Sidekick: The Misadventures of the New Scarlet Knight (9 page)

What cops hate is anything they can’t understand, like a lot of what happens on our side of the crime-fighting field. They’re not used to dealing with the super strong, super durable, or other physically-blessed bad guys, so when the time comes, they’re happy to let us independent contractors of the justice system tackle the big jobs while they do the mundane, also important stuff.

I chalked up the anger and frustration in the cops’ voices to the fact that they weren’t used to criminals disappearing in puffs of smoke. Granted, neither was I, but it fell more into my area of expertise than theirs. Too bad I couldn’t tell them that; it might have saved us all a few headaches.

They didn’t have anything to charge me with, even though their snap judgment of me (punk teenager with a sword) pressured them to do so. The statement of the blacksmith and the transcripts of the 911 calls from the panicking customers confirmed my story, and by the time they got around to looking at the store’s surveillance tapes, even they admitted it was pretty much a formality. Still, in their desire to be thorough, they took me to the station and kept me there for four hours, going back and forth over everything again and again and again. They finally let me go around nine that night. Even though I’m sure that wasn’t their intention, they were just thorough enough to make sure that once again I would not have time to go out on patrol
and
do my buttload of homework.

To heck with it. I’d done my bit of crime fighting for the day. The city would still be standing in the morning. My grades might not be. Sure, I might not be there to stop some woman from having her purse snatched or something like that, but for one night I thought it might be more important to tackle
Silas Marner
than a thug with a knife.

On my way out of the police station, I was surprised to see my new pirate friend sitting on a bench, a familiar velvet bag resting across his knees.

“Hi.” I tried to sound cheerful. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I wanted to make sure I had a chance to give you this.” He picked up the velvet bag and held it out to me.

“Whoa, is that what I think it is?”

“Yep. It’s the Beauty. And it’s your Beauty now.”

“No way. I can’t accept something like—”

“Please, take it. Otherwise, it’s just going to sit around my shop, not doing anyone any good. You were amazing with it this afternoon. You saved my business, if not my life, and I’m indebted to you.”

Not knowing what to say, I kept my big mouth shut. I reached out, took the sword and its velvet wrapping from him, and whispered a quiet, “Thank you.” Then I looked him in the eye. “I will find a way to thank you properly for this.”

“Maybe you will, or maybe you already have. My name’s Mark, by the way.”

“Bobby. Nice to actually meet you this time.”

“My pleasure. That was some wicked swordsmanship you showed against that guy. You sure know your stuff. How long have you been studying that?”

“Too long.” It wasn’t a joke or an exaggeration.

“I thought so. Hell of a display.” He swallowed, as if uncertain whether or not he wanted to voice his next thought, but plowed ahead before his better judgment could stop him. “You wouldn’t happen to be … who I think you are? Are you?”

“Mark, right now I’m not even sure if I’m who
I
think I am.” Again, not entirely a joke or exaggeration. I walked away, deciding it was better to drop it as quickly as I could, but he called out after me.

“Because, if you
are
who I think you are, I have a few other ways I might be able to help you.”

That caught my attention. I turned back around and took a few tentative steps toward him. “There is one way you might be able to help me.” He looked very eager, so I smiled and went on. “Your security system. Does it use tape or hard drive?”

“Both.”

“And did the cops leave either one behind?”

“They took the tape but left the hard drive.”

“Perfect. Can I get that drive from you?”

“I guess so,” he said as he scratched his head. “You think you can learn something from the footage?”

“Probably not, but I know someone who might.” I smirked. “Someone fast enough to see between the frames.”

Be Kind, Rewind

Boatwright University looked like every other college I’d visited since setting out on my “college quest” at the beginning of the school year. A bunch of squat brick buildings. I’d come to the conclusion that there must be a single company somewhere that manufactures all the bricks that go into building colleges, and only their bricks are allowed to be used when new buildings go up. You know the type. Arrogant bricks. Bricks that look down upon you like they have a reason to exist, and they’re not too sure about your right to do the same. Even the urban schools in their high-rise buildings blur into squat brick buildings if you look at them long enough, and I’d looked at too many of them in the past few months.

Boatwright did have one thing to recommend it, though, and that was why I was there.

Professor Seth Smith’s American History lecture didn’t do too good a job of holding his class’s attention. He spoke in a slow, almost droning voice, plodding along as if he was afraid the information and wisdom he had to impart wouldn’t make it into their heads if he went too quickly. He inundated them with facts, figures, and information, pouring it over their heads like Chinese water torture, and those few students who
had
managed to stay awake and sane through the process probably ended up learning quite a bit. I was one of them, but I was used to Professor Smith’s delivery; he really did have reason to fear that if he spoke too quickly no one would understand what he had to say.

As the class let out, I made my way down from the back row. Swapping my knapsack to my left hand as I reached the front of the class, I put my right one out for him to shake. He took it tentatively, and I “introduced” myself. “Professor Smith? Bobby Baines. I’m a high-school senior checking out the campus, and I was told I should audit one of your classes.”

“Ah.” The look he gave me told me he had some idea what I was really there for but was confused, nonetheless. “So, how’s the college application process going for you?”

“You know what it’s like nowadays. So many pitfalls in the process. You know, ‘if the camels don’t get you … ’”

“I see.” He perked up and quickly, but not too quickly, and gathered his notes into his briefcase. “There’s another class coming in, but I’m really interested in continuing this conversation. Would you mind joining me in my office?”

“Lead the way,” I said, trying not to chuckle. “I’ll try and keep up.”

Once sequestered in his office, the Professor and I both relaxed like the old friends—okay, acquaintances—we were. “You know, Bobby, I think we need to give you some better code words to tell us you want to talk to us in our other professional capacities.”

“Hey, it’s only been a month. We’ve all been too busy for any of you to teach me the secret handshake or whatever you use. I got my message across, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but not too subtly. There aren’t many college kids, let alone high school kids, who know the song I took my code name from. So, what brings you all the way out here? I assume you’re really here to talk to Mr. Zip, not Professor Smith.”

“A little of both. Say, Professor Smith’s wisdom at Mr. Zip’s speeds.” I reached into my knapsack and retrieved the removable hard drive Mark the Blacksmith had given me the night before. I recapped my confrontation with the robber in excruciating detail, talking as quickly as I could while being coherent and certain I got all the pertinent information in. About halfway through, he stopped me in disbelief. “Whoa! Hold on! You found Jack’s killer, and you never called the rest of us in?”

“I literally didn’t have the time, things happened so quickly.” Not entirely true, but what he would have wanted to hear. “And I’m calling you in now. This hard drive has the surveillance footage of my fight with the guy, and I’ve got a few suspicions I’m hoping you can disprove.”

He took the drive, plugged it into the computer on his desk, and opened the file. I told him the time frame we were looking for, and he zipped along to the right moment. “Hmm. Appearing in a puff of smoke? None of my guys can do that. Looks like magic. Probably someone Morgaine’s tussled with.”

“She’s my next stop, but I want you to watch our fight. Watch closely.”

He nodded and turned his full attention to the monitor. Even though the footage was unspooling in real time, for him it was probably going at the slowest of slow motion regular people could imagine. When he shifted into Mr. Zip mode, he could watch each individual frame of video as it drew itself on the screen if he wanted to.

He downshifted long enough to jog the video back a second or so to concentrate on a particular part of the action. Finally, after the attacker disappeared, he stopped the playback and stared at the screen. To me, only a couple of seconds passed as he glared at the monitor, but in his head it was probably an hour’s worth of his sorting out everything he’d taken in.

“Bobby.” He breathed in deeply the way I’d seen him do when he was angry and trying not to show it. “Who is that in the costume?”

“You tell me. I have no idea.”

“Maybe you don’t recognize them, but it’s someone you know. Or, at least, it’s someone who knows you.”

“Are you sure?” I had thought the guy’s fighting style was familiar but couldn’t place it. And I’d never before had someone who could predict my moves as well as he had. The logical conclusion should have been that we’d fought before, and yet I just couldn’t jump to it. Maybe I was blinded by my rage. Maybe it was the heat of the battle. Maybe I was just rusty.

“Look at this.” He rewound the video and played it in slow-for-me-motion instead of slow-for-him-motion. He pointed out a few moments in the fight where I’d left myself wide open, and my opponent hadn’t taken advantage of my vulnerability. “By all rights, Bobby, you should have died at least five times in that fight. This guy had plenty of opportunities to do to you what he did to Jack but didn’t bother. Your fighting was sloppy, but that’s understandable under the circumstances. I wouldn’t have been at the top of my game facing off against the guy who’d killed Jack, either.”

“Maybe, but your speed gives you much more of a margin for error.” The sheer enormity of what the Professor was telling me was starting to sink in. “Did you say
five
times?”

He rewound the video again, pausing at specific frames to indicate where I’d screwed up. “Five clear opportunities to put an end to the fight, and he didn’t take a single one.”

“Incredible.” The more I watched the points the Professor had pointed out, the more glaring my mistakes became, and the more obvious his withholding of the death blows were. By all rights, I should be locked in a freezer in the hospital basement or on my way to another granite paperweight like Uncle Jack’s, not standing there watching surveillance footage, taunting me about how dead I wasn’t. “I can’t believe that.”

“Oh, I can. This guy was obviously prepared for every attack you tried, even some of your more ‘unconventional’ moves. Whatever you did, he was right there and ready to block you.” He jogged the video again. “There are a couple of frames where it looks like the camera glitched. You’re sure this video wasn’t edited?”

“Positive. That’s raw footage. It was a cheap camera, and we were moving pretty fast.”

“I guess so.” He performed a few quick operations on his computer, dumping a copy of the video to his desktop. “I’m going to go back over this very, very carefully and see if I can find any clues. I’ll pass it along to the others, too, so you won’t have to worry about doing that.”

“Thanks. My schedule is pretty full right now. It’s only that I’m visiting a campus—which is technically the truth—that convinced the guidance counselor to let me out of school today. I told her I was going to take a red-eye out then turn right around and go home. She doesn’t need to know I don’t need an airplane to get from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains.”

“Understood. But the more I think about it, maybe you should take some time off from school and lie very, very low for a while.”

“Why?” The anger was coming back. I was just beginning to put two and two together about this jerk’s game and what it would mean, but I wanted to hear Smith say it. I needed someone to confirm that I wasn’t just being paranoid, or at least had a hell of a good reason for that paranoia.

“Isn’t it obvious? Not only did this person know you, or at least your fighting style, but he passed up several chances to do you in. Think about it. He was the cat, you were the mouse. He was playing with you. And if he knew enough to hold his own in a sword fight against the Scarlet Knight, or at least the hero formerly known as Squire, odds are that he’s an old villain of yours who recognized you in your civilian getup.”

“You mean … ” Again, I needed to hear it from someone else to make it real.

“That killer knows your secret identity.”

***

The Professor’s words ran through my mind the rest of the day and into the next. I tried desperately to wrap my head around the problem. Someone who knew my identity? Outside of the close-knit circle of heroes and sidekicks, I wasn’t aware of any. There were few who even had any possibility of figuring it out; most of the bad guys I’d gone up against in both my guises were a little on the stupid side to say the least.

Could it have been someone who knew me as Bobby and not as the Knight or Squire? I’d spent some time in the fencing club at school. Maybe the guy thought he was going up against his old fencing opponent? Nah. I’d dropped fencing club because I wasn’t learning anything, and none of the kids I’d squared off against were near as good as me, let alone as good as the weird guy in the black outfit.

I was so preoccupied with trying to solve the riddle of who was behind that mask that I found myself essentially just walking through the school day, relying on my unconscious mind to keep me moving along and answering when needed. I had done my homework and didn’t have any quizzes, so I could turn my brain off a bit and concentrate on the bigger issue. In fact, I was going along on autopilot so well, I almost didn’t hear the announcement summoning me to the office. That managed to jerk my consciousness back to the here-and-now and gave me a new problem to focus on.