(A/N: As always, thank you for your patience, which I shall reward with a nice long, juicy chapter. I plan to not wait long between updates too, having already started Chapter 17. And FYI, I have decided that EotM will only cover season 1. I think that's a big enough commitment as it is. :P)
Chapter 16—Where Things Turn Sketchy
Felicity rolled her chair forward and propped her elbows on Detective Lance's desk.
"So . . . lunch?"
"Kinda busy right now, Smoak," Lance said without looking up.
"With what? I'm the one who did all the paperwork, in exchange for seven glorious hours of sleep," she said, leaning back and stretching her arms over her head.
"I still have to write my own report."
Felicity watched him hunt and peck on the keyboard for about fifteen seconds before she stopped him by covering the computer screen with her hands.
"Smoak," he growled.
"Seeing you pound on the keyboard like that wounds me deeply," she said. "You're fulfilling the grouchy-cop cliché."
"Oh, well, say no more. I wouldn't want to be a cliché," he replied, sarcasm oozing from every word.
"Can I just—" Felicity rolled her chair around his desk and bumped him aside. She began typing, referring to his scrawled notes.
Lance watched her for a minute, then leaned back in his chair. "Someday you're gonna be one of those moms who does her kids' homework for them."
The phone on his desk rang, and he reached past her to grab it. "Detective Lance," he said into the receiver.
Felicity tuned out his voice, concentrating on deciphering his handwriting. The sooner she finished, the sooner they could grab some lunch. She felt like Chinese—it was an egg roll kind of day.
"So I'm driving."
She glanced up. Lance had hung up the phone and was looking at her like she'd just sprouted a third arm.
"Did you hear anything I just said?" he asked.
Felicity shook her head. "I stopped listening after you answered the phone."
"Stop doing my homework and get your head in the game. We got a drive-by shooting outside Queen Consolidated." He leaned around her and grabbed his notebook, shoving it in his jacket pocket. "One dead at the scene. Moira Queen's being taken to the hospital."
Felicity half-rose from her chair. "Was she shot?"
"Hit her head on the sidewalk," said Lance. "Which you'd know if you'd been paying attention."
"I'd have been paying attention if your awful handwriting wasn't taking up all my concentration," Felicity replied, but he was already heading for the door. She grabbed her purse from her desk and hurried to catch up with him.
Uniformed officers had already taped off the crime scene, a stretch of sidewalk outside Queen Consolidated, and the body had been covered with a tarp. It would piss off the techs, but Felicity thought it was a smart move considering the swarm of reporters and onlookers just outside the perimeter.
Lance went up to one of the officers while Felicity approached the body. Major Crimes meant homicides, and homicides meant bodies. If she wanted to keep her job, she'd have to learn how to control her emotions at a murder scene.
With her back to the crowd, Felicity lifted the edge of the tarp. One shot to the chest. Small-caliber entry wound, thank God, so the really gross stuff wouldn't be visible. The man's eyes were still open but had begun to cloud over. Something about him was familiar.
"Are you about to contaminate evidence?" Lance asked, appearing at her side. "You look a little pale."
Felicity shook her head. "I'm fine, but look." She raised the corner of the tarp a little higher. "Recognize him?"
The detective crouched down for a better look. "I'll be damned." He rose again. "It's Copani, one of Frank Bertinelli's men. How'd you recognize him?"
She shrugged. "Major Crimes. It seemed like a good idea to familiarize myself with the big players on the seedier side of Starling City."
Something approximating a genuine smile crept across Quentin Lance's face. "Look who's been doing her homework."
Felicity beamed back at him. It was the first time he'd acted impressed since she hacked Oliver Queen's ankle monitor. It felt good.
"Well, between him and Moira Queen, I'd say this guy was the likelier target," Lance continued. "Tell me what you know about Bertinelli."
"He's in construction, but in the way that Al Capone was in the furniture business," said Felicity. "He's shady, and he collects a lot of shady characters around him. Copani worked for him extorting protection money." Felicity drummed her fingers on her lower lip. "There've been some other deaths among Bertinelli's employees, right?"
Lance nodded. "Copani makes three. Let's go talk to Moira Queen while CSU does their thing."
"Oh, yay," Felicity said, sarcastic.
For someone who wasn't even being formally admitted to Starling City General, Moira Queen was being treated eponymously, like a queen. No languishing in a crowded ER for her. She was relaxing in a private room while her doctor examined her CT scan. Detective Lance and Felicity rode the elevator up to the eighth floor and headed down the hall. As they rounded the corner, a female voice rose in volume.
"You left Mom in the street. Alone and hurt, in the street. To get a license plate?"
Thea Queen stood with her arms crossed outside her mother's room. Her school uniform was disheveled, the shirt untucked and her tie askew. She was facing off with Oliver.
"You don't believe me?" he asked his sister.
Thea sighed. "I love you," she said. "Mom loves you. But it's getting hard when you won't be truthful with us." She turned to go back into the room when she spotted Felicity. The young detective smiled at her, but Thea said nothing and entered the room.
Oliver shoved his hands in his pockets and walked toward them, looking from Lance to Felicity like he couldn't decide who he was least happy to see.
"Detectives," he said. "Do you have any leads on the shooter?" His tone was all business now instead of the quiet, almost vulnerable way he'd spoken to his sister.
Felicity looked to Lance, but he was silent. And clenching his jaw, she could see.
"No leads yet," she said to Oliver. "Did you get a look at him?"
"No." Oliver took his hands out of his pockets. "He was wearing a helmet."
"Don't worry. We'll find him." Felicity looked down and saw her hand on his arm, her bright blue fingernails vibrant against his black sleeve. She had no idea when she'd raised her hand, but Detective Lance was looking at it too. She could almost hear his teeth grinding. She dropped her hand.
Oliver cleared his throat, addressing Lance. "My head of security is on his way. I want to make sure there are men outside my mother's door. She needs to be protected."
"Well, you know your family's at the tippy-top of my list of priorities," Lance said drily, "but the guy she was with was connected. Mobbed-up-to-the-eyeballs connected. She wasn't the target."
Oliver abruptly walked away down the hall, brushing past Felicity.
Lance huffed. "And you're welcome."
Moira Queen was in the process of being discharged when Felicity and Detective Lance entered her room. She looked up briefly, then turned back to the nurse, who ignored the interruption. Thea glared at them from her perch on the wide window sill.
"Who are you here to arrest this time?" Thea asked. "You're running low on options."
"Thea, don't be rude," Mrs. Queen admonished her daughter. With a regal gesture, she dismissed the nurse, and then gave her full attention to Lance and Felicity. "Detectives, surely this can wait. It's been a long and difficult day, and I'd like to get settled at home."
"We understand that," said Lance, "but with the shooter still at large, it's imperative that we get all witness statements as soon as possible." He whipped out his notebook.
Felicity approached Thea. "We'll post someone at the door until your mom leaves," she said. "And we'll have a marked car at the end of your driveway all night. But for what it's worth, we don't think the shooter was aiming for your mother."
Thea laughed bitterly. "I'd say thanks, but I don't exactly have much confidence in the cops right now," she said. "You people thought Ollie was a murderer. Ollie."
"I understand why you feel like you can't trust the cops," Felicity said, putting a hand on her arm. "But I'm not asking you to trust the whole department. Just trust me."
Thea's expression softened a little. "I do," she said. "Because I know Ollie trusts you, and he's not exactly free with his trust these days."
"He told you about me?" Felicity asked.
"He said you helped him out with some computer stuff," Thea replied. "I heard him tell Walter a few weeks ago."
"Thea, sweetheart, could you bring my clothes over here?" Moira asked. "Detective Lance is finished, and I'm ready to go home."
Thea smiled at Felicity and then crossed the room to her mother's bedside.
"Where is Oliver?" asked Moira.
"He took off," Thea said with a sigh. "Again."
Detective Lance nodded toward the door, and Felicity followed him out of the room.
"You smooth things over with the kid?" he asked her as they went down the hallway.
"I think so," said Felicity. "Did you get anything new out of Mrs. Queen?"
Lance shook his head. "She didn't even see the shooter. All I learned was that Copani fell backward when he was shot, knocking her down. Which only confirms in my mind that he was the target, not her."
Back at headquarters, felicity was on her fourth egg roll as she and her partner looked at evidence and tossed ideas around.
"So you think it's one of the other mob families?" she asked him. "Like the Chinese Triad?"
"No," said Lance, wiping a drip of soy sauce off his bottom lip.
"Then who?"
He flicked a wasabi packet at the board. The police artist's sketch of the Hood had been moved down to the corner to accommodate photos and notes on the three Bertinelli employees who'd been murdered.
"Well, according to the coroner's reports, none of the vics took a clean shot," he said. "Half the bullets missed. Our killer is not a pro. That, to me, rules out hits from other families."
Felicity chewed and swallowed. "Being an amateur's not stopping him from pulling the trigger."
"No, that's up to us," said Detective Lance. "If Bertinelli blames the Triad or anyone else, this could blow up into an all-out mob war."
By the time she left for home that night, Felicity felt like she could have qualified in court as an expert on organized crime in Starling City. She read fast and had consumed just about everything the police department had on Frank Bertinelli and his criminal enterprise. Her thoughts lingered on what she'd learned about Bertinelli's daughter as she drove up to the Italian restaurant up the street from her apartment.
Felicity had experienced loss in her life, and it had changed her, but it was hard to fathom the kind of despair Helena Bertinelli must have felt when her fiancé was murdered by an unknown assailant. Her father's business put the lives of everyone around him in danger, but even knowing that couldn't prepare someone for losing the person she loved.
Lost in thought, Felicity walked into the restaurant on autopilot. She barely remembered paying for her take-out order and didn't really come back to herself until she was in her parking space.
Once inside her apartment, Felicity fed Jpeg and then laid out her dinner on the coffee table. TV seemed like a good idea to turn off her brain. She switched on the remote with one hand and speared a bite of smoked salmon and Gouda tortellini with her fork in the other hand.
Three hours and six episodes of The X-Files later, she was stuffed and dozing on the couch. The apartment was kind of stuffy, so she had opened the window a couple of inches. That made it easy to hear the gunshots.
She lived near the Glades, but not so close that the sound of gunshots was par for the course. There were a lot of gunshots, and they were close by. Grabbing her phone, Felicity called in to Dispatch and gave her badge number.
"Shots fired," she said. "I'm at 1614 Aurora, just up the road from Carter Street." She snatched up her purse, unsnapped the built-in holster, and withdrew her gun. "The shots were close, but—"
"How many?" asked the dispatcher.
"I don't know. More than one. A lot more." Felicity checked the magazine and then slammed it back into the pistol. "I'm going to check it out."
"Negative, 2115. Wait for backup."
Felicity rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to charge in alone, gun blazing, but she wasn't about to return to the couch until she heard sirens, either. She ended the call, shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops, and went to look for the source of the gunshots.
The street was deserted, the threat of violence having scared off anyone who might have lingered. Felicity edged along the sidewalk, keeping to the shadows. Up ahead, a door slammed open. She pressed up against the building, her shoulder blades digging into the brick, and clicked off her gun's safety.
A slim figure in black leather darted out from a doorway and leapt onto a motorcycle parked illegally on the sidewalk. The rider wore a helmet, but Felicity thought she saw a swath of dark hair peeking out from the back. The mystery motorcyclist gunned the engine and took off with a squeal of tires on pavement.
Felicity crept forward. The person had come out of Russo's, the restaurant she'd gotten her take-out from hours earlier. Again, the door flew open, and Felicity flattened herself against the building. Someone else, someone she recognized, charged out of the restaurant and looked up the street. Someone clad in green leather, with a hood pulled low over his face.
She bit back a gasp as he turned in her direction. He was looking for the biker, she knew, but it would only take one close glance for the Hood to spot her in the shadows. Felicity wished she could melt into the wall.
"Which way?"
She jumped. With his hood covering his features, she couldn't be sure he was looking at her.
"Felicity. Which way?"
Her gasp slipped out this time. That deep, weirdly electronic voice had said her name. The Hood knew her name.
The gun she held behind her back felt extra-heavy. With her left hand, she pointed up the street, in the direction the motorcyclist had gone.
He nodded at her, then ducked into an alley between buildings. Moments later, a sleek black motorcycle with a more powerful engine roared out of the alley. Its rider wore a helmet—and green leather.
Felicity slumped against the wall. The street was quiet once again, but she stayed in the shadows until she saw a cop car pull up in front of Russo's, lights flashing. She engaged the safety again on her gun. Pulling her badge from her pocket, she raised her hands and stepped away from the shelter of the building.
Two uniformed officers got out of the car, guns drawn. Felicity stopped, keeping her hands in the air.
"Detective Smoak, Major Crimes," she said.
One officer approached the restaurant, and the other came toward Felicity. He glanced at her badge and then nodded. She lowered her gun.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Are you on duty?"
"No," said Felicity. "I live a few doors down. I heard gunshots and called it in."
"How do you want to handle it?"
Felicity stared at him. Was he deferring to her?
"Detective."
She blinked. "What?"
"I asked how you want to handle this?"
She thought for a second. "I'm a witness," she decided. "I'll have to wait out here."
The officer nodded again. He joined his partner at the front entrance of Russo's.
"Be careful," she called out to them. "I saw two people run out, but there could still be a shooter inside."
Felicity watched them enter the building. More officers would arrive any minute. It was time to call her partner.
Predictably, Lance flipped. He seemed more upset about her approaching the scene than about her second encounter with the Hood, but she figured that could come later. He ordered her to stay where she was until he got there.
She shivered. She hadn't bothered with a jacket when she ran out of her apartment.
The cop who'd first spoken to Felicity led a woman out of the restaurant. It was Gina, Mr. Russo's daughter. Gina had brought out Felicity's meal and ran her debit card. The woman's gaze landed on her. Felicity waved.
"You can wait here with the detective," the officer said to Gina. "I'll send your father out in a minute."
Felicity opened her mouth to protest. Witnesses were supposed to be separated. But it was his mistake, and she was off-duty, and Gina was clearly shaken.
"Gina, are you okay?" She put her arm around the other woman's shoulders.
"I—There—There are bodies," said Gina. "Dead men, in the restaurant—" Her voice faltered, and she leaned hard on Felicity.
"You're pale. Why don't we just sit down?" Felicity led her to the curb, and they sat. "Were you hurt at all? Was your dad?"
Gina pulled at the hem of her black dress. "I'm not hurt. My father—they hit him, but that was before the hooded man showed up and they started shooting."
Emilio Russo burst out of the restaurant. "Gina!" he cried.
"Papa!" Gina leapt to her feet and hugged her father.
Felicity stayed seated on the curb and looked away. Detective Lance drove up in his personal vehicle, a beige Camry. There was never a more blah car. She waited for him to get out. He still wore his work clothes too. She wondered if he'd gone home at all.
"Damn, Smoak," he said when he'd come to stand in front of her. "I can't leave you alone for five minutes without you getting neck-deep in something."
"It's a gift," she replied.
He gave her a hand, hauling her to her feet. "I'm going in, see what we've got, and then you're gonna tell me everything."
Felicity nodded. He turned, but she called him back with a "Hey!"
"Can I lock my gun in your car?" she asked. "It's, um . . . it's getting a little heavy."
Lance smiled. It was like seeing a rare animal in the wild—she froze, worried that any movement would send his smile scurrying back to its hiding place. He tossed her his keys and went into the restaurant.
After locking her gun in the glove compartment, Felicity searched the car for a jacket, or anything she could use to keep warm, but there was nothing. She went back to Gina and her father. Mr. Russo had a big knot on his head but otherwise seemed fine. Physically, anyway. He was working himself into a state over what might happen to his business.
Detective Lance came out again and beckoned to Felicity.
"Two vics inside," he said in a low voice, glancing at the Russos. "Bertinelli's guys. Pretty low on the food chain. I guess he's being forced to promote from within."
"Do we know what happened?" she asked.
"One guy took a bullet to the heart. The other one has multiple gunshot wounds. It's a mess in there—broken glass, flipped tables. Hard to tell how it went down." He nodded toward the Russos. "You talk to them?"
"Gina told me about the bodies, that's all. I'm a witness, so I didn't ask any questions."
"You're a witness in this instance, but it's part of the Bertinelli investigation," said Lance.
"What does that mean for me?" she asked.
"It means you're still on Bertinelli, but you keep this one at arm's length." Lance rubbed his hand over the crown of his head. "I'll talk to the owner and his daughter, and Officer Mead will take your statement. Then you go back home and put on some real shoes because we have work to do."
"Always so critical of my footwear."
"And Smoak? I haven't forgotten about the Hood," he said before walking away.
Felicity gave her statement to Officer Mead, the cop who'd led Gina out of Russo's. Then she retrieved her gun from Detective Lance's car and walked home.
When she was just inside the front door, the Imperial March from Star Wars played out from her cell phone. She glanced at the display, even though she knew who was calling. My mother, it read. No picture on the display. Felicity did not want her mom's face staring up at her whenever the woman called. She tapped the "Ignore" button.
Jpeg rubbed his face against her leg, purring.
"I know, baby," Felicity said to him. "There's nothing I'd like more than to go to bed with you." She cringed. "Not like that, because that would be . . . interspecies . . . Oh my God, I'm babbling to a cat now."
She was still in her work clothes, but her shirt was wrinkled and there were spots on her pants where she'd splashed her potato gnocchi soup. Not to mention the flip-flops. A shower would have been nice, but it would take too long. She ran a brush through her hair and redid her ponytail, then changed clothes.
Jpeg mrowled in protest as Felicity returned her gun to her purse and ignored another call from her mom. She gave him a couple of treats as consolation for her having to leave again.
Felicity met Detective Lance at the station. He was just getting to his desk. She walked past him and approached the board. She unpinned the Hood sketch and examined it closely.
"Yeah, it's fairly accurate," she murmured, "but I'm pretty sure he has a . . ."
"A what?" asked Lance.
A mole, she'd been about to say, to the right side of his mouth.
"A more chiseled jaw," she said. "This one isn't sharp enough. He could cut granite with that thing. Which would be really awkward, getting your chin down to the level of the stone . . ."
He held up a CD in a plastic case. "Want to look at some surveillance footage?"
"Finally, something that involves a computer." She took the CD from him and went to her desk.
She couldn't be sure about the mole. It had been dark. She was running on adrenaline. It could have been a shadow, a trick of the light. And there'd be no reason to mention a trick of the light to Detective Lance. No reason at all.
Felicity slipped the CD into the drive on her computer as Lance pulled up a chair.
"Just skip right to the time of the shooting," he said. "We'll start there."
The footage was less than awesome. Picture, but no sound. It was clear enough, but it seemed there was only one camera, aimed at the middle of the dining room.
"Is this the only angle you got?" Lance asked.
"That's it," said Felicity. "I recommended a company to Gina when they first wanted to put in cameras, but I guess she didn't take my advice. They totally chintzed out on their security package."
They watched in silence as the crime played out in black and white on the screen. Nick Salvati, Bertinell's right hand, forced his way into the restaurant, followed by a couple of thick-necked goons. After a brief verbal exchange, Salvati pistol-whipped Mr. Russo. When Gina reacted, one of the goons yanked her away from her father and pinned her arms behind her back.
Then the Hood burst in. With his bow in one hand, he fought with the closest goon, kicking and punching in a way that made it obvious he'd had some serious martial arts training. Nearly out of the frame, there was a brief flash.
Felicity pointed. "Was that a muzzle flash?" As she spoke, it happened again.
"Definitely," said Lance. "Somebody's in the wings with a gun, shooting at these guys." He leaned back in his chair. "What do you have from earlier?"
"I wouldn't know," said Felicity, giving him the side-eye. "This is my first time watching it."
"Just go back a few hours and then speed it up."
She sighed, then did what he asked.
"That looks like a business dinner," she said, pointing. "Birthday dinner."
"How can you tell?"
"Because that's a cake," said Felicity.
"A cake? No." Lance leaned in, squinting at the monitor. "It looks like a tire."
"Because that makes sense. A tire with a candle stuck in it."
"Any guests of the Chinese persuasion?" he asked.
"You said you didn't think it was one of the other families," Felicity reminded him.
"Humor me."
Felicity started zooming in on faces, quickly zooming back out once she'd seen their features.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait a second," said Lance. "What was that?" He snatched the mouse from her.
"Help yourself."
"Come on," he mumbled at the computer.
He zoomed in on a couple Felicity hadn't gotten to yet. She recognized the dark-haired woman on the right as Helena Bertinelli. And the man sitting across the table from her was Oliver Queen.
"Son of a bitch," Lance muttered.
"Well, that's just not . . . great . . ." Felicity's voice trailed off as she looked closer at the image paused on the screen, the image of Oliver Queen.
It could have been a trick of the light. Or maybe the quality of the video was worse than she'd thought. Because that couldn't be a mole just to the right of his mouth. It couldn't be.