[AT] Under My Nose...
[After Transition]
It was morning when Detective Harvey Bullock invited me to join in on the interrogations and interviews of the 38 witnesses and now it is nearly six pm and we still haven't questioned everyone and I really didn't think it would take this long given the fact that Batman was the one who was teaching me everything and when it came to interrogations there were a lot of threats, violence and holding people of the edge of building's which unsurprisingly made them get their story together quickly but here in an actual legal investigation there was no such shortcuts no matter how much me and Harvey wanted there to be some and so we had to question people meticulously going over each and every single detail a dozen times just to get a very simple answer from some insignificant schmuck who feels quite important sat at the table, I am quite tired now since I didn't have any sleep yesterday since I was watching the crime scene all night and right now I'm leaving the makeshift interrogation room and entering the waiting room where the rest of the people are waiting to be interviewed (interrogated) where I see Doctor Alex Nichols sat in one of the seats waiting for her interview but she is clearly just as tired as me since she didn't have a good sleep against the hard wood floor at the crime scene and she is currently yawning but she fights to keep her eyes open and looks towards me as I approach her. "Nick, well? Have they done it, have they figured out who did it?"
"Nope, not even close. We have got 38 witnesses to question, we have gotten through most of them but the investigation is thorough so it will still take a while to come to a conclusion." I tell Alex in response to her question but I can see that she is dead tired and so I try to keep my answer short so as to not send her to sleep too early and she is still dressed in the mourning clothes that she had on yesterday at the memorial service but that doesn't serve to diminish her good lucks but I ignore that for now, most of the people we have questioned so far have been just the regular people and villagers who were attending the memorial service yesterday and were in the building at the time of the murder and their answers were not very enlightening since they didn't see much of anything and quite a few of them kept babbling on about the curse which Bullock obviously paid no attention to while I also dismissed it but I was getting tired of listening to all the people telling us nonsense and useless information.
"Uh, excuse me Nick. I am pretty tired; do you know when I will be questioned?" Alex asks me as she stifles another yawn from escaping her mouth and I feel pretty bad since I am the reason she stayed up most of the night since we were talking and eating snacks which is why she is so tired now but thankfully for me I had already thought of this situation and dealt with it, Harvey is quite the chill guy that you can laugh around and joke with so it wasn't even hard to get him to do me a favour since the guy is a good pal plus he keeps thinking I am Commissioner James Gordon's future son-in-law which I am not going to correct since I want to still be a part of this ongoing investigation plus I imagine it would be quite funny to see Jim Gordon gnashing his teeth over it every day with all his officers believing it as well as Barbara's reaction to it and why it has still not been corrected after all these months. "I am sure you are exhausted, and I'm sorry for that because it is my fault you are so tired. Don't worry though, I already thought of that and I asked them to question you last so you can go rest and take a quick nap or something while we question the others."
"Alright then, thanks. I am going to go to the toilet and wash my face, freshen up a little and wake up so I am not dozing off in my interview." With that Alex walks off and down a corridor to go to the toilets and with a moment alone I take a moment to think over everything that's happened so far, who we have already questioned and the people remaining who need to be questioned which is 6 people total including Doctor Nichols and the four other people here in the waiting room who are the butler/aid Harold, the mayoral candidate Shaun Masters, the current mayor's daughter whose name I have forgotten as well as her lanky emo boyfriend whose name I have also forgotten along with the guy who's just entered the makeshift interrogation room and is being questioned right now, suddenly current mayor Karl Tate has entered the waiting room and pushes past his daughter and her boyfriend to start shouting at his aid/butler Harold while ignoring Shaun Masters who continues to sit down and ignores them while Karl Tate starts to verbally abuse his butler. "Shut up, you fool! Goddamn it, that bloody cursed piano!? Cursed piano, my ass. This all happened because of it, because that thing is still here. Get rid of the thing immediately, got it!?"
Mayor Tate finishes shouting at Harold who tries to say something but couldn't get a word in edgeways and so he can only agree with the mayor's words who didn't even wait to hear his response so assured that his orders would be followed and he walks off down the corridor disappearing around the corner leaving us all there watching him go shocked by his sudden outburst, after a moment I decide to ignore the incident and get back to questioning some of the other people waiting here so I stalk up to my next victim and beckon them to follow me to the interrogation room.
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"Enough, enough already! I obviously don't have any kind of motive to kill Kevin Hale, just leave me alone already!" It is an half an hour later and we are currently questioning the daughter of the current mayor whose name I have now remembered as Karina Tate and we had begun questioning this woman more than ten minutes ago after we had finished interrogating the butler Harold and that guy who freaked out about the music sheet before whose name is Kyle Newman but instead of being as helpful as possible and answering our questions Karina Tate has astonished us all by loudly yelling for the last ten minutes straight hardly answering any of our questions and I'm finding it hard to concentrate with her loud grating voice irritating my sensitive enhanced ears and so I am finding it a bit hard to concentrate on her answers let alone everything else I'm trying to keep an eye on with my senses, right now I am trying to concentrate on the people in the building who have already been interviewed but strangely they have stuck around instead of leaving and going home and I find that quite odd so right now I'm trying to sense the butler Harold and the crazy guy Kyle Newman who are currently loitering around in the waiting room just outside of this interrogation room along with Doctor Alex Nichols who is sat waiting with a legitimate reason which is her turn for interrogation.
"I've told you already lady, calm down. We're just questioning everyone, not just you and we are doing so with the same thoroughness so just answer the questions and then you can leave." Harvey tells the woman calmly but I can tell that his patience is very frayed and he is just barely keeping his lid on as evidenced by his clenched fists he keeps hidden under the table as well as his eyes continuing to linger over to his pack cigarettes in his jacket pocket which is on a coat rack across the room and I find myself admiring this man because he is by large to me a man that is controlled by his vices as evidenced by his drinking, his cigarettes, his diet, his appearance and his big belly and yet somehow he is restraining himself in order to do his job, clearly Karina doesn't have as big an admiration as she continues to be her annoying self as I try to concentrate on what is going on in the rest of the building and I particularly focus on Kyle Newman who has just looked at the time on his watch and then got up and walked out of the waiting room and down a corridor but before I could follow him with my senses my attention was stolen from me by a large screeching that hurt my ears and prevented me from keeping on aye on the man and his whereabouts.
"Really, you can't be serious!? I have already answered all of your stupid questions, so just let me go already!" Katarina wails in response to Detective Harvey Bullock's words and in the process shocks me out of my observation of Kyle Newman and my ears hurt for a second but thanks to my regeneration they are already all healed up and Karina stops screaming so loudly so I once again focus my senses to where I last saw Kyle Newman but when I focus there after losing him for just a second he is gone and in the corridor a door opens and out walks Karina's lanky emo boyfriend or whatever with his hands in his pockets leaving a room which had Shaun Masters inside but he doesn't arouse my interest much as I'm curious where Kyle Newman has disappeared to but before I can investigate it with my sense another sound is heard which again disrupts my senses and prevents me from searching, the sound playing can be heard all around the building and what is playing is the second movement of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' and everyone in the building immediately tenses up after hearing it with Harvey getting quite confused at the presence of the music as well as where it is coming from but I can't wait for him to get his bearing and this loud music is preventing me from picking up much with my hearing asides from the song so I quickly get to my feet while the rest of them are dazed and burst out of the interrogation room and runs towards the same corridor Kyle Newman disappeared down following the sound of the music and I follow it up some stairs to the second floor.
Getting to the second stairs my eyeline is immediately greeted by an open doorway with the words 'The Broadcast Room' marked upon it and that is where Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' is coming from so I stride towards it quickly but that's when I hear a scream coming from Kyle Newman who seems to be in the broadcast room but I don't let that stop me from advancing and when I near it I am witness to Kyle Newman stumbling back out of the broadcast room and falling on his ass and then beginning to backpedal away dragging his ass along the floor in horror and I quickly run up to him but instead of attending to him I ignore him in favour of getting a look into the broadcast room instead, I am assaulted by the sight of current (or should I say former) Mayor Tate sat on a chair with his head down against a desk and with a bloody knife standing out of his back creating a pool of blood in his otherwise pristine brown suit jacket and I notice speckles of blood smeared across his face but before I can do anything Harvey finally get here along with a few of his officers and once he sees the inside of the room instead of panicking he tells a police officer to call forensics and the coroner here immediately but he is informed that the coroner has already left for Gotham City so that they could perform an autopsy on the body of Kevin Hale which Harvey groans at.
I can't believe I let this happen, I was right in the building when this murder occurred and for all my power and abilities, I still failed to prevent this murder. if I can't prevent the murder of this bastard then I am clearly not skilled or powerful enough yet to properly live my life here in this world, more importantly, what is Batman going to think when he discovers I let this murder take place right underneath my nose...
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