A/N: Sorry for the delay, everyone! The next chapters should be posted more regularly. :)

That Radium Glow

Chapter 11

Rogers charged up the stairs two at a time. I followed as best as I could, but there were a lot of stairs between the morgue and the office and a broken down old grunt like myself was no match for Captain America. I was still panting on the landing when he burst into the office and made a beeline for my desk, where his holster, hat, and overcoat sat in a neat pile.

"Where's the fire, Cap?" I wheezed after him, rolling my eyes at Maria Hill. She was watching us with poorly veiled interest and a little bit of glee at my obvious discomfort. I shot her a dirty look.

Rogers shrugged into his shoulder "Banner. We can't leave him in Samson's custody. He's not safe. Let's go."

"Hold your horses there, cowboy," I gasped, still short of breath and hating myself for it. I really needed to quit smoking so much. At this rate I wasn't going to be able to look Maria Hill in the face for a week. "How d'you figure?"

"Didn't I tell you?" he asked grimly, reaching for his hat. "The Vegas branch ruled Pym a murder."

"What?" I exclaimed. It seemed to me I'd been doing that a lot lately. "I thought they found him in Lake Mead?"

"That was a cover-up," Rogers told me. He glanced warily at Maria Hill, who looked innocently back at her typewriter. She wasn't fooling anybody. "They wired while you were, uh, out. Cause of death was penetration of the brain and spinal cord by a thin, sharp instrument. Apparently there were marks on the bone."

The same way Doreen Green died. It couldn't be a coincidence. A cold hand closed anxiously around my heart and I stiffened. "Christ."

Rogers gestured impatiently at my own overcoat. I'd never bothered to remove my holster. "Come on, let's go."

My head reeled a little and I sagged onto the edge of my desk. Pym was murdered, just like Doreen Green. Murdered. It had to mean something. Rogers made an exasperated noise and I looked up. "And do what?" I demanded.

His eyes flashed. "Get him into Federal custody," he snapped. "He's not safe there."

I reached up and squeezed my temples. "Rogers, we can't just spring him on conjecture," I countered. I hated myself for saying it and Captain America looked like he did too. It was damned un-American to let an innocent man rot in a padded cell. "Chicago cops won't have it. In the eyes of the law, Banner's crazy until a shrink says otherwise. And Samson ain't going to say otherwise."

Rogers' lips pursed into a hard line. "We've got the pills, though-"

"Won't be enough," I said. "Samson'll just deny it. We can't prove he knew Banner was being drugged."

"Not yet, anyway," Rogers growled.

I shrugged and fished around in my trouser pockets for my cigarettes. So much for my resolution. I extracted one and lit it. "Hey, I don't like it either."

Rogers' shoulders slumped a little. I sure knew the feeling. "We could petition for a second opinion," he suggested with a sigh, dropping his hat back on my desk. "Get someone other than Samson to examine Banner. It'd take a court order, though."

"Hell, he might not even be the one dosing him," I observed glumly. Anyone on the closed ward could have been doing it, supposedly with Samson's blessing. My heart sank as I made a mental tally of orderlies and nurses, and realized just how many people Rogers and I were now going to have to check out. I took a long drag on the cigarette. "We don't need a warrant to talk to Banner," I said with a sigh. "Let's go back and try him again. Maybe he remembers something. Maybe he doesn't. At the very least, we can keep our eyes peeled for any funny business we can use to get that court order."

"Fine," Rogers agreed, slightly mollified by the prospect of taking some action, even if it wasn't exactly what he'd wanted.

My telephone rang without warning, making us both jump. Not many people had my private line. What was it now? I made a face and picked it up. "Barton."

The voice had a familiar hint of a sneer. A lieutenant's sneer. "It's Talbot. Can I speak to Rogers?"

I rolled my eyes. Fat chance. He could suck it up and deal directly with me. "No," I said rudely.

The line went silent for a moment. I heard Talbot swallow loudly. Something cold seeped into the pit of my stomach and I preemptively stubbed out my cigarette. It would keep for later.

"There's been a fire at Cook County," Talbot announced, still sour but a little cowed as he took the plunge. "Your boy Banner escaped."

Something hot burned behind my eyes. Without a word, I jammed the receiver into a confused Steve Rogers' hands. I could feel his eyes bore questioningly into my back while I stalked past Maria Hill and out of the office with short, jerky steps. I let the door slam shut behind me. Rage boiled up through my stomach and into my chest. I made the washroom before I lost my temper and it burst out in a wordless cry of frustration. I wasn't desperate enough to risk my fingers by punching a wall, but I slammed the heel of my hand into one of the wooden cubicle doors. The boom of abused wood echoed throughout the tiled room.

Every time. Every time we got close with this case, every time we got a break, every time we had some idea, some great, external force seemed to thwart us. And now Banner had vanished again. I sagged onto one of the sinks, gripping the porcelain tightly with either hand. The hot flood of rage was subsiding and I began to hurt. Sore muscles twinged throughout my body, and my jaw ached where I assumed Rogers had decked me. A sickly pale face looked back at me in the mirror when I glanced up, purple marks standing out lividly beneath hollow eyes and tousled sandy hair. An ugly bruise marred the tired, stubbled jaw.

I didn't like that face much at all.

I flipped on the cold tap without looking up, purposefully avoiding my own eyes in the mirror. I dashed icy water over my face several times, not caring that it slopped down my cuffs to sear the raw skin around my wrists or dribbled icy fingers down my collar. I was bone-weary but I couldn't stop now.

One thing at a time. I pressed my dripping fingers to my eyes against a fast-building headache. We'd go through Samson and his staff with a fine-toothed comb until we turned up something. We'd get it. We'd get him. Somehow.

The towel was rough against my cheeks as I vigorously dried my face. I wet another towel and held it against the bruise on my jaw. Worry for Banner still gnawed at my insides, but I was calmer now. We'd find him. Somehow.

Hinges creaked behind me and I cringed as I glanced up, but it was only Rogers. He studied me, his eyes crinkled a little with concern, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he simply tossed me my lighter and my pack of cigarettes. I gave him a grateful nod.

"Cook County is a mess," Rogers said aloud, as if bringing a smoke to the washroom for his wreck of a partner was the most natural thing in the world. "They still haven't figured out what started the fire. Banner went missing sometime during the evacuation."

"The hell did that happen?" I demanded sourly, lighting a cigarette. "He was in a straightjacket, for God's sake!"

Rogers shrugged. "Apparently he wasn't, at the time."

"Samson?" I asked between puffs. I shuffled over to crack one of the windows, to let some of the smoke out, and settled back down on the edge of the sink.

"Wasn't there at the time of the fire and doesn't know anything about it, according to Talbot," Rogers told me. "Barton, it's chaos over there. We won't be able to get anyone for questioning until tomorrow at the least."

Tomorrow might be too late. I massaged my temples with my free hand, wincing as I did so. My head hurt. Everything hurt, though the smoke did help a little. "And there's no sign of Banner?"

"Nothing," Rogers sighed and I swore under my breath. "Beat cops all got his description. There're cops watching Union Station, and Feds keeping an eye on his office, his student, Elizabeth Ross, and Tony Stark."

Because a couple of Feds sitting in a car outside Stark Tower would prevent Tony Stark from doing whatever he wanted. If Banner had half a brain, and I knew he did, he'd be out of Chicago by now with or without Stark's help. I took another long drag on my cigarette. One problem at a time. "He's not dumb enough to go to them," I complained, with a puff of exhaled smoke.

"You have a better idea?" Rogers countered. He held the door open and gestured me out into the hall.

Hiding in the washroom wasn't going to solve my problems; it was time to face the music again. I sighed and levered myself off the sink. "Not really."

Hours trickled by, oozing along with all the speed of the murky sludge we called the Chicago River. I finished my cigarettes and tossed the crumpled carton into a bin. Rogers finally gave up on his jacket. He folded it neatly in half and hung it on the back of the chair we'd pilfered from another agent. I pretended not to notice as another layer of the Captain America veneer peeled away. It was an expensive suit, but I could tell from the way he treated it that he hadn't come from money. I'd used to do that, too. Back when my clothes were new.

I made a few calls, on the off chance someone was willing to talk. Neither Tony Stark nor Elizabeth Ross had any idea where Banner was, at least that they'd cop to over the phone. I'd even called Janet Pym on a whim, and had gotten precisely squat. It was tempting to visit Stark again, to see if we could muscle something out of him in person, but as Rogers rightly pointed out, there was no sense hassling him without at least some cause. We couldn't afford to make an enemy of Tony Stark.

"I don't get it, though," I complained while I paced towards the wall. I hadn't quite worn a hole in the floor yet, but I was well on the way. "Why frame Bruce Banner for murder? And why try to drive him insane in the process?"

Rogers perched precariously on the side of my cluttered desk between Doreen Green's autopsy report and the pile of paperwork for Samson's warrant. We'd decided to go back through the case file, and photographs in stark black and white were spread across every available surface. Dr. Bruce Banner stared up mutely at us from the center. He still needed a haircut.

"You think that's what's happening?" Rogers asked, frowning heavily. "Someone's trying to drive him insane?"

"Can't think of what else it could be," I said with a shudder. A sudden memory of jungle heat and sticky blood flashed through my mind, vivid enough to make my mouth go dry and cold sweat break over my body. I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. One encounter with the drugged pills had been enough. I couldn't imagine being dosed again, or repeatedly, like in Banner's case. The thought made me feel a little sick. "Damned if I can figure why, though. Why bother? Why go to all that trouble?"

"And what if it's not just Banner?" Rogers observed. "It's possible Pym was drugged, too, even though I doubt we'll ever be able to prove it."

I frowned and turned on my heel for another pass. I felt like we were trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. I knew from experience that cases didn't always wrap up as neat as one might want, but square pegs just didn't go in round holes. There was something we were missing. There had to be. "But Pym had problems before."

"Made worse by the pills," Rogers countered. His frown deepened. "Look, Mrs. Pym told us he was more or less fine until he just snapped," he said earnestly. "Banner had no history of mental troubles before, according to Dr. Ross. It's consistent with them both being exposed."

He had one hell of a good point. I sighed and rubbed a hand tiredly across my face. A dull ache continued to pound somewhere behind my eyes.

"Someone drugged those pills," Rogers added, ticking points off on his fingers. "Someone slipped them to Banner and Pym. And then someone went to a heck of a lot of trouble to cover it up. But why?"

I shrugged, stumped. Rogers leaned back on the desk with a frustrated huff. One of the photographs slid off the edge, tumbling into the hollow space where my legs went on the rare occasion I sat at my desk. He grumbled with annoyance and bent to retrieve it. The cuff of his sleeve pulled back a little as he reached, exposing an old-fashioned watch. I'd never noticed it before. Some detective I was.

Illuminated numerals bobbed in the darkness while Rogers scrabbled around on the floor. His watch had a radium dial. I froze. That faint green light, that radium glow, nagged at me somehow and I couldn't for the life of me figure why. My forehead wrinkled into a frown.

Radium. I could feel the word twisting on my tongue. Radium. It sounded a little like radiation, which made sense, I guess. Radiation. Nasty stuff. I didn't know the details, but everyone knew nuclear weapons meant radiation. My eyes drifted to the shiny new sign near the door, stamped with that ominous black-and-yellow circle and emblazoned FALLOUT SHELTER. That was what they called the radioactive leftovers of nuclear weapons: fallout. The damn signs were cropping up all over town like some sort of apocalyptic weed. There were supposed to be shelters in all the buildings now, to protect us in case the Reds decided to nuke us.

Nukes. Nuclear weapons. My eyes fell again to the photograph of Bruce Banner and my heart stopped.

Banner was a nuclear scientist. So was Pym. So was Richards-

"Son of a bitch!" I shouted, clapping my hands together with a noise like a gunshot and making Rogers jump. "That's it!"

A sheaf of papers fell to the floor but he ignored them. "What?" he exclaimed, too surprised to disapprove of my language.

"Banner and Pym," I said quickly. How had we been so stupid? The connection had been there the whole time! "And Stark and Richards. They all worked on the A-bomb together, right? It's not about them; not personally, anyway. Somehow this is about the bomb!"

Rogers' brow furrowed. "The bomb?" he repeated, sounding confused. "But why…" His voice trailed off before he could finish the question, his eyes going distant with thought. Suddenly understanding dawned over his features. "Oh. Oh," he breathed. "Barton, don't you see? They're not trying to drive Banner insane; they're just trying to make it look that way."

"What?" I demanded. My heart began to pound against my ribs. Rogers was on to something; I could feel it.

He jumped to his feet. "It's why they framed him!" he exclaimed. His hands flew up to rumple his neat blond hair, excitement mingling with astonishment that we had apparently missed something so obvious. "They had to; it was the only way!"

Well, obvious to him maybe. "What?"

"Let's say you wanted information about the bomb," Rogers explained, tripping over his words in his haste. "You can't just kidnap a nuclear scientist. Someone will notice. The government will notice. So you frame him for murder. You make him look insane. You make sure they'll put him away forever, just not in prison. Put him in an asylum, and nobody will think twice about him ever again."

"Jesus," I breathed. It fit. It was a plot straight out of Hollywood. Things like that didn't happen in real life, did they? And yet, it fit. Rogers and I looked at each other. I suddenly felt quite small, as if I had caught a glimpse of something huge, faceless, and terrible. I swallowed. "Say you're right," I said slowly. "Pym checked himself into the sanatorium. Why kill him?"

Rogers looked sick. "Got everything they needed?"

"Or everything he had," I muttered. According to Stark, Pym was only part, a cog in a machine. There was only so much he could know.

"The question is who," Rogers mused. His eyes were lit with challenge. "Who would orchestrate something like that to steal nuclear secrets?"

"Ain't the Russians," I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. Rogers raised a skeptical eyebrow and I said: "We'd have known if they approached Banner or Pym. 'Sides, they already have the bomb."

"Point," Rogers grunted. "You think Samson knows?"

"He might," I said. I tapped my thumbnail against my teeth. "They might not have told him the whats or the whys. He's involved, that's for sure. Without him the whole thing falls apart. He's the one with access to Banner, and we know someone's dosing him on the inside."

"If we lay that out for the right judge," Rogers said hopefully, "We might get somewhere."

"But it's still all conjecture," I countered glumly. We couldn't go screaming up the chain about a potential nuclear spy without some hard evidence, or we'd lose our badges. Without Samson's cooperation, which we were never going to get, Banner was the key. We had nothing without him. "'Least without Banner."

And we were back to square one. Rogers threw his hands up in frustration. I dropped into my chair with a huff and slumped forward into my hands, ignoring the slide of papers on the desk beneath my elbows. I dragged my fingers through my hair several times, wanting nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed and to never, ever think about Leonard Samson or Bruce Banner or nuclear weapons ever again.

"Barton," Rogers said, and I made myself look up. He had a peculiar expression on his face, like he'd had an idea but he wasn't particularly happy about it. "You used to work Vice?"

"Yeah," I replied. "My first assignment as a Fed."

Rogers glanced down at his hands and swallowed. "If we're right," he said slowly, almost reluctantly, "And someone's using Banner to try to get nuclear secrets, they probably know he's missing by now, you think?"

I leaned back in my chair, not quite following, but willing to listen for lack of anything better to do. "S'pose it's possible."

"It would have taken a lot of work to follow Banner around. Maybe this someone contracted a…third party," Rogers paused and raised his eyebrows significantly at me, "to keep an eye on him. Or to pick him up later, if things went sour."

I sat up straight. He had a point. It was Chicago, after all. "And you think said third party might be looking for him?"

"Yeah."

I worried my thumbnail with my teeth. I wasn't on fully onboard with his theory that the mob had necessarily been tailing Banner (the FBI wasn't that blind), but that didn't mean word wasn't out about him in the criminal underworld. Asking around wasn't bad idea, despite being not strictly Fed kosher. Unfortunately, most of my old sources were dead or in prison. I'd put some of them there. There was one other option, though. It was a risk, but Bruce Banner's soft eyes were pleading with me from the desk and I decided I was desperate enough to chance it.

"C'mon," I said, getting to my feet and shrugging back into my suit jacket. I reached for my hat and overcoat. "We're going for a walk."

"Now?" Rogers asked, a little incredulously.

"I'm out of smokes," I said. He raised a questioning eyebrow at me, and I flashed him an innocent grin in return. Rogers groaned and grabbed his coat.

I usually bought my cigarettes in a little store on Division, not far from a telephone booth. I picked up a couple of packs, taking my time about it and making Rogers check over my shoulder to be sure we hadn't been followed. I tugged my hat a little lower over my face and slipped outside as soon as the coast was reasonably clear, Rogers on my heels.

"Didn't want to make the call from the office," I muttered to him by way of explanation as I ducked into the telephone booth. What I was doing wasn't exactly illegal, but calling on mobsters was generally frowned upon by Coulson. If things went bad, I didn't want to have a call on the record if I could avoid it. Rogers shrugged at me and with this tacit approval, I jammed a couple nickels in the slot and asked the operator to connect me to the Black Widow.

The independent operators, anyone not associated with the mob, had a loose network across Chicago. Nothing strong enough to threaten the major players, of course, but they helped each other out when they could. I was at an all-time low in the currency of favors with Natasha Romanoff, but that was between me and her.

She answered the telephone with her best throaty Bacall murmur. "Natasha Romanoff."

"Nat," I said. "It's me. I need a favor."

"A favor?" she exclaimed, but I could hear relief in her voice. I guess the last time she'd seen me I was still tied down. I smiled a little as her voice quickly regained its usual coolness. "That's not how this works. You owe me, Barton."

"It's important," I retorted. "Please, Nat. I need to you get me a meeting with the Hammer."

That got her attention. "The Hammer?" she exclaimed. "Have you lost your mind?"

I winced. Natasha had a point. Thor Olavsson and I had history, most of it bad. Shooting a guy and getting him sent up the river had that effect. In my defense, it had been an accident, but that didn't mean Olavsson saw it that way. He took his obligations to his adopted country seriously, though, and I was banking on that patriotic streak to get him to cooperate. "Maybe," I admitted. I ran a hand through my hair. "Look, can you set it up? I can't explain over the phone. It's for the Banner case."

She sighed, a tinny whoosh over the telephone connection. "Fine. I'll call you back."

We hung up. I turned to Rogers. His eyebrows had nearly reached his hairline. "So who's the Hammer?" I made a face and he added: "Or would I rather not know?"

I shrugged. Rogers might as well hear it from me, rather than Coulson. Coulson nearly busted his gut the last time I saw him tell it. I ducked out of the telephone box. "Thor Olavsson. Small-time gangster; took over the family business when his father died a couple years back. They own a nightclub called Asgard in Back of the Yards. Usual vices: drinks, dames, and gambling, but they've stayed out of the heavy stuff and he treats his people pretty well. Not a bad guy as far as gangsters go."

Rogers folded his arms across his chest. "I'm guessing there's a but."

I cringed. "A bullet in the leg and six months in the pen."

Rogers started to say something, stopped, started again, and finally settled for an incredulous: "That's one hell of a but, Barton." I grinned when he swore and he shot me a dirty look. "What makes you think he'll help you?"

I gestured for him to follow and we started back to the Federal Building. I tugged my coat a little closer, as the sun had begun to set and the wind off the lake became downright chilly. "Sure, I got him six months in the pen, but I got him off a murder charge," I explained. I decided to leave the more salacious details out. "Turned out me and Coulson had been staking him out when the murder was committed. He got a slap on the wrist for pandering instead of the electric chair."

Rogers shot me a long-suffering look. He jammed his hands in his pockets and huddled into his own coat. "I sure hope you know what you're doing."

Natasha was true to her word. Rogers and I were just about to leave for dinner when my telephone rang. "His place, eleven o'clock," she said without preamble, careful to mention no names. "I'll meet you there."

"Thanks," I told her gratefully. "I owe you."

"Yes, you do," Natasha said, "The usual."

She hung up, and the corner of my mouth quirked upwards. The usual was a free evening and a bottle of Vat 69. I glanced up at Rogers. "We're on."

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