9
Night was encroaching over Detroit. The eastern horizon was turning into overlapping shades of orange turning to violet with a faint line of dark blue along the bottom. As the blanket of night came closer, streetlights along the business district started lighting up and traffic increased and motorists headed home to the suburbs like herds of animals obeying forgotten migratory routes. In the Ritter Building, the law offices of MacNichol, Bellows and Flockhart were almost deserted. Aaron MacNichol congratulated partner Peter Bellows for his victory in a custody battle and pulled his coat on in a hurry to meet his wife for dinner. As Aaron headed out the glass doors, Bellows looked over and noticed one of their junior law students at work in one of the empty offices. Beneath that plumage of curly red hair, Kerry Hennessey worked as driven as usual. He thought a second, wondered about the situation and turned away from his usual course out to weave his way over and check on her. To get her attention, the silver-haired George Clooney lookalike lightly rapped at the door. Kerry lifted her head solemnly toward him.
"Miss a ride?" He asked.
"I'm waiting for a response." She answered. Bellows came up toward her and turned her laptop toward him.
"The Social Security Administration?" He recognized the website and looked back at her. "What case is this?"
"No case…" Kerry confessed. "Mrs. Flockhart has a contact in the local office who said they could run by sister's social for activity on it. I have to renew the request every three months."
"You've been looking for your sister a long time."
"Yeah…" Kerry answered. "For five years…"
"How do you know she's still alive?"
"I know…" Kerry sighed, looked at the lights of dusk over the view of the city darkening the room and looked back to Mr. Bellows.
"That's a lot of faith." He responded. "After that much time, several people would have given up…"
"You've got mail." The laptop chirped and cut off his thought. Kerry quickly opened her mail and tapped open the message from the Social Security Administration. It was not a full message. Kerry scanned the Federal logo and address briefly and scrolled down to her contact. The woman was a local administrator named Donna Krakowski who felt for Kerry's plight and sent her the intermittent status reports. Kerry read the message and sighed deeply depressed again. It was not the message she wanted.
"There has been no activity with this Social Security Number since January 2003." Bellows read it aloud. He sighed along with Kerry. "I'm sorry."
"She's got to be using another number." Kerry admitted to herself. "I've got to think outside the box to locate her. I know she's out there."
"You think she's hiding from you?"
"No…" Kerry turned to her other recourse of running her sister's name through the search engines for new links. "But she is making it hard for me to find her."
"Kerry…" Bellows looked to her as a daughter. "If you're putting as much effort into passing the bar as you are in finding your sister…" He paused to clear his throat. "I'll be glad to have you here as a lawyer." He backed up to head home. "I wouldn't be surprised if you make partner." He chuckled and turned out on his left heel. Kerry lit up with a light smile herself and changed her search engine criteria to "Supergirl Sightings." Immediately came a barrage of out-of focus YouTube videos, photo-manipulated images, on-line newspaper reports and a barrage of Supergirl websites. Justin Russo of Waverly Place in Manhattan, New York had a site called the Supergirl Shrine heavily devoted to cross-referencing sightings with photos. Dawson Leery of Cape Side, Massachusetts was mostly devoted to photos from the media on his Super-Fans of Supergirl website, but beyond that, the websites became less than stellar and even demeaning. If appearing at the top of the Google Search result was any indication of the ratings of a website then Incredible Supergirl Sightings Database by Howard Wolowitz of Pasadena, California had the largest most exhaustive research on Bridget in the media. It had an analysis of the sightings, a chronology of witness-contributed accounts, photos, links and scans of articles and magazine analysis, photos and video files and scientific data involving flight plans, examination of the powers and capabilities of the heroine and weekly on-line chats. Kerry had seen most of the photos before; several of the older original Detroit photos from five years ago were being passed off as taken in other cities. Some of them were obvious hoaxes that Howard had busted by comparing known and real images. After seventeen pages of reading nearly identical accounts of guys describing "how hot" or "how cool" this real-life heroine was, Kerry began feeling the pangs of sleep. By 5:30PM, the building around her was completely dark and the illumination of her laptop had caused a decrease in her mental acuity. Her head propped up in her right hand on the desk, Kerry closed her eyes briefly to rest them and without meaning too was dozing off while sitting up. In her dreams, voices from the past echoed back to her from her dreams.
"Stop persecuting your sister!" Her mother's voice was screaming at her from her mind.
"Get her to confess!" The voice of seventeen-year-old Kerry Hennessey echoed from history.
"She can't be that girl!"
"No, you just don't want her to be!" It was an argument she had had several times with her mother when Bridget was at the start of her secret identity. There were several versions of the argument, but they all ended the same with frustration and strained hostility, a mother fighting with her daughter over the secrets of an older sister.
"You're killing me, Bridget!" Kerry stirred a bit in her sleep. A tear dropped down her face. "I'm having nightmares because of you! I'm waking up screaming because I think you're sucking my life out or something. Please… please… You've got to tell me. That girl with the powers… with the stupid costume… Is there anything you have to say to me?"
"That skirt makes you fat…"
"Stop it, stop it!" Cate screamed at her daughters. It was the night of the party for Linda Kent held at the local Lion's Club Banquet Hall near Sterling Heights. Local Detroit businessman, Harold Winkler, who owned the Detroit Tribune, had held the gala event to meet the British-born brunette beauty to the United States. It was also the night of her father's heart attack, but it was also the last time Kerry saw her sister. She replayed the night in her dreams when she went to sleep.
"Mom, please get her to confess!" Kerry pleaded to her mother that night in 2003. "You know it's her. Why are you doing this to me?"
"Kerry, honey, please…" Cate had tried to every time to temper Kerry's frustration with logic. "I don't want to know anymore. It's your sister's secret. Let her have it."
"Mom!" Kerry was losing it.
"Why is this so important to you?" Their argument drew attention from a few of Paul's associates and friends from the Tribune. "Why is it so important to you to know everything about her? Why do you need to know this?"
"Because…" Truthfully, Kerry wasn't sure. Was it because of her own ego or because she couldn't stand the fact her own sister was keeping secrets from her? "Mom, she's been lying about it! We know she's been lying about it! Don't you get the least bit upset when she cons you about it? She's suddenly become so good at it! Don't you care about that at all?"
"I am settling this for the last time!" Cate groaned and stood in her good dress trying to maintain decorum in front of Detroit's elite. She took Kerry by the wrist and led her into the direction of the restrooms where Bridget had vanished. "Kerry, you trashed your sister's belongings! You two have to learn to live together!" She turned from Kerry to her other daughter. "Bridget, I want you two…" She pushed open the door to the restroom and encountered a woman in a black evening dress, the same sort of dress which Bridget was wearing that night. She was Linda Kent, a beautiful woman with shoulder-length black hair and two piercing azure blue eyes.
"I'm sorry, I thought you was my daughter." Cate excused herself. Kerry leaned in a bit looking at this person.
"No problem." Kent's soft voice excused herself and glided out to the gala. Kerry watched her and stood in awe of her presence. Her mother was meanwhile dropping and looking under the doors of the toilet stalls. She would be the person of interest that night for what people saw of her. She had stepped out of the banquet hall to take a phone call and then vanished, just like Bridget, but there was something else. She did see Bridget that night one more time. At the hospital as the rain came pouring down and her father was having emergency heart surgery, she had seen Bridget come racing out of the emergency entrance. Through the rain, she had seen her sister clad in hospital fatigues and screaming her head off having a conniption fit. That was when Kerry finally had her proof. Concealed by the rainy mist from a second floor window, she had watched her sister rip away the hospital garb to reveal that costume… that costume she had tore up the house several times looking for it. That blue leotard with the red "S" on it with the red cape and skirt, she had seen her sister wearing it just before she vanished off into the night and was never seen again. Kerry had kept it a secret from her parents for over a year and only told them after her mother left Sterling Heights Medical Center. The truth was out; she finally had her proof, but what did it manner? Bridget was never seen again. A Missing Persons report had been issued, but the leads never panned out. The body of a blonde girl had been found in the Huron River south of the airport, but it was the body of a missing flood victim from the year before. In the meantime, Supergirl sightings were coming from everywhere. From New York City, London, Seattle, Cairo, Argentina, Tokyo… they gave Cate hope and they gave Kerry something to be proud of, but there was one thing everyone had overlooked. What had happened to Linda Kent that night? Did she just dismiss herself in the confusion when Kerry's father was raced to the hospital? No one had seen her again after that. No, there was something else… something Kerry had forgotten. Something Rory had mentioned to her. Something she had forgotten after getting her proof at the hospital. While Rory was filling his pickets with sushi, shrimp and other appetizers, he had just casually looked out the window and saw Miss Kent racing outside the Lion's Club… pulling off her wig to reveal blonde hair as she ducked behind a van then shooting up into the air in a red and blue costume!
"I never saw them together!" Kerry woke up from her dream screaming and standing up at the desk. That's why her mother never found Bridget in the restroom; she had left it right under their noses as Linda Kent! How could she have missed that? If Bridget could fly and deflect bullets, why couldn't she disguise her appearance? She'd been searching the wrong name! Linda was the first name of Supergirl in the comics; Kent was the last name of Superman's civilian identity in public. How could she have missed that? Briefly checking her watch, Kerry typed in a new search:
"British heiress, Linda Kent, Supergirl Sightings…"
Up popped a few links from newspapers in Toronto, London and New York City. Bolstered by this new memory, Kerry noticed that Supergirl had saved victims of a sinking ship the same week Linda Kent donated money to a children's hospital in Toronto. Her face appeared in a London Gazette for a contribution to AIDS research the month that Supergirl stopped a terrorist attack in Britain. During the height of Supergirl sightings in New York City, Linda Kent was reported to be staying at the swanky Whittendale Tower in Manhattan.
"Where did she get all this money?" Kerry held up a photo of Bridget from her cell phone to compare with Miss Kent's on the Internet. The similarity was there, but it was not exact. She clicked over to a photos-only search. Several pictures of the reclusive heiress popped up, recycled for several separate articles. Among them, Kerry noticed a group picture and clicked on it.
"Bridget…" She sat stunned. It was her sister, blonde hair, grinning ear to ear and everything in a long blue graduation gown and cap from the Bay City Community newspaper in San Francisco. She was a graduate of Doherty High School on the west coast in 2006, but who were these other girls with her in the newspaper photo? The article read:
"Billie Daniels, the daughter of British philanthropist Linda Kent, graduates Valedictorian with a perfect 4.0 GPA from Doherty High School in the Nob Hill section of San Francisco. She plans on attending UCLA with majors in business and economics with a minor in acting. Pictured with her left to right are Piper Halliwell, Prue Halliwell, Sabrina Spellman and Phoebe Halliwell." Kerry couldn't look away. She had found her sister. She knew where she was.
"How many stinking secret identities do you have?" Kerry asked the image of her sister grinning out at her from the newspaper.
On the East Coast, the historical village of Grandview north of Philadelphia was saying good-bye to another of its oldest structures. The old brownstone was more than two hundred years old. It had been a hotel and even a house of ill repute at one time, but since 1968, it had been an apartment house for five separate families. Whether the fire was started by old wiring or bored teenagers who didn't know better, the location was now full of flame and pillars of black smoke pouring through the location. The crackling of old wood filled the structure, floors turned to ash and collapsed and personal possessions vanished to the ages. Fire department personnel charged through with military-level like training dousing everything in site with streams of water fired at eight hundred pounds per square inch. Outside the creaking and crumbling structure, natives and on-lookers watched from a distance with residents sitting from the corner as their homes and belongings were taken from them. Among them, attractive Melinda Gordon, the local antique store owner, watched helplessly concerned to see someone carried from the torrent of fire and smoke. Her husband, Jim Clancy, was one of the area paramedics. He hurried to tend to the young fire victim. Her face was blackened by soot, her hair and clothes covered with the scent of cinders and her left arm charred and burnt. Jim started administering first aid to get her breathing again, but Melinda with her own special abilities saw something else. A waft of smoke that didn't burn wafted from the young lady and gradually turned into a doppelganger of the girl on the stretcher. Melinda was seeing her spirit. She was dying.
"What's happening?" Lisa Spears looked around confusingly. "What's happening?" She looked around and saw Jim giving her CPR. "Please someone! My baby's upstairs! She's in her room on the top floor!"
"DeFib, quick!" Jim placed an oxygen mask on Lisa and grabbed the defibulator from the ambulance. Lowest setting first, he pulled the pallets and placed them to Lisa's chest and shocking her back. Her spirit was jerked back into her body when her heart restarted. Lisa started choking and fighting to clear her throat.
"Jim…" Melinda rushed up to him. "I saw her spirit. She has a baby inside."
"What?" Jim had never any reason to not believe her psychic senses. "Someone will get her."
"How do you know?" She turned to race toward the structure but Mike Switzer and Kevin Shatner of the fire squad grabbed and caught her. The flames were intense. Their microwave energy was a heavy wall that pushed her back. The noise was incredible. The crispy crunch of wood being blackened into cinder, the crackling of furniture covered in flames and the cacophony of flames dancing around and consuming everything in their path.
"Melinda, what are you doing?" Kevin held her at the door.
"There's a baby on the top floor!"
Charlie spun around to see the staircase crumbling to the first floor and the basement. One of his friends came down hard from the collapsing second floor and broke his leg. That way up no longer existed. All Mike could do was grab his fallen his comrade, and pull him out behind Melinda pushed out of the way. Through the fracas of dancing flames and crumbling furnishings, Melinda could hear a baby crying somewhere.
"Kevin, what are you doing?" The frantic beauty screamed.
"Melinda, we'd never get up there in time!" Kevin's blue eyes felt sorry. "No one could!"
The wind suddenly soared and a streak of red pierced over their heads. In its path, a few pieces of the front wall came tumbling down and a front window façade came crashing down. No one had seen it, but several teenagers started cheering. What was going on? Were they cheering the fire? Pulled backward from the crumbling edifice, Melinda noticed people looking up and pointing to the third floor. Descending down on the portent of hot air, a young blonde beauty descended down on invisible wings into an open parting of the rescue squad and firemen. Clad in blue with a short red skirt and red cape, she embraced close to her chest a tiny baby boy in a slightly charred blue blanket. Barely harmed, the tiny child clung to the bright red "S" on her costume as Bridget descended down to the sidewalk and turned to Melinda. The local teens knew who the blonde goddess was and tried getting closer to meet her.
"Here you go…" Bridget passed the boy into Melinda's arms. "I think he's safer with you."
"Who? How?" Melinda was stunned. Maybe it had something to do with her ability to see ghosts and spirits, but when she looked at Bridget she saw a powerful light and aura illuminating her body. It wasn't just the glow… it was the image of huge wings of light from behind her that she noticed. Although she mostly passed over and ignored the tabloid articles of this alleged real-life heroine, she had never read anything about her having wings or a bright heavenly glow. What she was seeing had to be for her eyes only, and it had to do something about her ability to see ghosts.
"Are you an angel?" Melinda took the child from her. Bridget didn't answer. She just stepped back, tilted her head back and began hovering upward quickly until she reached the level of the third floor. The fire was fizzling out under her in her hurry to return to the heavens. Melinda arched her head stunned unsure how to describe what she had seen, but somehow, she suspected this blonde heroine was a lot more than what she seemed.