Powers (12 page)

Deena turned around, along with the others, weary and curious to know why Captain Cross was bulling toward the detectives with eyes to kill. “What kind of a stunt … I don't know why…” He reached the desk and took Deena's face in his palm, turning it this way and that. “Are you okay?”

I'm fine. I'm
fine
. Tell the captain you're walking. Do it. Tell him now.

She removed Cross's hand. “Thanks to the special investigator. What's an asshole with barbecue fingers when you've faced down vengeful gods?”

Cross rested his ass on the closest desk. “That never should have happened.
This
shouldn't have happened. This situation is out of hand. I want drainers at every door … no one goes in or out without … look, I don't know who leaked this, but when I find out—”

“You won't.” Boucher came up from behind, carrying paper cups filled with water. Red droplets stained the cups; his hands were bleeding from the broken glass, wrapped in paper towels to stanch the flow. He handed one cup to Deena and the other to Walker. The two men exchanged a curt nod, and Walker drained his cup with a hurried swallow. The district attorney was angling their way, so Boucher talked fast. “Could have been anyone on scene or involved with the transfer. Techs, porters, cops, anyone.”

“That's true,” Walker said, crumpling the cup in his fist. “Hell, one of the lookie-loos may have caught a glimpse and recognized Joe or figured it out on our way to the station. You'll go nuts trying to figure it out. Let's just solve the cases we have.”

Cross jabbed a finger at Walker. “
You
solve nothing.
You
stay put. What the fuck were you even thinking, answering that call?”

“I was thinking that I'd do my job.”

“Right now, your job is to stay out of sight.” He waved a hand across the bullpen and then pointed out the window to the gathering crowd. “Whoever gabbed to PNN happily identified you as a detective on scene. They're going through your exploits with a fine-tooth comb. Know why they call it a media circus, Walker? Despite the main attraction, they're here to flush out the freaks and throw them to the lions.”

“You're mixing metaphors, Cap.”

Exasperated, Cross threw both hands into the air. “Do I have to throw you in a cell?
Don't
.
Fucking
.
Move
. Got it, Walker?” He pointed to Boucher. “
You
—do what you came to do and then get out. I have too much on my plate to deal with your
mishegas
along with everything else.”

“Thought I might dawdle with that investigation, Captain Cross. Stick around. Lend a hand.” Aaron glanced at Deena. “Catch up with old friends.”

Cross squinted, looking from Boucher to Deena. “Fine. Whatever. Just stay out of the way, and don't talk to the media. Pilgrim, get me a suspect. Anybody. Get one
today
.”

Deena saluted in reply as Cross stamped away to deflect the DA in the center aisle. Aaron edged closer to Deena and rubbed her shoulder; she flinched, moving away, unwilling to show further vulnerability. Not here. Not in front of the pimps and clowns. And definitely not in front of Walker or Kirk.

The buzz and drone of the cop house had reasserted itself. She needed to get back to cases, back to tracking down Willie Wails or hoofing down the forensics report from the Rampage Brothers murders. Aaron continued to hover, and she waved him off, sick of his mothering.
Enough, Pilgrim. Stop wallowing, quit second-guessing. This is just another fucked-up Powers situation, and you're the goddamn mother of fucked-up Powers situations. Get up, say something cute yet profane, and bark orders so they quit treating you like the baby
.

“Okay,” she began, turning back to Walker. “First thing I need you to do is track down Wails—hey, where are you going?” Walker had risen from the chair, gathering folders and notepads.

“I can't stay.”

“Cross said—”

Aaron held out a hand. “Walker, we still have to finish—”

“Cross said to stay quiet. And that's what I'm doing. I'm going home, taking work with me. I'll call if I dig up anything on Wails. Let's pick it up in the morning, Boucher. Deena, take Kirk and talk to Malachi Crane at the Human Front. Find out what he knows about Joe and the Rampage Brothers. Find out what he knows about Liberty.”

She placed both palms on Walker's desk. “Are you kidding? You're giving up?”

“I'm just calling it for today, Deena. I'm providing a bigger target for the department…… and a friend of mine died. I think that earns some time to myself.”

He started for the door and then turned around. He looked beaten. “Are
you
all right?” Walker asked. “That guy, I mean. The Power?”

Deena indicated that she was. “Yeah. Just another day in the salt mines, right?”

“Don't.”

Heat washed across her face. “Yeah. I'll be all right. Sorry about your friend.”

Walker shot her a smile, tight and joyless. “I'm sorry, too.” And then he was gone, shouldering through the room, avoiding stares and conspicuous whispers.

Kirk cleared his throat and took a step forward. “So, uh … should we……?”

Deena gave him her best fuck-off look. After a second, she felt bad and quietly told him, “Get an address, and find that suspect list. Then ask Dr. Death what he learned from the headless triplets. We'll grab lunch on the way uptown. I want Crane to connect some dots, but I need a few minutes.”

Kirk nodded and hustled toward the morgue. She watched him go, angry with herself for taking a shit mood out on the new fish. The baby meant well. It wasn't his fault that her worlds were crashing headlong into one another.

As if on cue, Aaron awkwardly sat on the edge of Walker's desk. He placed both hands on his knees and whistled long and low. “So,” he said, scanning the room, watching detectives intimidate criminals. “
Are
you okay? Like, really?”

She shot him a sidelong glance. “
God,
yes. I said I was fine.”

Aaron's lips thinned as he sighed. “Yeah. As an ex-boyfriend, I gotta tell you. I've heard ‘
God,
yes, said I was fine' before. It usually meant, ‘Asshole, no, I'm not.'”

Deena laughed. “You throw the term ‘ex-boyfriend' around loosely for a guy I haven't seen in years. ‘Asshole' fits, though.”

Aaron placed a hand on her arm and lowered his voice. “Seriously. You were manhandled by a human bug zapper. Your partner's been ripped from your side. This asshole you used to fuck, a moron who walked out of your life without looking back, just waltzed back in as if he owned the place. And now you're after a suspect whose testimony, along with others', helped ruin your father.”

Deena flinched, and her eyes watered.
Don't you fucking cry, Pilgrim,
she admonished herself
. Cry and I'll kick you in the goddamn uterus.

“Lest we forget,” he continued, failing to notice the maelstrom churning behind her eyes, “the reemergence of an unsolved string of murders. Killings, I might add, that took place during an emotional time for the both of us. Back when your dad and I—”

She grabbed his fingers and squeezed. “I
know
. I was there.”

Aaron squeezed back. Cross wandered by and raised an eyebrow; he paused for a moment, but Deena waved him on, assuring the captain that everything was fine in Pilgrimtown.
Fine, fine. I'm all
fine.

“All I'm saying, Deen, is that I know you. I know you're not ‘fine.' Walker does, too, but he's too much of a … fuck, I don't know
what
he is anymore. He's too
Walker
to put himself out there, if that means anything.”

“I'm fine.”

“And I'm Golgotha, Queen of the Radioactive Monsters.”

Dammit,
Deena thought ruefully.
He always knew how to get me to smile. Okay. I already opened up to him once, and maybe a hundred times when I was in training bras. What's one more humiliating confession going to hurt me?

Just get it out before the baby comes back.

She turned Aaron's way, ducking her head so that the hair hung into her eyes. “You wanna know what's bothering me? How about the fact that three men had their heads sliced off with a guitar string and were artfully posed in a subway car?” She ticked salient points off on her fingers, speaking faster and lower so that Aaron had to strain to hear it. “Or how about the hero who
might
be a traitor to his own kind and
may
have sold out the government, friends, and the country he purported to love?”

“Okay, I get—”

“No, wait. There's also the giant fucking tidal wave that obliterated Chicago and the underworld kingpin I tore apart with a lightning bolt from my dainty little fingers. There's the little girl I helped save who turned out to become a super
fucking
hero and nearly killed my partner in the process. Oh! Yeah!” She was getting louder again, and Aaron urged her to lower her voice. But Deena wouldn't be stopped. Not until it all came out. “And then there's my partner who
used
to have powers and then
didn't,
but all of a sudden he
does,
and he's—
what
?—beating up Satan, and then I don't know? He loses his powers
again
, and gets
new
ones—”

“Wait.” Aaron's eyes narrowed, and he held up a hand. “Are you talking about Walker? He had a third power set?”

“And I killed Johnny Royale and the Lance, and of course I was goddamn
pregnant
and then basically died—”

“Wait. What?”

“—but
that
didn't take, and … and,
god,
I don't even know.” She slumped over, dangling hands between her legs, head between her shoulders. “Old memories.
Bad
memories. The last five years have been a roller coaster, and I used to love this job, but so many people have died on my watch. So many people I let die or maybe even killed. And the weird, fucked-up shit I see on a daily basis? Aaron, you haven't lived until you've seen a man explode from the inside out. I've seen that
twice
.”

Deena lifted her head and stared into his eyes, shutting out the noise buzzing through the precinct. Her eyes were red, rimmed with tears, and her body simmered like a pressure cooker. “I just can't take any more. I loved being a cop. But when you've seen it all, when you've seen kids in danger and spoiled brats offing each other with designer powers because they think it's a game … you
lose
that love. You lose the idealism, and all you want is
out
.”

She flapped a hand in the direction that Walker had left. “I get it. I totally
get
it, you know. He didn't go home because we told him to stay out of the way. He left because enough is goddamn enough! You get jaded, and the shit becomes the norm, and you forget there was a time you had powers or that you saw some schmuck get raped by those who still do.” She dabbed both eyes with her fingers and let out a sigh. “And if that wasn't enough … if I didn't have enough haunting me … boom. Five words to remind me how much I hate my father. Five words to remind me how much I resent you.”

They sat there for a moment in awkward silence. Her throat was raw—sore from where the Power had grabbed it, dry from the sudden tantrum. The intervening years sat between them, marking the great unknown; the time they'd lost. The might-have-been. Secrets, history, countless details they didn't know about the other. Deena didn't think they'd be able to fully understand what happened or the people they'd become. But the memories rushed back, happier moments they'd shared before everything went to hell. The intimate details of a life she fondly remembered. Back before she met Enki Sunrise or Emile Cross or Johnny Royale or even Christian Walker. Before she'd killed anyone. Before Deena Pilgrim had witnessed—and lived—the impossible.

Back when all she'd wanted was to love a man and be a cop.

Now here they sat, in a police station far from Atlanta. Perched on her partner's desk, reliving old wounds and older cases. Shoulder to shoulder, yet very far apart. The silence stretched out, and Deena cleared her throat once more, wishing she had another cup of water.

After a minute, Aaron spoke. “‘Everybody got power, ever'body got pain. We take the ride, all side-by-side, and we'd do it again.'”

She looked up. “Did … did you just sing me a fucking song?”

“No. I sang you a significant lyric of a fucking Little Doomsday song. Lifted from ‘Power Train'—a deep cut off his fifth studio album.”

“I never liked Little Doomsday.”

“Sure you did. ‘Under the Macroverse' was your jam. We totally had sex to it.”

She blushed. “I think you're remembering what you want to remember.”

“You know why, right? ‘Macroverse' subscribed to my BEEBA chord theor—”

Deena laughed and hid her face in her hands. “Oh, shit. I forgot about that damn theory. No, no, no … you never stopped talking about it!”

“Look,” he said, suddenly shifting away from the lighthearted ribbing, “I get it. I can't say I have answers. And I won't pretend to understand everything you've been through, Deen. It sounds hard. It must have been.”

He shifted his weight, sliding closer. He was nearly in her lap now, and she felt the urge to stand. Before she could, he took her right hand in his left.

“But I've lived, too. I have no right to beg you to get what I've endured. I mean,
I
walked away.
I
made that decision. But my life hasn't been easy, either. Mom's death, for instance. Dad's stoic march into twilight … he's lonely, Deena. It's been rough.”