#cold case

He worked on them whenever possible, trying to find the missing pieces to explain what happened. Usually, his kids also picked a few up here and there, but no one put in as many hours to solve closed cases as Bruce. (Tim came a close second)

That's why he clicked through an old file with his morning coffee one Saturday instead of enjoying a sleep-in. His eyes rapidly fall over the words of the police report, then the following investigation reports, witness statements and a few pictures. This file is surprisingly thick, but having no valid leads made Bruce suspicious that foul play was a t work/

It's about a young teenage boy who vanished from a small town in Illinois before his body was discovered stuffed into a rotted locker in Gotham three years later.

Daniel Fenton was last seen dining with his friends at the local burger restaurant, Nasty Burger, after school. He was seen parting with his friends two hours later. Samantha Manson's parents arrived to pick up Samantha and Tucker Foley for an art show.

Daniel had not gotten permission to go; he had been grounded due to his grades, but although Mr. Manson offered to drive him home, and the man even called the boy's sister to pick him up, Daniel insisted on walking.

The town had been relatively safe enough that most teens walked around, so the four had driven off to beat the traffic. Daniel had turned towards his house, vanishing from the restaurant's CCTV camera's sight soon after.

The walk should have taken him no more than thirty minutes, but he was an hour late. Daniel's mother frantically called all his friends after failing to contact her son within those thirty minutes. The boy's friends send messages and calls, but the boy does not respond.

Another hour later, Mr. and Mrs Fenton phoned in a missing person report. They drove around looking for Daniel as the police slowly walked through the town, and word spread quickly that the youngest Fenotn had gone missing. By the seven-hour mark, a search party of Daniel's schoolmates and a few neighbors had been formed.

Police and one hundred and three civilians were on the hunt for Daniel.

Neither Samatha's nor Tucker's messages were marked as read, although a chilling fact was that Mrs. Fenton, Mr.Fenton, and Jasmine Fenton's text messages were opened. That pinged within a block of the Fenton's residence.

Two witnesses claimed to have seen Daniel at the corner shop one block from his house, where he stopped to buy a drink. A man in a trench coat approached the boy to ask for his opinion on the chip flavors.

Daniel could be seen chatting with him for a few minutes while standing in line to pay for their purchases, as the witnesses were the cashier and one other customer. After being rung up, Daniel left the man at the counter. The police could track this man down after the boy had gone missing for twelve hours.

However, it was concluded that he had nothing to do with the disappearance, seeing as the man had ordered a cab straight to the airport and gotten on a flight right. He had even waited inside the small corner shop, sitting idly at a table until his cab arrived.

The cab camera, airport security, and plane ticket confirmed his alibi. By the seventy-two-hour mark, a new clue appeared. Daniel's backpack was half dug in a hole five miles outside the city limits when a hiker spotted the slight gleam of the strap's decorative pin.

This was seven miles from where he had disappeared. Inside his backpack were his broken phone, school supplies, the clothes he was last seen in, and a framed photo of Daniel sleeping in his room.

Sadly, the investigators could not find any clues from the sight due to the heavy rain the previous two days. Even the items within the bag were half destroyed from the rain and mud ( Bruce thought that was a ridiculous claim. He would need to break into the evidence archives, steal the backpack, and run some tests. He would ask Barry for help if he had to.)

Two towns over, another witness claimed to have seen Daniel walking by the side of road, being led by a woman in a grey dress. His picture had been shared by frantic schoolmates at a football game where the new witness recognized him.

This was one week after Daniel's disappearance. The witness had claimed to have captured the pair on her dash cam after she had saved the clip because the two had appeared from the shadows "like ghosts," and she had screamed when her headlights shone on them.

The witness was driving through the back roads to her aunt's house, and the lack of street lights, alongside the dense trees lining the roads, made it hard for anyone to see at night. The clip was no more than seven seconds.

It is just as the car turns onto the dirt road that Daniel can be seen turning towards the car, his right wrist trapped in a woman's hold. He stares into the camera while it passes by, not showing any signs of distress.

The woman is turned away from the vehicle, seemingly peering into the trees as if she thought something had caught her attention. The pair's outfits are peculiar- they seem to be dressed from the early eighteen hundreds, which was why the witness had gotten such a fright.

After searching the area where this sighting was held, the police could not find any evidence that Daniel had passed through there. The case went cold for six months before a concerned man called his local authorities about a young boy standing on the edge of a bridge. He had accidentally spotted the boy while filming a wide landscape video of his hotel room.

By the time the man had raced down to the lobby and gotten to the bridge, the emergency operator in his ear, Daniel, had vanished. When the police collected the video, they could identify the same woman wearing the same dress standing by a white van in the background. Thankfully, its license plates were in full view.

The van was later found to have been reported stolen two years before Daniel's disappearance. However, a common link existed between five other missing people investigations that spanned those two years. Sadly, the van was never seen again, and police assumed it was scrapped.

Daniel's case went cold for three years until his body was discovered during a renovation effort funded by Bruce himself. All work on the old buildings was halted as Daniel's death was confirmed, the investigation was underway, and Wayne Enterprise working entirely with the police to find out what happened to the young boy. His body was sent back to his family after the autopsy had been completed.

Daniel Fenton's cause of death was ruled to be suffocation. Physical indications on his body indicated he had attempted to fight off whoever had left those marks around his neck, but in the end, Daniel had not won. Despite the many tests they conducted on the locker and the area, no other clues could be found of how, when, and by whom Daniel had wound up there.

Bruce didn't appreciate the entire lack of clues. He had searched and done his own testing as Batman the same night Daniel's body had been found. Nothing had appeared on his tests until he had attempted to use one of Constantine's runes.

This one had flared up for a mighty ghost. Bruce had gotten the idea to check for the paranormal after rumors spread of a ghost fitting Daniel's description through the nearby neighborhood children. Constantine claimed that it was not the murder victim, Daniel Fenton, but rather something far older and far more dangerous.

Something prone to luring humans away. Bruce believes the woman seen near Daniel in the last few years of his life was not a human.

Bruce sighs, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. He's gone over the file five times, yet nothing seems to jump out at him. His coffee had gone from pipping hot to lukewarm, and his children were slowly tickling into the room.

He raises his mug at them in greeting, hiding a smile behind his cup as Cass leans over to side hug him. His daughter is always more physical in her greetings, which makes him so happy that he ignores how her eyes have launched onto his screen with intense concentration.

"A cold case?" Tim asks from around a yawn. Bruce's head barely finishes the nodding motion before the boy leans closer to the table, eyes sharp. "What's it about?"

"The body was found in the restoration affordable housing project that was canceled," Bruce replies. He begins summarizing the case to his children as the rest finally settle around the table, looking at the usual amount of exhaustion Bruce has long ago been able to push through.

He can spot the moment they all start theorizing or analyzing the presented information while he scrolls up to see Daniel's smiling face. Bruce is just about to flip the tablet around so the rest of the children can see when his daughter leans closer to the tablet.

Cass's hand spams as she hisses. "Not Dead."

It takes a moment for Bruce to process her sharp words, blinking up at her. "What was that sweetheart?"

"Not. Dead," She repeats, pointing an accusing finger at Daniel's photo. "Not Human. Lures victims to death. Almost got me."