The second attack came a month later. Winter had settled on Amity Park. The pond in the city park had frozen over and been opened as an ice skating rink. Danny was walking along an icy sidewalks to join Sam and Tucker there. Sam wanted to go skating. Tucker who could barely stand on ice skates, was more interested in the free wi-fi being offered in the park.
"Look at him, there, walking along all high and mighty, like he owns the place or something!"
Danny looked around. Who was talking? Were they talking about him? The voice sounded old and wheezy and kind of familiar, but there wasn't anyone in sight. Of course there were mounds of snow along the streets and sidewalks from a recent storm. Maybe someone was there out of sight. Danny shrugged and continued walking.
"What's going to happen to him shouldn't happen to a dog." That was a different voice, but also old.
"I never liked dogs." That was the first voice.
"So you're saying he's going to get what he deserves?" The second voice.
"No, you old coot. I'm just saying. Dogs, him, ptttf!"
"Who're you calling an old coot, you mangy buzzard!"
"Not so loud. The boss said just to locate and watch him."
"Oh, like he can escape?"
By now Danny had realized that the voices were coming from overhead. He looked up and found, sitting on some electric lines, a pair of buzzards. Green buzzards wearing red fezes. Ghosts.
"Now you've done it," the second voice rasped. "He's seen us. The boss isn't going to be -- gawk!" A snowball had sailed unerringly to its head. It fluttered its wings to regain its balance.
"Did you see that? Did you? He hit me with a snowball! What kind of respect is that? I ask you. The youth of today -- they have no respect for their elders!"
"The look on your face when he hit you! Ah! I haven't seen anything so funny since --" The other buzzard fell silent as it dodged a snowball heading its way. "Think you're funny punk? Well, the shoe will be on the other wing in just a moment. Ha! Then we'll see who's laughing last!"
"Quiet you, you'll give the whole thing away!" The first vulture chided.
It took Danny a second to realize what the ghost buzzard had given away. He spun around in time to see the silver knight come running around the corner of the block up ahead. It had flaming batons in both hands. It took a gigantic leap at Danny, swinging one baton down in a crushing blow to his shoulder.
Danny tried to roll with the blow, tucking his head into his chest and landing on his shoulder. He let his momentum carry him forward and found himself back on his feet. He paused in amazement for a second that something he had learned in gym class had worked. Then he swiftly changed into Danny Phantom and threw up an ecto-shield just in time to absorb the force of another baton hit.
The blow drove Danny to the ground. As the silver knight strode forward to deliver another blow, Danny kicked out, planting his foot firmly in the knight's groin. The knight staggered back a couple feet. It clutched its legs together for a moment but didn't roll up into a fetal ball the way Danny expected. He made a mental note of that as he scrambled to his feet and scooted away.
"What's the deal, man? What did I ever do to you?" Danny challenged. The knight said nothing but twirled the two batons in a fancy pattern like a pair of nunchuks. "I guess you never saw "Raiders?" Danny said and pantomimed drawing a gun, pointing his finger at the silver knight and fired a heavy burst of ecto-plasm. "Bang!" Danny said as the fire engulfed the knight.
He waited warily for the fires to burn out. The knight was still standing, though a large area of scorching marred its surface. "This is the part where you fall do dead." Danny said, and waited.
The knight took a slow step forward. Danny waited for it to say something. He had been taunting it in hopes of getting it to say something. The knight merely hunched its visored head. A blister formed on its wrist.
Danny was expecting that and when the knight's blaster fired Danny had a shield up, deflecting the fire away. The blaster had been only a distraction because barely had the blaster ceased firing than a net of ecto-plasm was flung in Danny's direction. But Danny had been expecting something like that as well. His shield expanded into a long pole, snagging the net out of the air. It dropped to the icy ground when Danny collapsed his shield.
Danny sprinted forward and grabbed the net off the ground and flung it back at the silver knight. The knight tried to shoot the net out of the air with its blaster, but the fire wetn straight through the netting. The trap fell on the knight and for a moment encumbered it. Danny fell back a few feet while the knight wrestled the net off.
What Danny really wanted to know was who was inside the armor of the silver knight and how he could prevent that man from coming after him again and again.
Danny turned invisible and threw himself into the air. He did a quick loop around the silver knight, stopping a few feet from the back of the armor. He tried to find some form of egress, an on-off switch or some other weakness he could use to penetrate the armor. But hardly had he a chance for a quick glance then the knight spun around and smacked him with an electrified gauntlet. Danny fell back stunned, barely recovering in time to avoid another baton to the face.
So the knight can track him in his invisible mode. Heat seeking or some kind of ghost detector?
They traded a few rounds of blaster fire while Danny considered his next line of attack. They were fairly evenly matched in terms of power and abilities. The knight had greater physical strength but couldn't turn intangible like Danny. This fight could go on forever until one of the other made a mistake. Danny didn't want that someone to be him.
He went invisible again but this time dropped through the sidewalk before flying forward. He estimated the distance he's traveled carefully before popping back up through the sidewalk. He was eyeball to eyeball with the back of the knight's armor. A bit closer than intended but he was able to make a better survey of the knight's armor before the wearer sensed where he was.
The knight leaped up into a backflip, swinging its batons in a cris-crossing pattern in front of it. It twisted around in mid-somersault so that it landed facing Danny. He'd taken hits from both batons during the unexpected maneuver.
Danny lay stunned on the icy sidewalk, unable to move. The knight stood over him again, batons raised high over its head.
"Awk! Time to go!" One of the fez-wearing buzzards swooped down between the knight and Danny. "Don't keep him waiting."
The knight made a swipe at the buzzard. It sped off, leaving a handful of green feathers in the air. The knight turned back to Danny who was still groggily climbing to his feet, The baton came down, it's yellow flame suddenly hissing blue-white hot. Danny rolled desperately. The baton missed him by inches. Where it struck the sidewalk the pavement exploded into fine shards. Danny threw a shield over himself and hoped for the best.
The other buzzard flew down around the knights head. "Time's wasting. And don't think we won't report how you treated us." With a hoarse 'awk' it danced away from the knight's baton.
"You don't want him mad at you!" the buzzard advised before joining its partner in flying off to the north.
The knight looked at something on its wrist, probably a quickly extruded watch and snorted. The first sound it had ever made. It jammed one of its batons into the pavement near Danny's head while extruding rockets from its waist and flying off.
Danny lay where he was for a moment wondering what had made the knight call off the fight. Then he remembered the baton that had been left behind. He had barely time to turn intangible before it exploded with a deafening roar.
***
"So, you're saying that these talking vultures work for Vlad Plasmeus but this silver knight dude is using Skulker's tech. Are you sure it wasn't Skulker under all that armor?" Tucker was seated at a park bench, trying to warm his hands with a hot cup of cocoa. The heat from the paper cup, though, was so intense that he had to take his hands away from it every couple minutes to cool them off.
"Some of it looked like Skulker's tech. Only some. But it couldn't have been Skulker because most of the armor seemed defensive and Skulker never uses defensive tech. That would undermine his standing as the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter."
"But he's really a shrimp of a ghost operating an exoskeleton that looks like a big, burly he-man." Tucker said. "So he could have been using this other, more armored exoskeleton."
"Yeah, but he likes to talk. He's always boasting about how good a hunter he is. This silver knight guy didn't say anything. Either time. Skulker would have said something!"
"Has Skulker ever worked for Vlad before?" Sam asked. She was across the table lacing up her skates. They were black, like the rest of her outfit. Even the blade was painted black except for the actual edges. She was wearing a black nylon coat, black scarf wrapped around her neck and a black knit sock coat over her hair. Her face looked pale, washed out by all the blackness but there was a contented smile on her lips. For a so-called Goth, Sam liked all kinds of physical activities.
"Actually he has, but like I said, this silver knight didn't act anything like Skulker."
"But you think Vlad is behind all this because of the vultures?"
"They work for Vlad so this silver knight has to, too. It's that simple."
"You sure it wasn't Valerie Grey in a new costume?" Sam asked as she worked on her other skate.
"Honestly, Sam, I think you're obsessed with Val." Danny scoffed. "She couldn't be the silver knight. For one thing she's working over there at the hot dog stand.
Sam looked over at the kiosk where a teen-aged Black girl was serving refreshments. "She could have been on break."
Valerie Grey used to belong to the 'In' crowd at Casper High until her father lost his business through an unfortunate lawsuit. Suddenly poor, Valerie found herself shunned like a girl with Mono. Forced to talk with losers like Sam and Danny Val had become a nicer person but the big change was that in order to help support her and her father Valeria applied for every part-time job she could find. She was always working. And if she wasn't, she was trying to kill the ghost that caused her father to lose his business. She believed that Danny Phantom was responsible and some unknown benefactor had gifted her with some very effective ghost fighting tech. The result was rather uncomfortable for Danny. He liked Val a lot, but he could never be relaxed around her in case she happened to discover his secret identity.
"My first thought was Val, too," Danny said. "But, again, she, he or it, didn't fight like Val does."
"Vlad?" Sam suggested.
"First, the vultures talked like Vlad wasn't there. Secondly, Vlad's too vain to fight me as anything but himself."
"And he doesn't need armor to kick your butt," Tucker put in with a laugh.
Danny scowled.
"Aren't you going skating?" Sam asked as she got and tested her footing.
Danny looked up confused for a moment, then remembered why he had come here. "I've got to rent some skates first," he explained, "and I'm kind of upset about this attack. You go ahead and enjoy yourself. I'll join you in a bit."
Tucker was watching Sam walk down to the frozen pond. "I don't know how she does it, he said with a shake of his head. "I can't even stand up in those things and she walks in them like her feet were firmly planted on the ground."
"You've got weak ankles Tuck. Sam, on the other hand, has really strong ankles from wearing those Doc Martens all the time."
"Don't let me hold you up if you want to get some skates and catch up with her."
"I can't get this silver knight person out of my mind, Tuck. It's driving me crazy. If it isn't Vlad and it isn't Skulker and it isn't Val but uses technology that's kind of like Skulker's and Vlad's, who can it be?
"Vlad's girlfriend?"
"What? Don't be silly. The guy I was fight was a dude. I'm sure of it.
"But you didn't see a face or anything. How would you know it wasn't a woman?" Tucker pressed him.
"He didn't have any breasts."
"He's wearing armor, dude, how would you know if he -- I mean she, has breasts or not."
"They'd make bumps in the chestal area. You know, like those women stormtroopers at the Star Wars conventions."
"Danny, I hate to break it to you, but they form those breasts bumps when they mold the chestplate. It's like the nipples on Batman's costume, it doesn't mean anything."
"Nipples?"
"On George Clooney's costume. They molded in absolutely pointless nipples on the chest of his costume. But not, I'm sad to say on Batgirl's costume."
"How does this prove that the silver knight is a woman?" Danny asked.
"It doesn't. I'm saying that a woman could be wearing that costume and you wouldn't necessarily know."
"That could explain why he didn't fall down when I kicked him in the goodies."
"You kicked a man in the nuts?"
"He was trying to kill me."
"Oh, right. What happened?"
"Not much, just kind of closed his or her legs but didn't collapsed like I'd expected."
"Could be wearing a cup." Tucker pointed out.
"Or it could be a girl. Is Vlad still hanging around with that girl?"
"Let me check." Tucker set down his cocoa and unzipped his parka just enough to reach inside and pull out his PDA. He tapped in something and watched the results appear on his screen. "Hey, not only is he still with her, they're in town."
"In town!" Danny exclaimed.
"Well, in Cleveland, that's not that far away. Something to do with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."
"Is Vlad buying it?"
"Nah, just making a contribution to it. -- Oh, lord, this will make you laugh. He's donating a guitar once owned by Ember McLain!"
"Say-my-name Ember?"
"That one.
"Did he steal it from her in the ghost zone?"
""Apparently not. It's described as an early Les Paul. The ceremony is set for two hours from now."
"You think I should fly over there and take a look?"
"No, I was thinking that if the silver knight was someone in Vlad's entourage, they would probably have to leave about the time you said that silver knight broke off the fight, so they could get back to Cleveland in time for the ceremony.
"Vlad doesn't travel with an entourage. People with secrets to keep generally don't."
"Just his girlfriend." Tucker reminded Danny.
"Someone I've never heard of before and apparently has no existence prior to hooking up with Vlad. It doesn't make sense."
Tucker slipped his PDA back inside his coat. "Dan, my man, you look whiter than you usually look. Ol' Doc Farley diagnoses shock and recommends you get a hot dog and some fries, maybe a double order because I'm feeling hungry. Oh, and some more hot cocoa. This one is starting to freeze...."
***
It was a large auditorium so Danny was able to linger in the far back corner, high, near the ceiling while Vlad Master and his date mingled with people on the stage. Stage hands were working quietly in the background breaking down sets and scenery used for the ceremony. Vlad, attired in an immaculate white tuxedo looks suave and commanding as he usually did. One of the richest men in the world, he knew the world was his oyster and took pride of ownership in things. His things. His people. Whatever.
Danny got out the digital video camera he had borrowed from his parent's laboratory in the basement of FentonWorks. It had a 10x zoom making it almost as good as the high power binoculars of her father's that Sam offered. Danny wanted to record as much as he could about Vlad's mysterious girlfriend but he didn't know whether Vlad had a Ghost Sense like he did that warned him when other ghosts were near-by. Vlad had never acted like he did but Masters was a wily man and hide many of his talents from view. Danny had decided not to take any chances and stay as far away from Vlad tonight as possible.
He turned the camera on, aimed it at the stage and zoomed in as far as it would go. It was like standing not ten feet from the woman. She was clutching Vlad's arm just as she had in the picture Jazz had shown him weeks before. She was wearing a sleek green dress with a high neck and long sleeves. The hem glided just above the floor with only a hint of a toe sticking out from under the dress. Blonde hair flowed down her neck and shoulders. The hair was arrow straight and almost platinum in hue. Large black sunglasses covered her eyes leaving only a little bit of cheeks and chin visible. What he could see of her face was smooth, flawless. The nose was neither too small or too large, neither hooked nor upturned.
She stood for a long while as Vlad talked to various people. As time passed her face seemed to sag. The bright look and perky attitude was fading away. She leaned in to whisper something to Master then dropped his arm and glided over to a chair at the side of the stage and sat down. There were arms on the chair and she left one hand resting on it. After a moment she began drumming her fingers on the arm. Outwardly she still looked serene and almost ethereal but her fingers pointed to someone a lot more impatient.
Danny stopped the camera then drifted up into the trusses of the roof. There was a false ceiling below him now. Thick enough to reflect music from the stage down towards the audience but gaps between the tiles let Danny keep an eye on the stage. He drifted to a position closer to Vlad but higher up. Even if Vlad could sense another ghost around Danny figured that he wouldn't think to look overhead. And if he did, all he would see was ceiling. Danny wished he could hear what Vlad was talking about but he was too far away to hear anything. He took some more footage of Vlad and Felixa but neither seemed to be doing anything.
At last Vlad shook hands with his last visitor and went to collect his date. She said something and from the set of her lips it wasn't anything pleasant. Vlad took her elbow and steered her towards the back of the stage. From the way she seemed to lurch Danny suspected he wasn't holder her arm out of politeness. For a moment the camera caught a sideview of Vlad Master's face. It had that stonily, angry look that Danny was all too familiar with.
Danny followed them through the clearstorey of the theater to the backstage entrance. A chauffeur was waiting for them there. He held a fur coat for Felixa to put on, then a heavy cloth coat for Vlad. He opened the stage door and the three filed out.
Danny stuck his head through the brick of the theater's wall and watched them climb into a stretch limo and drive away. Danny debated following them but decided he had pressed his luck enough tonight. He put the camera in the backpack he was wearing and on a whim, turned invisible and slipped down to look at Ember's guitar. He remembered how Ember had made him think he was in love with Sam -- as a way to get himself killed. He remembered how determined he had been to be next to Sam, how everything about her seemed perfect. How happy he felt in knowing that he loved her. How much of that, he wondered had been Ember's mind control? That was all long past. He didn't feel that way about Sam anymore. He liked her because she was smart and funny and understood him better than anyone else. At least that's what he told himself as he lifted up into the sky and headed back to Amity Park.
The next day Jazz disappeared.
***
Sixteen year old daughters like their alone-time. So Maddie Fenton thought nothing of not seeing Jazz return from school or not seeing her camp out in the living room watching her 'stories.' (Intervention, Hoarders, Half-ton Teen, etc). Danny had seen her leave school and get into her car, a rattle-trap Chevette. Sometimes she would offer him a ride home but had made it clear that if she hadn't offered the ride, Danny wasn't welcome in the Jazzmobile. He assumed she had gone off somewhere with friends and so wasn't worried. But when the family sat down for dinner and one chair remained empty. The Fenton's knew something was wrong.
Danny ran upstair to check her bedroom. No Jazz. Jack Fenton ambled outdoors to see if her car was parked in back in its usual place. It wasn't. Maddie called her cell-phone and only got her voicemail. From there Mrs. Fenton called a widening number of Jazz's friends trying to find her. Danny tapped into her Facebook account and asking for her to call home. Looking up he was startled to see that his mother had aged years in just the few minutes that they knew Jazz was missing. Jack Fenton ambled back into the house looking puzzled and disturbed. He picked up the landline phone and called 911. As was usually the case with his father and authority, the call did not end well. The sticking point being that the police did not investigate missing persons cases for 24 hours unless there was clear evidence that a crime had been committed. He hung up with a growl.
"Didn't you put a GPS unit in Jazz's car?" Danny asked, hopefully.
"Jazz didn't like the idea that we were keeping tabs on her," his father grumbled. "Not that we were. It's just nice to know where she is at any moment in time."
"I'm surprised you didn't 'chip' us." Danny said.
"Well -- yes. Erm. The technology wasn't ready at the time."
"You were going to 'chip' us!"
"Just for your own good. If we had we'd know exactly where Jazz is. As it is we'll have to guess."
Danny rolled his eyes and tried to avoid saying anything more. Not for the first time he wondered what it was like to grow up in a normal family. While his parents were making more phonecalls, Danny sent Jazz an email knowing that it would be uploaded to her cellphone as well. He opened an IM session and sent out a call for her there. She didn't respond to any of these queries.
Danny drummed his fingers on the case of the laptop while he watched his parents pace about the living room. His father's usual booming voice was reduced to a whisper.
His parents were baffled because they couldn't imagine Jazz having an enemy in the world. Danny knew otherwise. Because Jazz had helped Danny on several occasions to defeat ghosts they were as likely to take their vengeance out on her as they were on him. One in particular would consider her an impediment to his plans.
Danny opened another IM session and flagged Tucker. "I need to know Vlad's location NOW!!!!!!!!" he wondered if he had used enough exclamation points as he hit 'sent'.
Tucker responded after a minute or two.
"WTF?"
"Jazz is gone" Danny IMed. "I think Vlad took her. I need to know where he is right now."
"OMG! On it."
Danny wondered how long it would take for Tucker to get a trace on Vlad Master. And how he was going to get away from his parents once Tucker told him where to find him.
"Jack! They're found Jazz's car!" his mother announced. "It's on 17,000 West Outer Drive. They want one of us to come out and identify the car."
"But they already identified the car as Jazz's." Jack objected.
"They probably want someone to say if there's any sign of a struggle in the car," Danny explained.
"Can't they tell by looking?" Maddie asked.
"Have you seen her car? It isn't like her bedroom, Mom. It looks more like my room."
"Oh." his mother said softly, then a resolute look came over her. "Hold down the fort, dear," she told her husband, "I'll run over and look at the car." She pulled the goggles of her jumpsuit down from where they rested on her forehead, a sign of her seriousness.
But as she turned towards the door, Jack Fenton took hold of her shoulder and pulled her back. "You hold down the fort. I'll go. You're -- better with all these gadgets and stuff." He pulled the goggles off her face and kissed her. "I'll do this."
Danny had rarely seem his mom cry, or be confused, or stopped from doing what she'd determined had to be done. She lay her head on her husbands shoulder and quietly sobbed. "Oh, Jack," he heard her cry, and had to look away, unable to bear seeing his parent's grief.
The scuff of shoes on the floor brought his attention back around. His father was heading towards the back door. "Dad, wait! I should go with you. I've been in Jazz's car more than you have. I think I know what it looks like normally better than you do." He had shoved aside his laptop and hopped out of the sofa as he spoke. Jack looked at his wife for a second then nodded his head.
Danny had barely cinched up his safety harness in the family RV, the euphemistically titled armored half-track assault vehicle before his father punched the accelerometer and they peeled out of the garage at 60 MPH. Jack Fenton dodged and weaved through traffic like a maniac but the usual glee on his face was gone. Danny pulled out his phone and texted Tucker to reply any responses there. Tucker had just replied with an 'OK' when his father jammed on the brakes, sending the RV into a skid that slid them around in a half circle, ending with then a foot from the curb and six feet behind Jazz's ancient Chevette. Danny didn't even know you could make a half-track vehicle slid.
"Dr. Fenton?" a man in a cheap suit standing near the car came over with his hand extended. "Detective Chandler. I'm in charge of the scene. Is this your daughter's car?
"Oh yeah. 1978 Chevette. Just like my first car. Hmmmm. Except mine was blue and this one is --ah -- Danny, what color would you say this car this?"
"Not-blue, Dad." Danny said getting out of the RV and walking up to Jazz's car. Sitting at the side of the road here in a empty part of the downtown it looked sad and pathetic.
The police man was still talking to his father. "If you could be so -- hey! Son! Please don't touch the car!"
Danny jerked back from the passenger side window he had been peering through. "Sorry," he said, then a thought came to him. "You know I've been in this car lots of times. I'm sure my fingerprints are all over the place."
"But we don't want your prints overlaid on earlier prints or smudging latents." This was from another man, sitting in the back of a van packed in front of Jazz's car. He had a winter jacket on with "Crime Scene" embroidered on the back. Danny nodded and jammed his hands in his pockets so they wouldn't be tempted to stray.
After a moment he walked over to the CS man. "That's my sister's car. She takes me home from school every so often. The back seat looks pretty normal. She always throws her books and papers in there, The front seat -- she always kept the front seat open in case she wanted to pick someone up. But now there's papers strewn all over it. I think someone threw them there. And, I'm not sure but I think the driver's seat has been moved. I could be sure if I could sit in it for a second."
"I'll ask the detective," the man said. He walked over to the detective. They talked for a moment. The man came back and pulled a pair of disposable rubber gloves from a pocket. "Put these on, make as little contact with the car as possible. We don't want you smudging any prints."
Danny got into the car and found he couldn't reach the pedals. "Oh, yeah, the seat has been moved back. Way back. The keys are in the ignition."
"We know. Just leave them there for now."
Danny was about to get out when he noticed the radio. '78 Chevettes didn't have pre-sets or even FM. Behind the glass screen there was just an indicator on a pulley in front of a card showing where the radio was turned to.
"Someone changed the radio," he called out. That brought both the detective and the crime scene investigator over. As they peered inside the car Danny explained.
"Afternoons my sister liked to listen to a psychology call-in show on WTLK-548. This looks to be set to 960..."
"The Edge." the CS man said. "My sons listens to that all the time. Grunge-metal. New rock.
"Jazz likes classical and soft pop."
Danny got out of the car and the Crime Scene Investigator got out a camera and started taking pictures of it from all angles, starting with the radio.
"Does you sister have any friends who's into contemporary grunge rock?" The detective asked. Danny shook his head.
He walked back to the RV and leaned against the grill. His conviction that Vlad had grabbed his sister was coming apart. Vlad would never have left her car out in the open like this, and he wouldn't have done anything so amateurish as to change the setting on her radio. And he certainly would not have changed it to modern rock. Danny was pretty sure that if Vlad listened to any kind of music it would be the same 90s music his parents liked. He felt his phone vibrate in his pants and pulled it out. It was Sam. She wrote: "Tucker told me. How can I help?" Below that was a missed call from Tuck. Danny was surprised he hadn't felt the phone vibrate earlier but that sometimes happened. It read" "Vlad's in town at the Kingsfront Hilton. Leaving later today in his private jet."
"Thxs" Danny texted.
Danny puzzled for a minute over where the Kingsfront Hilton was then realized that it was not more than a mile away. Conveniently close, Danny thought.
"Excuse me, Daniel?" it was the detective. "Do you know if your sister has any friends who live in this area?"
"No one lives here," Danny told the detective. The area was a hodge-podge of retail and office buildings, none much over five stories in height. The roads were empty, litter collected in corners where no one ever bothered to come around to clean. He noticed that the detective hadn't written anything down. "Most of her friends live south of the school, around Columbus Square." This he wrote down.
"Would you say your sister was a careful driver?"
The oddity of the question caused him to glance at the detective but the man was wearing a poker face. "Jazz is a very careful driver. Almost obsessively so." The detective wrote that down.
"So she not likely to scrap her car against things?"
"There are so many scratches on that car, who knows which one are fresh."
The detective went 'hmmmm', closed his notebook and went back to the car without explaining anything.
Danny followed him back and noticed where the Crime Scene tech was kneeing by the front left fender of Jazz's car. He was picking at loose material in a scratch there. It had to have been a fresh one because the turned up paint and metal was still bright and shiny.
Danny knelt by the tech who promptly waved him away with a "stand back, please." But as he moved back Danny could see several more fresh scraps on the car. Squinting at what the technician was picking up Danny asked, "Is that paint or metal you're collecting?"
"We won't know until we get it back to the lab."
Danny wasn't sure if it was paint or metal either, but whichever, it was silvery colored. He found himself thinking of the silver knight. It could easily have forced Jazz in her car off the road and subdued her. The knight was kind of large in its armor so it would have had to push the driver's seat back to drive the car here. But why change the radio station? He remembered the video he had of Felixa Cowen drumming her fingers on the chair while waiting for Vlad to finish his smoozing. Now there was a woman who would change radio stations in someone else's car, no matter how long or short the ride was. But what did some bored, rich party-girl want with his sister?
Maybe this was still Vlad's plot but if Felixa was the pilot inside the silver knight armor that had attacked him and now seemed to have abducted Jazz, what did she get out of all this? There was only way to find out and he's have to ditch his Dad to do it. Danny ran his eyes all around the neighborhood. assessing each object there for its usefulness. The moment he was sure he had mapped out the best route he started running. "Dad!" he called excitedly, "I see something!"
He was well ahead of them before his father and Detective Chandler took off after him.
As he had hoped an alley branched off from the street here. Danny ducked into it, changed into Danny Phantom, turned invisible and flew away by the time the two adults had reach the intersection. Danny wasn't sure what he was going to tell his parent later. He hoped by the safe return of Jazz to avoid all such awkward questions.