When I was ten, my parents were shot to
death in a small time mugging; it happened right in front of me.
For years after that night, that thought
defined me. It dominated my thoughts, my hopes, my ambitions, it permeated
everything I did. My entire world became about their deaths—and my grief. I traveled the world to escape the pain. I trained my body to channel the
anger. I trained my mind to try to answer the questions that couldn’t be
answered: How did this happen? Who was this man that took my parents from
me? What drives a man to do something like that?
Why me?
The thought of that night drove me to a
great many things. It did not, however, “create” Batman. I’ve come to
understand that Batman was borne of something much deeper, much more
intrinsic—my inherent sense of Justice. What happened to me, what
happened to them, should not have happened. I wanted to do as much as a man
can do to prevent it ever happening again. Would I have still become Batman
had my parents never been killed? Who can say? But their deaths weren’t
the reason I became what I became. It was a catalyst that
started me down the path.
Throughout all my years on this path, the
one crime I’ve never been able to solve was the most personal for me: the
death of my own parents. As good as I’ve become at what I do—as good as I
could ever become—I’ve realized that I may never find the truth. It has
nothing to do with a lack of ability. It is a simple function of time and
place. Evidence collection in those days was nowhere near what it is
today, and there’s a decided lack of usable material.
Notes
of the crime scene: one .45 caliber semi-auto handgun; powder burns on the
vics’ clothing indicate shot at close range; incomplete, broken string of
pearls at scene indicate a handful of pearls were taken (see Witness
Statement 7263876 written on behalf of juvenile witness—Wayne, Bruce by
Officer M.Cure), other jewelry left on victims indicate haste of
perpetrator’s retreat; wallet, stained with blood, emptied, found several
blocks away.
A decided lack of usable material.
Several years ago, I thought I’d come close—a career criminal who used to “work” that part of the city, a man named
Joe Chill. I spent months scouring the facts, hitting the streets tracking
and re-tracking the clues to find out for sure. Unfortunately, Chill was
killed before I ever got a positive answer. If he was the one that did it,
he took it to his grave. For years, I’d accepted that he was the true
culprit, but a part of me would never accept it completely, not without
absolute, confirmable proof.
When I was ten, my parents were shot to
death in a small time mugging; it happened right in front of me.
That thought drove me to become a
detective.
And the Detective would never accept an absolute answer without absolute,
irrefutable proof.

“Dear God…” Dick uttered softly, his eyes
still glued to the screen. After a few seconds of brutal silence, he glanced
over at Bruce. “Is it…? I mean, could it really be…? Is it him?”
Bruce muttered something unintelligible,
his eyes staring down at the keyboard as if he was unable to look at the
screen.
“Bruce? Is it him?”
“I don’t know,” Bruce clarified, his body
rigidly still.
“Is it possible? Was there any indication
if he was telling the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he have any details, anything at all
that would point to—”
Bruce’s head suddenly jerked upward, his
face twisted again with fury as he howled at Dick’s face. “I DON’T…” Just
as suddenly, the rage melted, a blank almost expressionless stare settling
in as he finished flatly, “…know.”
Dick studied that stare, a cold pit forming
in his stomach. It was that empty, emotionless expression, a look he’d seen
only once before. It wasn’t during a Hell Month or an interrogation
when the clock was ticking on a time bomb and precious lives hung in the
balance, it wasn’t confronting Joker, even after he’d killed Jason, it
wasn’t even when the specter of the Wayne murders was raised once before
with that lowlife Chill… It was an hour ago, when Batman calmly and quietly
snapped Riddler’s femur.
Dick stepped toward him, placing a hand on
his mentor’s shoulder. “Bruce?”
“We didn’t exactly get that far,” he
replied in a cold, mechanical tone. Then he turned and stalked off
toward the costume vault.
“You didn’t… Bruce? What do you mean ‘get
that far?’” Dick called after him.
“In the conversation,” Bruce growled over
his shoulder, a strange venom in his voice. “We never really got to the
point of… details.”
Dick stared. They never got to the
details? How was that possible? This was Batman they were talking
about. Batman always got the details, especially when it came to
murder. Batman would hold onto anything for as long as it took to unearth
every last possible detail…
In his mind’s eye, he saw that face again,
cold and emotionless, staring out from under Batman’s cowl. There was
something more to this, something deeper. Dick started to follow to the
vault, but a soft voice stopped him.
“Don’t.”
He turned, and saw Selina coming from the
shadows.
“Let me take this one,” she said quietly.
She’d stepped from the shadows, but also
from the direction of Alfred’s elevator, making it unclear how long she’d
been there and how much she might have heard.
“No. You don’t understand,” Dick started
to object, but she shook her head and he found himself trailing off as his
eyes followed the path to the costume vault where Bruce had disappeared.
“You don’t understand,” he repeated in a whisper.
“I understand fine,” she said definitely.
“A guy with a rap sheet the length of a phonebook has to see Bruce
Wayne—not Batman but Bruce Wayne—on his deathbed—and Bruce
comes back breathing hellfire. You telling me the possibility didn’t even
occur to you?”
“No… Hell, I still can’t believe
it,” he said dully. He was struggling with his own thoughts too much to
really process what she’d said, and some inner core of his brain was
answering mechanically, almost the way Bruce had done. “We had… There was a
guy, years ago, a two-bit thug. His name was Chill. He claimed to know who
Batman really was. Bragged to a bunch of his cronies that he’d ‘created’
Batman by killing someone close to him, and before he got any further, they
thanked him with 9 slugs to the chest. I always thought that was it. Chill
did it, Chill was dead; case closed.”
Selina said nothing. It just wasn’t
important to her. What Dick knew, what he thought he knew, how that might
have kept him from connecting the dots as she had, none of it really
mattered. What mattered was that he was bungling it. Bruce was a raw
nerve, and much as Dick wanted to help, he was slicing that exposed nerve
with a razor then bashing it with his fist. So she said nothing. She
didn’t want to make it worse by becoming confrontational—as long as he
stayed out of her way. But she wasn’t about to let him start “managing”
things—and especially her—however noble his motives, and it seemed like
that’s exactly what he was determined to do.
“Selina, this is worse than anything I’ve
ever seen,” he was saying. “Different than anything I’ve seen, even
when Jason died. Now, I’ve made my way in, but anyone else tries to talk to
him right now, I honestly think he may lose it—lose it to the point where
we’ll never get him back.”
She shook her head.
“Richard, I’m very fond of you, I really
am. I consider you and Tim, Barbara and Cassie to be family just as much as
Bruce and Alfred. And I know you love him, and I know you’ve been through
hell together, and I know you’ve known him longer than I have. But believe
me when I tell you, he isn’t going to ‘lose it,’ and if you ‘honestly think’
he could, you are frankly not worthy to be standing in this cave tonight
calling him by his name. Now please, Richard, let me take this one.”
“Selina, you have no idea what you’re
dealing with. He broke Riddler’s legs.”
“I know. Barbara called, that’s how I knew
you guys would be getting back about now.”
“Yeah, well, she didn’t see his face
when—Wait, you know?! That doesn’t scare the—I mean, you’re not a
little— This isn’t—”
“Yes I know and no it doesn’t, no I’m not
and no it isn’t. Look, Dick, it’s not that I’m unfazed by this. It
just doesn’t shake my faith in a few fundamental truths of the universe.
Bruce is a good man. When something hits, he might go off in such a way
that even Superman gets edgy, but that is a part of who he is and I accept
it. He won’t go too far; that’s part of who he is too.”
“Selina! He broke the man’s legs.”
“There’s no need to keep repeating that,
Dick, I am perfectly capable of retaining information for more than fifteen
seconds. Do you know Eddie has never once forgotten my birthday in all the
time we’ve known each other? If he’s in Arkham, if he’s in hiding, if I’m
in Zurich, no matter what, I get a phone call or a card or a gift. So don’t
think I’m not twice as upset about what happened tonight as you are. I am.
Truth be told, two, maybe three percent of what happened out there might
have been my fault.”
“Because you call him ‘Eddie?’” Dick
remarked, as amused as he could be under the circumstances.
“No, not quite,” Selina said sadly.
“Because you were wrong earlier. We don’t all run.”

The front doors of Wayne Manor were
constructed in 1866 out of the sturdiest Georgia pine. Returning Union
soldiers needed jobs, and Bruce’s ancestor, the architect B. Andrew Wayne
stepped up, creating a myriad of building projects including a massive
renovation of the manor. As a gesture to the recovering Southern economy,
he bought Southern materials whenever he could. Hence the front doors,
doorframe, and most of the foyer arch were all built from the hardest,
strongest and heaviest woods he had at his disposal. This was lucky.
For the force with which his descendant pulled the door open on returning from
Gotham Memorial Hospital was not sufficient to yank it off its hinges, nor
did the slam that followed penetrate to the surrounding walls, shaking
paintings on their hangers or sprinkling plaster dust from the moldings.
It did make one hell of a noise, which
Selina heard in the morning room and went to investigate. She saw Bruce in
the hall, storming towards the study (and, she guessed, to the grandfather
clock and the cave).
“Stay away from me,” he snarled over his
shoulder.
She recoiled, the ferocity in the voice
freezing her legs mid-step and jolting her heartbeat into a thumping
triple-time. The racing in her chest continued, but her movement
resumed after only a second’s hesitation and she reached the study just as
Bruce reached the clock.
“Of course,” he said under his breath, then
turned fully, positioning his body as a barrier between her and the clock.
“If I said ‘follow,’ would that get you to leave me alone?” he spat
bitterly.
“Something has obviously happened,” she
said gently, doing her best to ignore the fiery hatred raging in his eyes.
Nothing was said for a long moment. Then,
eerily, that blazing hatred vanished, snuffed out in a fraction of a second
like a candle’s flame pinched by wet fingers. The expression that replaced
it was infinitely more unnerving… Void. Beyond coldness or control or
detachment, there was only a lifeless, soulless void. What Shakespeare
called dead coals.
“Yes, something obviously happened,” he
said dully. “I’m going to be… occupied for a while.”
Then a totally unconvincing film of emotion
appeared in his eyes, just covering the dead emptiness, and his voice took
on an equally unconvincing veneer of tenderness as he added, “And you have
to go.”
“We tried that once, it didn’t work,”
Selina said gently.
Bruce shook his head. She was alluding
ever so delicately to their second Hell Month together, when he’d sent her
to Paris because he didn’t want Selina, the woman he loved, to see the part
of him that emerged in those weeks leading up to the anniversary. This was
something very different.
“There’s no need to go that far,” he
murmured, thinking of Paris. “Just move into the penthouse for a while…”
This was very different indeed. Selina,
the woman he loved, was also Catwoman, a thief and a criminal.
“It’s not safe for you to be around me
right now,” he concluded grimly.

“Then you’ve seen it” Dick breathed. “That
look, that ‘void.’ Selina, that’s what’s got me freaked, not the violence.
I’ve seen Psychobat break a guy’s legs before… And ribs, lot of broken
ribs… And a jaw. I’ve… God, I’ve broken a good few myself. But that, that
coldness, that dead, empty coldness… You weren’t afraid at that
point? Honestly, even a little?”
“No. I wasn’t and I’m not. Startled for
a moment, but… not afraid. Never afraid. And that’s why I have to be the one
to talk to him right now. Go upstairs, Dick, please. Have a drink. I
imagine you need one. We’ll be up in ten, fifteen minutes.”
He sighed. A part of him wanted to
argue, but something about her confidence held him back. The sheer
tonnage of the night’s shocks was catching up with him. It had started
while Selina was talking, brick by brick dropping onto his back… Alfred’s
call. Riddler’s beating. That look on Batman’s face as he did it. The return to
the cave. Batman’s rage. Bruce’s pain. Then the shock of that final
revelation: Casefile 001… By the time Selina finished talking, Dick felt
too weighed down to continue with her, let alone going another round with
Bruce. Batman had taught him how to set aside personal frustrations,
and that
personal pain, for the sake of others—to put the safety of others above
your own concerns, always. Dick had never been as successful as Bruce in
that regard. Instead, he developed an instinct to funnel that energy into
saving the ones in trouble. Now, Bruce was that person in trouble…
But Batman had also taught him to use the
best tool, or more appropriately, the best person available
for the task at hand. Maybe Selina really was the better choice to talk to
Bruce right now—or maybe that was a convenient excuse his beleaguered
psyche had come up with to get him out of the cave. He didn’t know.
And he was so weary, he didn’t care. He nodded wearily and
started for the stairs, muttering under his breath how he wasn’t allowed
upstairs in costume… He trailed off, not bothering with the barb about
getting grounded if Alfred caught him. The attempt at humor was as
pointless as it was unfunny. Maybe Selina had a point about that drink.
Selina watched him go, then she turned and
headed to the costume vault. She entered just as Bruce was sliding the
cowl over the false head that held it in place.
“I told you to go,” he said without
turning.
“And it’s so rare that I won’t do what I’m
told,” she smiled. “Bruce, what happened at the hospital?”
“I told you to go,” he repeated. “Selina,
please, I can’t… I… I can’t deal with this, with you right now. I said—”
“Yes, I know. You said it’s not safe
to be around you. And when that didn’t work, Psychobat reiterated the point
by breaking Eddie’s legs—And yes, before you say it, I know
that was ninety-nine percent everything else that’s going on right now—but I
also know that a tiny fraction of it, maybe just one tenth of a percent, was
for me.”
“I didn’t target Nigma. He
targeted the Midnight Special,” Bruce said savagely.
“I’m not disputing that,” she replied
calmly. “I just think it would have been better for whoever Batman ran into
tonight if they were someone who’d never sent me a birthday card… Bruce,
what happened at the hospital?”
“This has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU, YOU
IMPOSSIBLE—” he shouted, then dropped his head and spoke in a flat
monotone. “Just go.”
“Bruce… anything that affects you like this
does have quite a lot to do with me now. Please, don’t expect me to
stand by and watch this like it’s nothing, because that’s not going to
happen.”
He froze. The moment’s respite talking
about Nigma had actually been a relief. Now it all descended again.
“I can’t… not now,” he repeated through
clenched teeth.
“I’m not something you have to ‘deal
with.’ I can help. Now you told Dick that you never got to details
with Vaniel. Tell me why. Tell me what happened.”
Dick’s question “Why didn’t you get that
far?” and now Selina’s “Tell me what happened?” Bruce closed his eyes
against it, the scene replaying in his head…

The door closed behind David Vaniel as he
walked out into the hallway. Bruce turned back to the bed where Vaniel
Senior was still staring spitefully at the door.
“Your son is a fine man,” Bruce said
cordially.
“My son… is a worthless piece of shit.”
Edward coughed raggedly a few times, then rasped “just like his whore of a
mother.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow but said nothing;
Vaniel stared back, a light smirk crossing his face.
“I’m sorry, did I offend you or sumptin’? I
ain’t never been one to sugar-coat shit, Wayne. His mother was a worthless
bitch who din’t have better sense than ta get involved with a joe like me. She never did nothin’ with her life and she passed her stupid, doughy-headed
ideas onto that feeble son of ours.”
“He put himself through law school.”
“Well whoopy-fuckin’-doo!” Vaniel spat. “All the sense I tried to beat into that boy… tried to teach him to be his
own man, to be sumptin’ special… and he goes and becomes just another
shyster in this gawd-awful city fulluv’em.”
“Better that he become just another
criminal?” Bruce asked pointedly.
Vaniel tried angrily to pull himself up in
the bed, saliva spraying from his mouth. “Fuck you! Fuck you, you rich,
pretty-boy faggot!” Finally succumbing to his own weakness, he collapsed
back onto the pillows and stared at Bruce with venomous eyes. “Don’t you
dare fuckin’ judge me! I did the best I could to put food on the table, to
provide for my family. We weren’t all born with silver spoons up our damn
noses, you fuck. Some of us… *gasp* had to scrape by… *gasp* with what
we could…” Vaniel scrambled around the bed for his breath mask, finally
finding it and taking in a few lung-fulls of oxygen.
“I know a vast number of people in this
world are in rough situations, Mister Vaniel. But not all of them turn to
criminal enterprises in order to support their families. You need look
no further than your own son for proof of that.”
Vaniel glared at him over the edge of the
mask, then slowly shook his head. “This ain’t goin’ quite the way I hoped it
would go…” he rasped under the mask.
“Perhaps it would go better if you came to
the point,” Bruce said evenly.
“I’m getting there. I’m getting there,”
Vaniel managed between labored, sucking exchanges with the oxygen mask.
“Will get there a whole lot quicker without any more judge-fuckin-mental
interruptions from a ball-less, ivory-tower sack of shit that never worked a
day at a man’s job.”
“Law-abiding and educated being
antithetical to your idea of manhood,” Bruce observed dryly.
“Fuck you,” Vaniel wheezed, a casual aside
as he considered the oxygen mask. He took a deep final inhale, coughed
twice, then set it aside. “Real men gotta…” It didn’t work, and he
cursed without sound as he reached for the mask again. “Real men gotta make
tough choices,” he resumed. “Not Hahvard or Yale, while ya pass the fuckin’
pheasant. We don’t all get our lives laid out fer’us by some blueblood
mommy and daddy.”
Bruce leaned forward and gripped the bar at
the end of Edward’s hospital bed, staring at him. “Due respect, Mister
Vaniel, but with all your talk about me not knowing anything about your
family, you’ve forfeited your right to talk about mine,” he seethed.
“I know more about your family than you
think,” Vaniel rasped.
The two men stared at each other for a
tense moment. The bar at the end of the bed began to creak under
Bruce’s grip.
“What are you talking about?”
A saddened grin washed over Vaniel’s gaunt
features. “I’m talking about your parents, boy.”
The bar creaked louder for a moment until
Bruce released his grip. He straightened himself up and adjusted his tie. “This conversation is over,” he announced and headed for the door. Edward
watched Bruce walk away, knowing that his one chance was slipping away.
He pulled the oxygen mask away from his face and rasped as loud as his
crippled lungs would allow.
“I killed ‘em.”
Bruce froze. After a long moment, he
slowly turned back to face the dying man.
“I did it,” Vaniel repeated. “I shot your
parents.”
With startling speed, Bruce suddenly shot
to the side of the bed, his large hand grabbing the front of Vaniel’s
hospital gown and yanking the frail man up off of the bed. The monitor
beside the bed started beeping in a faster, erratic rhythm. Their
faces mere inches apart, Edward saw an all-too-familiar burning behind
Bruce’s eyes.
“What did you say?” Bruce growled in purest
hate.
“That night, in the alley. You and your…
parents…” he started coughing raggedly, his whole body convulsing.
Bruce held firm to the paper gown, holding him in place.
“Why…?” Bruce growled through gritted
teeth.
Vaniel coughed a few more times, then
finally managed to speak through strained breaths with as much defiance his
broken body would allow. “You were all strolling through that alley like you
owned the whole damn city. Dressed in your finest… *hrk*”
He was cut off as Bruce’s hand instantly
shifted from the gown to his throat. “NO! Why did you tell me that!”
“I… I… just… thought… you had a…
a right… to know…”
Bruce’s grip tightened. Edward struggled,
gasping for breath, but the grip was like iron. A cough started low in his
chest and tried to work its way up, but was caught at the hand on his
throat. His whole body spasmed violently, his frail hands attempting to claw
at Bruce’s arm but failing. The monitor beeped more rapidly, more
erratically, and somewhere deep inside, Bruce knew there was only a few
seconds before Edward’s heart rate reached the point where the monitor would
alert the nursing staff. He tightened his grip even more for a few seconds,
his face twisted with rage, then slammed the frail body down onto the
mattress, finally releasing his grip. Edward’s body continued to spasm as he
coughed violently, dark red blood spilling out of his mouth. Bruce just
stared at the pathetic form flailing on the bed, his jaw clenched so tightly
that his teeth were groaning in protest. Without a word, Bruce spun
back toward the door and stormed out, nearly yanking the door off of its
hinges as he flung it open.
As he heard the distant sound of his son
calling after Bruce Wayne, Edward finally got his breathing back under
control. He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand and held
the oxygen mask over his face. Under the mask, he muttered quietly.
“Maybe he’s got a pair after all…”

“Now do you understand?” Bruce murmured, an
emotional wreck after the telling. “When I said ‘not safe’… when I…”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Selina said gingerly. “Bruce, look at me. You’re going to be okay. Take it slow.”
He didn’t turn to look. He didn’t speak
again. He just stood facing the wall and the false head with the Batman
cowl resting on it. Selina could feel the waves of dark intensity radiating
from him, but she said nothing. Like she told Dick, he had his own way of
coping. He went inward, sometimes with an intensity that could bend
light. The trick was to not get freaked out by it. The trick was
remembering that the super-dense intensity at the heart of that black hole
was still Bruce.
“Take it slow,” she repeated softly.
Hell, it was the most concentrated essence
of what made Bruce the man that he was—which was the man that she
loved—which might be the reason she would never react to that dark, hellish
intensity like anyone else.
He made a noise. It wasn’t a grunt, a sob,
or a sigh. It was a kind of raspy rumble as he inhaled, and she
realized he’d been performing a breathing exercise since he finished the
story.
Going inward. That was his way.
The trick was not to leave him in there.
That’s what the rest of them did, and that’s why the Batcave had eaten two
stars by the time she’d moved in.
The silent minute turned into two and then
three. Then, without any transition and without turning from the Batman
head, Bruce finally spoke.
“I just left,” he said intently, a
sudden wave of frustration blotting out the greater pain for a moment.
“Maybe the only chance I’d ever have t— and I, I just left. I had
to… I had— Selina, I swear to God, I had to leave that room or I’d have
killed him right there.”
“Bruce,” she said quietly, “the last sound
I want to make tonight is ‘pfft,’ but you’ve got to work with me here. What
you’re saying is… actually… quite absurd. You weren’t going to kill him…
because you don’t kill.”
“Batman doesn’t kill,” he said slowly. “But
Bruce Wayne might.”
She stared for a long moment. When
she finally responded, her tone was solemn but the words were more
light-hearted than either of them were expecting.
“You know, there are those out there who
say that you’re just as crazy as the ones you send to Arkham. They’re fools
who don’t know anything about you beyond ‘black cape’ and ‘big fist.’
I’ve certainly never held to that theory. But it’s comments like that
that make some of the people who do know you wonder
sometimes.”
Bruce spun and glared, a mixture of rage
and confusion on his face.
“’Pfft’ doesn’t begin to cover it,
Bruce! It really doesn’t. What you just said is absolute bullshit.”
She
stopped and sighed. “And you know it is. Of course ‘Bruce Wayne’ wouldn’t
kill him, because it’s not about ‘Batman’ or ‘Bruce Wayne’—it’s all
YOU. YOU don’t kill… and you never will, m’love.”
Bruce’s head dropped as he replied almost
silently, “How can you be sure?”
“Well, Joker’s in Arkham and not a coffin,
that’s the obvious one,” she answered instantly. “But more to the point…
Bruce, you didn’t kill him, that’s how I know. You stormed out of
the room, scared Alfred, scared Dick and broke Eddie’s legs. But you did
leave that room.”
He flinched at an unspoken memory, but
slowly looked back up. Selina took a tentative step towards him.
“When you decided staying would have meant
wringing his neck, you left. Bruce, how clear do you want it?”
“I’d never felt that before. Even with
Joker,” he said hoarsely. “I… I wanted to kill him. I honestly did.”
“You wanted to. But you didn’t
need to. And that’s how I know.”
“Semantics,” he said gruffly.
“No,” Selina replied patiently. “Semantics
is that bullshit from before, ‘Batman won’t kill but Bruce Wayne might.’
This isn’t semantics, this is ‘different words have different meanings
and those differences matter.’ If you needed to, then
I’d be worried. Wanting to means that you had a choice. And I know—Bruce,
with every fiber of my being, I know—that when you have a choice,
you come out on the right side. You’re so consistent, it’s frankly
unattractive.”
Bruce considered the words.
“Downright infuriating,” she added, with a
loving grin.
“Why did you send Dick to the showers?” he
graveled, the abrupt change of subject and tone hinting, for the briefest
moment, that whatever else was happening, Psychobat still wanted all
questions answered, and all answers duly catalogued, annotated, and
cross-referenced.
“Because Dick doesn’t consider your
absolute, unqualified, relentless, inflexible, uncompromising,
non-negotiable, pig-headed-stubborn commitment to doing the right thing to
be infuriating and unattractive. And what you needed to hear had to come
from someone who does.”
Feline logic, Bruce thought
miserably. That’s what this evening needed.
“He’s upstairs now,” Selina said, reaching
for his hand to lead him from the vault. “And he’ll want to talk, if you’re
up to it.”
Bruce glanced absently down at her hand but
strode past her and out into the cave proper. “I’m not. But I will,” he
replied blankly. A few steps into the cave, he paused, looking towards the
trophy room and the safe beyond hidden behind a hologram wall. “Go up and
send him down here. There’s a lot of work to be done, and no time to
waste.”
“Do you want me to help?” Selina asked
quietly, following his eyes and guessing the investigation to come.
The only answer was another rasping rumble
as Bruce exhaled and a cold emptiness in his eyes that Shakespeare called
dead coals.

Witness Statement
Written
on behalf of
juvenille
witness—Wayne, Bruce by Officer M. Cure
On
return from the Park Row Theatre at approx 22.00 hrs on Friday Jan 21st in
company of parents Thomas and Martha Wayne. Wayne, Bruce witnessed the
shooting of parents. Attack took place in back alley of Park Row N leading
to main boulevard. Victims were held at gunpoint by unidentified man who
demanded money and jewelry. Money was handed over but assailant panicked
and shot and killed witness’s father, witness’s mother Martha Wayne
screamed. Assailant then shot and killed her too and pulled pearl necklace
from around her neck. Man then ran from scene towards the main boulevard.
Witness was left unharmed.
“I don’t need to read
it,” Bruce said flatly, sliding the photocopy of a photocopy into a folder
and placing it precisely on the computer console between Dick and Selina.
It was just after midnight. Bruce and Dick were still in costume, apart
from masks and gloves. Workstation One, the ledge beside it and the
inviolate space where Alfred would set the dinner tray were all strewn with
crinkled police reports, sealed evidence bags with yellowing type-written
tags, an old-fashioned cassette player and a stack of government wiretaps,
and two items completely out of place among this produce of criminal
investigation: a Cat-Tales mug and a Catitat mug, each placed a careful
distance from the paperwork but conspicuously handy to Bruce and Dick’s
respective workspace.
Neither man had wanted
the cocoa and Selina didn’t especially want to make it, but it had become
obvious that Bruce wanted to get something from the safe. He kept glancing
towards the trophy room, and then, without actually looking at her, his jaw
set in that old rooftop grimace, the one when he was really upset with her.
She figured Dick’s presence wasn’t a problem, since Dick didn’t know the
safe existed. Bruce getting up from the console and walking west would mean
nothing to him. Bruce could be going to the med lab, the costume vault, the
filing cabinets, even the gymnasium. He could just be stretching his legs;
Dick wouldn’t even notice. Nor would he notice (or care) if Bruce brought
back another file from wherever he’d gone. It was only Selina who could
attach any importance to the phenomenon, because only Selina knew he had a
very secret safe with his most personal belongings…
So she went up to the
kitchen and made cocoa. It was a silly excuse and she felt like an idiot
doing it. It was such a stupid, girly thing to do, making cocoa. Catwoman: the Feline Fatale, Catwoman: the untamable, Catwoman: claws, whip, and
attitude, was going up to the kitchen to make cocoa, for Bast’s sake!
But then, for just a split second when she set Bruce’s mug down, she caught
a flash of something other than void in his eyes. It wasn’t gratitude or
even acknowledgement. She didn’t really know what it was, but it was
alive.
Dick had picked up the
folder the moment Bruce set it down. He removed the witness statement
with reverent care and started to read while Selina walked the long way
around the back of the workstation until she came face-to-face with Bruce.
“I don’t need to read
it,” he repeated in the hurried whisper one uses in a library or a church.
“Every word and detail is burned into my memory. Strange details. The word
juvenile is misspelled. The curious repetition of my mother’s name. ‘Witness’s mother Martha Wayne screamed.’ I remember wondering about that
when I was eleven. If there was some technical reason for it, for legal
purposes. But then it should say ‘shot and killed witness’s father
Thomas Wayne,’ so that couldn’t be it…”
He stopped and flushed.
“When you’re eleven, you
think there must be a reason,” he concluded.

When you’re eleven, you think there must be a
reason. I looked at the back of the paper in Dick’s hand, sucked into
a vortex of memories… the day that envelope arrived. Alfred
didn’t want me to see it, so I snuck into his pantry when he was on the
phone. I’d recognized the return address: Melquoire, Brandt, and Huffman, the family
lawyer. A cover letter from Phillip Melquoire forwarding another letter
from the District Attorney and several sheets of police paperwork. It had
been over a year (actually it was 14 months and 11 days ) and the case had
been reclassified. It was still open, everyone stressed that. There was no
statute of limitations on murder, everyone stressed that. But no
polite formula of words could blunt the hard reality: the murder of my
parents had been placed into a category where nobody expected it would ever
be solved.
I looked at the papers, photocopies of
photocopies, not the original casefile that Batman would obtain years
later. It was that day in Alfred’s pantry that I first saw that
witness statement, what had actually been taken down that night from the
sole witness to the crime in those crucial first hours after the event.
‘Witness’s mother Martha
Wayne screamed.’ I wondered why they wrote it that way. When you’re
eleven, you think there must be a reason. When you’re eleven, you don’t
realize that Officer M. Cure (whose first name was Marshall and who retired
to Sarasota, Florida eight years ago) was halfway through the graveyard
shift, typing on an antiquated Underwood at one o’clock in the morning in
front of a malfunctioning radiator, trying to get through it so the butler
that just showed up—and who has butlers in this day and age—could take
the kid home where they could at least get them out of that shirt with the
blood spatters on the sleeve that he keeps staring at…
The officers of the 38th
Precinct did what they could that night, but from a detective’s point of
view, they didn’t leave us much. Dick was trying and he meant well, but
this wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as he was expecting. He was letting
emotion color what he knew as a crimefighter. What little evidence existed
from Crime Alley, I had exhausted years ago. We had to focus on the new
lead, on Edward Vaniel, and that was difficult for him to accept. For him,
this was solving the murder of my parents. Returning the favor,
because I had done it for him.
What it was for Selina, I
still don’t quite understand. All I know is I could not make her leave
the costume vault. I couldn’t get Dick out of the cave before that, but
she did, for a few minutes anyway. It didn’t give me much time alone, just
a minute or two. A part of me might’ve been grateful if she hadn’t come in
herself as soon as she got rid of Dick.
I wanted them both gone.
I wanted to conduct my investigation alone and without the incessant
distraction and interference. I wanted to regain control of my mind, my
body, my cave, my mission, and most of all, over the most important case
Batman would ever have.
Dick was fairly easy; I
knew what he wanted. He wanted to help me find my parents’ killer the way I
had done for him. I told him—truthfully—that the only way to learn the
truth about what happened in that alley was to forget it, to put the police
records aside and focus on the new variable. We would hit the streets,
hunting down any of Edward Vaniel’s associates from the old days, cutting a
swath through the Gotham underworld. I’d take the West Side down to SoHo,
the Village, and Tribeca. Nightwing would take the East Side, NoLiTa,
Chinatown and the docks. The chance was slim, but he might come up with
something. At the very least, it would get rid of him for a few hours
and let me work in peace.
Selina was more
difficult, as always. I told her Dick would partner me on this, that he’d
earned the right. I’d helped him track down his parents’ killers, after
all, and then kept him from taking it too far when we found them. At about
that same time, I reminded her, she was helping herself to John Klondeff’s
jade collection, so…
It was a harsh way to put
it, but it wasn’t needlessly harsh. I did it for a reason. Selina
doesn’t apologize for her criminal past and she doesn’t back away from it.
At the same time, she wouldn’t want to argue for being a thief, not then,
not in relation to that case, so she did the only thing she could.
“Sure.”
She said it lightly, as
if neither the refusal nor the reasoning behind it held any importance for
her… Of course it did, and of course there would be a price. I had no idea
how high, or how soon it would have to be paid. All I knew was I had
achieved my solitude at last, at least until I had to meet Nightwing on the
Moxton Building to hear what he had found.

“Not much,” Nightwing
announced, disgusted.
“This surprises you?”
Batman asked stoically.
“I guess not. Well yeah,
it did, but I guess it shouldn’t have. One of the pitfalls of that life,
short life spans.”
Batman grunted.
“Though strangely,”
Nightwing continued, “the ones who are still around that did know Vaniel were more… cooperative
than I expected.”
“I don’t imagine he had
too many friends, even in the criminal community,” Batman stated flatly.
“That bad, huh?”
Out of the corner of his
eye, Nightwing saw Batman bristle slightly, then the flat tone returned. “But despite what little you found…?”
“One name kept popping
up,” Nightwing confirmed. “From those ’reputed mob ties,’ like it
said on the quick sheet.”
“I found the same,”
Batman graveled.
“One name, over and
over,” Nightwing nodded.
“Carmine Falcone,” they
said together.

To be continued…
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