have used my friend since you’ve been so distant,” she said, more to herself.
The arrow hit and lodged where it had been aimed, right at his heart.
Still, he put up a stone front. She might not have meant for him to hear her words. They’d sounded more like she’d been thinking aloud.
But the fact Genova had gone away for a couple of weeks, leaving her friend high and dry—that bothered him. It didn’t mesh with what he’d come to know of the free-spirited attorney. That night had been a one-night-stand. He had no intention of ever going back. It had been a simple way to release some anger, and maybe getting back at Darby for dropping her news on him when he was vulnerable.
Even though he didn’t want her to know about the mistake he’d made with Genova.
The lawyer had the same reputation he’d had up until a couple years ago. He’d known that going in.
And sure, the two had flirted off and on, even though everyone in their social circle knew he was interested in Darby.
His mind skated back to the last time he’d seen Genova, her parting words as he’d left her bedroom.
What if she’d put more stock in the hookup than he had? Had he totally used her, thinking she was using him as well, but it had held more weight for the voluptuous Genova?
Had her trip been planned—or had it occurred in reaction to the night they’d spent together?