Avengers Noir Chapter 7

By Cadet Deming

Rated T for violence and adult content. I don't own the rights to the Avengers, Marvel and Disney do, so please don't sue. Natasha/Loki. Please read and review!

A greenish tint tainted everything about the coroner's office: the mint-colored tiles, the fluorescent lights, the scrubs on Dr. Bruce Banner. Banner's skin looked sallow-green. He took off green gloves covered in gore and shook my hand. I peered through his glasses and saw that even his eyes were brown with green flecks in them.

He quickly looked away. Lack of eye contact could mean anything from guilt to shyness.

Dr. Banner said, "I can't release any paperwork to you or let you make any copies, but I can show you the report."

He handed me a file and I read though the details. Everything was dry and technical, the violent end of a man's life reduced to terms like "piercing of cerebral cortex" and "cracked occipital condyle." Odin's body had been found lying face up in an alley.

The cause of death was a bullet shot through each eye. Odin had actually worn an eye patch on his right eye for decades, after an injury from his service in World War 1. I wondered if there was intentional symbolism in destroying his eyes.

I asked him, "How long have you been working as a coroner?"

"About 3 years."

"Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Banner took off his glasses and started cleaning the lenses. "You'd be surprised at what I've seen over time. I've recorded people blinded before, but I've never had a situation where someone shot an already blinded man in the eye, let alone both eyes."

I wanted him to look at me. It was easier to read people when they didn't hide their features.

I asked, "What do you think it means?"

He put his glasses back on, but still didn't look at me. "I don't give my opinion on motivations. I just report the facts on cause of death."

I sat down on the edge of his desk and crossed my legs. I knew just the barest top of my silk stocking was visible. I wasn't crazy about resorting to cheap tricks like flirtation, but I was trying to use what I had.

I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. "This is all off of the record. As a private investigator, I find trusting my instincts is the best thing to do. What do your instincts tell you about this case?"

He glanced at my thigh for a moment and then up at me. He sneered.

Through clenched teeth he said, "I think it's better for people not to give in to their emotional instincts. I'm a doctor and a scientist. Maybe you need to go now."

I pulled my skirt down. "Am I making you angry?"

He started laughing. "Lady, if you made me angry, believe me, you'd know it. I don't need to lose another job."

I sat down across from him. "Why would you be fired? I'm just trying to do my own job, too. A family lost a father. I'm only trying to find out why. Everything is off the record, I swear it."

Bruce locked his eyes onto mine. I tried to look sincere.

Bruce said, "I haven't seen this exact same cause of death before, but there is something familiar about it. Patient Number N-4912, or Odin as you know him, was shot with two precision strikes with .45 caliber bullets. One bullet alone would have killed him instantly. From the angles of the exit wounds, both shots hit him at the same time. If it's any consolation to the family, his death was instant and painless."

"How is this familiar to you?"

Bruce said, "About two years ago, I handled a case where three victims in the Irish Mafia were killed. They all died from two symmetrical bullets into their hearts. Two days later another Irishman was killed with two symmetrical bullets in his stomach. The murders were written off as unsolved gang warfare. Six months later one of the Chinese mafia was found dead with double gunshot wounds in his lungs. A week after that a low-level loan shark was found dead with two bullets to the base of his spine, and another two through his forehead."

"Did the police ever narrow down a suspect?"

"In a report I included my suspicions the kills were the mark of the same man. Rumors spread through the department of a mercenary or hit man for hire nicknamed Bullseye. I was warned by the top brass to back off on connecting the dots in writing or be forced into early retirement."

I remembered Laufey mentioning Bullseye as the world's greatest shot.

I asked, "I've heard about Bullseye from the criminal underground. Why were you threatened?"

"I think the powers that be around here were on the take from whoever hired Bullseye. And this job is my last chance. I used to be a University Doctor studying human biology, but I had a drinking problem. I get mean when I drink. Angry-mean. I put a guy through a wall in a bar and lost my license to practice medicine on the living. Working on the dead is my last hope."

Too often, people blamed alcohol for letting out the parts of their personalities that were inside of them all along. If he was angry when he drank, the rage was probably under the surface all along.

I tried to imagine Dr. Banner breaking a wall with a human being. His glasses and technical jargon made him appear a studious type of man, but under his scrubs his shoulders had a powerful build to them.

Banner grabbed a scalpel that glinted in the flickering light.

I said, "I won't let anyone trace the Bullseye connection back to you."

He held the scalpel up. "I would hope not for both of our sakes. Just get the son of a bitch that's doing this. I've got too many bodies coming in as it is."

"Thank you," I said. "How long ago did you stop drinking?"

He smiled at me. "Who says I stopped?"

I hurried out of the coroner's office as fast as I politely could.

Loki's house was a stately brownstone on the Upper East Side. It was four stories tall and covered in twisted ivy. Sigyn answered the door with her three children in tow.

I said, "Hello, I need to speak with Loki in person please."

Loki towered over her shoulder. "Alright then. Sigyn, set an extra place for Ms. Romanoff at the table for dinner."

His wife nodded and walked away. Her sons followed her immediately, but Hela stared at me. She didn't blink.

I whispered in Loki's ear. "I need to talk to you alone. Preferably in a room with alcohol."

A smile curled on his lips. "You want to share a drink with me?"

I said, "After I tell you what I need to tell you, I think you'll be the one needing a drink."

The smile on his face faded. He led me down to a library. I envied people wealthy enough to have their own libraries, although the more I learned about how disturbed Loki's family relations were, the less I envied him in particular.

As a private investigator I was used to giving people horrible news. Your wife or husband is cheating on you. Your daughter ran away from home because she's pregnant out of wedlock. In these instances the people who hired me were prepared for it. I didn't think when Loki hired me to find his father's killer he was prepared to discover Odin wasn't his biological parent, but his true father may be the man who was responsible for killing him.

Loki poured both of us a shot of vodka. We downed our drinks in tandem. I was dreading his reaction. Would he erupt in anger, blame me for being the bearer of bad news, possibly even fire me?

He asked, "What was so important that you needed to see me in person?"

I started simply and told him about the Bullseye killer theory, leaving Dr. Banner's name out of it.

"Interesting," he said. "A professional killer with double deadly aim. How dramatic. But is that really why you're here?"

"Would it be fair to say Thor was Odin's favorite, but you were Frigga's favored son?"

He frowned. "I never really thought about it in those terms. It's not prestigious for a man to be a 'Mama's Boy.'"

"So, if I told you Frigga wasn't perfect, you could handle it?"

He looked deep in thought, memory, or both.

Loki said, "I'd suspect you may be biased against my mother because she didn't approve of me hiring you. I would rather be my father's favorite."

"Why is that?"

"Because mothers don't have any real power."

"You mean, women don't have any real power."

"You have some power. In your beauty. It gives you power over men."

He stared intensely at me.

I said, "What if I told you another woman had that kind of power over your father? What if the reason Odin never favored you was because he suspected you weren't his child?"

I told Loki everything I had learned from Amora and braced for his reaction.

To Be Continued