Consequences

Karen Page stared at the open email on her laptop screen, the black text filling a small portion of the white expanse. She’d stared at it long enough for the letters to vibrate in her vision, bluring them together. Foggy’s office door pulled open, Matt heading for the coat rack while Foggy placed a folder on her desk.

“When you get a chance, can you look into this?” he asked, his eyes furrowing as he noticed her state. Foggy was always acutely empathic, as if he could sense the air shift with each mood. His grey eyes scrutinized her hesitation as she raked her fingers through her blonde hair. Matt turned with a furrowed brow, and she quickly sighed away her demeanor.

“Sure,” she promised and took the folder in hand. “Headed to the courthouse?”

“Yeah.” Matt hesitated as he adjusted his coat collar. Karen stuffed away her unease quickly before he could question it. “We’ll still meet up at Josie’s after, right?”

“Right,” she answered. He wasn’t buying it. Matt turned to face her, and while he was blind, it was as though he could see the nerves she pushed away, or the crack in her lip where she absentmindedly picked too hard. Hell, he probably tasted the blood in the air when it happened an hour back.

She looked at the time displayed in the corner of her laptop screen. It really had been an hour since she received the email.

“Is something the matter, Karen?”

She playfully scoffed at Matt’s keen senses, and met his sightless gaze. She couldn’t tell him the truth. Not yet. But she knew he’d hear it if she lied.

“You know Mr. Laine?” she asked.

“Benjamin Laine? Yeah, the guy who said he might be framed for an attempted murder,” Foggy said.

“Didn’t he say he went with his parents’ lawyers?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.” Karen hesitated, grimacing in her own slip up as Matt’s head tilted thoughtfully. “It’s just, I haven’t seen any news about it. You’d think there’d be something out there.”

Foggy’s knuckles tapped against her desk corner. “Sometimes these things don’t really make it anywhere.”

“Do you think there’s more to it?”

Matt’s prodding made the email on her screen a blaring light in her peripheral. She involuntarily caught Foggy’s glance and read his look keenly. They had an agreement: don’t worry Matt until there was something to worry about. Karen didn’t know if her email was worrisome yet, and if she said anything, Matt would forbid her from investigating.

It could be nothing.

She closed her laptop, shutting away the distracting screen. “I think it may just bother me no one has reported on it.”

“Missing the Bulletin?” Foggy asked. He picked up on her shift and attempted to flow it to a lighter air. Karent smiled at his intuition, and he smiled back knowingly.

“A little,” Karen admitted, and shrugged. “Sometimes even the little things can matter.”

“Well, you can always give him a call,” Matt suggested. “You’ve got good instincts. Just… Well, be careful. You know.”

His concern for her well being never ceased, though it felt more true now that she’s known his secret identity for years now. Matt Murdock being Daredevil was something she felt she should have seen from the start. All the bruises and bleeding and the way the masked vigilante’s jawline always looked so familiar. Back before she knew, his worry felt like hollow promises. Now it felt true, but also laced with the threat of his involvement as Daredevil.

Fisk was gone, at least, and New York had so many superheroes it was rare the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was an absolutely necessary force. It never stopped him from patrolling at night, but at least it wasn’t anything big.

Hopefully this wasn’t big…

She waved them off as they shut the door behind them, leaving her to her daily grind, which required her to open her laptop once again. Karen’s hand hovered over the computer, thumb hooking in the fold and pushing the screen back up into view. The monitor lit and requested her password before entry. Such a simple feature. She admittedly did not have a challenging enough password, but at least she could remember it.

Her fingers rested upon the keyboard, eyes glancing back to the door. She was aware of her heartbeat and tapped her index finger to its rhythm until all fingers decidedly typed her password.

The email returned, blaring its invitation once again. It was an address hours outside of Manhattan with the words, “No lawyers. Come alone.”

The email was sent by the same one Benjamin Laine used for his initial inquiry into Nelson, Murdock, and Page. It was oddly ominous in execution, and incredibly suspicious. Mr. Laine seemed like a simple man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She pulled up her notes she transposed from their initial meeting where he had given all his evidence of the potential framing.

She remembered he asked for a consultation, and of course Matt and Foggy obliged without asking for payment. Benjamin looked fearful, his hands constantly wringing together, a leg bouncing between conversational turns. His head was balding and turning salt and pepper around the halo that remained.

He said he walked into his apartment, and his roommate accused him of tampering with his car. The breaks stopped working causing the roommate to run into a tree. The shop said the breaks were cut through. Benjamin had said his roommate accused him of poisoning his food. He thought he might be having a bout of paranoia, but his roommate sounded like he was going to take some sort of legal action.

And then his roommate ended up in the hospital. By that point he’d made a trail of accusations pointing right at him. The roommate, Jason Colter, was unconscious at the time of the meeting, and he already spoke to the police and said he’d send over his report.

The report never came, though, and she wondered if it was because Benjamin picked up on Matt’s uncertainty. Karen and Foggy had learned to follow his lead on unspoken instincts. Matt had said they’d follow up with him after they receive the police report. A few days later they all received an email from Benjamin letting them know he sought representation elsewhere.

Clicking into her internet browser, she searched his name. Benjamin Laine of New York yielded hundreds of social media profiles and entries. Parsing through the mass revealed a variety of people who looked nothing like the man that had stepped into their office. Nothing came of a search on Jason Colter either. She made a few phone calls to the local hospitals inquiring on his status. There was no one there by that name.

Why did this man email her? Was it even him? She looked up from the blaring glow of her screen and saw the empty office had darkened. The lamp in the corner of her station was the only light illuminating the small space of Nelson, Murdock, and Page. She kept her station tidy despite the stacks of boxes she had yet to file into the cabinet to her right.

A soft sigh escaped her, fingers combing through her hair as she pushed back her unease. Her natural curiosity never died after she left the Bulletin. She craved answers, and her mind parsed through her potential avenues for such a venture. Searching police records would prove fruitless if she couldn’t confirm Benjamin’s name. He said he filed a police report, though. It couldn’t hurt to make a records request.

Those things took days, but maybe she could sweet talk an officer at the precinct. Did Benjamin even say where it was filed? She was assuming in Hell’s Kitchen. Why would he go to Nelson, Murdock, and Page if he wasn’t a local?

It was her only avenue left. One of the precincts in Manhattan would have the report, surely. As she gathered her things, she questioned whether this venture was even worth the effort.

Of course it was. This little mystery lit a fire in her that had been dimming to embers. She had nearly forgotten the thrill of a puzzle, not that her work with Foggy and Matt was boring. It came with its challenges, just not as invigorating as a story trapped without a page to fill.

Karen looked at the time on her laptop screen before closing it shut to pack it away. It was late, but not meet-up-at-Josie’s late. She had plenty of time to make an inquiry at the police department and get back for a few drinks.