“Hey Bruce, you got back early last night; everything okay?”
It was breakfast, about seven in the morning and he hadn’t slept but looked over to Dick sitting a few feet away. Raising the newspaper just a little, trying to hide the circles under his eyes, he half grunted “Fine.” Since they were never what anyone could call chatty in the morning—or anytime if you just considered Bruce, he got away with it for now. Inside of five minutes Dick was up and gathering his school things, stuffing them in his back pack and getting his jacket out of the closet.
One bullet dodged.
“Forgive me, Master Bruce, but might I suggest your calling into the office and informing Mr. Fox that you will be delayed until after lunch today.”
“Why would I do that?” He came close to giving Alfred the Batglare.
“Because you haven’t slept in the last two nights and the effects are starting to tell.”
“I’m fine and I would appreciate you keeping your opinions to yourself, if you don’t mind.”
Alfred withdrew from the room but Bruce knew him well enough to know that this was just the first salvo in this particular battle.
Driving himself to Wayne Enterprises he had time to think without the distraction of either family or work—either of his jobs. Selina was dead, that was a simple and tragic fact. He had held some hope and thoughts about their being together in some unknown future, spending time together, maybe even marrying, as farfetched as that might seem. Of course he’d likely have to wait until Dick was out of the house since he couldn’t stand the woman and might cause trouble, but that would only be a couple of years. They could have waited that long.
Dick would be off to college; Batman and Catwoman could fight crime together, approaching it from opposite sides of the fence, as it were. They would solve cases together then go home and…
It could have worked. He was sure of it.
She was so close to giving up crime for him. No, they’d never actually discussed it but he could tell by the way she looked at him, how she would tease him, lead him on and by the sound of her laugh when she got away yet again. Even when he’s arrest her they knew it was just part of the dance.
His mind went back to what happened last night at the museum; it wasn’t in the morning paper but would be soon enough It would probably be all over the evening news and there would be questions and police wanting answers. For that matter, Dick would want to know what had gone down and he wouldn’t be as easy to fob off as Gordon was.
It was odd, all those men being killed—odd that he had no idea who’d done it. All right obviously the guards had been murdered by the art thieves but the criminals, they were the ones he whose deaths confused him. Maybe he should have brought Robin along as back up, the boy was observant, he might have seen something he’d missed himself.
He ran through the likely possibilities in his mind; the men could have argued amongst themselves, it could have gotten out of hand. There may have been another person or persons in the museum he’d somehow missed.
Maybe there had been more than three members of the gang; maybe the others had killed their cohorts to make their own share of the reward or sales larger.
But he didn’t understand how it happened without him knowing—that was what he didn’t understand. Of course it was always possible he’d been drugged or some such, had his memory erased some how. It could have happened and was even looking likely. Odd. But had no memory of waking up or coming to. He didn’t have any conscious memory of lost time, if that made any sense.
He pulled into the Wayne Corp parking garage, stopping in his own space. There was a Board meeting in a few minutes; he’d think about this later.
* * *
Around eight-thirty that evening, with the temperature hovering close to twenty degrees, Dick walked down to the cave. “Hey, you ready to go out yet?”
Bruce looked up from the monitor. “No, not quite. Why don’t you go finish your homework and I’ll call you when I’m done with this.”
There was something odd about the expression on his face, enough to make Dick pause. He tried to find the right words before he spoke and knowing that there probably weren’t any right words. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. She just slipped on some ice by the edge of the building; I checked afterwards. You had nothing to do with it and it would have happened if you were there or not; there’s no reason to beat yourself up over this—I know you’re upset, but it wasn’t anything you did.”
Bruce nodded, seemingly in agreement with the boy. “I know, don’t worry about it. Go on back upstairs, I’ll call you in a little while.”
About forty-five minutes later Alfred walked into the study where Dick was watching a DVD while he worked on some math problems. “I thought that you might enjoy some hot chocolate on a cold night.”
“Thanks but I think I should be getting suited up for patrol.”
“The master left almost half an hour ago.”
Dick almost blinked in surprise but stopped himself. “You’re sure?” Of course Alfred was sure. Alfred knew everything. “Did he say anything?”
“Not that I recall, shall I put the chocolate here on the desk?”
“Yeah, sure, thanks.” Alfred left, leaving Dick to wonder why Bruce had left without him after saying they’d be going out together in as soon as he was done with whatever it was he was working on.
He went down to the cave, found the main computer off, booted it up again then ran a search in ‘history’. Bruce had visited several news sites, looking up reports of Selina’s death as well as reports of the dead men in the museum from last night. There were several stories about the guards and their families but the criminals were still unidentified, at least officially. Obviously they were there to steal some of the paintings, according to GCPD and based on the tools they had with them but what they’d do with them—or who would buy anything that high profile was just conjecture at this point.
The art case seemed to be pretty basic to Dick, aside from the fact that while it was clear the criminals had murdered the three guards, no one seemed to have any idea who killed the thieves. They’d been overpowered by someone (or some group) who was evidently skilled in hand to hand combat. There were no fingerprints, no clues other than that of the method of death. Nothing was missing from the museum; no entrances had been forced.
The guards’ being killed was almost standard stuff, but who killed the killers? And while it was sort of an interesting case, why did Batman care enough to spend hours looking at the news reports?
And where the hell was he?
This was the second night he’d gone out on his own and while that happened, it wasn’t like him to sneak out and sort of lie to Dick to do it.
Crap. Well, he was upset about Selina, but he was still Batman and he was conditioned to putting his personal feelings and problems on the back burner.
Shutting down the computer, Dick went up to his own room and picked up his secure phone. He started to dial Titan Tower but put the receiver down before getting through all the digits. His friends weren’t the ones who could help him figure this out—he was supposed to be the detective, right? Besides, no one knew Batman as well as Robin did. If something was up with the Bat, he was the one who would get to the bottom of what was going on if anyone was.
He sat on the edge of his bed, okay, Rob—think.
* * *
In the sub-basement of Wayne Stadium, home of the currently in last place Gotham Knights, a meth lab was in full production. No one knew about the thing, or rather knew where it was. Lots of people knew about it; the cops, the buyers and, most importantly, the maintenance staff of the facility who took a twenty percent cut for their silence and cooperation.
Until now.
Without warning a small incendiary bomb was thrown through the suddenly exploded opened steel door.
Within seconds the room was an inferno; equipment, several million dollars worth of drugs, furniture and people were engulfed in flames.
There were no survivors. Nothing was salvaged.
There were no clues as to the manufacture of the bomb and no evidence as to whom might have been responsible.