2019.

There wasn’t much sleep for Gracie that night. She tried, but everything in her head felt jumbled and on fire.

First thing she did was clean the whole apartment up and down, left to right, and back to front. Bringing order out of chaos sometimes calmed her. She even cleaned Kristen’s room, although some stubborn dark droplets clung to the carpet.

Her roommate wasn’t totally stupid, right? No way could she stay with Zack after this. Gracie folded Kristen’s socks in the hope that maybe, just maybe, her roommate wasn’t totally a lost cause. Maybe she would come to her senses, change her mind about charging Zack, and then he would be the one going to jail. 

The cleaning did eventually get Gracie to where she could sit still with her laptop. She signed-in to each of her online classes to make sure she was caught up, and turned the light off around 1 AM.

At 2 AM, she got up to try walking off her nerves. Jerry and Joe had been snoring in happy doggy dreamlands, but they took their leashes, shook off sleep, and joined her outside to circle the block. Gracie could easily have kept going, but the dogs started lagging behind, and she returned to the apartment for their sake, then got back in bed and just lay their staring up at the dark.

Was she really going to jail? That made no sense. None of what was going on made any sense at all.

Gracie started searching stories from The Titan Gazette that included the term “aggravated assault.” The results weren’t pretty. Was the world so broken that she could be sent away for two years, maybe more? All for serving up justice to a guy who beat his girlfriend?

Closing her eyes brought Gracie back to that night before. She could feel the broken bottle in her hand, see its edge catch the light as it trembled in her grasp. Then she was looking down at Zack. And then, there was the Crimson Wraith.

Gracie closed her laptop and picked up her copy of Nights of Justice again, even if Goodman was writing about things from way back. That guy in the mask she saw wasn’t like a hundred years old. No way. But maybe there was some connection:

At first, the activities of the Crimson Wraith and his faithful sidekick, the Wily Wisp, were known only by those involved with Titan City crime — its perpetrators, victims, and those attempting to thwart it. Awareness of their adventures gradually grew to a tipping point during the heightened paranoia of the 1950s, when enough of the citizenry had heard about the Crimson Wraith to question the rightness or wrongness of his activities. If the Crimson Wraith truly fought for good, why do so in secret? This question guided a series of investigations seeking to end his crime-fighting career.

Rather than retiring, however, the Crimson Wraith transformed in both costume and method. The skull that hid his face moved to his chest, and he began to wear an eye-covering domino mask that allowed him to smile at onlookers, who could then recognize his humanity. The Crimson Wraith then aligned himself with the forces upholding order in Titan City through public appearances with city officials, most frequently Mayor Kelly Winchester.

There appeared at this time a new class of costumed criminal to challenge him, such figures as Deadly Nightshade, the Puzzle Prince, Frostbite, Queen Cleopatra, and, most famous of all, the Troubadour. The crimes they committed included larger-than-life props and elaborate ploys, seeming as much like performance art as the pursuit of ill-gotten gains…

Goodman’s tone, so calm and matter of fact, didn’t directly resolve any of Gracie’s fears, but it presented the world as making some kind of sense. If it wasn’t exactly safe, at least it wasn’t total insanity.

With that last balm against the worries of her upcoming fate, Gracie found a few hours of sleep until Jerry and Joe had to let her know it was time for them to go out again. She obliged, and then made the call to Hancock. It was about 11 AM.

He sounded startled by her call. “Hello? Hey? Yeah?”

“Um, is this Bradley Hancock?”

Suddenly his voice became all professional. “It is. Yes, it is. Bradley Hancock, attorney-at-law.” He quoted his business card exactly.

“Right. So…” Gracie swallowed. “I was told I should call you…”

“And I’m glad you did. What can I do for you?”

“You see, there was this guy… and I… I met him at midnight…”

Silence. And then, “Say that again?”

Gracie flipped over the business card. “I mean, I met a man at midnight.”

“I see. All right. When can you come in?”

“Come in where?”

“My office. If you ‘met a man at midnight,’ we need to speak in person.”

“Right. Yeah, okay. I mean, I guess, like… now?”

“Good. See you soon.”

She made it to his office by noon. It sat amid the crush of shops on Dixon Street, above a vintage clothing store beside an artisanal chocolatier. Hancock had told her to look for the window with a sticker of the St. Andrew’s flag, a white X on blue background, and there it was, the only identifier to his otherwise unassuming office. She went to the door that led to the upstairs unit and pressed a buzzer.

“This is Bradley,” his voice said from the box.

“Yeah, it’s Gracie.”

“Come on up.”

The buzzer sounded, and rhe door unlocked. It was surprisingly heavy, and Gracie had to shoulder it open. Right away, she noticed a camera facing her from above. Seemed paranoid. But the walls were painted a soft, warm beige leading up a flight of carpeted stairs. And it smelled nice inside, sweetened with hints of cocoa and vanilla from the chocolate next door.

Upstairs, she found a tiny waiting room with deeply cushioned seats that looked decades old. An electronic chime announced her entry, and Hancock came out of his office, with a big smile, hand outstretched.

“Miss Chapel, welcome! Come on in!” He seemed young, for a lawyer, anyway. Just a few lines of gray crept into his beard. A green polo shirt clung tightly to his large frame, and there was a warm twinkle in his eye, the kind you see in pictures of Santa Claus.

Gracie took his hand, and he waved her into his office where a half-eaten calzone sat on his desk. Among the legal tomes lining the shelves around him, she noticed a memorial statuette of clear crystal that read, In Recognition of the Survivors of Zero Hour. Titan City, January 1, 2000.

“So,” he said, taking the calzone from his desk and depositing it in a small refrigerator underneath, “you met a man…”

Gracie nodded. “At midnight.”

“At midnight. Right. Right… First off, whoever told you to call me, you don’t need to say, and I don’t want you to. That isn’t important. What’s important is that whatever help I can give, you’ve got it. So, tell me what’s going on.”

Hancock sat back and listened as the details from the other night came haltingly out of Gracie, all the way up to the Crimson Wraith’s appearance and the trip to the hospital after, then Villagrana telling Gracie to turn herself in. She took Hancock’s cue of not mentioning it was Villagrana who gave her his card, but she noticed him smile slightly at the mention of her name.

Only when Gracie finished did he ask further details, but nothing about the Crimson Wraith. Did Gracie have any previous record of arrest? Had she been intoxicated the night of the fight? Had there been any previous altercations between them? 

Then he was quiet. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. A heavy sigh hissed out of his nostrils. The longer he sat there, the more Gracie felt her stomach start to knot. Hancock’s head bobbed, and he chewed his lips.

Finally, he spoke. “Well, in most circumstances, I’d say you’d gotten yourself in a real pickle. In a situation like this, what is lawful and what is right sometimes miss each other. If this guy shows up in court with stitches, that’s strong evidence for his claim. And with your roommate not pressing charges, what happened before is going to be up for debate.”

“I don’t understand. He hurt her. He hospitalized her. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“Right now, it might not be all that helpful to go into what you could or should have done.”

“No, I want to know. If that’s what I’m gonna be judged against, I want to know.”

“Ok, first thing would have been to take her out of there, out of there, and seek medical attention, not try for payback against him. Taking pictures of her injuries and the condition you found the apartment in would have given you evidence to cover your ass in court…”

Gracie rolled her eyes. “How was I going to be able to do that? You think he was going to let me walk out of there with her?”

“Maybe not. Have you ever heard of that thing where victims of domestic violence order a large pepperoni to call for help? They dial 911, but just go through the motions of ordering a pizza so their abuser doesn’t know what they’re up to.”

“Well, great. I’m glad they can do that, but I’ve never heard of it. I came home, saw she was… she was so messed up… I couldn’t…” 

Couldn’t think. That’s what she was going to say, but even thinking back to how Kristen looked, how she smelled, Gracie felt rage burning inside. She couldn’t think at the time and she didn’t want to think. All she wanted was to give Zack a taste of what he’d given her.

Hancock seemed to sense her distress. “Hey, in the heat of the moment, people go on instinct and hope for the best. It sounds like, no matter what, your roommate is in much better shape than she would have been without you around. You got her to the hospital. You got her into the care of those who could see what her wounds were like and stop them getting any worse.”

“But now I’m screwed, huh?”

“Like I said, in most circumstances. But these aren’t most circumstances.”

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. But someone sent you to me on his behalf, which means he thinks we’ve got a shot at seeing real justice. I’ll have to make some calls, but I know two things. First, when an officer of the law asks you very nicely to come downtown, you very nicely go downtown, especially if it’s the captain herself.”

“The captain?”

“Did she not tell you? Captain Esperanza Villagrana of the TCPD.”

“She didn’t say she was a captain.”

“There’s a lot she doesn’t say.”

“Okay, that’s one thing. What’s the other thing?”

With a reverence bordering on the spiritual, Hancock said,  “Always trust the Scarlet Stranger. He’s human. He can’t be everywhere at once or stop a bullet or turn time back on itself, but the man who wears that mask cares about this city and everyone in it, even the ones who don’t deserve it. And if he cares about you, he’s going to do everything he can for you, which is a lot.”

Gracie caught Hancock’s eye flickering to the Zero Hour statuette and wondered if that had been the midnight where Hancock had met the man himself. It certainly seemed like he had a first-hand encounter with the Crimson Wraith, and that must have given reason to put a whole lot of faith in him. 

It must be nice to feel you could trust someone so much, Gracie thought. That wasn’t something she had much experience with. But even if she couldn’t share Hancock’s faith, she didn’t see that she had any other options.