Wicked – Chapter 5

By Christopher W. Blaine

DISCLAIMER: All of the characters and events portrayed in this work of fan fiction are ©2004 by DC Comics Inc. and are used without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2004 by Christopher W. Blaine.

Ben walked back across the street, a folder in his hand that probably shouldn't have been there. It was only a copy of the actual case file and it had cost him many, many favors, including a promise to mention a certain officer's name to a female copy editor, but now he had it.

He had glanced at it briefly inside the police precinct and what he had saw had not impressed him. He had come from Texas, where he had worked extensively with the Texas Rangers, so he knew something about police procedures and forensics. The evidence collection abilities of the Gotham City police left something to be desired. From what he could tell, the GCPD had managed to taint every single crime scene relating to the Wicked murders.

It was inexcusable, but there was really nothing he could do about it except hand the file over to Black Canary. Secretly he hoped that she had a line on a real detective because he honestly felt they were both out of their league. He was good at following a trail, but the police, through their ineptness, had managed to erase the path he needed to follow. From what he knew of the Black Canary, and that was woefully very little, she was not much of an investigator herself. The records on her that he had briefly scoured when he first joined the paper, had shown her to be nothing more than eye-candy for the Justice Society.

And her current attitude was doing very little to change that perception.

He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair as he approached his car. She was the only person who had stepped up to the plate in this game; everyone else was either trying to pass the buck or just ignoring it. Sure, the cops made like they really cared when the rich kids were taken and then murdered, but Ben had interviewed the poorer families and found that the real attitude was one of sterile sensitivity. It was almost as if the cops were scared of pursuing the killer!

"Oh, God! Didn't I say not to smoke in my car?" Ben asked, waving a gray cloud away as he opened his door.

"Did you?" she said with a smile. "I'm sorry, must be the blond hair." She accepted the file with a nod that dropped a line of ash into the floorboard. "Good boy."

"You're going to pay to have my car cleaned," he said as he started it up.

"No I'm not," she commented as she scanned the file's contents. As they pulled out onto the main road she closed it and asked if he knew where a large, detailed map of Gotham City was at.

Ben thought about it for a moment. He did not want to head back to the paper, mainly because he was sure that his editor would take one look at Black Canary and decide to assign the story to someone else. Ben was still trying to be accepted by the other reporters and he was making headway, but Wicked's desire to communicate with only him had caused some friction.

"The VFW hall has one," he announced. She asked how he knew and he said he liked to go there on Friday nights to put a way a few beers. "My girlfriend won't let me go to real bars."

She laughed. "And you actually listen to her, don't you? That's sweet."

"It isn't sweet, it's what you're supposed to do."

She gave him a hard stare. "You're a real by-the-book kind of guy, aren't you?"

He took in a deep breath. "I'm sorry. My problem is this story...this case. I'm in the middle of something when I'm supposed to be an outside observer. Reporters are supposed to report, not create the news."

"And knowing that the life of a young girl is in the balance isn't helping, is it?" she asked. She threw her cigarette out the window but blew the smoke in the cab of the car. Ben coughed and she chuckled. "Just try to remain objective. That's what you do, right?"

"It's different when there are kids involved," he told her. "I've got a son."

"I've got a daughter, so let's stop all of this pillow talk and get down to business. I want to plot out on a map everywhere this guy has struck and everywhere that he had dumped a body," she explained. He nodded and took a right turn a little hard. She ignored it and continued to elaborate. "It's called geographical profiling."

"No kidding."

"I annoy you, don't I?"

"Not really; I just expected a super-hero to be more heroic," he said.

There was silence for a few minutes. "It's not easy doing this...putting on a costume and trying to save the universe. Being a non-powered babe in a group full of super men."

He said nothing for the rest of the trip.

It took a full half-hour to get Black Canary away from the vets. Dozens of men, all of who had served during the "great war" had stopped what they were doing to approach and shake her hand or accept a grateful hug. Ben noted that she seemed a bit put off at first, but he suspected that was an adequate reaction. From their conversations, he assumed that men were always trying to touch her, mostly in an inappropriate way.

But this was different. Each one of them had a story to tell of how she had rescued a friend or saved a loved one; or perhaps there was a tale about the Justice Society and the way it had protected the home front during the war. She tried to explain that the war had been before her time, but the old warriors didn't care. They were in the presence of someone who understood them, had lived their lives in their time period. She was a piece of living history, unchanged despite the years, and they just wanted to hold onto her for a moment.

Ben busied himself by pulling a small table over to the map of Gotham City and then getting himself a cup of decaffeinated coffee. It was too late in the day to get the real stuff, though he was sure that he would need it before long. Super-heroes were notorious for keeping late hours. He then remembered to call his girlfriend.

By the time he had returned, Black Canary was busy putting pins on the map. For places where children had been kidnapped she put little American flags. The British Union Jack was for areas of release and some plain white pushpins indicated where dead bodies had been found.

Nodding her head, she reached over for a second folder that Ben had acquired. As she read through it and grabbed a handful of French flag pins, she explained why she had needed it. "I'm willing to bet that our friend is stealing his cars because none of the witness statements have the same vehicle in the area. This is a write-up of all of the stolen vehicles reported over the same period as the murders."

"You try to think of everything, don't you?" Ben asked. It was something he would have suggested as well, but he noticed that the Canary almost seemed to have a pathological need to be in charge of their little investigation.

She took another twenty minutes to put all of her pins up and then she sat down and simply stared. Ben looked at the map and then looked at her; there was no pattern he could see and he considered himself a pretty intelligent guy. He did have one useful piece of information. "He'll be hunting for his second victim in the next day or so if he keeps to his normal schedule."

Black Canary continued to stare at the map and nodded slowly. "Go on," she beckoned.

Ben pulled up a chair and picked up a pencil. He tapped it on the table silently as he spoke. "The interviews with the victims coincide with the descriptions he provides in his letters to me. He gets the first victim and immediately rapes them. He'll spend several days assaulting them, bathing them, assaulting them...he shaves them too."

"Completely?" she asked.

"No, just in the...you know, private areas."

"He's obsessive to the point it is a compulsion," she noted, but she also knew that it wasn't anything new she was revealing. "I don't suppose you've checked to see if this has happened anywhere else before?"

"Hey, I'm a reporter; I check everything. The closest thing I came to was a similar situation in Metropolis six years ago. Two children kidnapped...two boys...one was killed and the other was let go. A letter was sent to the Daily Planet but it was never published."

"That means Wicked got interrupted."

"Yep, but don't try pointing that out to the detectives on the case. They just shake their heads and head over to the donut box." Ben sighed and laid his pencil down. A vet came by and said something to Black Canary and then shuffled off to the bar for a drink.

"Is it really that bad here?"

"Hasn't there always been corruption in Gotham City, especially in the police department? Personally, I think they believe that this is some sort of mob thing...they are stupid enough to believe that."

Black Canary snorted. "I fought the old mob bosses of Gotham, like the Bertinelli's. They had a code of honor; they'd kill your kids, but they wouldn't rape them."

"That's really reassuring."

"So what's your theory, Mr. Tinsley?"

"Military. He joined the army or something. Not prison because a psycho like this would have gone nuts there, but the military gives him someplace to blend in and plan. Maybe even learn a skill."

"Or he needed to get away quick," she said. "Have you talked to the Metropolis cops on the case? Metropolis usually has pretty good ones."

"Dead and the case notes were destroyed when they were exterminating a rat infestation at their records department. They hadn't gotten to it for any sort of permanent back-up." He stood up and checked his watch. "Look, I need to get home. My girlfriend is already unhappy that I'm hanging out with a sex symbol..."

"You're trying to get on my good side..."

Ben flashed her a smile and she visibly relaxed. "Plus, I need sleep. I'm not a super-hero. I'd like to get my notes down for this day as well."

"Writing a book?"

"Actually, yes; why not?"

"No reason," she told him. They made chitchat for a few more minutes and ended the day with her assuring him she could get a ride. An older man at the bar with a crooked smile and a tall drink in hand waved to him when she nodded at him.

Once Ben was gone, she accepted a drink from her "date" and pulled out her cigarettes. She would have to call her husband after a while and check in. He was a detective by trade and they had fallen in love working on cases, much in the same manner she and Ben were. It was obvious, though, that Ben was more interested in his life than hers. He was working hard to be a good reporter; not a great one, but a good one.

Again she was reminded of how she had just wanted to be a good cop, and would have settled for being a good super-hero, but always felt as if she fell short of that goal.

Inhaling deeply she savored the flavor and then blew out hard. Several of the men were watching her chest and she decided to say nothing. These were good men who had put their lives on the line for their country and it said a lot about Ben that he considered these former warriors his friends. He was a good partner for this mission but she still wondered why she was even doing it.

Wasn't her day past? Hadn't the government basically tried to screw the Justice Society in 1951? Sure, the locals looked past that sort of thing, letting her run around and play hero as much as she wanted, but the truth was that nobody really wanted her help. The cops didn't care; they were just hoping that Wicked would move on. The rest of the Society didn't care (she was still kind of surprised that Green Lantern had not started investigating these crimes).

And she was not the detective her husband was, either. Exactly what was she trying to prove? What was truly motivating her? The need to do good no longer got her out of bed in the morning.

It was her daughter.

She had no fear of Wicked getting a hold of her child. Larry Lance would kill anyone who tried to harm little Dinah, just as her mother the super-hero would. Despite her greatest hopes, she was convinced that somehow the legacy of the Black Canary would make itself at home with her daughter and she wanted to stamp out the vilest evils she could before that day happened.

The world was changing and it was not getting any prettier.

"I just want to be like you, dad," Bruce whispered as he stood in front of the grave of his father. Alfred had called him in twice already for dinner, but the boy was having noen of that tonight. His outburst earlier had embarrassed him and he was not ready to face anyone yet. Instead, he kept his back to the Manor and faced the only two people in the world he felt would accept him no matter what he did, no matter what he said.

"You went after him, you attacked him to protect mom." Bruce reached a hand up and wiped his running nose. With his body positioned the way it was, he could not see the muscled form of Ted Grant watching him. Bruce had some awareness that Grant had been hired to protect him, but he considered the bodyguard nothing more than a nuisance. Alfred was trying his best, but Bruce refused to be stopped from his mission.

"I ducked...I let mom take the shot that was meant for me and I'm so sorry. I...I want to be a m..man like you," he got out before it became impossible to form words. His jaw muscles refused to obey his commands and he sniffled involuntarily. After a few moments he raised his head to watch the sun start to go down in the distance. "I've done everything you would have done, dad. I checked the sources and I wrote it all down. He had to be aiming for me and I got scared."

He looked to his mother's grave but remained silent except for the occasional sob. He had not been able to say very much to her since he had reached his damning conclusion. He feared her reaction.

Ted watched and made several mental notes. He understood a lot now, especially after looking through the boy's room. Bruce Wayne had somehow, in his search to reconcile the death of his parents, come to believe that the killer had actually meant to kill him. For whatever reason, the shot missed Bruce and hit his mother, or so the boy thought.

He now went to the spot where the attack had occurred to relive the horror, not to pay homage. He probably secretly hoped that the killer would return and finish the job. Ted had seen it many times before. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, he had dealt with all kinds of psychological horrors. Memories of the Great Depression filled his mind and he pushed them back. Now was not the time he told himself.

Bruce remained at the grave site for another three hours, crying the whole time. Exhaustion finally got the better of him and the boy literally dragged himself into the manor and up to his room. Ted slowly followed and once he was sure that the boy would not be making any excursions this night, he made his way to the kitchen.

There stood Alfred, his black coat removed and sleeves rolled up. Behind him was a thousand dollar dishwasher and a sink full of soapy water. "You know, that thing will wash dishes," Ted pointed out as he moved over to the coffee machine.

"Yes, but I do it much better," Alfred said with pride. As Ted poured a steaming cup, Alfred asked him what he thought.

"The boy needs...something," Ted said. "But I'll watch him. Nothing will happen to him this trip, I promise."

"That, Mr. Grant, you can rest assure, is something I will hold you to."