"Magnus?" Helen asked, tapping her radio so that she could reach her son-in-law.
"Yes, Helen?"
"Can you find someone to stay with the children for a few hours?" She asked, biting her lip as she looked at the images on her screen. "I have something I need your help with."
"Dad wanted to see the kids this afternoon," Magnus said, affirmatively. "I'll be there in ten minutes. Is that soon enough?"
"Thank you," Helen said, looking once again at the image she'd received from her contacts at the police station. There was something absolutely astounding about it.
"Hey, Doc?"
Helen looked up to find an aging Henry walk unevenly into the room, his back ever so slightly curved from leaning over the trademark tablet in one hand and an all-too familiar cane in the other, an unfortunate addition since an incident on a mission nearly fifteen years ago that had crushed Henry's leg. He was lucky to be walking at all. "Henry," she greeted warmly.
"You got the link?" Henry asked, motioning to the screen.
She nodded as she quickly input the command to transmit the screen images to a holographic image in front of her. She immediately scrolled through with her finger before she arrived at one for the technician to see. "What does that say to you?" She asked, pointing at the image as he limped over to stand beside her.
"Uh, that I need my glasses," he sighed, setting his tablet on her desk and set the cane against the desk.
Helen managed an almost apologetic smile as he reached into his pocket for the corrective lenses. Perched on the bridge of his long nose, he looked at the image. "Hm...if I had to hazard a guess, it's probably blood." He pulled the glasses from his nose and sighed. "But then, this isn't exactly my area of expertise...it's more Will's."
"He's otherwise occupied," Helen said, turning her attention back to the screen. "But I agree with you – it's probably blood. And, from the looks of it, it dripped down from something above."
"That's going too far into Will's alley for an old HAP like me," Henry laughed, putting his glasses back into his breast pocket.
Helen laughed softly before she studied the man who'd become like a son to her in their nearly sixty-five years together. "How are you feeling?"
He patted his leg, gently. "Ah, the bum leg's actin' up a bit, but that's probably because of the rain in the forecast."
"You'll tell me if you need anything?" Helen asked, earnestly.
"You betcha." He said, pointing at her as he limped away from the desk and out the door.
Helen sighed, heavily. Another generation of coworkers and friends who were growing old without her.
"You ready for me yet?" Magnus asked, walking into the room.
"Yes, thank you." She said, nodding. "These are the photographs which were sent to me from a contact in the police department. Tell me what you think of them."
Helen walked down the alley with experienced precision as she held the firearm in front of her for cover. Her eyes scanned the alley quickly, pausing for a moment as she noticed a strange spot on the wall. "Magnus," she called to her protege's son, not turning her eye from the anomaly. "What do you make of this?"
The athletic thirty-eight-year-old with observant brown eyes, thick dark hair, and an olive complexion walked over to where she stood before he turned his eye to the same place on the wall. "Hm. Dark stain on the wall. More like a drip than a splatter or a spot..."
Helen nodded. "In the sunlight, I would imagine that we're looking at dried blood."
"Looks like we were right about the photograph." He agreed.
"Yes, but that was further down the alley."
"I noticed that too." He nodded. "Maybe whatever left the blood there also left it here."
She nodded her agreement.
"Now for the more obvious question..." Helen said, inhaling as she looked over at her companion.
"How did it get there?" Magnus finished, looking over at her.
"Um-hm," she murmured as she looked around the alley for other clues. Something caught the sunlight, and Helen looked up only to blink in surprise. Blond shoulder-length hair. She could have sworn she'd seen straight, blond, shoulder-length hair.
Like Ashley's before she died.
"I suppose that it could have been from any abnormal which could climb walls..." He murmured from beside her, still facing the wall. "Maybe got injured himself or..."
Helen looked over at him, and he noticed the look on her face. "Helen?"
"You didn't see her?" She asked, looking back.
There was nothing there, and she inhaled sharply.
"Her who?" He asked, following her gaze, curiously.
"Nothing." Helen said, shaking her head. She couldn't possibly have seen her daughter. Ashley had died forty-two years ago.
We never recovered a body, the voice in her head reminded her as Magnus Zimmerman continued to speculate about the blood they'd found.
"...know what could have climbed the wall and would also have red blood? Or at least would feed on something that had red blood?"
Helen looked over, shaking herself from her reverie. "I'm sorry...what?"
"Maybe I should get Audrey or do this later..." Magnus said, looking over at his boss, concerned.
"I thought..." She began.
"You thought..." He prodded.
She inhaled. "I thought I saw Ashley."
He raised an eyebrow. "Your daughter, Ashley?"
She nodded, slowly. "I...I must have been mistaken."
"Yeah. She's been dead for forty years or so. I think you would have found her by now if she was still here..."
"I know that, Magnus." She snapped, looking over. "It must have been a trick of the light."
"Maybe you should go home and get some rest. Talk to Dad, maybe."
"Perhaps you're right," she admitted. "I did not rest much last night, and it might be a good idea to speak with Will about this." She sighed before she looked back at her namesake. "Call Audrey. I'll take the van, and return to the Sanctuary."
He nodded. "Then, we'll bag this sucker and join you."
"You are your mother's son, aren't you?" Helen teased with a light-hearted smile.
He grinned. "Just doin' my job."
She appeared suddenly on the rooftop. Ripping from one place to another always gave her a thrill she couldn't quite recreate in any other way.
With cat-like precision, she stealthily made her way to the window, looking down on the museum. As her intelligence had indicated, the guard made his rounds of the room she watched at 9:10.
"Gotcha," she murmured as she pulled the black ski mask over her face and almost white-blond hair. She reached for the device she had in her pocket, and pressed a button which completely disabled the cameras before she flashed into the room, broke the encasing, took the priceless Roman vase, and flashed right back out.
"Hey, uh, Helen?"
The woman looked up as seventy-five-year-old Will Zimmerman walked into her office. "Yes, Will?"
He'd begun calling her "Helen" instead of "Magnus" in an effort to minimize the confusion after his son's birth, and she'd been almost surprised at how much she missed the old nickname. Just like she would miss Henry's affectionate "Doc" when he finally...
Don't think about it, Helen, she thought to herself as she pushed the melancholy thoughts of imminent loss out of her mind.
"I found something I think you should see." He said, showing her a small computer card. Unlike Henry, he was a spry man even in his seventies, though Helen knew that had been a result of daily workouts in the Sanctuary's fitness center. But what his physicality didn't say was that he'd recently recovered from a heart attack, and that Helen was vigilantly watching to make sure that he didn't have another.
He quickly made it to her desk, sliding the chip into the front of the desk to be read by the interconnected computer. Then, he sent a holographic image up in front of where he stood beside Helen.
"What is it?" She asked as she watched the video.
"Wait for it," he said, watching the video with a trained eye. It seemed like any other surveillance with guards walking to and fro, and silence in between. "Now." He said as the screen went blank.
"That's odd," Helen said, her brow furrowing.
"That's what I thought." He said, stopping the video.
"What is it from?"
"That one was from the British Royal Museum." Will said, soberly. "About the time that the video cut out, they lost a set of priceless jewels that were on loan from the Royal Family."
Helen's eyebrow raised instantly.
"I have five other tapes, each pretty much like this. Regular surveillance, a sudden stop to them, and some major loss. Uh...in Russia, they lost one of the Faberge eggs, um...I think there's also a Dead Sea Scroll missing, and a lesser-known Van Gogh. And most recently, here, they lost a Roman vase that had been on loan from the Italian government."
"And the authorities don't know what to make of it?" She asked, looking over at him for confirmation.
"That's just it," Will said, soberly. "There's no sign of struggle, no sign of intruder, there isn't so much as a broken window."
"The authorities have no suspects then?"
"I didn't say they didn't have any suspects," Will said with chagrin. "But none that would be able to pull off a heist in all five cities."
"Then, they were all in different places around the world?"
"And within the last five months."
She swallowed. "Well, there's really only been one abnormal I've known that could appear and disappear at will, and grand larceny wasn't his modus operandi." She sighed. "Well, of course, there's Audrey, though I doubt with her work here at the Sanctuary and her family that she has time to even think about making a heist so large." Helen didn't mention that as the woman's mother, she didn't believe that Audrey would resort to stealing priceless artifacts.
"No, I know," Will said, shaking his head. "I'm not saying that Jack the Ripper had anything to do with this..."
She tensed at the title her former lover had earned for himself.
"And probably not Audrey...I'm just wondering if...maybe there's something else out there. You know, with their particular talents..."
Helen looked distinctly skeptical before she remembered what had transpired earlier that morning. A flash of blond hair? John's talent for appearing and disappearing when and where he wanted to? "Perhaps...there is someone else..." She said after a moment.
Will looked over at her in interest.
"Ashley."
He froze for a moment, surprised that she'd even said anything. "Helen..."
"This morning as I was working with Magnus," she began instantly. "I saw something. A brief flash for a moment. It was the same color as her hair. But before I could investigate further, it disappeared."
The forensic psychologist still looked distinctly skeptical.
"I know what you're thinking." She said, seriously. "And if I was in your shoes, I would probably think it too, but..."
"Listen to what you're saying, Helen." He interrupted, shaking his head. "Forty-two years ago, I sat right here and listened to you go on and on about how Ashley had been trapped by the EM shield somewhere in the Sanctuary. So, we looked. And we found the bones of another one of those superabnormals. Then, you fed me some story about how the computer had absorbed her energy signature. And again, I listened..."
"I'm not crazy," she protested.
"I never said you were," he said with a sigh. "Lonely for your oldest daughter, however? Yes."
Her face was stony as she waited for a moment to compose herself before continuing. "I'll have Audrey and Magnus see about possibly pretending to be buyers for the stolen articles."
"Helen..."
"Did you need anything else?" She asked, turning a veiled eye to him.
"No." He sighed. "Nope. That's all."
"Then, if you'll excuse me?" She said, motioning to her computer screen.