June: The Breathless (4)
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June is the worst month for people with irregular lifestyles.

When you pull off an all-nighter, it's already bright by the time you go to sleep; when you wake up at the break of dawn, your clock says three-thirty in the morning. I didn't mind the latter much, but it made me feel as though I lost the track of time. Morning, evening, night and day lost their meaning. Everything turned into a blur.

Last night, I'd returned home around one in the morning. I hit the bed maybe one hour later. By the time I fell asleep, the first rays of sun were already creeping through the shutters.

Thank you so much, new masked vigilante. You owe me four hours of sleep I desperately need.

I was sitting by the kitchen table, drinking my morning coffee. I usually had my coffee light – I didn't suffer the aroma very well – but the first cup in the morning had to be a kick in the head. To many people, the morning coffee is a daily ritual. To me, it was a life necessity. I could go without breakfast, shower even toothbrush if I had to, but I absolutely had to have my caffeine. Because-

The phone unleashed a stream of fast-paced blather, then claimed it was Skatman.

Quite so.

“Hello? Dan?”

Morgan? Are you up?” My partner had the exact tone of voice I dreaded to hear.

“Just drinking my morning coffee.” I braced for the worst.

Then gulp it down fast and get in gear. Kowalski stuck again.

As I feared. No breakfast or shower for me today. Thank God I always start my day with a coffee. When Dan called at five in the morning, I had to be instantly awake.

♦ ♦ ♦

The hard-boiled fiction writers love this phrase: 'The smell of death'. 'Death has an unmistakable scent', they write with an almost mystical emphasis.

Load of bull.

In my short detective service, I came across all kinds of death. Slow or swift, peaceful or violent. Gory and bloodless, painless and torturous, natural and unnatural. Death from gunshots, from slash wounds, burning, drowning, asphyxiation. Death from traumatic shock or cardiac arrest, death from poison or disease – every combination was different, and each had its own, unique smell. There was nothing lofty about these scents, either. Death smelled just plain awful every time. Some were just worse than others.

This was one horrible death.

It seeped through the open window on the first floor, spreading all over the narrow, two-lane street. It was among the worst things I'd ever smelled in my life. Charred flesh, ruptured blood vessels, muscles strained beyond capacity. Fractured bones, torn joints. Major internal organ failure.

The small crowd of officers was all deathly pale. I couldn't blame them. I probably looked no better.

I had the advantage of speed and short distance, but Carlucci somehow had gotten here before me. She nodded at me weakly. Judging by her green face, she had trouble holding her breakfast. If she ate one.

“Sun.” She had trouble speaking, her was voice trembling.

“Jesus, Piper, what happened here?” I waved at her to get closer, away from the stench. She threw a glance toward the window over her shoulder.

“He – interrogated the vic,” she finally said after a few deep breaths.

“Not with a popsicle.” I frowned.

“No, not with a popsicle.”

“Christ.”

Carlucci threw a second glance towards the scene. “A homeless guy found the body about two hours ago. Scared the hell out of him. It's an abandoned building, still has running water and electricity, but the owner doesn't bother with security. A perfect place for a squat.”

“Or an improvised torture chamber,” I added. “Anything else?”

“Your number one fan is here.”

Shit. “Did you let him snoop around?”

“I thought you'd want to do the honours.”

“Screw you, Piper.”

I waved the stench away and tried to find the familiar scent. It was just around the corner. Gray soap, light cologne and fresh laundry. Old leather, steel, grease and smokeless gunpowder. Well-balanced diet, regular exercise and chronic lack of sleep.

“Cuthbert.”

Superheroes and supervillains varied when it came to outfits. Some chose the outlandish circus suits straight out of silver age-comic books, others preferred inconspicuous civilian clothing. James Goldstein, a.k.a. Cuthbert, was somewhere in-between.

In his wool hat, grey shirt, cargo pants, bulletproof vest and old, worn leather duster, he looked like a cross-over between a western sheriff and a noir hard-boiled detective. The common denominator between the Old West and the Prohibition Era were the big irons on his hips. I had to say, the design worked surprisingly well. You could almost get a false impression that James Goldstein was good-looking.

“Hello, Morgan,” he greeted me in that calm, confident voice of his. “A biker suit? It looks great on you. I could mistake you for a superhero.”

“Commission warrant, please.”

He scoffed. “You know Piper wouldn't let me stick around if she didn't check them.”

“When an officer of the law demands your warrant, you're obliged to present it. Now get over with it.”

Cuthbert sighed, took out his phone, tweaked a bit with it and shown me a screen with a code picture. I scanned it with my own smartphone and looked through the document. Slowly. Carefully.

Of course, everything was in a perfect order.

“Is your license valid?”

“You know it is.” I knew it was. He extended it two months ago, I personally wrote his recommendation. I just felt like bullying him a little. The cloud of pheromones he'd released upon seeing me made my awful mood even worse.

“Let's see it.”

Cuthbert groaned, tapping at his phone again. “You can be so petty at times.”

“There are two kinds of Empowered in the world: Those with a badge, and those who show the papers. You show the papers.”

“Not funny.” He finally produced another code. I scanned it and scrolled through the screen without looking.

At some point, the federal government realised it was easier to institutionalise the costumed clowns than fight them. This led to a series of legislations that ramified the extent of the superhero privileges. The details were, as always, dumped onto the individual states. Some had outlawed super-heroism outright, others sought to integrate it with the law enforcement.

Over here, we'd chosen to make the superheroes a part of the private security sector. Each Empowered had to undergo a strict training and obtain a license. Even then, they were only allowed to work on public or private commissions, lending a hand in solving specific cases.

Cuthbert was among the first Empowered in our city to go legit, applying for a license right after the first superhero amnesty. He operated under very different legal ramifications than we did. In some ways, he had more privileges. He could intervene in any crimes committed by his targets without a warrant, for example. His restrictions on the use of force weren't as severe as ours, either.

Still, he didn't carry the badge. It limited his privileges quite a lot. For example, he couldn't enter a crime scene without a permission from an officer.

I sighed and put the phone back in the pocket. I guess that was enough for a payback.

“So you're going after Kowalski, too?” I took hostility out of my voice.

“All major players in the city are,” he replied. “Believe me, legit heroes won't rest until he's out of the picture.”

Dead or alive. So the commission said. “Is the reward that high? I didn't check.”

“That's a part of it,” he agreed, “but... Kowalski is like a kid poking a hornet's nest. Things spiral out of control. Nightmare is in the intense care after he got caught in a crossfire. Black Kite is dead.”

“Kite is dead?” I parroted in shock. “How?”

“Heard of the West Park shooting? Two mobs were fighting over a drug stash of a wiped-out gang. Kite swooped in to break it up, but there were civies in the line of fire. She tried to evacuate them and took one in the back. She died in the hospital tonight.”

“Even with a level III vest?”

“Five-fifty six NATO, hot load, close range. The round splintered and shredded her insides.” He clenched his jaw. “This is personal, Morgan. Many key players call for Kowalski's blood.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And you?”

The gunslinger sighed.

“I just want him out of the picture. If this keeps up, the city will drown in blood. That, or the National Guard will move in and declare a martial law. Don't know which is worse.” He stared me straight in the eyes. “And don't get me started on the black PR he gives to us Empowered.”

He exaggerated, but not much. As far as I knew, the governor was on the verge of panic.

“Some are going out of their minds, though. Retaliator swore that he'll kill Kowalski on sight.”

“That's pushing the line,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, well... Remember that fight they had three weeks back? Kowalski hit him with a rifle butt.” Cuthbert gave me a crooked smile. “No lasting damage, but Dave looks like a horse kicked him in the face. Add that Breathless slipped right through his fingers and he took one to the centre of his ego.”

“That guy is such a goddamn brat.” I scowled. “Even his hero name sounds like a Nerf gun.”

“Yeah,” Cuthbert agreed, looking to the sky. “Sometimes I wish the psychological examinations were more throughout.”

“They are, believe me,” I assured him. “The rumour is, Dave's evaluation said that if we didn't let him go legit, he'd become a renegade anyway. Or turn supervillain out of sheer spite.”

“You know what's depressing? That sounds really accurate.” He sighed, then pointed at the open window with his thumb. “Well... Kowalski won't catch himself. Shall we go take a look?”

“Are you ready for this?” I steeled my nerves.

“No. You?”

I drew a deep breath, preparing for the worst.

“Let's just get this over with.”

♦ ♦ ♦

 

Cuthbert put his scarf over his face. It was soaked with some filtering substances, allowing him to breathe in this stench without gagging. I didn't have the luxury. Inhaling deeply I put my attention away from the horrifying odour, concentrating it on the smells hidden behind it.

“He was here,” I whispered as soon as we entered the staircase. The gunslinging superhero looked at me with apprehension.

He hadn't entered through the front door, but he'd definitely been in the building. I followed the trail up to the door on the first floor.

The victim didn't look as bad as he smelled, but he was still a horrifying sight. He sat in the chair, wrists and ankles cuffed, his form rigid as though every muscle in his body was clenched. His face was tightened into a terrifying grimace of mortal effort, the jaw clenched, teeth cracked, eyes bulging out of the sockets.

“Detective Sun,” Hicks greeted me, a tissue pressed to his face. “How can you stand this stench? Aren't your nose supposed to be super-sensitive, or something?”

“I turn my scent away,” I explained.

“Say what?”

“You know how you turn your eyes away when you see something unpleasant? I can do the same with scents.”

“Oh. Makes sense, I guess.”

In my experience, humans react to smells so badly because they have no control over them. Their scent is inefficient, but they also can't tune out the distracting cues. With our eyes, it works just fine. With hearing, we can do it to a degree. When it came to odours, humans are hopeless.

Paradoxically, my well-developed sense of smell saved me from the worst of it. As long as I kept my concentration, at least.

“So what happened here?” I pointed at the victim.

“He put an electric wire around his leg and turned it live,” Hicks explained. “When we found him, it was still turned on.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What is he now, Liam Neeson?” Cuthbert muttered.

“Do we know who the vic is?”

“No idea. No ID, no credit cards or documents on him. Personal belongings amount to keys, a pen, a pack of tissues and a used metro ticket.” So at least we knew where he was prior to this. “It seems he was looted. His pockets were turned inside-out, the possessions were on the floor. He has a mark on his finger, but there's no sign of the ring.”

“He's looting the bodies now,” Cuthbert noted. “He's desperate.”

“He's been for quite some time,” I confirmed. “For what we know, he's re-selling the drugs he takes from his vics, too. Those he doesn't take, anyway.”

I closed my eyes, following the smell I found earlier through the miasma of the body. As I thought, it was much stronger here. I dove in, digging into the details. Soon, I shuddered. This was wrong. Very wrong.

“Morgan?” I opened my eyes and took a careful step back.

“He didn't come through the front door,” I replied, backtracking to the staircase. “So, he had to come and leave through – here.”

I opened a door with an emergency exit plate, exposing metal fire stairs. The trail was strong, he obviously went through there. I followed it down, into a back alley filled with trash.

“A car,” I noted, closing my eyes again. “It stood here for quite some time, engine hot. His tracks end here.”

“I guess a dead end, then.” Cuthbert sounded depressed.

“Not... Necessarily. He doesn't treat it well.” I inhaled deeper, digging through the machine odour. “It's some fairly new model, but he uses low-grade gasoline. The engine, fuel and injection systems are in tatters.”

“Can you follow it?”

“Probably. At least until he hits a road with a heavy traffic. I'm not that good with engine smells. I'm a people person.”

“It's still a trail, at least,” he cheered me up. “So, what's with the long face? What else did you find?”

“Morphine.” I closed my eyes again, digging into Kowalski's scent. “He's – taking morphine now. Or some other opioid. He mixes it up with amphetamine.”

“Morphine? Kowalski? Isn't he supposed to feel no pain?” Cuthbert sounded incredulous. I opened my eyes and looked him in the face.

“Jim... I think he's dying.”

“How come?”

“He's resistant to pain, but not immune. If he's taking morphine, then it got unbearable even for him,” I counted on my fingers. “His infections are getting worse, but I can't smell as many leukocytes in his blood as before. I think he's got a fever, but his immune system is failing. And there's... An undercurrent of blood in his overall scent. I can smell it coming from his wounds, but it's also mixed up deeper in.”

“Internal bleeding,” he agreed. “Someone must have had done him good.”

“We did last week,” I confessed with the slightest hint of guilt. “We gave him two four-four magnum and a point-five AE to the chest-”

“Who the hell uses Action Express in combat?” He didn't even try to hide his disgust.

“Max does.”

“Oh. Oh, right. That makes sense.” He calmed down. “What range?”

“I dunno, 20 yards? 30?”

“Internal damage,” he announced. “He's down to level III soft body armour by now. It might have stopped AE with some luck-”

“It did,” I interjected. “I didn't smell any traumatic blood.”

“- but the sheer force would still wreak havoc on him,” he finished. “Serious damage to the rib cage, possibly some degree of haemorrhage. With that much force at once, I wouldn't be surprised if organs took some impact, too.”

This was another thing that didn't work out like in comic books: Superheroes in bulletproof vests shrugging off gunfire like raindrops. A ballistic armour stops a bullet from penetrating the body. That doesn't mean it stops all the kinetic energy.

“I told them,” I muttered with anger.

When it came out of his mouth, it was pretty much final. There were gun nerds, then there were specialists and professionals. And then there was Cuthbert, the gunslinging superhero.

Cuthbert's power gave him a superhuman understanding of ballistics. He instinctively understood everything that came with the area of projectile combat, from throwing rocks down to transcontinental ballistic missiles. While the chief advantage was performing toughest trick-shots with his eyes closed, it also made him an authority on firearms. From what I heard he received a lot of job offers from the military and weapon industry. So far, he'd turned them all down. He preferred to put his power into practice as a superhero.

The gunslinger bit his lip. “If what you say is true... This is bad.”

“I know,” I agreed. “We need to catch him alive, or at least take him down on our own. If he keels over and we don't find the body, he'll turn into an urban legend-”

“That's not it, Morgan,” he interrupted me with agitation. “Kowalski isn't the type to kick the bucket quietly. If he goes down, he'll want to go down in style. He'll make some grand last stand, with as much collateral as possible.”

I felt blood running out of my face. “Y-you serious?”

“You know I've been doing this before we went legit, right? Trust me, I know that type. They were rampant back in the day.” He bit his lip. “They usually think alike. Whatever ideals they play lip service to, the only thing they care for is a legacy. The more destructive, the better.”

I cursed. Or rather tried to. My mouth suddenly turned dry.

“Morgan, Jim. There you are, you two.” I heard the door to the fire stairs creak open. Turning back, I saw my partner coming out of the building.

“Glad you're finally here, Dan,” I finally found my voice. “His tracks lead here. He left in a car. I think I can follow it, but I'm not sure how far.”

“Great.” He gave me something that could resemble a smile if he weren't so disgusted. “Get to it. I'll need to stick around here for a while. Do you want anyone with you?”

“No, we need all hands here, thanks. We still have to find out who the vic was-”

“Oh, no need for that. I know the man.” A deep frown formed on Dan's brow. “And that's our biggest problem.”

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