Chapter Text
Who the hell did this? Detective Iris West wondered as she frowned at the gruesome crime scene.
Three male bodies—at least one of them a member of the Hammers gang, if his arm tattoo was anything to go by—with faces beaten up beyond recognition, found at the river bank by the northern bridge in District 4.
Iris ruled out a gang war right away, because the bandits had been armed. None of their rivals would’ve ambushed them without guns of their own, and there was no sign of bullet wounds on the corpses. And that was just one of the oddest parts of the whole affair.
After carefully looking around the perimeter set by the yellow tape, Detective West found the other odd part: the shell casings of the supposed fired bullets were all stacked in a neat pile right over the bank.
“Hey, West!” her partner Floyd Lawton called out as he ducked down the tape to approach her. “Actually got witnesses, bunch of kids who were skipping class.”
“Not the most reliable source of information,” Iris commented snarkily “but what did they say?”
“That they saw flashes of lightning around the area as the crime was committed,” Lawton described, glancing at his open notepad, “and that they felt a gush of wind pass them as they ran towards the scene.”
“They ran towards the scene?” West repeated, ignoring the dread that settled in her stomach. “I thought that it was bikers who called first responders.”
“They didn’t want to get questioned at first,” Lawton informed with an eye roll. “Weed,” he added at a lower voice.
Iris gave an eye roll of her own before staring back at the pile of shell casings, her partner following her gaze.
She’d suspected that this was the work of a meta-human, but not that meta-human.
“The Captain won’t be pleased, especially after yesterday,” Iris’ partner mumbled as he flipped his notepad closed.
“We don’t know that it’s Zoom,” Iris replied sharply as she stared at the disfigured faces of the victims.
“Really, West?” Lawton scoffed. “Stops bullets, produces electricity as he moves, and leaves with a gush of wind? No need for Allen to tell us that there are traces of dark matter lingering around. Speaking of which, where the hell is Allen?”
“I’m here!” the high-pitched voice of the hardest-working CSI of CCPD shouted a few yards away, and Iris forced her smile down as she saw the lanky man tumble down the slope leading to the crime scene while cradling his toolbox.
Bartholomew Henry Allen, thankfully called Barry Allen, was the same age as Iris—they’d graduated from Central City High the same year—but most people took him for an intern fresh out of college. The nerd vibe that he radiated with his thick-framed glasses and his gelled hair that always managed to fall in his eyes didn’t help his already youthful features.
Iris herself looked younger than her twenty-eight years old, but she used heavy makeup and a permanent scowl on her face to be taken seriously.
“That’s not possible,” Allen exclaimed breathlessly after ten minutes of working his magic around the crime scene.
“What’s not possible?” both detectives asked, making sure to stay out of the CSI’s way.
Aside from his constant tardiness, Barry was a very reliable resource at CCPD. He was not just a nerd, he was a smart nerd. He had reversed-engineer Dr. Harrison Wells meta-human alert watch to make a highly sensitive dark-matter detector, which allowed the police to tell whether powers had been used at a crime scene in a thirty-six hours time frame; his glasses actually allowed him to see minute details that escaped even people with a twenty-twenty vision; the quality of his tests rivaled that of high end laboratories like Mercury or Tannhauser—not S.T.A.R. Labs, though—because he’d improved the equipment with his own hands.
Really, if Iris had the time to date, she’d have hit on Allen a while ago. As it was, her career kept her busy until way past office hours.
She wouldn’t have to if her promotion wasn’t depending on her ability to arrest Zoom.
“The footprints not belonging to the victims indicate only one individual,” the CSI confirmed Iris’ suspicion as he crouched down to cast one of said footprints by the stack of bullet shells. “He stood here when the victims used their guns,” he added as he extended his arms towards the dead bodies, “and somehow…”
Rarely did the CSI hesitate when he went on his reenactments of the crime. He was a real chatterbox once he had his theories worked out.
Him trailing off so early in the story showed not that he was unsure of himself, but that he was shocked by what he thought had happened. Iris had seen him make that face very few times, once on their first meta-human case five years ago.
“Somehow?” Lawton prompted, and Allen blinked before waving at the fast-drying cast.
“Somehow he went from here to there,” he said as he pointed at a spot closer to the corpses, which was a good fifteen yards, “without walking. As if he’d teleported, or…”
“Run so fast that he didn’t leave any other footprints in between,” Iris completed his sentence.
“So it was Zoom!” Floyd concluded.
“Or a meta who can teleport,” the woman countered.
She’d arrested one in the past, Shawna Baez, stupidly nicknamed 'Boo'.
The beep of one of Allen’s numerous portable machines drew the two detectives’ attention to the CSI’s toolbox.
“What’s that?” Lawton asked the scientist as the latter read whatever the results of the test was.
“A modified femto-ampere meter,” Allen replied automatically before removing his glasses and sighing loudly.
“What does it do, again?” Iris’ partner asked, and normally she would’ve rolled her eyes at him for not remembering the one piece of equipment they saw used by the techs every time they were on a useless lead to catch Zoom.
But right now, Iris was too shocked by what she could tell was Barry’s preliminary conclusion.
“The air is still charged with the lightning of a speedster,” the younger man announced as he put his glasses back on.
He looked as disappointed as Detective West was.
Yes, Zoom was the most wanted criminal in Central City, and the boon of Iris’ existence a.k.a the lamest reason her superior kept coming with to justify her lack of promotion despite her amazing work in the force. But Zoom was a thief, and had never actually harmed anyone in his path.
To this day, Zoom and his associates had only stolen expensive art pieces, jewelry and high end tech that the robbed labs never agreed to describe in useful details to the police for trade secret reasons. Everyone suspected that the stolen items were weapons and other tools that would allow law enforcers to stop more meta-humans, which obviously Zoom and his friends didn’t want to see completed.
Not that law enforcers necessarily needed more help to stop meta-humans. Any cop with a level head could apprehend the average powered criminal, and very good officers like Iris could handle the worst of them with the right intel and a little bit of preparation. The meta alert app, meta-cuffs and stun guns developed by S.T.A.R. Labs and graciously donated to the precinct by Harrison Wells were more than enough to stop the vast majority of supervillains.
But a high number of influential people in Central City invested a lot of money in anti-meta tech, so the security and productivity of all those private laboratories were the concern of Iris’ superiors. It clearly didn’t matter that one of them was likely responsible for the very existence of meta-humans in the first place.
How people had obtained powers overnight three years ago was still a mystery to the public. The phenomenon wasn’t unique to Central City, but Iris’ hometown counted more documented powered people than any other city in the country.
The detective’s only source at CCPN was her best friend Linda Park, a sports reporter, who couldn’t find out if any of the stubborn investigative reporters at the Journal had any better theory that Iris’ own ‘one of those crazy scientists with too much money and time on their hands tried to play god’.
“You two look surprised, but I saw this coming,” Lawton declared haughtily as he pulled on his suspenders. “It was only a matter of time before the Dark Speedster accelerated to murder!”
No it wasn’t. The reason why Iris had never put too much effort into arresting Zoom, other than she didn’t care to help those fame-seeking scientists, was that the speedster had helped the police apprehend some of the most dangerous metas. In fact, when meta-human criminals were still a new threat to Central City, the speedster—then called The Streak—had dropped many of them in the cells of the precinct, restrained by the earlier versions of the meta cuffs.
Only West had ever thanked him for his assistance back then, which was probably why he felt comfortable flirting with her whenever they were in the vicinity of each other.
At first Iris had thought that he wanted to bribe her into looking the other way whenever his associates where on her radar, but so far Zoom had never asked her for a favor other than helping civilians in distress he declared himself too busy or too cool to rescue.
How could the friendliest outlaw the young detective knew have committed such a violent crime? In broad daylight?
“In broad daylight,” Iris repeated out loud, drawing the attention of the two men next to her.
“What about daylight?” her partner asked absent-mindedly as he made a face at the dead bodies.
“Zoom only strikes at night,” it was Allen who replied.
West exchanged a knowing look with him, and she took advantage of their locked gaze to admire Barry’s lovely green eyes.
He was so pretty, but also handsome, and definitely cute. Iris knew that he found her attractive too, but either he was just appreciative of her looks but uninterested, or he was too intimidated to make a move first.
“I mean—yeah, um...As far as we know Zoom only operates at night,” the CSI stuttered, a blush blooming on his high cheekbones as their gaze lingered.
It was always fascinating to Iris that, despite his overall shyness, Allen never broke eye contact with her first. There was just this hint of challenge in those otherwise innocent pale eyes that made the detective give in and look away.
“Which confirms my theory that he has a stable day job,” Iris said as she turned her eyes to her partner. “He’s possibly an employee of the very places he robs, who knows? If those labs gave us their complete employees’ list, we could’ve already caught him.”
Both Barry and Floyd snorted.
“What?” Iris asked sharply as she put her fists on her hips and lifted an eyebrow.
Allen had the graciousness to look chastised, but Lawton chuckled.
“Even though the guy has the hots for you, he won’t ever let you find out his identity or arrest him,” her partner speculated. “I bet that every piece of tech he steals is worth a fortune on the black market.”
“Definitely,” Allen agreed before a glare from Iris made him return to his footprint cast.
“I’m still not convinced that this is him,” Detective West voiced out loud as she pointed at the dead bandits with her chin.
“Who else could it be? He’s the only speedster in town,” Lawton pointed out.
Was he? Iris had thought so herself, but she had no proof.
Considering the nature of their powers, speedsters couldn’t easily be seen. Zoom was a cocky thief who wanted everyone to know that he could bypass the high security of those state of the art facilities. West was certain that if he truly wanted, no one would ever be given the chance to chase after him.
This was why, as she returned to her car, the detective decided that she’d ask Zoom herself whenever he showed himself next.