After the Golden Age

“Are you crazy?” her father said.

“How do you know it was him?” Suzanne asked.

She produced the gauntlet from her attaché and laid it on the table before them.

Warren picked it up first, studying every inch of the leather, fingering the embroidered hawk. The leather was worn, stained with sweat and age, the stitching around the fingers frayed, and scuffed patches showing around the thumb and pads of the palm. The embroidery was also frayed, loose-colored threads poking up. The glove was old, used.

“Could it be a fake?” Arthur asked.

“It’s something the Hawk would have done,” Celia said.

“He hasn’t been active in twenty years,” Warren said.

“I believed him,” Celia said. She didn’t have to reveal who he was. They’d all assume he’d been in costume, with the mask. “He gave this to me.”

She produced the folder with the newspaper clippings. Her parents and Robbie gathered around the open file, sorting through the clippings, their expressions growing more confused as the moments passed. Arthur didn’t bother looking; he watched her. He could learn everything he needed to from her roiling thoughts. She tried to stay calm, for his sake.

Celia said, “It’s the connection between the robberies we’ve been looking for.”

“But it doesn’t go anywhere,” Robbie said. “Does it? It’s a coincidence. It has to be. Unless you’re saying Snyder is the mastermind?” The possibility seemed ludicrous. Governor Snyder came across as being harmless, if ineffectual.

Arthur crossed his arms, which made him look hunched-in and thoughtful. “These names—they’re all suspects that have been arrested in connection with the spate of robberies. They have no other prior relationship to each other. They weren’t part of the same gang before, they didn’t serve prison time together. They’re not second cousins. The one commonality are these pardons. The idea of Snyder being involved in this—it’s improbable, not impossible. We have to consider it.”

“Not Snyder,” Celia said, “Paulson.” She showed them the last article she’d discovered, and the buried information that Paulson had been the one to suggest the pardons as a way to help balance the budget. But she wondered if he might not also have suggested the names of inmates to be pardoned.

The group needed a moment to process this. Celia waited.

“It might not be him,” Suzanne said. “It could be someone associated with his office. Someone else pulling the strings.”

“Do we trust the information?” Arthur asked.

“They’re newspaper clippings; I verified them all,” Celia said. “The Hawk just left the clues, but we’re drawing our own conclusions. That’s what we have to trust.”

“All right, then,” Suzanne said. “What do we know about Anthony Paulson?”

“He’s got a son on the police force,” Celia said, unable to keep the bite out of her voice.

“He’s on his second term of office, and is running for a third,” Arthur said.

Warren leafed through the clippings. “Arthur, have you ever read anything off him?”

“I’ve never tried. I can’t recall ever being in the same room with him. You three always handle the public appearances.”

“Maybe you ought to arrange a meeting.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“It’s time to pull his file up on the computer,” Warren said, indicating the back hallway, which led to the Olympiad’s command room. The others agreed and started to move on. Suzanne collected the file folder.

This was in their hands now, and Celia ought to have been happy to wash her own hands of the responsibility. Except she wasn’t. She sat in the kitchen chair and grit her teeth, gathering the courage to just stand up and follow them. It shouldn’t have been that difficult.

Arthur leaned on the back of her chair and whispered at her ear. “Come on, Celia. You’re invited.”

The wave of relief she felt shouldn’t have been strong enough to start tears pricking in her eyes. She blinked them away and hurried to follow him.

The wood door at the end of the hall looked like every other door they’d passed, the ones leading to bedrooms and bathrooms. But this one had a security keypad by the doorknob. Suzanne punched in a code, and a scanner read her thumbprint. The door slid aside, rather than swinging open.

The Olympiad command room was everything a starry-eyed admirer of superhuman vigilantes could hope for. The cavernous space offered secret elevators and passages to different parts of the building, including the hangar in a warehouse a block over that housed some of the team’s vehicles. Computer banks made up an entire wall: keyboards, indicator lights, printers, scanners, and analyzers. One of several screens showed a map of the city, and a radio monitored police frequencies. A gleaming steel table and chairs occupied the middle of the room. This was where the Olympiad had formed hundreds of plans, hunted hundreds of foes. Sparsely lit—only the table and computer banks shone brightly—the place was a den of shadows.