Oliver discovers the identity of the sniper and tracks him down.
The interrogation of street dealers was fairly fruitful for Oliver. He'd managed to stop some deals and find the locations of a few stashes which he proceeded to destroy. However, none of the dealers had any idea of Ricardo Diaz's whereabouts, and almost all of them had no clue that Diaz had a backer. They'd assumed that Diaz was sourcing the drugs himself, but Oliver knew otherwise. The drug epidemic which Oliver had feared would happen was starting to come to fruition. With the widespread usage of Burnout, addiction was already starting to set in, and that was just contributing more to the increase in violence.
Diggle's search of the CCTV footage proved to be a dead-end too. He managed to spot a potential vehicle, but with no plates and tinted windows, they had no way of identifying the driver or sniper. They followed its route through other camera footage, but they lost it near the old abandoned Bertinelli construction yard. Oliver momentarily stopped there to search for anything, but found nothing. The second attempt to transport Quentin back to his residence had gone smoothly. The police weren't involved this time. Diggle had managed to organise an ARGUS transport for him, with Oliver shadowing the transport as well. Quentin was now back at his apartment with 24/7 watch-over from ARGUS agents.
He was enjoying his "breakfast" at 13:24 when his phone started ringing. Not his personal cell, but his 'business' one. He was desperate for a breakthrough, and answered Mia's call hastily.
"I got your mail," she said.
"Did you manage to salvage anything from the phone?" asked Oliver.
"Yeah, I did. It took me a while, but I got it done."
"So what did you find?"
"The route for Quentin Lance's transport and a few phone calls made to the same unregistered number."
"Can you get a trace location of the last call made to that number?"
"Already ahead of you on that one. The call came from the Papp Hotel, 1700 Broadway."
"Broadway?" asked Oliver, seeking confirmation.
"Yep."
"Alright. Thank you, Mia. Once again."
"You're welcome, my green-hooded friend."
Mia's words made Oliver smile as he hung up the phone.
Oliver returned to the lair early and immediately began looking through the records and guests at Papp Hotel over the past month. It took him a few hours to find the person he thought would have made the call and once he did, he was sure he had the right man. The time was 21:34, and Oliver had just finished suiting up when Diggle entered the lair.
"Where are you heading off to so early?" asked Diggle.
"My contact pulled through with the phone. Got the location of the person that they'd last called," said Oliver, as he placed flechettes in his thigh holster.
"Where?"
"Papp Hotel. 1700 Broadway."
"Broadway?" asked Diggle, possessing the same thought Oliver had when Mia had told him. The Bertinelli construction yard was also on Broadway Street, 3 blocks from the Papp Hotel. "You thinking that the merc's last call was made to the sniper?"
"Yeah. The mercs and the sniper were obviously working together, for the people behind everything else."
"Everything else, which you still haven't yet proven to me is all connected," replied Diggle critically. "Surely you have an idea on who the sniper is?"
Oliver moved back to the computer and opened the tab with the man's profile and picture. "Rhys Walker. Nothing suspicious from the outside. Just seems to be an ordinary businessman. What's suspicious is that he has no living family and has been staying at the Papp hotel for, precisely, the last 27 days."
"That's from about a week before the mass shooting," recognised Diggle. Diggle eyed the man's picture. He appeared in good shape and was a fairly handsome fellow, sporting a thick mustache accompanied by a scruff of a beard. "He looks like he could be a movie villain," joked Diggle, "There's nothing concrete indicating that he's our guy though."
"True, but nonetheless, we need to pay him a visit."
"Sure," said Diggle, as his phone buzzed and he received a message, cursing as he read it. "Dammit."
"What is it?"
"They need me at ARGUS. Something's come up."
"Go."
"What if you need backup?" asked Diggle concernedly.
"I won't. Trust me."
The Papp Hotel hadn't changed a whole lot since the last time Oliver had been here, back when he was tracking Floyd Lawton during his early days as The Hood. Business struggled for a while, with people being wary of staying at a place where a vigilante had a shootout with a hitman, but that fear eventually went away. Slight refurbishes here and there kept the place in good shape, but it was still no place where a businessman of Walker's supposed caliber should be staying at all, let alone for over a month.
Walker was in room 32, situated right at the end of the floor hallway. Oliver had entered the premises through the window of an unoccupied room, and walked carefully in the hallway towards Walker's door. He wanted to be careful not to alert him with his presence outside of his room. Taking in a deep breath first, Oliver took a step forward before ramming his foot at the door hinge, breaking it open.
His eyes tracked movement to the far left corner of the room, where Walker shot up out of a chair, drawing a pistol. Having already nocked an arrow, Oliver fired it milliseconds before Walker pulled the trigger. The weapon fired, but the pistol was knocked out of his hands and the bullet missed Oliver. Oliver moved closer to the man, firing another arrow which pierced his left shoulder. Walker attempted a valiant fight upon closing the distance with Oliver, but Oliver's ambush gave him the advantage as his element of surprise proved too much of an obstacle for Walker to overcome. He threw out a punch, but Oliver ducked under it and swung his left fist right towards the floating rib on Walker's right side. A perfectly placed liver shot.
From that point on, Walker had no chance. He stumbled and prepared to fight back, but was unable to. The stinging sensation spread through his torso, and the pain forced him to kneel over. Within a couple of seconds, he had felt like his entire body had shut down, with the excruciating pain clouding his mind while all of the air left his body. It didn't help that Oliver immediately flew across the room to knee him directly in the face, knocking him to the ground.
The liver shot had done all of the work for Oliver, with the knee strike just to make sure Walker was truly out of the fight. Oliver nocked another arrow as he waited patiently for a few more seconds to allow Walker to catch some of his breath. He lifted his bow, aiming at Walker's chest before speaking.
"Rhys Walker, I will gladly put this arrow through your heart if you don't tell me who you work for."
"I don't work for anybody," wheezed Walker, wiping the blood that had started to pour from his nose. "I serve a cause."
"What cause?!"
"You wouldn't understand, with your bow and arrows and misplaced sense of righteousness." Oliver lost patience with Walker's cryptic speech, as he raised his bow slightly and fired the arrow just millimeters to the left of Walker's neck.
"Last chance," said Oliver as he nocked another arrow. "Who put you up to this?"
"You want a name? I'll give you one… Azrael."
As Walker finished his words, police sirens began to become audible to their ears, and Oliver realised it was time to leave. He placed the arrow back in his quiver, before turning Walker around and binding his hands together with zip ties. The sprawled parts of a rifle on the desk which Walker was previously sitting at would give the police a good enough indication of who he really was.
"You have no idea what you're up against!" declared Walker ominously as Oliver stepped towards the exit.
Oliver sped back to the lair as quickly as he ever had before, and practically sprinted down the stairs and towards the computers. He didn't even take his suit off, only doing so after an hour of research into 'Azrael'. At first, Oliver struggled with his searches, not knowing whether Azrael was a person or organisation.
He eventually found his answer, but the information was still scarce. "Azrael" was a person, an unidentified extremist. Unsubstantiated reports linked him to a couple of chemical attacks and assassinations, but the reports were just that. Unsubstantiated. Whatever he found appeared to be limited, and there was nothing of substance that could point Oliver in the direction of his true identity. Diggle never returned to the lair, and neither did Oliver to his apartment.
He was so focused on his research that he didn't realise that the sun had eventually risen. When he did, he took a momentary break to grab a cup of coffee to allow him to continue. He visited Bratva associates in the city who helped provide him with more pieces of information. Despite their fallout in 2017, Oliver and Anatoly eventually made amends, and Oliver was reinstated as a Bratva Captain. Oliver spent the whole next day piecing together whatever information he could find, only sleeping for 5 hours in the afternoon to rejuvenate before continuing. By the time he was done, he eyed down what he had gathered, and realised what a mighty task it would be to bring down what he was about to face.