Martian Manhunter

The door gave on the third blow cracking at the handle as the frame splintered inward sending long shards of wood protruding outward. Richard Grant stepped slowly into the small room and looked down. He was expecting the worst, and that is what greeted him. Behind him William McIntyre looked over the detective’s shoulder.

The pool of blood spread slowly from the body on the floor. It ran long the grooves in the linoleum spreading outward like a macabre crimson game of tic tac toe.

“Is she dead?” McIntyre asked. He already knew the answer.

Grant nodded slowly and grimly.

“We…” McIntyre began to speak, his voice was a hoarse whisper. He paused and swallowed softly. “We need to tell John. He needs to know.”

Twelve Hours Earlier

She rolled over and the bottle slipped out of her hand and landed on the hardwood floor with a loud thud. One eye cracked open and she slowly rose up. Her mouth was dry and stuck together and her head throbbed with every slow beat of her heart. It beat away the seconds like a painful metronome.

Lauren Kusanagi raised herself off the couch where she had slept. Again. Her bed lay in another room, untouched in days. If she hadn’t passed out on the floor or couch she would find herself in a strange apartment after a long night at the bar.

What had she done last night? It was a rhetorical question as it was the same thing she had done the previous night. Drink. Drink until she no longer felt afraid of the nameless terrors that left her shaking and terrified each and every night.

Still shaking from her nightmares Lauren’s eyes caught the clock on her VCR. She was late for work at the Grant-Jones Detective Agency. Luckily her boss, Rich was usually late as well so it wasn’t normally a huge deal. But she couldn’t remember the last time she had been on time. It had to have been over four months. Not since she was in that car crash. The ‘car crash’.

She pulled a bandana over he pink hair to save herself the time needed to do it up. Her clothes were the cleanest she could find. Grant didn’t stick to respectability in the office but he’d chewed her out for dressing scary enough to spook potential customers. She left anything spiky out of her choice. It was a limited choice.

Showering, dressing and catching the bus happened without memory. Just a haze of habit done through weeks of repetitive ritual. She arrived at work within the hour slipping in as quietly as she could. From the sound of voices coming from the main office her bosses were talking to a client. She sat down at her desk and checked the day’s appointments and overnight messages. There was nothing pressing. It had been a quiet few months. They had spent the time investigating fraud cases or tracking down petty criminals. Their current major case was following a husband suspected by his wife of marital infidelity. She was beginning to think Grant was close to snapping from boredom. At least he had plenty of time for his pet projects investigating Intergang.

Behind Lauren’s receptionist desk the door to the main office opened. A middle-aged woman with her fading brown hair tightly wound into a bun stepped out of the office. She was dressed in a respectable black dress with a matching large black purse. An outfit that screamed out ‘upper-middle class’.

“Thank you sirs.” She said retrieving her coat from the coat rack by the main door.

Grant shook her hand. “No, ma’am, thank you. For your business. You’ve come to the right place; we can find your daughter. Don’t you worry.”

“And I appreciate your effort and pray for your success.” The woman waved and exited.

Grant tipped his fedora up away from his face and looked at Lauren. “Nice of you to show up Ms. Kusanagi.”

“Sorry Mr. Grant.”

“Like you’re one to talk about being late.” John Jones said from behind them. He was still in the main office on the room’s large couch.

Grant shot Jones a look. “I’ll remind you I was here before you this morning.”

“Yes, but you slept on the couch so I’d hardly think that counts.” Jones shot back.

Grant shrugged and returned to his desk. “Whatever. Just because I don’t have a watch shoved up my ass doesn’t mean I’m lazy or slow.”

The small door beside Grant’s desk opened and Billy McIntyre exited from the office’s washroom. He dropped a wad of paper towels into the trashcan. “Your toilet is clean.” He told Grant icily.

Grant smirked at him. “Clean enough to see my face in it?”

“Let me eat some bran muffins first and I’ll get back to you on that.”

Grant plopped his feet on his desk and pulled the bottle of whiskey from the desk drawer. “So where were we?” he asked twisting off the cap.

“I believe you were about to come out of the closet.” BillyMac said sitting down on the couch next to Jones. “Something about women’s undergarments.”

“No, we were talking about your job here.” Grant said giving BillyMac the finger. “We can’t just pay you to clean the john.”

“You’re not paying me at all.”

“Besides the point.” Grant said as he took a quick swig of his booze. He slapped the cap back on and put the bottle away. “I have my ties to the media, all those reporters and the like that owe me favours or are willing to slip me information. And Jones has his police ties after his years on the force.”

Jones nodded. He said nothing about how big his law enforcement connections went. Not that BillyMac was any stranger to that either. They just couldn’t tell Grant that.

“John told me you were an ex-con, that you made some mistakes and are trying to make up for them, correct?”

McIntyre nodded. Well, he had tried to take over the world twice and hadn’t spent time in jail as much as was frozen in the JLA Watchtower. But that counted. “All I want is a second chance to do right.”

“So then you must still have some underworld ties, know some criminals who are willing to talk and the like.” Grant said leaning back on his chair. “You can be our man with his ear to the ground. Our informant.”

“Whoa, whoa.” BillyMac said holding up his hands in the stop position. “I am not being your Huggy Bear.”

“We’ll discuss this more later. We have work to do.” Jones reminded the pair.

“Right.” Grant said picking up his pen and tapping the tip against his notepad. “I know a few social workers I can chat up. See if they’ve seen our runaway. McIntyre, you hit the local youth centers and pass her picture around. Maybe she’s been handing around there.”

“I’ll check with the cops. See if she’s been picked up.” Jones said standing up. “Everyone have a photo?” he asked picking up one of the old school photos of a young blond girl with braces. The rest nodded and held up their copies.

BillyMac hauled on his coat and got ready to leave.

The apartment of John Jones was small and neat. Almost sterile. And yet it still managed to have a warm atmosphere of memories and nostalgia. Pictures dominated the walls, photographs of old friends and smiling faces. Moments captured and immortalized. A few plaques were nestled in a corner, rewards from the city for dedicated service to the force and honors for actions above and beyond the call of duty. Beside them were the bowling trophies and the small cup for winning the precinct poker tournament three years in a row.

William McIntyre, also known as BillyMac by his friends or those too lazy to just call him William McIntyre all the time, emerged from the shower vigorously drying his hair with a towel. Jones had happily let Bill spend the past few months in his apartment while he stayed elsewhere. Which really could have been anywhere in the world. Literally. And several places off the world as well.

BillyMac pulled on his freshly washed clothes and laced up his boots in preparation for another day doing menial tasks around a two-bit detective agency. He wondered how John could stand this day in and day out. Running around doing pathetic little jobs and cases for dorks too messed up to straighten their own lives out when John could be J’Onn and saving entire countries from power-crazy madmen. Or saving some endangered tree iguana from bulldozers or something.

Locking the door behind him BillyMac jogged to the bus stop rounding a corner just in time to see it pulling away. Shouting expletives he chased after the large vehicle praying it hit a red before it got too far away. It didn’t and McIntyre leaned on a light post until he caught his breath.

Just a few months ago he could have just flown after the bus or stopped it cold in its tracks with a magnetic field. But now he was as powerless as the rest of the schmoes running about their personal rat races.

McIntyre jogged the rest of the way to the office arriving late. Late for his ever so fun job of hunting for evidence proving some drooling incompetent hadn’t rear ended some other drooling incompetent’s car or gathering evidence that some old lady’s neighbor was really a cannibalistic Satanist preparing for some senior citizen stew.

And just a few months prior he would have been Triumph, founding member of the Justice League (sort-off) and great hero (again, sort-off). They should be throwing themselves at his feet offering him praise and national holidays named after him not demanding he arrest their soylent green making devil-worshipping block-mate.

He entered and found Grant brushing his teeth in the washroom and Jones reading the morning paper over a cup of coffee.

“Fresh Brazilian roast?” He asked sarcastically.

Jones nodded. “You know how cranky I get unless I pop down to South America for my morning pick-me-up.”

“What was that?” Grant asked poking his head out.

“Just commenting on my caffeine addiction.”

“Better than your Oreo addiction.” Grant said emerging rubbing his two-day’s worth of stubble. “I’ve never seen a grown man consume cookies so religiously.”

“You should see his apartment.” McIntyre mused. “I swear there’s an entire cupboard devoted to them.”

“You still couching it there?” Grant asked. “It’s been what? Four months? Shouldn’t you have found a place by now?”

“Only if I could afford rent.” BillyMac added icily.

“Well if you did real work around here…” Grant began sitting down. “Why exactly have we hired you? The jovial side-kick role has been filled.”

“No, slight difference there. I’m the sarcastic running commentator and you’re the insensitive jackass.” BillyMac said.

Grant cracked a half smile and shrugged. “I’ve always thought of myself more as ‘unrestrained by society’s annoying constrictive rules’. I’m just to honest for this world.”

There was a knock on the door. “Are you open?” came a voice from the other side.

“Yes. Come on in.”

A middle-aged woman entered the office. Grant gestured to a chair in front of the desk. “Hello. I’m Mrs. Tenderbaun, I called earlier.”

“Right, your daughter ran away from home.” Jones said straightening on the couch.

“I brought the photos you asked from.” Mrs. Tenderbaun replied opening her purse and removing a handful photos. They were all a few months old at the earliest, most were a few years out of date. She placed the photos on the desk. “Please help me find my little angel.”

“We’ll do what we can to bring her back to you.” Jones said.

“Unless she’s dead, in which case we’ll just leave her where she is.” Grant said picking up one of the photos. He ignored the gasp. “What can you tell us about Tracie?”

“She’s fourteen. No, fifteen now. And has been missing for five months. We hadn’t been getting along so well near the end. She was skipping a lot of her classes and we were fighting almost every night. One day I…” Mrs. Tenderbaun choked back a sob. “I called her an ungrateful bitch and slapped her. She was gone the next morning.” Tears flowed freely now.

“I see.” John said. “And you called the police.”

“Right away. She had packed a bag and there was no sign or forced entry or a struggle. She just ran away. They did what they could but just filed her away with all the other missing children. I don’t want my daughter to end up as some damned statistic. She was too bright for that, had too much potential. Did you know she was at the top of her class all through primary school?”

Grant grunted. “Well, there’s not a lot to go one, but I’ve had harder cases.”

“Maybe you have her doing slave labour for you too. Is she the girl you have waxing your car?” McIntyre said quietly to Rich.

“Go scrub my toilet.” Grant commanded pointing at the john. “I want to see my reflection in every surface by the time you’re done.”

BillyMac grunted and headed off to work.

“Sorry, she doesn’t look familiar.”

BillyMac shrugged and tucked the photo away in his jean jacket. The volunteers at the youth center were of little help. They saw so many kids pass through here they had trouble telling some of them apart. The kids on the other hand just refused to be of any help. They pegged McIntyre as a cop or Narc and had blacklisted him from any help. “Thanks anyway.” He muttered looking around for anyone else to ask.

“Have you tried the YWCA down the street?”

BillyMac nodded. His third stop.

The youth worker shrugged. “Then I think you’ve been everywhere, sorry I can’t help.”

“Not your fault.”

The worked shrugged then snapped his fingers. “There is a Inner City Medi-Center that a lot of these kids go to when they’re sick or hurt. The people there take good records, they might have something.”

BillyMac shrugged. It was worth a try.

The window rattled from the wind outside. Not much, but enough. Lauren jerked every time the pane rattled in the window frame. It had been fit in badly, it was loose so the glass clattered loudly against the wood.

She didn’t know why. The car crash happened outside. Why should she feel more afraid in the office than at home.

The window rattled again. This time louder and more violently. It sounded as if someone were knocking on it, trying to get in. The hair on the back of Lauren’s neck went alert and stuck straight up. She turned and looked through the doorway at the window. Nothing was there.

She fidgeted about her desk for a few seconds and produced a matchbook. Rammed in the frame it could muffle the rattling. She rose and walked slowly to the window.

It was the longest trip across that room possibly, she never realized how large Grant’s office was. It seemed to take forever to reach the window. It rattled. She froze. Inching forward she moved the flowing curtain and something behind the glass jerked and stared back at her. She screamed and hopped back dropping the matchbook and crashing against Grant’s desk. The pigeon flew away.

Biting her lip in frustration Lauren angrily slammed the matchbook into the window frame. She was angry at the world for making her feel this way. Angry with herself for not getting over a single accident. Angry that she felt so helpless. She sat down at Grant’s desk and rested her head against the cool wood. Slowly raising her head she opened the drawer of the desk and looked in.

Grant’s bottle of whiskey looked back.

“Yeah, just a minute, I’m coming.” Tracie Tenderbaun opened the door of her apartment, the chain latch tightened and she looked through the crack. Three strangers were standing there looking at her. One looked like he had stepped out of a 40s black-n-white pulp movie and tripped while doing so. The other was a rough looking man past middle age in a leather jacket who still looked hard bodied and fit. The final man had close cropped red hair and looked to be in his mid-thirties and clad in a jacket-sweater-jeans combo that reminded Tracie of a dock worker.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

The trenchcoated stereotype tipped his hat. “Actually miss, it’s you that can help us.”

“Oh, you’re business.” She closed the door and pulled the latch open. “Not all three at once, that will cost extra.” She walked back into her apartment and waved them in. “Usual fees, I do it all. Anal, oral, DP. Extra for stuff like bondage or showers. And I don’t do anything that involves cutting anymore so no knives.”

The little blonde girl with braces now had a bad platinum-blonde dye job and make-up smeared across her face. Her lip was slightly swollen where it looked like she had been struck and there were fading bruises across her arms and neck, the former also being dotted with needle marks both old and recent.

Grant and company froze for a second as the fifteen-year-old they had been looking for pulled off her dressing gown and struck a seductive pose. “Right who wants to go first? Don’t just stand there, you guys are getting me so hot. Ohhh, don’t come here and pound my tight ass. Much.”

Grant stepped forward. “Actually Miss Tenderbaun, we were sent here by your mother.”

Bullets ripped past striking old brick shattering the aged stone sending dust raining down. He dived into an alley knocking over trashcans and dodging around a dumpster.

“You gonna die man! I’ll kill you!!” he screamed emptying the rest of his clip into the walls of the alley.

He turned and dashed forwards and struck a wall. A green wall.

The man bounced off the chest of the Martian Manhunter like a pebble of a building. He slid into a pile of garbage bags as the Manhunter from Mars strode forward.

“You are coming with me.” The alien said stepping slowly towards the man.

He yanked a knife from his jacket. “You ain’t takin’ me without a fight. I’ll fuckin’ rip you up like one of my bitches.” He jumped to his feet and swung at the unmoving figure. The blade struck flesh and bounced off like it had just hit steel. The weapon vibrated hard in the pimp’s hand making the perfect sound of an upper B-flat.

J’Onn stepped forward and grabbed the man by the coat. “Jail awaits.” He said taking to the air.

“Hello? Mom?”

Tracie’s hand shook violently and the phone vibrated in her hand. The cheap plastic frame clacked against the young girl’s many rings.

“No mom, I’m fine. Yes, they’re taking care of me.” She sat in Grant’s chair wrapped in his coat. She shivered slightly and gnawed on her lower lip.

Lauren looked hard at the young girl the detectives had been hired to find. She studied the face and posture of someone who was really helpless. That was where she was heading and that was what she was becoming.

They had entered five minutes ago. The girl carrying a small bag of everything she considered important, her entire life squeezed into a small sack.

Lauren had heard them coming and put back the bottle. She slipped a mint into he mouth to disguise her breath. She could feel the liquor slowly working away in her stomach. It made her feel nauseous and disgusted with herself, and yet she wanted another shot more than anything else in the world.

“Uh-huh. I’ll see you soon.” Tracie said hanging up the phone. It continued to shake in her trembling hand. Rattling about before finally sinking into the cradle.

“See, not so hard.” Grant muttered. His mouth felt dry.

“I can’t just leave, Crater will kill me.” Tracie pleaded again. It was all she had been doing since she entered. “I have to go back.”

“He won’t find you.” Jones said resting his hand on the young girl’s shoulder. “He doesn’t know where you mom lives.”

Tracie wept quietly. “He’ll find out. No one gets away from him, none of his girls ever leave. He’ll find me and he’ll hurt me until I come back. Or he’ll hurt my mom. If I leave now I can still make tonight’s limit…”

Lauren studied John’s face. It grew determined and hard. For a split second she thought she saw someone else, something else. Like a memory superimposed over his frame. Then it was gone.

“I’ll be back.” John said. “I’m going to make a few calls to some of my police contacts, see if I can make sure this Mr. Crater never harms anyone ever again.” John grabbed his coat and stepped out of the room.

“Right, boss.” BillyMac said. “Later.”

“Take care of her.” John said pointing at his partners.

“Righto Johnny Boy.” Grant said saluting, his cigarette never moving from his lip.

Tracie wiped the dampness form her face. “He’ll kill me, I just know he will…” she murmured to herself.

Grant pushed the brim of his hat up and rubbed the back of his hand on his forehead removing the nervous sweat. “So what should we do?”

“What can we do.” McIntyre said.

“What can we do?” Grant rolled the body over and stared into the cold empty eyes. The congealing blood made a wet squelching sound when the face was peeled from the tiles. “She’s dead, self inflicted. She killed herself rather than face herself.” He pointed to the jagged rips across the wrists and the long tear across her neck. “Looks like she started on the wrists and when that wasn’t fast enough she slashed her own throat. She must have been at it for a few minutes, she was cutting width-wise, that won’t kill you, no veins there...”

McIntyre felt his stomach twist. “Why?” He looked down at the dead body that used to be Tracie Tenderbaun.

Grant stood up. His fingers were sticky with drying blood. “As long as she continued her life there, in that apartment, she could pretend there was no going back. That she had no choice but to do the things she did. Once we brought her back, showed her she could have left at any time then those things she did, those things she had done to her, they didn’t need to have happened.”

“Shitty moral for today…” McIntyre mused leaning in the doorway. He felt sick.

Grant nodded. “Not everyday can end with sunshine, smiles and bunnies.” He pulled his hat back down. “Just thank God that dead hookers in your bathroom endings are rare.”

Grant left the room to think of a way to tell Mrs. Tenderbaun the news. McIntyre just stood there looking and the stiffening frame of the fifteen-year-old runaway girl that it had been their job to protect.

The End...

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