Vigilante (16 page)

N
olan heard muttering coming from the Cube as he entered. It was three hours later when he finally made it back home, having dealt with a few minor disturbances between Coney Island and Manhattan. But he expected that the others would still be inside the Cube, no doubt following the police reports about what had happened, and waiting to fill him in on the boy and his troubled life that had led to his building his own dirty bomb. And how a teenage kid could even get his hands on radioactive materials.

“Unbelievable,” said Branford’s voice as Nolan drew nearer.

“Going to get himself killed,” Alice added. “Do they know it’s a man? It could be a woman.”

“Who now?” Nolan asked as he walked inside.

Branford thumbed toward the screen they were all looking at. Nolan saw a recorded TV news report about what looked like someone in a homemade costume that was meant to look like Nolan’s own black combat fatigues. But it was a poor imitation—just a black sweat suit complete with a sewn-on white hood. Nolan didn’t recognize the costume-wearer’s surroundings.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“ ’Fraid so,” said Branford. “Got yourself some bona fide hero worship.”

Nolan peeled off his gloves and jacket, listening carefully as the reporter on the screen explained that the footage had been shot in Chicago, where what they called a “Hand copycat” was shown standing on a rooftop. According to the report, a bunch of people thought he was a crazy person about to commit suicide by jumping, when he let loose a banner that fluttered down the side of the building and proclaimed in enormous hand-written lettering, “I will show you a better way!”

The footage cut to a different shot where this would-be vigilante was seen running wildly through the streets. Another shot showed him helping an elderly woman pick up the contents of her burst bag of groceries and carrying them to her home for her.

Nolan actually smiled. “I hoped this might happen,” he said.

“You expected people to pretend to be you?” asked Arjay.

Still smiling, Nolan replied, “I hoped that others might follow my example. I didn’t think anyone would dress like me, but I always knew I wouldn’t be able to change things by myself. From the start, if this was ever going to work, there would have to be others who would take up the charge.”

“But is that a good idea?” asked Alice, ever the voice of concern. “This man doesn’t look like he has any of your training or skills. Won’t he get hurt? Or worse?”

“Eh,” said Nolan. “Looks like all he’s doing is good deeds. As long as he leaves the crime fighting to the professionals, I say this world needs all the acts of kindness it can get.”

“I still don’t understand why we can’t use all this goodwill to accept donations,” said Arjay, not quite under his breath.

For weeks, he’d been nagging Nolan about an inquiry he received daily on the website: people wanted to know how to make monetary donations to The Hand’s cause. And Nolan’s answer had always been the same. They were to refuse all offers of help.

Nolan felt his ire rise at Arjay broaching this subject once again—a subject he’d intended to be closed after the last time it came up.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Branford chimed in. “I know how you feel about it, but our resources
are
going to run out eventually. If people want to help us keep doing what we’re doing, why not let them?”

Nolan’s ears burned red, and he fought the urge to shout. Instead, he spoke slowly and emphatically. “Do you not understand the tightrope we’re walking? People are so cynical. . . . It’s not even about what we do or don’t do. It’s about what people
think
. I can’t afford to dip one single toe into morally ambiguous waters. If we accept donations, then someone out there will accuse me of doing this whole thing just to get rich. The
second
somebody suggests that, this is over. An accusation is all it takes these days for the people to find you guilty.”

The room fell silent at Nolan’s sobering words. He knew he was right, and his friends knew it too.

There was no need to say anything else. He changed the subject. “Tell me about the bomber.”

Everyone fell silent. Branford warned him that it was the kind of story he didn’t want to hear. Nolan demanded they tell it anyway, and Branford read the police report that had been filed just a short while ago.

The kid’s name was Nicky Solomon, and he was, as Nolan expected, the product of a troubled home life. His parents had divorced a year ago, when Nicky was just fourteen. But when the police went to his home after his arrest tonight to deliver the news to his mother, they found her dead, shot by a gun that the killer had then turned on himself.

And the killer was Nicky’s father.

Both bodies had been lifeless for more than twenty-four hours by the time they were found. A husband’s crime of passion, that led to a son’s crime of desperation, of attention-seeking, alone-and-mad-at-the-world rage. Nicky’s mother, it turned out, was a part-time nurse, and the police were quickly able to determine that the material inside the pipe bomb had come from the hospital’s radiology department. The boy had been exposed to near-lethal amounts of radiation while building his makeshift pipe bomb using instructions from the Internet. If he managed to recover, he would have health issues for the rest of his life. Not to mention a criminal record with a terrorist-level offense.

It was yet another sad story in this broken world that would never have a happy ending.

Nolan left his cohorts inside the Cube and walked out, but not toward his bunk. Not toward anywhere, really. Just a private spot where he could process this without everyone watching him. The world had grown a little darker tonight, and he needed to escape the black hollow pit that he felt himself teetering toward.

———

The next morning, as Nolan was eating breakfast, he felt someone’s eyes on him, and he knew whom those eyes belonged to without having to look.

“How do I fight that?” he said quietly, picking up their conversation where they’d left it the night before. “How do I fight something that could cause a normal, average teenage boy to turn into a mass murderer?”

Alice’s hand landed on his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said softly, honestly.

She circled around to look at him head-on, and her eyes were filled with sadness and concern. “The war that was waged over that boy took place inside him. In his heart, and his mind. In his very soul.”

He looked up at her. “How do I fight that war? How do I impact the human soul?”

She smiled, but there was no humor in her. “Outside of prayer, there’s only one way to reach the soul, and you already know what it is.”

Nolan looked down at the table. For the first time in a very long time—since as far back as his time in captivity—he felt his eyes burn with moisture. “I can’t just
love
this city into becoming a better place.”

She closed her eyes. Sighed. “I know. You’re a man of action. But you and I both know that the illness of the soul has already been addressed, through the sacrifice of someone a lot more than human, two thousand years ago. You can’t improve on what he did.”

Nolan looked up, eyes wide, almost hurt. “I’m not trying to! Are you—Look, I’m not trying to
replace
 . . .
him
! I wouldn’t—I mean, I could
never
, not even a little . . .”

“Easy,” Alice said. “I know why you do this. I’ve seen your heart. But there are some things that simply aren’t up to you to fix. You’re still approaching this tactically. But it’s not a military operation, remember?”

Nolan looked down. Alice wanted him to
feel
more. To connect with the people he saved, to let his emotions out. But he wasn’t trained for that. He was taught to compartmentalize his feelings into a nice safe box and focus only on the job. He feared he would never know how to reconcile the mission with the emotion.

“I’m sorry,” said Arjay, quietly, from behind Nolan. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But you need to see this.”

The two of them followed him to the Cube, where Branford was watching a press conference taking place live at the White House. The familiar blue curtains stood just behind a young woman who was at the presidential lectern, addressing a crowded press room.

“The president is emphatic,” the woman said, “that he deplores the loss of life from the events that took place at the home of Yuri Vasko last week in New York. President Hastings asked me to assure all Americans that the rumors of Organized Crime Intelligence involvement in the destruction of Mr. Vasko’s home are false. The OCI is aware of Mr. Vasko’s alleged involvement in illegal business practices, but the Intelligence’s operations are currently being targeted at higher-profile enemies of the American people.”

Nolan glanced at his friends. The president had just lied to the world about the OCI’s involvement in the raid on Vasko’s home. This was bad.

The young White House press spokesperson concluded her remarks and said she would take a couple of questions.

A reporter from a television network got the first question. The white-haired gentleman stood to his feet. “Can you comment on the eyewitness accounts suggesting that the vigilante known as The Hand was on the premises the night Vasko’s home was destroyed?”

“Those reports are unverified,” said the press secretary. “Next question.”

An elderly woman from the
New York Times
stood next. “If the Organized Crime Intelligence had no involvement in the disaster that took place at Yuri Vasko’s home, then do the police have any leads on who
was
responsible?”

The press secretary shook her head. “Any and all leads the police are exploring are of course confidential, lest we tip off the persons of interest. As I said in response to the last question, we have no concrete evidence as yet, but reports of a mysterious individual on the scene during the destruction of Vasko’s residence
are
mounting. The president of course condemns any and all unlawful vigilantism in this nation. Regarding Mr. Vasko’s home, citizens with information about the events of that night are urged to report what they know to their local police—whether it involves any rogue crime fighters taking the law into their own hands or not.”

E
llerbee,” started Lynn Tremaine. The word came out in the only tone of voice she possessed, which made Agnes think of the
mew
of a bored Cheshire cat. “Your Vasko piece was . . . adequate.”

Agnes blinked and was unable to hid her surprise. Praise from Lynn Tremaine was a rare thing. At least she thought it was praise.

“How so?” she probed her boss, turning off the computer screen in front of her. She’d just noticed—to her great shock—that the number of people following her on her favorite social network had jumped to over a hundred thousand in just a few hours’ time. This morning, she’d had fewer than four hundred followers.

“Apparently, it was good for the paper. Though personally, I found your use of the tragedy to launch a screed against The Hand, to cast doubt on his motives, the kind of grandstanding that gives journalism a bad name,” said Tremaine. “But I was just informed that today’s edition had a circulation seven times our normal volume, and reader response has been off the charts. The office switchboard has sustained a maxed-out call volume all day long.”

Agnes couldn’t believe it. It was true she had taken the Vasko assignment and used it toward her own ends. But she wasn’t trying to denounce The Hand; she merely wanted to provide some balance to the unending praise that the rest of the media so willingly awarded him. Objectivity was the bedrock by which journalism operated, yet somehow it didn’t seem to apply to The Hand because of his apparent good deeds.

“Well,” she said, struggling to find an appropriate response to her boss, “that’s great news. Thank you for telling me.”

When Agnes turned back to her desk, Tremaine didn’t move. “There’s something else.”

Of course. There was always something else.

Tremaine cleared her throat. “The board of directors has instructed me to give you your own weekly column. You will follow The Hand’s activities and provide a different . . .
perspective
 . . . from what other journalists write. Congratulations. You’re getting a 15 percent raise after your fourth column is published.”

Agnes was doing somersaults inside but had to try not to show it. She couldn’t resist letting a gloating smile escape, though. This couldn’t have possibly come at a better time, now that she was making real progress at unmasking The Hand.

Tremaine stood, scowling at her.

“I’ll expect your first piece in my in-box Friday morning,” said Tremaine. “Also . . . you may want to watch your back. Your article is popular because it’s provocative, but it’s not particularly endearing. Not to the public—or to your co-workers.”

Tremaine made her exit.

Slowly, Agnes rose to her feet, just enough to look over the top edge of her cubicle. The newsroom was bustling with activity, looking just like every other day she’d worked there. The three or four dozen other employees were working at their desks or zipping about to and fro. She didn’t spot a single person giving her the evil eye or wringing their hands maniacally with wicked grins on their faces, plotting her downfall.

She sat back down, relieved that her life was not in immediate danger. Suddenly, a dozen or more wadded up balls of paper were lobbed into her cubicle from all directions, and Agnes ducked. When the paper rain ended, she picked up one ball that had landed just behind her keyboard and flattened it out. In big black magic marker, a single word had been written: SELLOUT.

She balled it back up and threw it out of her cubicle in a random direction.

Whatever. She had work to do and a column to prepare. She already knew what her first column would be about: the scars on The Hand’s face. But first, she would need a little more to go on. . . .

And this was just the beginning. If her job was to provoke, imagine the response when she made the world-exclusive announcement of The Hand’s true identity.

———

Two hours and one bribed prison guard later, Agnes was sitting across a reinforced glass window from a man named Chas Graves. Graves was a recent addition to the inmate population, courtesy of The Hand.

And as Agnes suspected, he was only too willing to talk about what he’d seen of the crime fighter.

“His face—it was just wrong,” said Graves into the phone receiver. “Like it had been through a blender.”

Agnes tried to play cool her level of interest, but inside she was celebrating. “How much of his face were you able to see?” she asked into the phone.

Graves held up a hand and held his fingers apart about an inch. “His hood covers most of it. But what I saw was pretty nasty.”

She nodded and noted what he’d said so she could quote him in her article. Then she pulled out her phone to update her social network status.

“So did I help you?” Graves asked. “What are you going to do with this?”

Agnes dropped her phone back inside her purse and looked up into the criminal’s eyes. “I’m going to tear that hood of his off.”