Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

silence before her words came pouring out. "It was like that in Peru. Last year. Peter and I quarreled–it was over something trivial, I can't even remember what. But he said some hurtful things to me. I was upset."

Conflicting emotions crossed her pretty face, guilt and misery and grief all jumbled up together. "Robert . . . comforted me. One thing led to another, and . . . well, sorry to be so blunt, but Peter walked in on us."

"And you think that gave Peter motivation for what happened at the pyramid?"

"Yes. No. I don't know." Jenny was close to tears. "The Peter I know would never do a thing like that, not under any circumstances. But I told you–he started acting strangely as soon as we climbed the pyramid."

Hamish Stewart passed again, and Dag got to his feet. Jenny saw him wince with pain as he straightened his bad leg. She stood up herself and reached out a hand to shake his.

"Thank you, Mr. Rawlings," she said sincerely. "I feel a lot better now. I guess I needed someone to listen to me."

"That's something we all need," Dag agreed sagely. "Thank you again for your time, Ms. Ayles."

He took a couple of steps, then turned back to her as if he'd forgotten something.

"Oh, one last question, if you don't mind." He slipped his hand in his pocket and brought out a sheet of folded drawing paper. He opened it, and Jenny squinted at it in the fading light. "Does mis mean anything to you?"

There was a pencil sketch on the sheet, showing a human figure dressed in animal pelts and wearing a bull-like horned headpiece. Jenny stared at it and shook her head. "Sorry," she told him. "It looks like some kind of tribal shaman–similar to the ones depicted in cave art in some areas of Europe. But I'm afraid I don't know enough about the subject to be any more precise. I can recommend some books, if you like."

"Excellent." Dag refolded the sheet and stuffed it back in his pocket.

Jenny reeled off a short list of titles he might find interesting, then watched as Dag retraced his steps along the footpath and through the bushes. She heard the sound of his car engine start and caught a fleeting glimpse of the glow from his taillights as the Charger bounced back along the gravel track toward the highway.

She felt drained, but strangely more at peace than she had since Peter's disappearance. Even Hamish Stewart's pointed comments about "the wasted afternoon" didn't faze her.

As far as Dag Rawlings was concerned, the afternoon had been far from wasted. He had learned more than if he'd spent a week in a library.

The Dodge barreled back down the highway toward Gotham in light traffic. The rush hour had started, but most vehicles were headed in the opposite direction, out of the city.

Dag thumbed a button on the dashboard, and the glove compartment popped open. He reached over to take out a moist towelette and rubbed it across his head. When he tossed it aside, it was smeared with the silver highlights from his hair. Instantly he looked twenty years younger.

As he continued on, his tongue pushed at the broken tooth in the corner of his mouth, dislodging the small plastic camouflage cap. He spat it out.

Jenny Ayles and Hamish Stewart–and anyone else who'd seen him that afternoon–would remember a middle-aged man with a broken tooth and a bad limp. Not the most elaborate disguise he'd ever used, but it had served his purpose.

No one would ever connect Dag Rawlings with the man who really drove the car–Gotham City's billionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne.

Celebrity TV shows and newspaper gossip columns often reported on Bruce Wayne's comings and goings; after all, he was reputed to be the city's wealthiest man–and its most eligible bachelor.

According to the reports Wayne was a fop, a handsome but weak-willed man whose major mission in life was to spend the vast fortune his father had bequeathed him. His exploits on the ski slopes of the Italian Alps or in the sun-drenched resorts of South Africa gave the tabloid reporters reams of column space as they speculated on who he was dating, who he had dumped, and who had dumped him.

He'd been romantically linked with supermodels, Hollywood actresses, and the daughters of European aristocracy.

Not one of them would recognize the man who sat at the wheel of the Dodge, his face grim, eyes intent on the road ahead even as his mind raced to integrate everything he'd learned from Jenny Ayles.

Too many coincidences, he thought. All of this is connected somehow–Robert Mills's murder, Peter Glaston's disappearance, the weird blue lights, the unbelievably powerful figure who faced the Justice League . . . and beat them. But how? What are the connections?

Wayne took the service road for the Gotham Narrows Bridge and was halfway across it before he saw the golden beam of light that lanced upward from a city roof. It was focused on a single low, dark cloud, and as he drew closer he could make out the shimmering shape of the Bat-Signal projected on the cloud's base.

Commissioner Gordon needs to see the Batman.

A half mile past the end of the bridge, Wayne turned the car off the main road into the old Industrial Zone. Back in the nineteen thirties and forties, a nationwide network of rail lines had terminated here, bringing raw materials from the hinterland to feed Gotham's insatiable factories. When the new, postwar light industries started to expand, they relocated to the area of the docks, abandoning the I.Z. to the rats and vandals. Now even the vandals had moved on, leaving a ghost town stripped of everything that had even a glimmer of value.

Wayne dimmed his headlights and drove swiftly through the rutted, disintegrating streets. There were no streetlights here, but the so-called playboy knew exactly where he was going.

As the Dodge approached a crumbling red sandstone warehouse, Wayne depressed a button on a small