Dick entered the gym area of Ollie's basement to a blast of music, the thumping beat vibrating throughout his body, Dick grinned, "some things never change" he said quietly to himself, remembering the times when Roy's training sessions invariably involved his playing the stereo so loud that the whole training room at the Tower would reverberate with the force of the music, it was surprising, Thought Dick, that Roy was still able to hear anything afterwards.
Roy was on the treadmill, running at full sprint, he'd obviously been going at it for awhile, as Dick noted his sodden, sweat drenched singlet and sweat shorts. He'd also had enough, Dick noticed his gait was becoming clumsy, indicating his body was protesting, Roy should have been easing into a cool down jog, but he wasn't slowing down. 'Obviously a man on a mission' thought Dick, as he walked over and turned down the stereo, bringing his presence to Roy's attention by doing so.
Roy instantly slowed to a jog, turning and giving Dick a small wave of acknowledgement.
After a few minutes Roy got off the machine, and walked unsteadily over to Dick, panting he sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall that Dick was standing against. "Hey……Dickster, how's it hanging dude?" Roy said, attempting to put a jovial tone to his voice.
Dick chuckled, "Hanging better than yours will be if Ollie catches you running yourself into the ground like that."
"Nah man……..he knows I gotta let loose sometimes, and better I let it out on the equipment down here, than taking it out on any of them, 'sides he's gone out for a few hours with Dinah and Lian, Mia's off with the Titans, so it's only me and Connor here."
"YeahConnor told me when he let me in……..So……..You need to talk or anything man?" Dick asked as he walked over to a small fridge in the room, opened the door and pulled out a bottle of Gatorade and tossed it to Roy, before returning and sitting down on the floor beside him.
Roy caught the drink. "Thanks Mom" he joked as he opened it and gulped down a third of the bottle before answering Dick's question. "Nah, ain't got nothing to say dude……..bit hard to talk about what I don't remember."
"Ok…..so maybe we start out by working out how much you don't remember……..what about the first thing you can remember after Ollie found you?"
Roy looked at the ground, "I…….remember the hospital…not everything at first…but bits and pieces, Dinah, Doctor's that sort of stuff, but it's not really clear until a couple of days after I'd been there, that's about it really…..nothing before the hospital."
"Can you think back to what you remember before this all happened?"
"Yeah, clear as a bell, cleaning the living room up, it was Lian's birthday the day before, Mia and Dinah organized a party with some of her little buddies from school…..those kids really trashed the apartment, Lian had a great time." Roy chuckled at the thought, "Afterwards we went to the park, Ollie gave her a new bike and she was itching to try it out, we didn't bother cleaning up till the next morning."
"Lian's birthday? That's the last thing you remember?...Roy that was nearly four months ago."
"I know that dude." Roy said his voice beginning to show annoyance. "I've already gone through this with Ollie, the Police, Connor and Dinah……..I wish to hell you'd all stop asking the same things over and over." Roy snapped.
"Bud…….you know why we hafta do this, your in deep shit man, and we all want to get you out of it"
Roy sighed, downing the rest of his drink, before speaking. This time his voice was calmer, more controlled, "I know man, and I'm grateful…….It's just….I go over and over things in my head…trying to remember, trying to figure out what might have happened……I lay awake most of the night thinking about it until my head hurts, but nothing comes to me……..Then I get up, and I see Lian, and she………she's still so distant……Yeah she talks to me, and she'll give me a hug…..If I ask…..But it's all changed, and I don't know what the hell changed it, I don't know what my kid saw me do, and she won't talk about it to anyone……….So I can't even begin to pull down the wall she's built up……Then I go back to thinking about it all again, and not remembering……And then I'm asked if I remember anything again, and again…..And, well……It totally sucks man." Roy leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eye's.
Dick sat quietly for a moment, taking in what Roy had just said to him. Standing up, he turned and gave Roy a pat on the shoulder, before offering him a hand up. "I understand Buddy…….Tell you what….You tell me if you remember anything any earlier, but from now on we'll get together and talk once or twicea week and run through the boring questions, and I'll tell everyone else to back off a bit, deal?"
"Deal" Roy said, taking Dicks hand and pulling himself up on his feet.
"Right, now I'm going to wait for you upstairs, you take a shower……cause you stink man….Wally's coming over soon….we'll steal a couple of Ollie's beers and kick back for awhile.
"He bringing the Pizza's?"
"You know it, beer and Pizza, or in Connor's case some of that herbal tea shit he drinks and salad."
Roy headed towards the shower "Sounds like a plan man" he chuckled.
---------------------------------------------------
Dick paced the floor of his apartment, as Wally sat on a chair nervously bouncing his leg up and down at a speed which made it look like a blur.
"Ok, what do we have so far?" Dick asked out load, not really talking to Wally but just trying to get things in order in his own mind. "We, know that around the same time, or just before Roy and Cheshire where at the warehouse, someone else was there, that in itself, doesn't mean whoever it was had anything to do with what went down there, but combined with the fact that Oracle accessed the Police records, and other than Roy's weapons, The other main items of evidence found where two darts, both completely different, and the marks on them indicated they were both fired from different guns."
Wally spoke up. "Maybe they were both Roy's,…. shit the guy's got enough guns to fill an armory Dick, you know what he's like he's a gun freak at the best of time's"
"Wally, he might have a huge range locked up at home, but have you ever known him to carry more than a couple on him? Especially when he's carrying his bow, He certainly wouldn't be likely to waste space by carrying two guns that do the same thing, when he could carry one and some other weapon, besides we know there was only one on him when he was found, and the unused darts he was carrying with him are the standard ones he's been packing for the last year or so, The Police never found any other guns in their search and neither did I……..One of the darts was tested and contained the same sedative Cheshire had in her body, thatone was fired from the gun found on Roy,but the other one had been partly crushed and there wasn't enough residue in it to get conclusive results." Dick paused and turned to face Wally.
"Maybe it belonged to Cheshire?" Wally asked
"Cheshire doesn't need to use darts, not with the poisons she has on her fingernails." Dick paused, and then smiled. "You wanna give me a lift? We're gonna pay a visit to Roy's apartment."
-----------------------------------------------
A few minutes later the two young men, dressed as Nightwing and Flash, stood in the living room of Roy Harper's apartment.
"I'm glad Oracle was able to pull strings and stall the Police from issuing a warrant to search this place." Dick said, "I really needed to do this before them."
Flash walked towards the kitchen, "Don't touch anything Dude." Nightwing said.
Starting in the living room Nightwing began to search, he quickly noted that Roy's entry door was locked from the inside, which meant Roy had left through the window, which had been unlocked when he and Flash had entered, that also meant that the alarm was turned off. "Well I don't think Roy took Lian with him to that warehouse." Nightwing said, "Which means that probably, either Cheshire or someone else did"
"How do you know that?" Flash asked.
"Doors locked from the inside, I couldn't see Roy carting Lian out the window and over rooftops."
Entering Roy's room Nightwing noticed blankets piled on the floor, and Roy's smashed phone shattered into pieces on the other side of the room, it had obviously been thrown there with some force, he'd seen this before. "Good one Roy, you've really got to learn to keep that temper under control." He mumbled. He could imagine the scenario that had played out in this room, he'd seen similar scenes before, Roy had received some sort of call that he wasn't happy about and had hurled the phone against the wall. 'That's got to be the third phone this year that your damn temper has killed, Harper" He said to himself.
Nightwing continued the search, after half an hour or so Flash disappeared somewhere, returning after a few minutes, every so often he would repeat the action, standing around waiting, wasn't his strong point.
Nightwing noted the door to Lian's room had been flung open with enough force to dent the wall behind it, possible by Roy in a rush to check on her, the bed was unmade, but other than that Lian's room was untouched.
After continuing to search for another two hours, the two heroes's returned to Dick's apartment.
"Ok" Dick said, "The alarm wasn't turned off as I first thought…. it wasn't working, someone had shut it down from the outside, someone who knew their stuff, because I know that alarm was an excellent system, I helped Roy install it." Dick Paused before continuing, "From what I can see, it went something like this, Someone dismantled the alarm, then entered through the window, I'm guessing they took Lian, left, then called Roy… he's gotten his gear together and left to go wherever he was told."
'So some one set him up, there was someone else besides Cheshire involved." Wally said
"Not necessarily, Wally, it could have been Cheshire that took Lian…….But it doesn't make much sense that she'd take her, then call Roy and tell him where she took her……All we've really established is that it looks as though someone other than Roy took Lian to the warehouse…..I'm pretty sure someone else is involved, but we really don't have concrete proof of that, and thinking isn't gonna help Roy, we still need to find proof……Because really, it only makes sense to us that the clues point to someone else, because we know Roy, and we know how out of character this is, the Police don't have the benefit of years of working with him, so they aren't going to keep looking when much of the evidence they have pretty well condemns him."
"Maybe Roy will remember something, did you get a chance to talk to him about it?" Wally asked. "Cause I didn't want to bring it up today, he actually looked like he was starting to relax."
"Yeah, we talked…. This afternoon, before you turned up….. He still doesn't remember a thing, he's getting pretty pissed that he can't remember though, so I'm going to back off a bit, I told Ollie to leave it alone for a few days as well, see if Roy will remember something if he's not feeling pressured all the time by constantly being asked questions about it…….I wanted to talk to Lian, but Ollie's not prepared to let that happen yet, and I have to follow his lead there, it's touchy, and she's only a little kid, so we'll have to let her open up naturally when she's ready to talk about it."
"So what your saying is we've got lots of clues that don't give us much in the line of real answers?" Wally asked.
"That's the way it goes sometimes, we just have to keep chipping away until we find something that will make those clues all fall into place. It'll happen, it has to, because the alternative just isn't acceptable, I'm just hoping it happens before Roy ends up behind bars."
End Part 5