Page 10 of No Capes
“Can’t say. Secret identities and all that.”
I frown, and he gives a mocking grin.Soit’s going to be like this.“Is it D.S.?”
“Those are my initials.”
“Your Super’s initials or your secret identity’s initials?”
“Yes.”
“Like Damian Scott?” Woodchips scatter as I drag my sneakers against them. What if, on top of everything else, Damian Scott Jr. is a Super?
As if the Super can sense how badly I want him to confirm this, he smugly asks, “Who?”
“What happened to Raincoat—Gary?” I demand.
“Nothingtooterrible. Not to worry, Roberts.”
I’m never going to get a straight answer from him. Unfortunately, I still need information, and I’m not quite ready for the big question. “How did you open my locker?”
“Didn’t. I found which locker’s yours and slipped the note in from the top. To answer your next inquiry, everyone’s locker numbers are in the school computer system. Not too hard to crack.”
“Why didn’t you just put it in my mailbox?”
“Would that have freaked you out less?”
“Probably not.”
We swing in a charged silence. He waits for my next question, which already hangs in the dark like a ghost. But I can’t ask it. So I make a statement instead. “You don’t know anything about my mom.”
He stops swinging. “What if I do?”
“But you don’t.”
The Super presses his watch, and an image lights up on it. “You’ve seen this picture?”
I squeeze the nylon fabric inside my jacket pocket. Yes, I’ve seen the picture. It had been on every news channel for weeks. A green minivan, charred black, lies in three pieces along CapitalCliffs. The Levine family’s car had exploded when it crashed through the guardrail. Hydroplaning, it set a small fire on the cliff, but the fire wasn’t enough to melt the car to nothing. Not during a storm as powerful as the one that night.
He taps to a new image. “Here’s what a minivan should look like after a high-speed hydroplane. Even in a storm. Spot the differences?”
“It’s not as bad,” I say. In the next picture, the car is crumpled, but intact, and with zero charring.
“Did you hear what they found in the car?”
“Gasoline. The gas tank punctured after it hit the rail.”
He clicks another picture. A scorched, red lighter lies in a patch of grass. “Found about two hundred meters away. No fingerprints.”
A shrill ring swells in my ears. “That wasn’t in the police report.”
“The police didn’t find it.”
“You found it?”
“Golden Ace did.”
The ringing stops. This D.S. dude goes on, “The lighter is official evidence, but the police had already closed the case when Gold turned it in. Everyone accepts that the gas tank ruptured in the crash, but what if that’s not what happened?”
He watches me, but I say nothing. I can’t. D.S. muses, “Don’t you find it odd that they never did an autopsy? That everyone was quick to believe the worst car crash in forever was a freak accident? I’m just saying. If it were me, I’d want an autopsy.”
