Chapter Text
Foggy
“What the hell, Matt?” Foggy glared at the piece of paper – a sheet of Nelson & Murdock letterhead, to be exact – on the desk blotter in front of him. The familiar scrawl slanted down across the page, but the words were plain enough: “Don’t look for me.” Foggy sighed wearily and raised his voice. “Karen!”
She appeared in the doorway of his office, her mouth set in a thin line. “What?”
Foggy handed her the sheet of paper. She glanced at it and frowned. “What the hell?”
“My sentiments, exactly,” Foggy told her.
Still glaring at the words on the paper, she took a seat across the desk from him. “That’s not gonna help, you know,” he told her. He picked up his phone and started to dial a number.
“What’re you doing?”
“Calling Brett.”
“But Matt said not to look for him,” she protested.
“You aren’t seriously suggesting we should do what he said, are you?”
“What does this tell you?” she asked, gesturing with the paper in her hand.
“Um, that Matt Murdock is utterly incapable of learning from his mistakes?”
“True, but not the answer I was looking for.”
“What, then?”
“It tells us he left, and he doesn’t want to be found.” The paper slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. She made no effort to pick it up. “Brett’s just gonna tell you there’s no evidence of foul play, and if Matt decided to walk away from his life, from us, there’s nothing the cops can do.”
“Damn,” Foggy swore. “You really think that’s what he’s done?”
“I think he left of his own volition. As to why, I have no idea. But you should call Brett, anyway.”
“Why?”
“To make sure he’s not, you know, dead or lying in a hospital somewhere.”
“All right.”
Foggy picked up his phone again but put it down when Karen added, “But first, we check Matt’s apartment.” On his way out the door, he bent down to pick up Matt’s note, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket.
Karen
Karen used Matt’s spare keys (which she had “forgotten” to return to him) to enter the building and his apartment. Foggy followed her inside. They stopped at the end of the entrance hall and scanned the space. As she expected, the apartment was neat, nothing out of place. With Matt’s enhanced senses, bumping into the furniture wasn’t usually a problem, but it made his life easier if things were where they were supposed to be.
“You check the bedroom, I’ll check the desk,” Foggy said.
“Got it.” A few minutes later, Karen emerged from the bedroom and went into the bathroom. When she came back out, she said, “There are a few empty hangers in the closet, but most of his clothes are there. Same for the chest of drawers. The towels in the bathroom are damp. Nothing missing except maybe his toothbrush and a few toiletries.”
Foggy finished the thought. “So he must have showered here last night.”
“Or early this morning. Anything interesting in the desk?”
“If you mean a note telling us what he’s up to, no. His laptop and phone are there. No open files on the laptop. Nothing unusual in the emails, voice mails, or texts. His wallet was in the drawer. His state ID and bar card are missing, but all of his credit cards are there. No cash.”
Two heads turned simultaneously toward the cupboard under the stairs. “His Daredevil stuff,” Foggy said.
Karen took Matt’s keys out of her handbag and opened the padlock on the cupboard doors. Foggy pulled the foot locker out of the cupboard and opened it. He lifted out the tray containing Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s boxing robe and set it aside.
“Is it all there?” Foggy asked, gazing down at Matt’s Daredevil gear.
“Hard to tell, but I think so.” She turned and kneeled next to the tray. “He’s planning on coming back,” she said, lifting the boxing robe. “If he wasn’t, he’d never leave this behind.” She dropped the robe and stood up.
“So what do we know?” Foggy asked. Then he answered his own question. Raising one finger, he said, “He left of his own volition.” He raised a second finger. “He’s planning on coming back.”
Karen returned the tray to its place in the foot locker and walked over to the couch, going over what they’d found out. Suddenly, it all added up. She knew. The blood drained from her face, and she sank down onto the couch.
Foggy closed the trunk and shoved it back inside the cupboard. When he turned to look in her direction, he gasped. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have.”
Foggy left the cupboard open and went to sit beside her, a worried look on his face. “What?”
“It’s Elektra. It has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Foggy went very still for a moment. She could almost see his mind working, putting it all together. “Oh, shit,” he swore, “I think you’re right.” He fell silent again, while his mind worked some more. “But how did she get out from under the building?”
“Who knows? Matt doesn’t know how he got out, but he did. She could have, too.”
“So, what, they ran off together?”
“Looks like it,” Karen replied. “It would explain why he took his ID and cash but left his phone and credit cards. Makes it harder to track him. Besides, Elektra has enough money for both of them.”
“But if that’s the case, do you still think he’s coming back?”
Karen shrugged. “No idea.”
“Let’s head to the precinct, talk to Brett,” Foggy said.
“Got it.” Before she left, she went back to the desk and picked up Matt’s laptop and phone. “I’ll check them, just in case,” she said, putting them in her shoulder bag. Foggy nodded, and she followed him out of the apartment.
Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney frowned as he looked up at the lawyer and investigator seated on the other side of his desk at the 15th Precinct. “Based on what you’ve told me and this,” he said, gesturing with the hand that held Matt’s note, “this isn’t a missing person case. He left of his own volition. So what are you doing here?”
“We were hoping,” Karen said, “that you could check the hospitals and, and – ” Her voice broke.
Foggy finished the sentence for her. “And the morgue. Just to make sure, you know.”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
“But please, do it discreetly.”
Brett gave both of them an annoyed look, but nodded his head. “You said you thought he took off with his ex, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t she dead?”
“Apparently not,” Foggy replied dryly. Brett gave him a questioning look. “Long story.”
Brett sighed. “I’ll do what I can. Now get out of here. I’ve got real cases to work on.”
He didn’t have to tell them twice.
Karen couldn’t take another step. She sank into one of the mismatched chairs in their makeshift law office upstairs from Nelson’s Meats. She was tired, so tired. Foggy stopped on the way to the table that served as his desk and took a look at her. “What?” he asked.
“We’re a couple of idiots, you know that, right?”
He pulled up a chair and took a seat. “Yes. What specific idiocy did you have in mind?”
“Thinking that this – ” She waved her hand to indicate the entire room. “That this could ever work. It’s over, Foggy – Nelson, Murdock & Page is done. We never really had a chance.”
“Giving up so soon, Page?”
She nodded. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Waiting for Matt to turn up, wondering if he’s dead or alive, if he’s ever coming back. Face it, Foggy, Matt bailed on us, he’s not coming back.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Foggy told her. “I’m thinking, maybe he didn’t run off with Elektra, after all. I mean, it’s possible, but if he did it, I don’t think he’d do it like this. I think he’d tell us, not just leave a cryptic note like he did.”
“Ah, yes, the ‘new and improved’ Matt Murdock. Weren’t you the one who said he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes?”
“I did,” Foggy conceded. “But if he was leaving with Elektra, I think he’d want us to know it. Him leaving like he did, that tells me he’s doing something he doesn’t want us to know about.”
“Like what? Going after Fisk again? Or Poindexter?”
“Last I heard, both of them are still in custody, so . . . .” Foggy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“God damn it,” Karen swore. “We were finally getting our act together, and he has to go and pull this – ” She waved a hand. “ – this shit.”
“I get it,” Foggy said quietly. “I really do.”
“I swear to Christ, when he comes back, I’m gonna – ”
“You’re gonna do what, exactly?”
She threw up her hands helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should know all the facts before doing something drastic,” Foggy chided her.
“Always the lawyer.” Karen sighed.
“Speaking of which, don’t we have work to do?”
Karen didn’t answer him, but she went to the table she was using as a desk, picked up a file, and opened her laptop.
Several hours later, Karen was about to call it a day, when she heard Foggy’s phone ring. “Hey, Brett,” he said. A knot formed in her stomach. She kept listening. The conversation was brief. “Yeah . . . OK . . . thanks for letting me know.”
She got to her feet and crossed the room to Foggy’s desk. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Brett called. Some guy found some clothes in an alley – black, bloodstained – and turned them in at the precinct. Brett says they look like Daredevil’s. He wants us to come down and see if we can identify them.”