Gotham Noir part 4

[icarus_chained]

After an absolutely snarl-worthy week, I bring you chapter 4.

Gotham Noir: The Man with the Lonely Eyes

Rating:  R this chapter
Warnings:  Murder. And this chapter is primarily about the mystery. No real slash yet, though it's coming.
Chapt Summary:  Clark goes to the murder scene. And has a long conversation with Gordon, who has a particular suspect in mind. Clark, however, has quite another.

Chapter 4: On Suspicion of Murder

I did pick the telephone back up. Eventually. I sat on my bed with my hand making furrows through my hair as I listened to Lois give me an address. The street name meant nothing to me, but I fished out a pencil and made a note of it, planning to hail a taxi once I could get my feet back under me. And I got one, too, not ten minutes after calling it. There was a certain black humour in that, that you could call up a taxi in Gotham to pay someone a call, and not get it for an hour, but head for a murder, and she drums one up on the spot for your convenience.

Hell, I was feeling cynical. Friends dying on me tends to do that, even if I'd only known them for a few moments. And Selina ... she'd been special. I'd never met a dame like her, and it killed me to know I'd failed her. But as the cabbie started taking me down streets that suddenly looked familiar, that pain wasn't the only thing I was feeling. A sickness rooted its way into my gut as I realised where we were heading.

Into Old Gotham.

Goddamn it. That taxi pulled up outside a shady block of apartments on the southeast side of the old town. Probably only about three blocks from where I'd gone in after Wayne, though I couldn't be any more sure now than I'd been the night before. All that time I was wandering around, or sitting under the Canary's spell, and she was here. Dying.

I paid the cabbie as quickly as I could, trying to ignore the way he stared at me. Not at the crowd of cops on the doorstep. That was the way of life around here, worth a couple of seconds of attention, no more. But I, some blow-in walking in like he'd been summoned ... that was different. Newcomers sure made an impression in Gotham. Or maybe it was just me.

I walked in the door, conscious that hard eyes followed me every step of the way. Cops are like that when a stranger walks on scene, but they don't question you. Nobody walks into a murder scene unless they got business being there. Either business with the high-ups. Or business with the victim. Either way, they let you up, let you get an eyeful, see what shakes loose before the man in charge takes you aside for a nice round of interrogation. I've had cops in Metropolis give me the run-through before, like on the Chrysler case couple of years back. It lasted around about until Lois walked on-scene. They didn't like to argue with her, and I can't say I blamed them.

In Gotham, though, there was no respect owing for me or Lois. So there was no warning touch on my arm as I walked down the third floor corridor. No veiled looks of pity in the eyes of the cops. They were hard men, faces blank and cool and completely professional as the stranger walked by. I don't doubt the rumour mill started up again the instant I was out of earshot, but not in front of the blow-in. Not in front of a potential mole.

Then I stood in the doorway of her apartment, of her room, and all that stopped mattering to me. I registered Lois out of the corner of my eye, and Gordon with her, but it wasn't important. What was important, the single thing that mattered in that room, was the body lying behind the coffee table. Her body.

I stepped into the room, walked over around the table so I could see her. Properly. Like a man should stand and see how he'd failed. Somebody moved behind me, but I had eyes only for her.

Selina lay on her back, her red dress bleeding down into the red-black pool beneath her, an arm outstretched like she like was accusing somebody, the other curled in reflexive shock around her wounded torso. The siren polish of the nails on that reaching hand was chipped and broken, like she'd fought for the weapon that killed her, and the look frozen on her face was as angry as it was terrified. I tried to imagine the flirtatious smile she'd given me that night at the gala, tried to fit it over that defiant snarl, and found I couldn't. She'd frozen in death, no longer the damaged temptress but a fallen warrior, and her green eyes stared up at me in blind challenge over the bloody glitter of the stone her killer had left lying innocently in the open wound, as if to taunt me.

A hand touched my shoulder, gently enough, but still I jumped. Gordon's face registered no acknowledgement of the motion, giving me time to gather myself, and I had to feel grateful to him.

"Stand aside, lad," he said gruffly, into my blank look of confusion. "Let the lads have her now." I blinked, looked at the two men standing behind him with the body-bag, and for a second felt an irrational urge to stand there and not let them past, not let them take her where she didn't -couldn't- belong. For a second, I felt my face harden in defiance, and then the spirit left me, and I slumped a bit as I stood aside, and left her to them. And I thought I saw a hint, just a glimmer, of pity in Gordon's eyes as he led me off to one side.

Instantly, Lois was at my side. Her small hand found mine, the strength of her grip reassuring, and she stood beside me as we watched them take Selina away. She didn't know Selina, any more than I did, really, but there was that look of strange sympathy in her face, that silent commiseration from one tough woman to her fallen comrade. Whoever Selina was, whatever she had been in life, she didn't deserve what had happened to her, and Lois understood that instinctively. And so did I.

Gordon and his boys, on the other hand, I wasn't so sure of.

After a minute or two, Gordon gestured to one of his lads to take Lois aside, and fixed me with a calm, measuring stare. I looked back as openly as I could. His hands were busy lighting a cigar as he watched me thoughtfully, just looking me over, as if he were trying to fit me into a slot in his mind. I could guess what slot he thought might do it.

"Either you've got balls of brass," he said finally, musingly, "or you ain't acting, kid. Don't think I've ever seen a man so striken as you, standing over a body. Not for a long time, anyway."

"I'm not acting," I said, more than a little coldly. "You don't think I could do something like ... something like that, do you?"

He nodded his head consideringly, not looking at me. "Well, now. I don't know you enough to make any kind of judgement on that, do I? But when your lady friend there follows me up here, and tells me that you know the victim, and then panics because she ain't seen or heard from you all the previous night ... Well, you tell me what I'm meant to think then, eh?"

I shook my head, stunned. "You can't tell me Lois thinks I could do that. I won't believe it!"

"No," He said softly, and then he did look at me, hard and piercingly. "No, she doesn't believe it. She was afraid you were lying in some other room, looking just like your friend Miss Kyle. That little lady believes in you. And that ... is why I want to be very, very sure that her faith is justified. I wouldn't like to think you were lying to her. And I'd like it even less if you were looking at her, and seeing a future Miss Kyle."

I stared at him, aghast, my fist clenching at my side. I couldn't even get my head around what he was suggesting, couldn't answer over the swell of angry disbelief in my chest. To accuse me of murder, however obliquely, was one thing. To suggest that I would ever, ever harm Lois was quite another. There was no way. There was just no possible way. I shook my head in angry denial, but the words to explain just wouldn't come. The concept was simply too far beyond my comprehension.

And then he nodded to himself and, easy as you please, he started smiling, like I wasn't standing there getting ready to haul off on him. A neat little twitch of the lips, and a wry shake of his head, and he looked up back up at me. "Didn't think so," he said. "Minute you walked in the room, my gut said it wasn't you. Nobody looks at something they done the way you looked at her. But I had to be sure, for your friend's sake. My gut's been wrong before, though not on something this big, and I had to know for sure. Couldn't let that pushy little number walk off with a killer, could I?"

And he so obviously meant it that I had to forgive him. For Lois' sake, I'd have done the same. Hell, to protect Lois I probably wouldn't even have waited to find out. I'd have slapped me in a cell and have done with it, and good riddance. In fact, had he been any other police officer in Gotham, that's exactly what I would've expected of him. But Lois has gut feelings about people too, and she's as seldom wrong. If she said Gordon was on the level, then he probably was. And the wary glint that remained in his eyes, even as he nodded at me, only confirmed it. He was no fool, and he wasn't about to let a killer slip by him, no matter how innocent looking.

"So," he started, interupting my thoughts. "Mind telling me where you were, last night? Just to keep the boys down at the office happy?" The sidelong look he sent me was in equal parts cautious and commiserating. I opened my mouth to answer him, and stopped dead.

Because I'd remembered what the sight of Selina had driven from my mind. I remembered why I was in Old Gotham that night. Who I was following. I was remembering that I'd lost that man, the same man who'd fought with Selina the night of the gala, in the old town not twenty minutes from here, if I could judge such things right at all in this damned city. A man who'd been damned familiar with the streets, who moved among the thugs without fear, who had eyes that were as hard and lonely as any I'd ever seen.

I knew I hadn't killed Selina. But could I say the same for Bruce Wayne?

"Kid?" I turned back to Gordon, to find him looking at me with that hard, penetrating stare, ripe suspicion back in his eyes. "You got something you wanna tell me?" And it was in the front of my thoughts to do just that, to tell this one trustworthy cop everything I thought I knew, and let the law handle it. His name was on the tip of my tongue, and all I had to do was open my mouth and say it.

To this day, I don't know why I didn't. Maybe it was that standing over Selina's body had made it personal for me, made me want to find her killer myself. Maybe I wanted to look into his eyes, and hear the truth for myself. Maybe it was that some part of me couldn't understand why Bruce Wayne, of all people, would want to kill. Not just Selina, but Weiss too. I hadn't forgotten him. Or maybe that was just what I wanted to think, because I didn't want to believe that those lonely eyes could belong to a murderer. I don't know. What I do know, is that when I opened my mouth to answer Gordon, not a mention of the man with the lonely eyes passed my lips.

"I was here," I answered, still too caught up in my own thoughts to realise how that would sound. It was only when Gordon slowly and carefully took his cigar out of his mouth and moved his other hand nearer his holstered weapon that I realised what I'd just said. "Not here here!" I burst out. "I meant I was here in the old town. I ... got lost."

He paused in the wary motion, but his hackles were back up, right enough, and his hand didn't stray far from the revolver. "Lost, eh? Got anyone to say where, exactly, you happened to get lost?"

I shrugged in relief. That was no problem. "Sure. Half of Old Gotham probably noticed me, especially when two boys tried to run me into an alley. But if you could try the bar, if you wanted someone more trustworthy."

"Bar?" There was a flat note to his voice still, a blank wariness. Whatever trust I'd gained from him had fled altogether.

"Ah, I didn't catch it's name. Don't know if it has one. Matches called it John's place."

I'm not sure which name it was that did it, but Gordon stiffened in outright surprise, and stared at me in startled reassessment. "John's. You're sure?" he asked sharply. I nodded. "And Matches brought you in?"

I blinked. "You know them? Do you know everyone in Gotham, Commissioner, or what?" He shook his head.

"Not by a long shot, kid. No. Either you're the luckiest damn reporter in Gotham, or the unluckiest schmuck going. Or ..." and he stared hard at me, "... there's something you ain't telling me. You been here what, two days, and you've managed to be on the scene at two murders, and in between get hooked up with that lot. If that's coincidence, I'll eat my badge. Hnh. I suppose John'll vouch for your whereabouts last night?"

I nodded, bewildered. Which lot was 'that' lot? "John, or Miss Lance. I stayed to watch her set." He nodded, and his eyes managed to soften again at the mention of Canary's name. But at least he might have a reason to know her. If I remembered right, her husband ... damnit, he was, for the love in her eyes at his memory ... had been a cop, and a murdered one. Gordon'd know her, all right. And John, well, there was no telling. It was Matches that threw me. A cop knowing a criminal was hardly surprising, but respecting one? Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell I'd gotten dragged into.

"Alright," Gordon said softly. "Alright. John says you were there, you were. What time'd you leave?"

Here, I winced a bit. "Ah. I'm ... I'm not exactly sure. Some time around one, I think. I wasn't ... exactly sober. You might be better to ask John. Or Matches. He got me home, I think." And Gordon shot me what they called an old look, a wry twitch to his mouth, and I knew he'd relaxed his suspicions a bit once more. "Why? What time ..." I swallowed. "What time'd she go down?" There was no doubt who I meant.

Gordon shrugged. "No harm telling you, I suppose. John won't lie, no matter how you might try to convince him to. We got a witness saying she was seen alive around half past eleven, heading up here, and then the landlady -she's the woman in white you'll have seen on the way in- said she heard a gunshot go off around twenty to one. Said she didn't know where it was coming from, and wasn't exactly inclined to investigate." He snorted blackly. "Lucky she decided to tell us that much, around this neighbourhood. People around here see no evil, and hear no evil, and you can damn well be sure they don't speak no evil."

He stopped, and shook the black mood off, staring suddenly around the room as if remembering where he was for the first time, and blinking a bit when he realised that aside from one uniform left outside the door, we were alone. Shaking his head at himself, he nodded me towards the door. "Come on, kid. Lets finish this conversation elsewhere, eh?" Away from the site of a friend's murder. I had no problem whatsoever with that. He paused as we went out to speak with the officer at the door.

"Montoya, think Traffic will let you off long enough to run an errand for me?" The sharp-faced woman in the traffic uniform smiled.

"Thought you'd never ask," she responded sweetly, and Gordon grinned.

"Run down to John's, will you? Check if the kid was there last night." She frowned, and looked measuringly at me.

"Dunno, sir. Why don't you send Bullock?"

Gordon blinked. "Because John'd knock him back out on his ear the minute he opened his mouth, that's why! You know what Bullock thinks about the 'freaks'. He goes down there, we'll have a riot on our hands, and he'll be in the middle of it!"

Montoya grinned darkly. "Yeah. Your point, sir?"

Gordon stopped. "He been giving you trouble again, Montoya?" She shrugged bitterly.

"The usual. Woman's got no place being a cop. Not even a ticket-pusher in Traffic. I should be a good little girl and let the big men handle it. Man makes me sick." And she spat off to one side in a very unladylike fashion, and grinned sharply at my expression. "You agree with him, mister? Think I shouldn't be doing a man's job?"

I shook my head hurriedly, and allowed Gordon to steer me away without resistance. "No, he doesn't. Ain't that right, lad?" I nodded rapidly. "Just run down, Montoya. I'll have a word with Bullock later, alright?" I missed her response, but I gather it wasn't flattering to the man in question. Gordon shook his head as we walked out down the stairs, and then turned to me with that considering look back in his eyes. "So. How long did you know Miss Kyle?"

I blinked, caught out again. I could have sworn he'd forgotten that, once he'd decided I hadn't killed her. But I was fast realising that this man didn't forget or miss much of anything. "Ah, all told? About half an hour," I answered, and shrugged sheepishly at his wondering look.

"Damn," he murmured, and I looked at him sharply. "You really did get hit bad. She must've liked you."

"What do you mean?" I asked harshly as we stepped out into the downstairs hallway, heading back out among the cops.

"Just that you were awful tore up over someone you'd known for half an hour. I know Miss Kyle was good, but I didn't think she was that good."

Before I knew it, I had my hand fisted in his shirt collar, the fury coursing through me making me forget myself enough to have the strength of that fist showing clear. "What the hell are you saying?" I growled. "Damnit, man, they just took her body out!" I heard the distinctive sounds of multiple guns being cocked, but I didn't care. My eyes were fixed on his face. And he, quite calmly, laid his hand on my arm and coldly commanded his men to stand down.

"You forget yourself, sir," he said softly, and there was no fear in him, and no cruelty either. "I haven't forgotten what has happened. Nor am I likely to." I put him down. He straightened his tie as if nothing had happened, and motioned me to follow him on. Breathing a little heavily, I did, conscious of the hard, angry stares that bored into my back.

"We're not exactly unfamiliar with Miss Kyle," he continued mildly. "I'd go so far as to say I know more of her than you do, Mr Kent. Did you know she used to be a bit of a skirt? Suspected of jewel robbery, among other things?" I jerked a bit, and he smiled knowingly. "She was never caught, but she was never shy about her past, even after Wayne fell for her and bought her way out of the slums for her. Most thought he was just another mark to her, but turns out it may have been the other way around. Met her match in him, I think."

"Didn't know you kept up with the gossip, Commissioner," I grumbled, but I was listening intently. He may have known more about her past, but I wagered I knew a bit more about her present that he did. Anything to do with Wayne had me pricking my ears. He smiled bitterly, but kept going.

"Have to, when they call me in for every bloody function and piss-up in Gotham, don't I? But Miss Kyle never begrudged anyone the truth. Wayne knew what she was when he fell for her. Everyone does. And they still fall despite it. She had magic, I guess. It just failed her with Wayne. He gave her the diamond, though."

I stopped dead. "What?" I whispered. Gordon turned.

"Didn't know, did you?" His mouth twisted wryly. "Don't know a hell of a lot about this murder, do you?" I shrugged that off. I may have been lost, but I was beginning to see the light. "But yeah. That diamond the killer placed so bloody cheerfully, it was hers. Wayne gave it to her, for a goodbye present. Fact is, we managed to get him to agree to come down to ID it, make sure. I should be heading to the office now, in fact." He looked at his watch. "Should be coming in in another half hour or so."

I stared at him. Wayne was connected to Selina by a diamond? The same diamond used in the murder? And no-one thought this was in any way suspicious? Gotham rich don't get questioned, though, do they? The Gotham PD don't bite the hand that bloody feeds them, do they? But looking at Gordon's calm, tired face stopped that train of thought where it stood. No. Whatever about the rest of them, this cop would question whoever he damn well thought needed questioning. He simply didn't know what I knew. About where Wayne had been the night before. And who's fault was that, after all?

But I didn't tell him. Even then, I didn't tell him, though common sense and every decent urge in my mind told me I should. I couldn't make myself tell him. Because I wanted Wayne for myself. I wanted to talk to the rich bastard one to one, and shake the truth out of him if I had to. And to that end ...

"Mind if I come with you?" I asked. He looked at me sharply, and I shrugged. "Since I don't see Lois around, I'm guessing she followed the story back to base. I just wanted to reassure her that I'm not under arrest for murder." I paused. "That is the case, right?"

Gordon smiled wearily. "Yeah. I'm not arresting you on suspicion of anything. With that little she-cat on your side, I'm waiting until I'm damn well sure before I risk her wrath. But if you want to come to a cop-shop after today's little chat ... well, I ain't about to stop you." And he opened the passenger door of his car to let me in, before moving over to one of his officers for a final report on the scene, and to give the last orders for clean-up. They would have had most of it done long before I came on-scene, anyway. He'd waited, to see if I'd been there before, to see if her body would catch me off-guard and let the guilt show through. This was just the final check.

I didn't care. I knew I hadn't killed her, and I trusted Gordon to be smart enough to know it. My only problem now was going to be waiting for me at the station.

Bruce Wayne. The man with the lonely eyes. And quite possibly the man responsible for two murders, if only one that really mattered to me.

He and I were due a little chat.

Chapter 5: Confrontations