Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or Batman Begins. Copyright belongs to DC Comics, Warner Bros. Movies and any and all other copyright holders. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story.
Author's Note: My take on what happens on the night the Waynes are shot, seen from the point of view of James Gordon and other officers of the GCPD. Might be slightly AU.
The night was slowly darkening over Gotham City as Officer James Gordon made his way into one of the precinct offices of the Gotham City Police Department to begin his shift. As he walked up the stairs to the locker rooms and the offices he quietly greeted a couple of people from day shift whom he recognized vaguely by appearance. On his way up he almost tripped on a concrete step that had all but disintegrated, cursing intently as he fought to maintain his balance. His whole day so far had been off on the wrong foot, and by the looks of it, his shift wasn't going to be much better. But, he thought, it was still better than being in Loeb's precinct, having him breathe down his neck every minute of every day. The two of them had taken an instant dislike to each other, since the very moment Loeb was promoted Captain in place of one of the precinct's own, and Gordon, tired of being his scapegoat for everything that went wrong, had requested, and been granted, a transfer.
After having changed into his uniform he walked into the office section, looking for his partner. Every office he had ever entered that had been a part of the GCPD were painted in a shade of green whose only other use was in the military, and everything in them, from the windows to the desks and drawers, was in a permanent state of disrepair. He often wondered exactly what became of the increased funding the Mayor always promised the department.
His eyes quickly found his partner, Officer Nicole Wilcox, Nicki among friends, sitting at a desk reassembling her service weapon, presumably after having cleaned it. She looked up and grinned when she saw him.
"It's gonna be a good night for you and me, Jimmyboy! The list says we've got the safest beat in the city tonight. Park Row, 90 percent chance of survival."
Nicki winked at him, as if she had just told him a secret. Nicki Wilcox had a mischievous nature, but for the months he had known her and been on the beat with her, she had always kept a cool head on the job. She had the Force in her blood, as far as he knew both her mother and her father had been members of the GCPD before her, her father had been shot and killed in the line of duty. Her mother had survived the Force, but had taken early retirement upon the death of her husband. Nicki seemed to have learned some of the balancing act it took to be a good cop, the balance between being safe and being just edgy enough to be one step ahead. As far as he was concerned Nicki had everything necessary to rise through the ranks. But, of course, if she insisted on staying in Gotham, it probably wouldn't happen. It was a known fact that corruption had begun rearing its ugly head in the GCPD, making it increasingly difficult for anyone with their moral compass still working straight to get a deserved promotion. He knew that very well, and had to a certain extent prepared himself for the life of a beat cop for the rest of his working days. Surely Nicki would realize it too, sooner or later, but right now she didn't seem to care. Nicki was just Nicki, one of the few who actually seemed to enjoy being out on the streets, fighting the uphill battle to clean up the city.
Gordon didn't know how he felt about this uphill battle. He wanted with all his heart to make a difference, but some days, when everything went south, and everything they worked for fell to pieces before their eyes, he found it increasingly difficult to grit his teeth and keep on working. On those days he watched Nicki with increasing respect. She had an amazing ability to pick herself up off the floor when she had the same moments of doubt he had, and watching her do it seemed to give him the strength to do it too.
Suddenly Nicki stood in front of him with a steaming cup of coffee in each hand, smiling.
"A penny for your thoughts?" She said, before offering one of the cups to him.
He took the cup, smiling a tired smile, adjusting his glasses with his free hand. The glasses where a recent acquisition and he had taken an instant dislike to them, refusing to wear them in the beginning. But between Barbara's disapproving glances and his captain threatening to put him on desk duty, stating that he didn't need an officer that couldn't see straight, he had been forced to relent, and now struggled to get used to having the blasted things on his nose.
"Something wrong, Jimmy?"
He was silent for a moment, then shook his head. She studied him for a few more seconds, then shrugged, and put an arm around his shoulder.
"Oh, lighten up, Jimmy! It's not that bad…whatever it is. Look, tell you what, I still owe you breakfast from that bet we had on who'd make Commissioner, how about after this shift is over I settle that debt?"
"Yeah…I reckon it's about time you did."
He smiled again, and this time his smile towards Nicki Wilcox was heartfelt.
Half an hour later they were out on the streets. It was completely dark now, and only the light coming from the occasional street lamp, and that of their own flashlights, gave them a shadowy view of the city. Park Row was quiet, the muffled sound of a TV could be heard here and there, but most of the inhabitants seemed to be asleep. As the two of them passed the Opera House they could hear the faint sound of music coming from within.
"You ever been in there?" Nicki asked Gordon as they passed the well lit, monumental building.
"Nah…not really my kind of music. You?"
"Once, when I was a kid…my grandpa took me for my birthday. I liked the music, but not the performers, so I spent three hours or something with my eyes closed, just listening."
Nicki grinned at the memory.
They continued to walk in silence for a while, before getting into a discussion over which precinct team would win the inter-departmental basketball championship that year. The only thing they could agree on completely in that discussion was that IAB was sure to end up at the bottom of the charts.
Suddenly the silence around them was pierced by a sharp sound that rang out and echoed through the neighborhood. A gunshot. Both of them spun around, running back towards the sound, when they heard a second shot.
Nicki felt the taste of blood in her mouth as she ran. She could hear Gordon half shouting a request for assistance into his radio two steps in front of her. They had just reached the Opera House, when she spotted a shadowy figure emerging from an alleyway behind the Opera. A quick exchange of glances, and Gordon was in full sprint after the figure, while Nicki slowed down and entered the alley with one hand on the holster of her weapon.
The light from one lone streetlamp and that of her flashlight was all she had to see by. Satisfied that no other assailants lurked in the shadows, she focused on what was now directly in front of her. Two people, one man and one woman lay on the asphalt, their arms and legs spread out at weird angles. Between the two bodies sat a young boy, probably between eight and ten years old. His face was like stone, his eyes like he was looking straight through her. She crouched down and put two fingers on the lifeless man's neck, searching in vain for a pulse. The same thing with the woman, no life left. The boy made no effort to move, or even to speak to her. She checked briefly for ID, but didn't find anything. No wallet…a robbery gone wrong maybe? As she looked around she saw that what looked a lot like pearls were sprinkled about on the ground. She couldn't quite escape the thought that the two victims seemed strangely familiar. Slowly she approached the young boy, kneeling in front of him.
"Hey…can you tell me your name?"
No reply. Not so strange, he was probably scared out of his wits, or in shock…or both. His eyes seemed a bit more focused now, like he was only now seeing her and realizing she was there. She stood, carefully picking him up and carrying him a few steps away. She could hear sirens approaching in the distance.
After a while of simply looking and listening, she said quietly;
"It's going to be ok, sweetheart. You still don't want to tell me your name?"
He was still silent, but clung to her as if he was holding on for dear life. Then, in a whisper, almost inaudible;
"Bruce…"
She smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
"Hi Bruce. My name is Nicki"
Suddenly Nicki became aware of a shadowy figure moving towards them, and in a second she had images in her head of how she would let go of the young boy in her arms and draw her weapon if it turned out the approaching figure was a threat. She felt a wave of relief wash over her when she saw that it was Gordon.
"Nothing?"
Gordon shrugged.
"I lost him…but he threw this in flight," he said, holding up a revolver.
"Six shot Taurus, cheap Beretta knock off, not the kind a hired gun would use. So, we're probably looking at a straight up robbery. Let's hope he was foolish enough not to wear gloves…"
And that we have him on file for something already, he thought to himself.
Gordon walked past Nicki and the kid, and stood for a moment looking at the two bodies. Nicki turned sharply when she heard him curse under his breath.
"What?"
"You recognize these two?"
She turned her head to look in his direction just in time to see him stand up, presumably after having crouched down to see the faces of the two bodies more clearly.
"I thought there was something familiar about them, why?"
"There should be…this is Thomas and Martha Wayne."
"Wayne? As in…?"
"As in Wayne Enterprises…Wealthiest family in the city…shot down and killed in a back alley. What the hell is happening to this place?"
"I don't know, Jimmy. I don't know…"
An hour later the alley was lit up with lights in red and blue. Officers Gordon and Wilcox stood outside the main path, talking to their captain, John Lyles. The news of the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne had spread like a wildfire through the city, and at least a dozen police officers now struggled to keep eager reporters and photographers behind the newly created barrier of yellow tape. A woman from Child Services sat crouched by the passenger door of a police car, trying to get the eight year old Bruce Wayne to talk. The boy hadn't said a word since whispering his name to Officer Wilcox, and the woman who had spent the past forty-five minutes crouching in front of him, getting nothing but a blank stare, felt ready to give up, despite herself.
Aside from the rush of crime scene techs and homicide detectives stood the three uniformed officers.
"The whole bloody department is going to be all over this. The Commissioner is going to make sure of that," Captain John Lyles said in a low voice to his two officers.
"Because he's going to be the public's center of attention until the bastard who did this is caught, and if he can prove that the department can still pull enough resources together to get the guy, he'll be Gotham's new hero…"
Lyles let his voice trail away, and threw a glance around at the whole miserable scene, just in time to see the coroner close the two black bags that now contained the bodies of two of Gotham's most loved philanthropists. His glance paused for another moment at the young boy who had found his life irrevocably changed in a matter of minutes.
"Did he say anything to you, Wilcox? "
Nicki shook her head.
"First name, that's it. Looks like Child Services aren't getting much either…"
"Ok…give it another shot anyway, Wilcox, you might get lucky."
Nicki nodded and headed over to the car, where the woman from Child Services now had stood up, after crouching by the door for the past hour.
"You mind if I talk to him for a second?" Nicki asked, waving a hand towards the police car.
After getting the 'go ahead', Nicki opened the other passenger door and slowly got into the back seat, sitting next to the young boy.
"Hi Bruce. How are you holding up?"
He turned his head and looked at her, a look of recognition flashing in the otherwise dead eyes, but he didn't say anything.
They sat in silence for a while, before Nicki spoke again.
"Listen Bruce, I know a lot of people probably asked you this already, but I'm going to ask you again anyway. Do you remember anything about the person who came up to you?"
No response. Nicki decided to change her approach.
"You know, sometimes when you get scared you sort of freeze and you can't do anything, even though you want to…and because your body freezes it feels like your head and your thoughts do to, and when someone asks you about it afterwards you think you can't remember a thing about what happened. The thing is that your eyes they see and your ears still hear even though your brain tricks itself into believing that it doesn't remember…"
She paused, and noticed that he hadn't taken his eyes off her while she spoke.
"The person who came towards you…was it a man or a woman?"
Pause. He continued to look at her, and then suddenly;
"A man…he had big shoes"
Nicki smiled.
"Ok, good… see, you do remember something. The man, was he as tall as your father?"
Again a pause, then he shook his head.
"Was he about my height?"
He seemed to measure her, his eyes scanning her from head to toe, before answering.
"In between"
"Ok. What did his clothes look like?"
His eyes were still open, but the look in them made it clear that he was far away. Nicki sat quietly, watching him.
"Dirty…like he hadn't washed them in ages… They had holes in them…"
"What about the color of his hair?"
"Yellow…like Mother's. But his hair was dirty too…it looked wet, like if you walk in the rain without an umbrella, but it wasn't raining."
"I know, you're doing very good Bruce. How about his eyes, do you remember them?"
He nodded silently, his head now turned away from her. He was looking out the window at the chaos outside. Slowly he spoke;
"They looked scared."
"Ok," Nicki said softly.
Again there was silence between them, before Nicki carefully turned in her seat and placed a hand gently on Bruce's shoulder.
"Bruce, you've done great. Is there anything else you remember? Something you thought was strange, maybe?"
He started to shake his head, but stopped in mid-motion and looked straight into her eyes.
"His hands…they were shaking. He kept changing his grip…"
"Ok, thank you, Bruce. You've been a big help. I promise I'll do everything I can to find the man who did this to your parents."
As Nicki closed the car door, Gordon, who had stood outside trying to listen in on the conversation, joined her.
"Ok, so we're looking for a blond haired man, between five eight and six feet tall, dressed in dirty clothes, carrying a gun. Based on the description of a terrified boy who's just witnessed the death of both his parents, that means we're looking for about every thug in the entire city."
Nicki shot him a frustrated look.
"Sounds about right," she admitted with a sigh.
Jim Gordon could not remember ever having seen the precinct offices so crowded at half an hour past midnight before. All available officers from all three shifts had been called in, and the majority now sat with coffee-filled Styrofoam cups in their hands, or they were trying to rub the remnants of sleep out of their eyes. Captain Lyles had taken his place in the centre, apparently trying to wake up his precinct with some of his never ending enthusiasm. Gordon couldn't share any of it, because it seemed the investigation had become stuck before it had even begun. One look over at Wilcox confirmed that her mind went in the same direction his did. And to top it all off, this was the most high profile murder case to hit the city in decades, and the pressure was on from all thinkable sides.
A shrill whistle was heard by everyone in the room, and Captain Lyles raised his arms to signal to all of them that he wanted their attention focused on him. When silence fell he smiled, and spoke;
"Alright, I know that we've got a tough case on our hands, and there isn't much to go on, but let's do a recap of what we do know… Wilcox, you talked to the boy, did he give us anything on the assailant?"
Several heads turned in Nicki's direction at the mention of her name.
"Male, blond hair, ragged clothing, average height…that's about it. But the kid was in shock after losing both his parents, there's no way of knowing how accurate his description is…he might as well have described the Grim Reaper. Where did they take the kid, anyway?"
Lyles nodded in agreement.
"Well, the techs found prints on the gun he threw away, so let's hope he's in the system already. If he is, we'll soon see if the description matches or not. I think Loeb's guys brought him down to Central Booking or something… Yeah, Gordon?"
Figures, Gordon thought, Just like Loeb to pull a stunt like that. He couldn't have left the kid with Child Services or something…that would have been a crime.
Lyles nodded towards Jim Gordon, who had raised his hand slightly, asking silently for permission to speak.
"You know," Jim started, "if I were to guess, I'd say we're dealing with a rookie. Didn't the kid say something about his hands trembling as he held the gun?"
Wilcox nodded.
"Yeah, and he was in a hurry…he shot both of them because he didn't have the time to wait for them to hand off their money and jewelry. I think I saw pearls scattered in the street…maybe he tried to rip them off her neck?"
"Ok, so desperate and inexperienced…where does that leave us?"
Lyles asked, having jumped seamlessly back into the conversation.
"Probably with someone who's not very skilled at hiding from the cops. He might be on file for something minor, and if he is, we might actually be able to find the guy…" Gordon replied.
At that moment there was a loud ringing sound, as the office fax machine sprang to life. The officer who sat closest to the machine jumped from his seat and retrieved a few sheets of paper from the machine.
"The techs got a hit on the prints. A Joseph Chilton, busted once on a B&E not too long ago…looks like he took a step up to armed robbery. No current address, no place of employment… Blond hair, brown eyes, five ten, no distinguishing features." The young officer read from the files, before taking another sheet, this one a black and white picture of a man, and passing it around the room.
Lyles had jumped from his seat, and his eyes now formerly glowed.
"Ok, now that we know who to look for, let's get out there and find him. Let's check the shelters and soup kitchens first, with no job and no place to live, maybe that's where we'll find him."
The meeting was soon over, and every officer soon disappeared out with a copy of Joseph Chilton's photo in their hands. Officers Gordon and Wilcox were no different, but neither of them spoke a word to the other on the way down to the garage and a waiting patrol car.
Two hours later, Jim Gordon watched as the clock on the dashboard of the patrol car passed 03.30 AM and sighed. Nicki, who was in the driver's seat, shot a sideways look at him.
"Hang in there, Jimmy. All hope's not lost yet… But I swear, I never knew there were this many shelters in this city."
"There weren't, Nick. Not until a year or so ago, when the stock market took a serious dive. A lot of people lost a lot of money, and some lost everything they had…The powers that be had to do something, so the solution was to create as many makeshift shelters as possible…for all the god that did."
Nicki pulled the car to a stop outside a building that was so out of place with the rest of the street, it looked as if someone had just decided to put a block of concrete there, and had carved some windows into it for good measure. Silently both of them walked up the stairs and entered the building. A middle-aged man stood behind a counter, and shot them a skeptical look when they entered. They weren't the most popular sight around a place like this. Gordon approached him, placing the photo of Joseph Chilton on the counter.
"Hey. We're looking for this guy. Has he been in here tonight?"
To the surprise of both, the man nodded.
"Yes, he came in about three hours ago. Seemed distraught, kept looking over his shoulder, but I didn't think anything of it. We get a lot of that here…"
The man came around the counter and led them into a long room, filled with two rows of similar beds, a broad passageway in the middle. He remained standing in the doorway, and put a finger across his lips to tell them to be quiet. In all the beds, a person was sleeping, except one… In the middle of the left row of beds, a man stood by a window, looking out on the city. He was still fully clothed, and had not made any move to turn and look in their direction. Gordon thought to himself that this man didn't look like a monster, certainly nothing like the Grim Reaper. He looked ordinary, his clothes were dirty and worn, but this was probably just a guy down on his luck, this was not a cold blooded killer, despite how he was already being described in the media. He looked, Gordon thought, as if he was simply waiting for them to arrest him.
Silently, Gordon moved forward towards the figure, and he knew that Wilcox had done exactly the same. Moving across the room, between beds, Gordon came up behind the figure of Joseph Chilton. And he knew instantly, the second his eyes met those of the Wayne murderer reflected in the glass, that this had been the longest night of his life.