Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Twenty-One

After Sam fueled up at the truck stop, he pulled his vehicle off to the side of the parking lot to think and to take some air. He'd dispensed with the services of Jacob, who had a number of upcoming job interviews. There would be a lot of driving in Sam's future. He just needed to get used to the fact.

Milwaukee had been a complete bust. Over the last two days, Sam had plotted Amy's every activity for the time that she'd been there, even the frequency of her restroom breaks during certain parts of her stay. Nothing. Not a single person with whom he'd spoken remembered anything being out of order. As near as he could ascertain, Amy had served her client, enjoyed her time at the hotel, and ate out a few times.

The client, a small aerospace firm, had been happy with her work. She'd stayed a few days, given some classes, conducted some interviews, and was to have provided them a written report on the company's billing and delivery systems. That report, of course, had never arrived. Everyone at the company seemed sincerely concerned about her disappearance, but no one knew anything.

There was a strong possibility Minneapolis would be no better. He intended to suggest to Tommy that they forego Minneapolis and Kansas City for the time being and concentrate on St. Louis and Indianapolis.

The problem was that everyone with whom he'd spoken in his previous St. Louis visit had assumed that Amy had departed the city: she'd finished with her client, checked out of her hotel, and the St. Louis PD could find no sign of her. Everyone in Indianapolis, where Sam had stopped on the way to visit Tommy in New York, said the inverse: she'd never arrived.

Sam seethed.

Such an emotion was uncharacteristic of him, but the ire he felt at his friend's disappearance weighed on him more with each passing day. Amy had had some rough edges when she was younger, but age had mellowed her. She now was a woman whose virtues were many and whose vices were few. True, she still gambled a little and still nearly always won, but she'd confided to Sam not long before that she seldom made more than a few hundred dollars a night. She played simply to enjoy herself and to keep up her Gift.

Nothing in her life, good or bad, merited this terrible violation.

He managed to swallow his anger, after which he took two breaths and tried to think of anything other than Amy and her disappearance. Contrary to his reputation as a roughneck and a skull-cracker, Sam considered himself a man of peace. His difficulty in mastering his rage now troubled him.

These thoughts led him back to his two years in Viet Nam. His Gift had fully expressed there. After it had, Sam had rampaged in that country. His great strength and remarkable durability had rendered him a veritable one-man infantry company. Nothing frightened him. So much had he bolstered his battalion success rate that his commander had opted to look the other way after PFC Babington had attempted to shoot another soldier. The army merely had extended him in country for nearly another year. The ferocious young paratrooper had not minded in the least.

The man Sam had tried to shoot was an asshole—and, yes, a racist. But Sam looked back on that event now with a feeling akin to remorse. Something had happened to him in his last few months in Viet Nam. He couldn't put his finger on the change or what had triggered it. But when he left country, he swore he would never pick up another gun again as long as he lived. And he had not.

He still used his fists from time to time, but, after nearly killing a man in a prize fight in San Francisco, only rarely and with the greatest care. In truth, he seldom needed to do so.

A few months after he'd returned from the army, a friend of his mother, a woman who Sam had always known affectionately as Aunt Lucille, came to him for help. At the time, she owned a small deli in Bronzeville, and a group of local toughs fancied they would use the place as their personal commissary, helping themselves to free food while driving away paying customers.

Without hesitation, Sam marched over to the abandoned building where these would-be Capones hung their hats, walked straight through the door, and stopped within an inch of the mooch who fancied himself their ringleader. Before departing, Sam had the man bent backwards over a table and told him exactly what was going to happen. There were no threats, just instructions.

Sam later learned that there'd been a change in leadership in the tiny gang after his visit, but none of that crew ever again gathered at Aunt Lucille's deli.

Bad people feared Sam because he feared no one and nothing. After that realization, he seldom needed to use his fists. A small handful of times per year he had to give some wannabe gangster a love tap before picking him up and dragging him to the police. Just as often, though, Sam would help the future felon back to his feet and take him out for a cup of coffee to discuss the issue.

The coffee almost never set the villain straight, but it did sometimes. It was worth it to Sam. The price of a thousand cups of coffee was a bargain if it put just one errant soul back on the straight and narrow.

Most of Sam's time was spent helping people with their issues: organizing after-school programs, getting voters to the polls, arranging lawyers for the indigent, helping folks with landlord issues, getting the city to get off its ass to fix something. The list went on and on. Often the answer was as simple as introducing two people, each of whom needed something. Occasionally, he would take money for helping with a problem, but only when he knew that the person who he'd helped could afford it.

Only three times in the last 45 years had Sam been so backed into a corner that he'd been forced to take a human life. In each instance, Sam's opponent had himself been Gifted. Two had been contract killers sent for the express purpose of stalking and killing Sam. The other had been a corrupt businessman whose illicit plans Sam had several times thwarted. Each time, he had wished the deaths could have been avoided.

And then there was 1991. He thought of that day with a shiver.

The phone in his pocket vibrated and brought him back to the present day. Saved by the bell, he thought with a chuckle.

It was Tommy.

"What do you want, motherfucker?" Sam answered. "I'm trying to get some sleuthing done, here."

"Amy was driving a car," was all that Tommy said.

"What?"

"Amy purchased a car, a new SUV, last August. She was driving it for work."

"Well, sonofabitch," Sam muttered under his breath. "That explains why I couldn't find anyone who saw her at the airport. Shit."

"Sam, this is a good thing. We need to find that car."

"Yes. Agreed," Sam said, suddenly focusing. "Milwaukee was a complete bust. Let's scratch Minneapolis and Kansas City for now. We can always go back later."

"I agree. Should I meet you in St. Louis?"

"No. Go to San Francisco." Sam had seen the huge volume of material Tommy had sent him from Flagstaff. "We need help. If it ain't Philly, we need to find someone."

"Okay," said Tommy. "Look at the .jpg numbered 47 I sent you. That's the information on the car. Why don't you start looking in and around St. Louis? If the car isn't there, then we'll walk every inch of roadway and cornfield between St. Louis and Indy if we have to."

"That's the fucking spirit I wanna hear. When you headed to San Fran?"

"In a few minutes. I won't be there long."

"Keep me briefed," said Sam. "Anything else?"

"No. Nothing. Just look at .jpg 122. It's a more recent picture of Amy. I'll call tomorrow."

The two hung up. Sam surveyed his supplies: full tank of gas, satellite radio, and three bottles of soda. Satisfied, he got in the car, fired the engine, and headed south. He easily should make St. Louis by first light.