A/NI suppose I should begin by saying that I'm sorry about the awful delay in updating, but one should only apologize for things one doesn't intend to do again, and I unfortunately can't promise that it won't happen again. However, one hopeful factor is that I've finished my original novel, although it needs some editing, so that project won't be consuming my creative energy. School is whacked – the sheer amount of grading I have to do this semester is exhausting – but I'll be ok. I hope! One thing about having to wait this long before I summon up the energy for a chapter – it really makes me think twice about what's really important to the story. Enjoy!
Disclaimer This chapter was written under the duress of a royal order from my ex-roommate. Therefore, just as soldiers who fight at the command of their king are not responsible for the justness of the war, so am I not responsible for the quality of this chapter.
Chapter 4
School days, school days; dear old golden rule days.
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic; taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick.
- Will D. Cobb
Bruce slumped over his cup of coffee in the kitchen, trying to wake up. It was abominably early – only six-thirty – which meant he had gotten a whole two and a half hours of sleep, but he wasn't about to miss any of the events of this morning, Richard's very first day of high school.
Bruce couldn't quite remember how they had arrived in their current situation, but he was fairly convinced that he had been manipulated by both his ward and his butler. When Gordon had revealed that the riddle murders had definite ties to Bailey Academy, Richard had pounced on the idea of going undercover so that they could have a spy in place at the school. Although it would not actually be undercover, since he would attend under his own identity, as Bruce pointed out. He declared that he was not about to let Richard, as Richard, anywhere near the homicidal riddler. Richard argued that this type of hiding in plain sight was what made up Bruce's entire social life. Bruce, not willing to open the subject for debate, had returned a flat "No," and three days later found himself on the phone with the chairman of the school board, trying to wangle a mid-year spot for his ward in the city's most prestigious prep school.
Alfred, whose eyes in the back of his head seemed to grow sharper each year, turned away from the stove where he was scrambling eggs and smiled in the direction of the doorway. "Good morning, Master Richard."
"Hey, Alfred. Bruce, man, you awake there?" Richard asked, sliding onto the counter stool next to his guardian.
"Urgh," Bruce assented, casting a casual sideways glance at his ward. Then he did a double take, not certain his sleepy eyes had seen correctly the first time.
Richard smirked. "So, what do you think?"
Apparently Tanya, size 6, wielded more influence than Bruce had realized. Richard's nondescript brown hair was now inky black. The dark locks fell across his brow in beautiful disarray, and his fair skin, already at its palest in the dead of winter, appeared almost chalky, while his finely drawn bone structure was thrown into prominence. He could have modeled for a portrait of Lord Byron.
Bruce groaned and buried his face in his hands. "You look like the living dead."
"That's good," Richard said calmly, accepting his plate of eggs. "Vampires are very hot right now."
"I've created a monster," Bruce mumbled.
"Permit me to point out, sir, that Frankenstein's creation was not a vampire," Alfred volunteered in his most helpful tones.
Bruce dropped his hands in order to glare. "Why are you always on his side?"
"I'm not on anybody's side, sir, I was merely putting in a word for literary accuracy."
Richard laughed, spraying a mouthful of eggs across the counter, and had to hurry upstairs to change his tie before they could leave.
"Can I drive?" he asked Bruce as they pulled on their coats in the hallway before heading out to the car.
"No," growled Bruce, throwing open the front door. The Aston Martin was at the bottom of the stairs, purring and toasty warm inside, thanks to Frank, the early morning car guy.
Richard, who had really not stopped smirking since he had first appeared that morning, taunted, "Somebody was out too late last night."
Goaded beyond endurance, Bruce grabbed his ward by the collar and applied a rough hand to his head.
"Not the hair!" Rick yelled, twisting away and scowling fiercely into the hall mirror as he tried to repair the damage.
"Sir, if you wouldn't mind not letting in an enormous draft," Alfred put in, looking pointedly at the front door. "Do enjoy your day, Master Richard."
"Thanks Alfred!" His cheerfulness restored with his hair, Richard bounced out the door, followed by Bruce.
They pulled up in front of Bailey academy. The imposingly ornate brick building rose gracefully up from smooth, snow encrusted lawns. "You're sure you don't want me to come in with you?" Bruce asked, a little wistfully.
Richard rolled his eyes. "I'm sure."
"Remember the rules."
"Bruce, you've read me the list about a hundred times. I think I've got your rules down."
"Well, don't break any of the school rules either."
"If I do, I won't get caught." Rick grinned cheekily and swung himself out of the car. "See you tonight!"
"Right," Bruce sighed as he watched his ward head up the neatly shoveled walk.
Putting the car in gear he drove home much more slowly than was Bruce Wayne's usual habit. Although he was still half convinced that sending Richard to school was a bad idea, there were plenty of positives weighing in on the other side. Aside from the educational benefits, there was the reluctant agreement he had managed to wangle with his ward that said Richard could go to school only in exchange for giving up most of his night work. In addition, he had to keep his grades up, avoid irrevocably scarring his school record, and promise that if he did stumble across any leads to the murderer, he would contact Bruce before taking any action on his own. But Bruce couldn't shake the feeling that it wouldn't be enough to keep Richard safe. Maybe all parents feel like this on their kid's first day of high school, he reflected as he parked in the driveway, turned the keys over to Frank, and went in search of Alfred.
Richard pushed open the door whose frosted glass pane read OFFICE. A trim, gray haired woman looked up at him from behind the secretary's desk. "Hi, I'm new," he said cheerfully.
"You must be Richard." She picked up a manila envelope and offered it to him. "You'll find everything you need in here. Your books are waiting for you in your locker. Also, we've assigned a student guide to help you find your way around today." The secretary, whose desk plate read Mrs. Chambers, beckoned over a short, round faced boy who had been standing patiently off to the side. "Richard, this is Haliburton Gratchison IV. Why don't you two head along now and find Richard's locker. And Richard dear," she gave him a stern look over the tops of her spectacles, "you'll want to tuck in those shirt tails."
"Do I have to?" Richard asked his guide as soon as they left the office.
"Unless you want demerits," the chubby boy affirmed. "You'd better straighten up that tie, too, before a hall monitor sees you. And by the way, it's just Hal."
"It's just Rick," Richard responded, shifting his book bag so that he could tuck his shirt into the top of his navy uniform pants. He made a face as he fastened the top button of his collar and created a proper choking hazard out of his blue and scarlet striped tie (Bailey colors).
They stopped at a bank of lockers and Richard fished his assignment out of the envelope. Glancing at the combination, he spun the lock, and it clicked open without trouble. As Mrs. Chambers had promised, there was a neat stack of glossy textbooks inside. Rick hung his coat on the hook and looked at his schedule. "What do I need for homeroom, English, and history?"
"Nothing for homeroom, but we don't even have it today because of opening assembly. For the other two you need the poetry book and …"
"And the history book," Rick finished, pulling the two volumes out of his stack. He slammed the locker and unzipped his bag to toss them inside. He looked up to say something to Hal … and then it happened.
She came down the hall toward him, gliding on long, gorgeous legs displayed to full advantage beneath her pleated school skirt. She was almost past him before he thought to look at the rest of her, and he got only a brief, shattering impression of blazing green eyes in an ivory face. And then she was gone and Rick was left with oddly slippery knees and a dull buzzing in his brain.
"She's out of your league, man." Hal's voice seemed to come from a long ways away, but when Richard finally turned his head, the other boy was standing right next to him, looking sympathetic. "That's Barbara Gordon," he added, as though it were an explanation in and of itself.
"Barbara," Richard repeated, dazed. The goddess's name was Barbara … Something clicked into place. "Gordon?" he demanded. "As in …"
"Yeah, as in the police chief's daughter." Richard couldn't help a grimace of dismay, but fortunately, Hal seemed to think this was perfectly normal. "And if that wasn't enough," he continued, as they finally began to walk down the hallway, "she's a senior and she's got a steady boyfriend."
"Strike three," Rick muttered, his knees still wobbly. He was so preoccupied that he nearly ran into a man in a blue coverall who was hurrying down the hall with a spray bottle and roll of paper towels. "Sorry!" he apologized, just barely jumping out of the way.
"Sorry, Mr. Harris," Hal added.
"No worries, boys, no worries." The janitor was a little portly, balding, and from the way he was peering at Richard, nearsighted. "New one, are you?" he asked.
"That would be me," Richard affirmed.
"You'll be all right," the old man assured him, kindly if a little irrelevantly. "I have to go and polish the trophy cases before Mr. Sturgeon walks by. Mrs. Simmons had her little boy in this morning, and the fingerprints!" He shook his head, clucking a little, and hurried away.
Richard looked questioningly at Hal, who tapped his temple significantly. "I figure there's a few synapses firing blanks up there. But he's not a bad guy, Mr. Harris. He knows more than anyone else about what's going on in this school, and if he likes you, he'll help you out."
Rick finally snapped out of his Barbara induced haze and remembered why he was at Bailey in the first place. Someone who knew everything that was going on would definitely be a useful acquaintance. "What kind of people does he like?"
"People who don't make messes."
They joined an increasingly large stream of students that was flowing into a set of double doors with Maxwell Auditorium engraved above them. "We have seats together," Hal explained as they entered the well lit hall and he led the way to the appropriate row. "That's why I got to be your guide. You'll find that Bailey has a small alphabet fetish. They organize us first by grade and then by last name."
They were forced to pause in the narrow aisle as the flow around them came to a standstill. Craning his neck, Rick saw that a kid had come to a dead stop for no apparent reason. "Hey move!" an irritated voice somewhere ahead of them snapped, followed by a shushing sound. At last the kid moved ahead, and the line started up again.
"That was David Stern," Hal whispered.
Bruce stared down at the file, going over the evidence for what felt like the two hundred and fiftieth time. Georgia Stern, her elderly father, and her neighbor's infant daughter had been slaughtered in the Stern's basement while her husband and son were at a party halfway across town. According to the husband, Georgia had come down with a migraine that afternoon, which is why she hadn't gone to the party, but the son, David, had confided that he thought his mother was faking the headache because she had just had a big fight with her mother-in-law, the party's hostess. The baby had been kidnapped from her second floor nursery while the babysitter was on the phone with her boyfriend downstairs.
The baby … Bruce closed his eyes and wondered what malicious whim of fate had decreed that Commissioner Loeb's daughter and her family should live next door to the killer's target and that it should be his granddaughter that was chosen to fill out the rank of corpses. Loeb was screaming for action, and Gordon, already on the commissioner's black list, was taking the worst of the scorching.
And the worst of it was, the killer had told them who he was going to murder next. The false tooth that had been slipped in among those pulled from the first victim's mouth belonged to Georgia Stern. In a cosmetic surgery a year ago, she had had implants installed for two of her lower teeth and had been given a "flipper" to fill in the gaps while she waited for her gums to heal before the permanent crown was installed. She had later donated the plastic ridge with its two false teeth to her son for his health class project (after first swearing him to secrecy about where he had gotten it) and he had lost it at school – at Bailey. Now one of those false teeth had reappeared, cut from its plastic base so that it could rest inconspicuously in the circle.
If the murderer had warned them about his future plans the first time, then he would have done it the second time as well. Gordon and his team had been going over the evidence with a fine tooth comb, trying to figure out which piece of the carefully arranged tableau was pointing to the next victim. Their best guess lay with the cane that had been placed in the old man's hands, but which had turned out not actually to belong to him, so it fit the criteria the murderer had set up the first time. Like the tooth, it was passed off as a natural, not an intrusive element in the scene. And like the tooth, its true owner would be difficult to trace. All fingerprints had been carefully wiped away, and its plain, durable make probably had fifty thousand twins scattered across the city.
Bruce was used to people who killed – for power, for money, for pleasure. But this – this use of death like a sketch pencil, to fill in a little picture for no other apparent purpose than to amuse – it reminded him of a caption blazoned on the outside of a magician's kit he had bought for Richard several Christmases ago: Astound your friends! Confound your enemies!
It did more than turn his stomach. It frightened him. And now Richard was in the middle of it, watching, listening, and perhaps being watched and listened to in return.
Richard and Hal ate lunch with a group of Hal's friends, including his rather clingy girlfriend April, and then they compared schedules again. Although their morning classes had been identical, their paths were now diverging. April and Hal were going to geometry, and Richard had something called "Mathematical Elementals." April giggled when she heard the name of the class.
"You have Animal Math?"
Rick looked at her, confused. "What?"
"It's just a dumb name somebody came up with for that class," Hal put in hastily. "Don't worry about it. So you understand how to find the classroom?"
"Yeah, just around the corner there." Rick shoved his hands in his pockets. "Hey, thanks for letting me hang with you this morning."
Hal shrugged. "No problem." Then he added frankly, "I'm getting extra credit in my junior leadership class for this. But you can sit with us again tomorrow if you like."
"Thanks," Richard drawled, not entirely sure how to take that remark. "I'll see you guys later." He walked down the hall, unobtrusively observing the faces of everyone he passed. Bailey wasn't a huge school, and he'd already looked at photographs of students as well as faculty and staff. It was important that he figure out as soon as possible how networks in this place worked. He wouldn't be able to spot what was out of place unless he knew how things were supposed to work.
Actually, his first day had been a little overwhelming, he admitted to himself as he slipped into the desk with Grayson typed next to the slot for fifth period. Although he watched people all the time, he did it as a detached observer – it was much more complicated to have to worry about his own self presentation at the same time.
As if to illustrate his thoughts, the girl in the desk next to his was peering sideways, looking afraid that he might catch her looking at him. Richard offered a smile, and she immediately bent her head so that a dark curtain of hair concealed her face.
"All right, people, take out your books and open up to section five point two." The math instructor was petite, with carroty hair that was nothing like Barbara Gordon's glorious red head. Seeing her had been far and away the best part of the day, and Richard absently slipped into a daydream were she actually looked at him and said Hi, when a sharp voice called him back to the classroom. "Mr. Grayson? I assumed you are Mr. Grayson?"
"Uh, yeah," Richard muttered, squirming a little beneath the teacher's critical stare.
"I realize this is your first day, but would it be too much strain to join the class in turning to five point two?"
"Sorry," he muttered, hastily flipping through the book.
"Now that we're all on the same page," the teacher, Ms. Simpkins he remembered from his schedule, continued, "Let's see if you remember anything you learned before the winter break. Take ten minutes to do the first ten problems."
There was a collective groan, and Rick examined section five point two, curious to see what the cause of it was. Convert each fraction to a decimal, the single line of instructions read, and below it were numbered rows of fractions. Rick stared at the page in confusion, and then raised his hand. He could have sworn Ms. Simpkins sighed before she called his name. "Yes, Richard?"
"I don't think I understand what we're supposed to do," he confessed, feeling embarrassed. The homework assigned in his other classes was already daunting, and he had been hoping to have an easy time in the math class. When Bruce had enrolled him, he had explained that Rick would be working with a private math tutor, but the principal had informed them that while all students were, of course, encouraged to seek tutoring outside school whenever necessary, everyone was required to be enrolled in an actual class. Rick had been resigned to having a class that might, perhaps, deal with concepts he had already mastered with Alex, but he had been pleasantly surprised by the "Mathematical Elementals" which he assumed would be a class in programming. Although he had been messing around with his own programs for some time, any class that allowed creative work time would be a plus.
"Convert the fractions into decimals. If you are unfamiliar with the procedure, there are directions at the beginning of the chapter."
"So … you just want us to convert each fraction into a decimal," Richard repeated cautiously. "That's it?"
He actually heard the sigh this time. "Yes, Mr. Grayson."
"But … why?" he asked, feeling more confused than ever.
"Why? Because I told you to," Ms. Simpkins snapped.
"But … isn't it a little … pointless?" he blurted out, and then heard Alfred's voice whispering, Tactless, Master Richard.
Ms. Simpkins apparently agreed with the imaginary voice because her eyes went narrow and hard, while her mouth drew into a wrinkled little bud, as though it had been tightened with a drawstring. "Until you acquire a teaching license of your own, Mr. Grayson, I suggest that you allow me to decide what is necessary for this class."
There were a few titters from the back of the room. Richard slunk down in his seat and wished he could simply sink through the floor. This was the first class in which he had asked any questions, and he definitely regretted the experiment. Still cringing inwardly, he pulled out his notebook and opened it to a clean page.
There was a little rustle next to him, and Rick turned to see the girl holding out a piece of paper covered in squares. "Would you like some graph paper?" she whispered through her curtain of hair.
"Thanks," he whispered back, taking it. Still feeling as though he must be missing part of the directions, he glanced surreptitiously at her own sheet. She had written her name, Carmen Leo, in careful cursive at the top of the page, and she had copied down the first fraction beside a number one, but that was as far as she had gotten. She was now chewing on the end of her pencil, her head bent over the page, and her hair prevented him from reading her expression.
"Richard Grayson!" Ms. Simpkins' furious voice snapped through the quiet air of the classroom. "If you cannot pay attention to your own work, then you will have to come up here and sit with me." She pointed at a student desk that sat next to her own large one.
With horror, Rick realized that she must have seen him looking at Carmen's paper and thought he was trying to copy the answers. It would be no good trying to explain, so he quietly gathered up his things and moved into the desk at the front of the room. The eyes of every student in the room seemed to be pinned on him, and he heard another snicker go around as a hot flush crept up his face. He wanted, more than anything, to be shielded in his cape and cowl, crouched invisibly in the corner of some dark rooftop. Scowling down at his paper, Richard copied down the assigned fractions and their equivalent decimals as quickly as he could. If he was doing it wrong, he would find out soon enough.
But he wasn't doing it wrong. And as the lesson progressed from converting fractions to adding and subtracting them, he snuck a glance through the rest of his book. It had nothing at all to do with the elemental functions necessary to programming and everything to do with the elements – basic principles – of math. Feeling generally stupid for having made such a mistake, Rick kept his head down and his mouth shut for the rest of the class. At the end of the period, he meekly wrote down his homework assignment and escaped out the door.
His next class, something called Life Skills, was only a few doors down the hall, so he was the first one into his seat. Closing his eyes and deliberately controlling his breathing, he focused on dispelling his frustration and embarrassment. After all, it was his first day back at school in seven years. It was only to be expected that he get confused in a class or two. But it was nothing he wouldn't figure out, and it was definitely nothing he needed to worry Bruce about. Bruce was already skittish about this whole idea. No, he, Richard, would go to the stupid math class like he was supposed to and do everything they told him to. And he would remember why he was here in the first place, so that as soon as he got his bearings in this bizarre new environment, he would find the clues that would lead them to the killer. Resolved, calm, and focused, Richard opened his eyes and found Barbara Gordon in the seat next to him.
The secretary's voice buzzed gently over the intercom. "Mr. Wayne?"
"Yes, Jessica?" he asked absently, flipping through a stack of reports and wondering whether he ought to be at the school to pick up Richard a few minutes early.
"Selina Kyle is here to see you."
Bruce's eyebrows flew up in surprise. He hadn't seen Selina since the night of the ill-fated New Year's party, when the mysterious thief had somehow swooped across the casino balcony, ripping diamond necklaces right off the necks of Irina Couture and the woman next to her, pushing Bruce into the pool, and shoving Selina Kyle down a flight of stairs en route to the exit. It wasn't until later that the casino discovered its house safe had also been robbed, and nearly a million dollars worth of hotel guests' jewelry was gone. But spectacular as the robbery was, it had been pushed by the riddle murder onto page two, both of the papers and Bruce's list of priorities.
Jessica was whining into the intercom. "I told her she needed an appointment to see you, but she insisted …"
"It's all right, send her in."
There was a short pause, and then Jessica said sulkily, "Right away Mr. Wayne." Bruce was aware this secretary to a playboy job had been a disappointment to her. Jessica had originally envisioned seeing much more of him as playboy and much less of herself as secretary.
He unobtrusively slid his stack of reports into a desk drawer as the door to his Wayne Tower office opened and Selina entered. From the sardonic lift at the corner of her mouth, he thought she had caught his move with the papers, but he kept his own expression innocent. "Selina, how are you?" he asked, standing and moving around the desk to greet her.
"I'm fine. Thank you for the get well flowers."
"You're welcome. I'm just glad you didn't break anything tumbling down those stairs."
"Bruises only," she assured him, pushing back the sleeve of her blazer to show him a purple splotch that had begun to go green around the edges.
"Did you actually see the burglar?" he asked curiously.
She shook her head. "No, I was shoved sharply from behind. I didn't know a thing until I was falling."
He nodded. "Same here. Good thing I know how to swim."
"Speaking of which, I brought you something." Reaching into her black leather shoulder bag, she produced a flat package wrapped in tissue paper and silver ribbon.
"Thanks. Should I open it now?" Bruce asked, accepting it.
"Please do."
He tore off the paper and found himself holding bright yellow inflatable life vest. "Wow, thanks."
"You're welcome. I got the inflatable kind so that it could fit under your tuxedo. Just in case this ever happens again."
Grinning, Bruce straightened out the rubber so that he could read the small print at the bottom. "Property of LexCorp."
Selina's eyes gleamed with amusement. "I stole it from Lex's jet."
Bruce burst into laughter. "What happens to Lex if his jet goes down in the Atlantic next trip?"
"I'll spend the rest of my life saying, 'Out damned spot!'"
Bruce laughed before he could catch himself. What was it about this woman that made him forget who he was?
Selina pounced on his slip. "So, even the notoriously illiterate Bruce Wayne has read Macbeth."
"I have the condensed version," he explained, trying to recover. "Great classics in five minutes or less."
"What a relief. I thought Gotham's most notorious playboy was about to turn out to have feet of gold."
Bruce was ready for that one and gave a blank, polite smile, but he wasn't certain she fell for it. However, Selina didn't pursued the topic but instead asked, "Would you like to go and grab some coffee? I have an hour to kill before my meeting."
Bruce glanced at his watch. "I can't," he said, with genuine regret. "I have to pick my kid up from school. It's his first day."
"Away from the careful eyes of his tutor, into the big bad world of the prep school," she said mockingly, but without malice. "It was all over Gotham Gossip this morning."
"Yeah," sighed Bruce. "And they're probably waiting to pounce on him the moment he comes out the door, so I'd better get going. Can I take a rain check on the coffee?"
Selina smiled tauntingly. "We'll see. It doesn't rain very often where I come from."
To Be Continued
A/N Thanks so much for bearing with me during this tough semester! Your reviews are enormously encouraging, and are the main reason you have this chapter right now.