She stopped running. After a fifteen-minute chase Harleen finally stopped running in the middle of Gotham City Square. Now that she was standing still everyone else was able catch up. Clown-masked henchmen came on the scene from the same alley that Harleen had come from, police cruisers, lights flashing created a barrier on the street in front and Batman glided on to a nearby roof top. Both of them poised to intervene. However neither of them did.
The rain continued to pour down in buckets, the goons continued to advance and her supposed rescuers continued to be nothing more then bystanders. Both under the assumption that if Harleen was important enough for the Joker to come out of hiding for the first time since his escape from Arkham asylum, he would take care of her himself.
Her safety, no her life, was forfeit for the mad man she had unleashed.
Even as the henchmen got closer and closer, she did not move. She didn't scream or even cry out. Harleen just raised a gun up to her temple and pulled the trigger.
Her blood hit the air in a crimson mist. The shot reverberated through the square as Harleen fell backward slowly, her body morbidly bounced when it made contact with the pavement.
With their job done for them, the clown-masked henchmen ran off, scattering in different directions. The police restarted the pursuit, dispersing in those same directions. Commissioner Gordon, two other officers and Batman hidden from view were the only ones to stay behind. Even though there was nothing that could be done for Harleen now.
The fact that Harleen could have had a free hand in the Joker's escape from Arkham made her very unpopular in Gotham. The press had been particularly relentless in reminding everyone who was most likely responsible for the constant state of fear the city was in.
There was no possible way that the Joker had escaped from Arkham on his own, he had to have had help, specifically someone on the inside and Harleen was the key suspect as his collaborator. Though her motives weren't entirely clear, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham had gone on record saying that the clown prince and his young psychiatrist had become inexplicably close and Dr. Joan Leland further confirmed this statement by saying that Harleen had been warned more then once about the dangers of getting too comfortable with the Joker. Not that there was much doubt as to what happened. Everyone knew it was probably very easy for the Joker to manipulate inexperienced Dr. Quinzel.
Most of, if not all, Harleen-related articles toed the line of being slander.
News-reporters were now arriving on the scene, much to Gordon's displeasure, beating the paramedics. Gordon grabbed tarp and a roll of yellow police tape out of the trunk of his cruiser. They should have created a perimeter long before now but everyone was frozen from shock and guilt. Wordlessly he passed the tape off to one of the officers still with him, and then went over to Harleen. He hoped they would be able to hold the reporters back. The least they could do was give her some peace in death.
Her eyes were closed and Gordon felt awful about being thankful for that. Next to Jonathan Crane, Harleen had some of the bluest eyes he had ever seen, just the thought of seeing them lifeless made his stomach curl. Not an easy task, having served fifteen years on the force he had seen more then his share of horrible things; corpses mutilated to the point of unrecognizable washing up on the shores of the river, parents breaking down after they identified the bodies of their children, the list goes on and on. None of that had been his fault, this was. In two seconds he could have given the order to save her, which would have taken minutes for his officers to act on. In total it would have taken Gordon anywhere between two and four minutes to save Harleen's life but he hadn't.
The rain made soft pat sounds on the tarp it was starting to let up but was still flushing blood across the square. His eyes glanced up at the rooftops. It may have been a collection of shadows playing on his imagination but he thought he saw the dark knight crouched like a gargoyle. If only Gordon could talk to him. Batman would most likely have answers to what drives people to such extreme measures, maybe he could make heads or tails of why Harleen chose to put a gun to her head because Gordon did not understand why at all.
Officer Berg was now standing next him. Gordon saw the young man look down at the tarp before quickly averting his eyes. It was time to make this official.
Despite the shock he was still in, Gordon found his voice.
"Time of death eleven thirty-eight."