Natural Born Angel (17 page)

Sylvester sat up. “I thought the Angels said there was no surveillance video that survived?”

Jacks just gave him a look.

“Thank you, Jackson,” Sylvester said. He opened up the envelope and examined the black thumb drive. “But why are you doing this?”

“Because, after what you did for Maddy and me last year, I trust you. And I think it doesn’t matter
who
solves this case. As long as it gets solved. I’m not sure if there’s anything you can use. But you might see something we haven’t.” He took a deep breath. “My stepfather doesn’t know I’m here, like I said. I got a lot of this info from his laptop. He thinks it’s nice for me to have a . . . hobby, I guess.” Jacks’s voice was bitter for a moment. “Since I can’t protect anyone right now. But he sees it as just that, a hobby. He doesn’t understand that I’m looking for a
purpose.
Or something like that.”

Sylvester nodded silently, his respect for the young Angel increasing.

“I’m not even sure myself what it is. But not being able to save, not being able to fly, I feel so helpless – useless, I guess. Like someone who’s not supposed to be there any more. Now just a burden.” Jackson’s eyes grew dark and contemplative.

“I’m sure that’s not true, Jackson,” Sylvester offered.

Jackson didn’t respond. He looked around the apartment. At the printed-out articles. A map. The stacks of books around the living room. Sylvester’s obsessions.

“Detective. . .” Jacks began slowly. He motioned around. “Why do you do it?”

The detective’s face was serious. Almost gaunt.

“Mark mentioned something about your past when we saw each other last time. Was it from when you were an Angel? I know from what you told me last year that you made an unsanctioned save, and lost your wings. And I know” – a look of pain came across Jackson’s face – “what it feels like not to be able to fly. But what happened? Behind the rumours and the discrediting and losing your wings. What really happened?”

Sylvester let out a long breath. Pulling his glasses off, he polished them with the white dress shirt he wore under his rumpled sports coat.

“It seems so far away now,” Sylvester said. “Even though I think about it every day. It’s difficult for me to talk about.”

Jacks looked up at the detective. “Maybe it could do some good.”

“Maybe.” The detective walked to the kitchen and came back with a glass of Scotch, neat. “I was a Guardian. Around the same time your real father and your stepfather were both also coming up as Guardians. It was a great time for the Angels. Each year more and more Protection policies were coming in, and the NAS wasn’t nearly as controlling of things as it is now. Not as corporate. It was a golden age for Angels in America, in my opinion.

“I lived in a house up off Laurel Canyon. Not as much a house as a mansion.”

Jacks involuntarily raised an eyebrow as he glanced around the detective’s current humble apartment.

“Yes, I too once lived like the Angels, Jacks,” Sylvester said. “My bonuses each year kept getting larger and larger. I was young, only twenty-two, twenty-three. I loved the Angel life and it loved me. I had a girlfriend I was in love with. Sylvia. She was about to be Commissioned.

“I didn’t have much to do with humans. I generally stuck to Angels and the Angel events. The way my father did, and the way his father had taught him. But then a child changed my life. She was eleven, maybe twelve. This was when I was still a new Guardian. She was the daughter of my housekeeper. Her father had left them, moved to Texas when she was just a baby. She and her mother lived in the side guesthouse on my estate.

“Penelope – that was the girl’s name – she and I would sometimes play chess. She’d win half the time, and I wasn’t letting her. She was smart. And she would make me laugh. I’d never had any siblings and it was . . . fun . . . to have a laughing kid around. I wasn’t much more than a kid myself, frankly. I often helped her with her schoolwork. After a short while, I started to think of her as a member of my own family. And something about that girl made me start to think, just a bit, mind you, about the selfish Angel life I was living.”

Sylvester paused to take a drink of his whisky. He stared at his distorted, amber reflection at the bottom of the glass before beginning the next part.

“It was a beautiful day. The most beautiful day you could ask for in Angel City. Especially in those days, when the pollution was much worse.

“Penelope and her mother, Maria, were on their way to visit relatives in East Los Angeles. They insisted on taking the bus, even though I offered to drive them. I think Maria would have been embarrassed if I saw where their family lived.” Sylvester shook his head. “That’s what being an Angel causes in other people.”

“What happened?” Jacks asked.

“The driver of the bus was on the freeway when she had a diabetic seizure. At sixty miles per hour, the bus began ploughing towards the edge of the overpass they were crossing.

“I had the vision. Of Penelope and her mother’s death. It was brutal, searing my mind. I saw her frequency instantly. It was of her dying under the crushing weight of the bus as it toppled off the overpass and on to the road below. She was, of course, not a Protection. Maria could have worked and saved for thirty years and never have afforded a Protection policy. I know now this is why my father didn’t want me consorting with humans. Not because he was a snob.

“Before I knew what I was doing, my wings were out. I blasted through the plate glass window of my home to fly to the speeding bus on the freeway. I was there, Jackson. I had made it in time. In a blur, I was beside the bus, ready to make the save, as the bus smashed through the concrete like it was papier-mâché and plunged straight off towards the streets below.

“But I— ” Sylvester’s voice broke for a moment with years of emotion. “I hesitated. Just for a moment.”

Jackson shivered.

“I thought about the consequences. Of making the unsanctioned save. Of losing my wings. I hesitated. Instead – instead of just saving her. I was thinking of my miserable
self
. Instead of that beautiful girl. It was just a moment. But it was enough.

“The bus began collapsing on to itself with force against the tarmac, like an accordion. I shot down and used my time-bending to freeze the accident. It took everything I had in me. Chunks of concrete hung in mid-air, enormous sparks were flying up from the crumpling front of the bus on the street, frozen in space. The terrified expressions of those on the street below were fixed on their faces. I still remember everything as clear as yesterday. I smashed in through the bus window and found Penelope and her mother there. They were frozen. Her hair was floating up towards the back of the bus. Shrapnel and purses and eyeglasses and blood were floating back up there, too. All frozen like a snapshot. And I was too late. Penelope’s bottom half was already crushed. But she had a strangely peaceful look on her face. I just looked down at her legs and lower torso mangled in the metal, and I started to weep. The bus began to slightly shift as my grip on the time-bending began to slip. I ripped open the metal, reached down, and pulled Penelope and her mother from the wreckage just as the bus smashed fully down and toppled over.

“I kneeled on the pavement and had Penelope over my knees. Her eyes opened for a second. She was conscious and saw me. And you know what that little girl said to me? ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ She died in my arms.”

Jacks looked at the detective, his blue eyes wet. He didn’t speak.

“Maria survived her injuries but was never the same. She was heartbroken. She got a settlement from the city and the bus administration and moved back to El Salvador. Every Christmas I get a postcard.

“The NAS was able to conceal from the public the fact that an unsanctioned save had been made. But I was punished immediately. The ADC took me that night. Not that I cared. Pulled me out of a bar downtown, where I was hoping to obliterate myself. After how I’d failed to save Penelope . . . I didn’t even want to live any more. My girlfriend, Sylvia, begged me to fight, but I knew it was useless. She ended up getting Commissioned as a Guardian in Rio de Janeiro. I’ve never seen her since. They’ve made sure of that. And they took my wings.

“I joined the ACPD. Changed my last name to what was then my middle name: Sylvester. I tried to start a new life to cover my guilt and shame. Thought I could bury myself in the department. A rumour circulated at ACPD that I’d missed the save of a Protection and that that’s why I was disgraced, all washed up. If they’d only known how much worse it was than that.”

“I’m . . . sorry,” Jacks said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I— ”

“There’s no way to have known, Jacks,” Sylvester said. “That is why I do what I do. Not because any of it could ever bring an innocent child back, or erase what I did when I didn’t save Penelope in time because I was thinking of myself. But somehow, some way, I can at least make the account slightly more even.” He knocked back the rest of his drink before putting the glass down with a clink. “Jackson, you’ve saved someone you loved and almost paid the ultimate price. But you saved her. Never forget that.”

Jackson’s thoughts streamed back to Maddy. His voice was studied. “I won’t.”

“And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to eat my dinner before it gets too cold.”

Sylvester and Jacks stood up.

“Thank you for this,” the detective said, motioning to the manila envelope sitting on his coffee table.

“I just want to help. Even though it feels like no one else believes I have anything to offer any more. I at least need to try, I guess.” He dropped his eyes again. “Anyway. Thank you, and have a good night,” Jacks said, walking out of the door. Sylvester closed it behind him.

Sylvester sat down on the couch and opened the container of Thai food, which was still satisfactorily warm. He started digging in with a plastic spoon, his mind swirling with the history he’d just told Jackson. Drawing in a deep breath between bites of curry, the detective tried to shake it off. Reaching into his bag with his free hand, Sylvester opened up his laptop to start watching an episode from one of his favourite TV shows – he had a weakness for a couple of BBC series. Even though he was mostly a traditionalist, he had to admit that being able to stream was pretty nice.

The computer was open to his email, and he saw he had a number of new messages. Mostly mass emails from the department, with some spam. But the latest was only a few minutes old. And it was from someone simply called “A Friend”. The email address was just a series of nonsensical letters in front of a gmail.com domain name. The subject line read: “Please Read Me, Detective.”

Puzzled, Sylvester opened the email.

Inside was simply a link to an online newspaper – no other sign or note of who could have left it for him. Sylvester clicked the link.

It opened an article about the fire and collapse of a brand-new high-rise apartment complex in Beijing, which had been designed by a prestigious Swedish architect. The Chinese tragedy had happened a week before, but officials had only been coming out publicly with details over the past day, after everything was cleaned up. Over five hundred had died in the horrific accident.

In the article was an eyewitness photo taken as the building burned. Sylvester cleaned his glasses, leaning closer to the screen to investigate the photo. The building was on fire, smoke roiling from the glass windows, residents streaming out in a panic. It was horrible. But what was Sylvester supposed to see? He continued looking, and looking, but could find nothing.

Frustrated, he zoomed in further on the photo on the screen, which only began to slightly pixellate.

And then he saw it – far off on the side of the building in the background, unnoticed, there were flames. But these were a slightly different colour, the smoke darker, the fire more intense. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d never have noticed anything in the chaos.

Sylvester looked even closer. A jolt ran through his body.

If he examined as closely as possible, he thought he could see eyes burning darkly in the fire. The eyes of a Dark Angel.

J
ackson’s Ferrari rumbled under the Immortal City sun as he slowed along Ventura Boulevard in Angel Oaks, looking for his destination. He rarely came out to the Valley, and he didn’t know his way around this part of town as well. Last night’s visit with Detective Sylvester was still resonating in Jackson’s brain as he drove down the street, looking for the unfamiliar address. The detective’s tale had haunted Jackson’s dreams that night.

He wanted to somehow help further with the investigation. He may not be able to serve as one of the Angels, but he could still help his kind. That’s what he
should
be doing. Instead of doing things like
this
, out in the Valley
.
Caught in his thoughts, Jacks missed a turn. He grumbled as he pulled a U-turn.

At last he saw it.
Wow. You really couldn’t miss it
, he thought. He pulled around the side of the building and parked near the back. The thrumming engine of the car went silent as he turned off the ignition key. Jacks sighed as he looked out of the window at his job for the day.

Out in front of the modern, curved-glass-and-steel showroom of the giant car dealership was strung a number of multicoloured balloons, along with a large banner that read GRAND OPENING in big lurid letters, hanging over sparkling Range Rovers and Porsches.

Was this what it had come to? Jacks tried to remain positive. He thought about how he had a long road ahead of him and tried to chase away thoughts of just a year before, when his image had been splayed across buildings throughout Angel City. Darcy had convinced him that this car-dealership opening was a great appearance, that they really wanted Jackson to make it a glitzy event. And his publicist said he needed to do whatever came his way, to “get back out there”. But Jackson was still reluctant.

Stepping out of the sports car, he scanned the car park for Darcy – where was she? She was always early.

All of a sudden, Christina, Darcy’s assistant, materialized at Jackson’s side.

“You’re here, Jackson, that’s just wonderful,” Christina said, keeping one eye on her phone. “Now let’s get you in to talk to the owner, Mr Rahimi, who’s so excited to meet you before the event begins.”

“Where’s Darcy?” Jacks asked, looking around.

“She’s with Maddy, of course,” Christina replied, tapping at her BlackBerry. “But I’m here for anything you need.”

“Oh,” Jacks said. Now Darcy wasn’t even dealing with him directly?

“JACKSON!” A voice boomed loudly. A tan man in a sleek suit approached Jackson, all smiles. “Willy Rahimi, so terrific to see you. Welcome, welcome. Would you like a snack? A glass of wine? A Perrier?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Jacks said uncomfortably as the big man shook his hand up and down a few times too many. Jackson could see that on the other side of the lot, underneath the balloons, was a little table set up for him to sign autographs. There was a small line of people waiting patiently. Above was a sign: MEET JACKSON GODSPEED.

Mr Rahimi looked over to Jackson’s car. “No Maddy?” he said with a nervous chuckle. “We were hoping maybe she might just happen to come along. Heh.”

For a second Jacks looked back at his Ferrari – his potential escape. Darcy’s assistant picked up on it.

“Jackson is
so
excited to be here today, Mr Rahimi,” Christina said. “Come on, Jacks, just this way.”

Swallowing his doubts and pride, Jackson walked over towards the cheerful balloons and table, where some people were waiting.

A teenaged girl accompanied by her dad was at the front of the line. She had a pink cast on her broken wrist. She introduced herself as Aimee. Smiling, she had her dad take a picture with Jacks and had him sign her cast.

“Thank you,” the girl said, starting to turn away. “Before I go, one last thing, though,” she said bashfully.

“Yes, Aimee?” Jacks asked expectantly.

“Can you tell Maddy hi for me?” she asked hopefully, looking up at Jacks with batting eyelashes and her broken arm.

“Oh. Uh, of course,” Jacks said, forcing a smile. “She
is
pretty great, isn’t she?”

The next person in line was even more blunt as Jacks signed a Nike Wings poster from his campaign a couple of years ago. The young man asked point blank: “What’s it like being with Maddy?”

“Maddy’s going to be a great Guardian someday,” Jackson answered through set teeth. This was getting a little too personal. “Next?”

The rest of the event continued pretty much the same way, Mr Rahimi standing behind Jacks and shaking hands with potential customers. And Jacks getting asked by everyone about Maddy.

“You were great out there,” Christina said as she walked Jacks back to his car after he finished his contractual hour appearance.

His shoulders and neck taut, his entire body feeling just wrong, Jacks came to a firm decision. “I’m not doing one of those again.”

“But— ” Christina started.

“I don’t care what Darcy says.
No
,” he said. “This isn’t what I’ve been working for my entire life – to be a. . .” He couldn’t even finish the sentence as he waved his hand towards Rahimi’s car dealership. “No,” he repeated, slamming his car door shut, wheels squealing as he peeled out of the lot.

“So you’ll watch me this time,” Tom said to Maddy. The array of gauges, dials, lights and meters in the cockpit was dizzying. She had studied the instrument panel from the book the pilot had given her, but facing it right now was a daunting prospect. Still, she thought this time she’d get a chance behind the controls.

“But this is our second lesson already. How am I supposed to— ” she blurted.

“Maddy. This is my show. I know you’re used to getting your way everywhere else out there.” His hand gestured over to the hills that stood between them and Angel City. “But here, what I say goes. If you don’t like it, you can get out right now.”

Maddy bit her tongue, although it took everything she had. Something about this pilot just got under her skin. She wanted to impress him, but he was making that impossible.

“OK,” Tom said. “So I have one commandment: Do. Not. Touch. The. Controls. Full stop.” Tom looked at her.

“But what if we’re, like— ”

“Even if I have a heart attack and I’m keeled over the controls and we’re plunging to our deaths, don’t even try it.”

“I can fly on my own, you know. I have wings,” Maddy said defensively.

“I’ve read the report. I think that depends on your definition of ‘flying’.”

A slight smile broke through the pilot’s normally serious expression, and Maddy felt suddenly better. His words might sound mocking, but underneath, it was as though he understood what she was going through.

“Let’s go.” The propellers suddenly roared to life, a raucous whirlwind outside Maddy’s window. After a brief taxi, Tom lined the plane up along the small runway. In fact, now that Maddy thought about it, the runway seemed
really
small. She realized she’d never flown in a plane this small before.

“Are you sure this is long enough to— ” Before she could finish her sentence, she was pressed back in her seat as the aircraft began speeding forward. Her nails dug into the side of the seat as the end of the runway approached.

With a quick lurch, the Cessna lifted off the ground, and then, after a quick ascent, it levelled off. The weightlessness lifted Maddy’s stomach up into her chest for a moment. She peered down as the earth receded below them.

She looked over at the young pilot. His eyes flipped from instruments to the sky in front of him and then back again. His hands moved quickly, smoothly. It was simple, automatic for him, manipulating the controls. He looked like he was just tying his shoes. It just seemed so effortless. Maddy couldn’t explain it, but as they banked to the left, it seemed almost like he and the plane were fused somehow. She began to see why he had come so highly recommended from Professor Archson. After their first lesson, Maddy had done a Google search on “Tom Cooper fighter pilot”, and dozens of results had come up: he had graduated summa cum laude from the Naval Academy in Annapolis with a degree in history, had been selected for the prestigious Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instruction Programme, and had got many accolades for his flight prowess. She even found some of the navy message boards, and they were calling him the greatest pilot of his generation.

“When reaching sufficient altitude, you have to decrease the— ”

“Angle of attack,” Maddy said, finishing Tom’s sentence. “That’s the way to ensure stability.”

Along the horizon, the peaks of the mountains extended into the distance, poking out of a low line of wispy clouds.

Tom looked over at Maddy, raising an eyebrow. “That’s right,” he said. “But what if you want to also assume zero bank angle?”

“Since this is fixed wing, I use the gyroscope to observe yaw and use the controls accordingly.”

“Good,” Tom said, looking over at Maddy from behind his aviator shades. “You’ve been doing what I asked.”

Maddy suppressed a smile.
Ha.

“Now watch me. The key is to integrate all the information at once: the tension of the controls, what you’re seeing, what the instruments are telling you, what your intuition is telling you.”

The plane gracefully climbed and rolled to the right, through a bank of clouds that had rolled in from the ocean. Above the clouds was crystal blue sky as far as they could see. They both seemed taken with the sight for a moment.

“How did you learn?” Maddy said at last, breaking the spell.

“To fly?”

Maddy nodded.

“I may not have wings like an . . . Angel,” Tom said. “But ever since I was a boy flying the crop duster with my uncle back in Pennsylvania, we knew something special happened when I got up in the air. I was a natural-born flyer. They couldn’t keep me out of the air.”

Maddy studied him. “What do you have against Angels?”

“I don’t have anything against Angels,” Tom said. “Susan referred me to you, didn’t she?” He looked down across the horizon. “Now please pay attention as I make this manoeuvre.”

“You’re changing the subject. Every time something about Angels comes up, you get this look on your face.”

The young pilot glanced over. “I’d prefer not to talk about it. My politics are my business. Let’s just say I don’t agree with everything the Angels stand for.”

Maddy’s thoughts cast to her long discussions with Jacks about this, and the process she went through to choose joining the Angels over college.

“I don’t agree with everything either,” she said.

Tom looked at her incredulously. “You’re becoming a Guardian.”

“So I can get a chance to maybe change things,” she said, colour rising in her cheeks. “I resent your tone. You don’t know anything about me.”

Tom looked over at her. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I hope you can change some things. I really do, Maddy.”

A brief patch of turbulence shook the plane, then smoothed out. She tried to bring the topic around to less controversial subjects.

“So you flew so much with your uncle you became a professional pilot?”

“Nothing seemed more natural.”

“And now you fly . . . jets?” Maddy asked.

He nodded. “F-18s. And I’m here in Angel City testing a new prototype of my aircraft carrier in the Angel City Bay. Next-generation fighter.”

She remembered the awards and accolades she’d come across when she did a search on the pilot. She looked over at Tom. Even though he was serious and put on airs, he was just a boy a couple of years older than she was. A boy with a lot of responsibility. And he was helping her – even if he did feel obliged.

“Lieutenant Cooper,” Maddy said. “I know we may have got off to a rocky start. But thank you. I mean it.”

Tom looked over at her uncomfortably for a moment. She had caught him off guard. “Of course,” he said hurriedly. “Now what about when a precipitous drop in altitude occurs and you need to
. . .”

The polished steel elevator doors in Maddy’s apartment building slid open with barely a whisper. She stepped out into the hallway, her cheeks glowing from the sun of the flight lesson, her hair windswept. She was met by Jacks, who was standing in the hall outside her apartment.

“You’re late,” Jacks said.

She checked the time on her phone. He was right. “Oh. Only ten minutes, Jacks,” she said. “I had my flight lesson and it went longer than I thought.”

She opened the door and threw her bag down.

“How’s that going?” Jacks asked, following her inside.

“Good. I think. Although the pilot still won’t let me fly. And other training stuff is OK, too.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge. “Except I can’t really bend time yet.”

Maddy cast her glance to her father’s old notebook, which was on the side table with her other books. At night she had been studying it. It was filled with useful tips and tactics for mastering the training subjects. But she’d only managed to bend time briefly, just for the slightest moment, not enough to successfully pull off a hard save under pressure. Or do anything as complicated as when Jacks froze the policeman’s bullet in Kevin’s Diner the year before.