Quickly Bruce had set the car on autopilot and instantly hacked into the police system retrieving all the information of this new murder and linked it to the serial killer.
Robin took a quick glance over the body's description. A young girl, ten years old, blonde hair, brown eyes, blue dress with a bloodied apron, she had been found in an ally wrapped in a table cloth, stained with tea and cake. "Is this that killer you've been trying to track down?" He silently thought himself fortunate to not have to ask over the case, and instead have it land on his lap in the form of a computer screen.
"I've already figured out the approximate location." Batman responded seeming upset by the whole situation, and brusquely turned the autopilot off.
"Why do I get the feeling this is an actual psychopath?"
Bruce, looked over at the younger, "Did something jump out at you from the girl's description?"
"Alice," he responded.
"Good eye, Dick."
Bruce down-shifted and Robin noticed that they took a strange, sharp turn, now getting further away from the small red dot on the tracker. Batman had an idea of where to find this crazed madman, and they had to stop him before another "Alice" was kidnapped and killed.
"Where are we going?" Dick asked, though he could tell that they were heading into the Bower district of Gotham. The streets became tighter, and the buildings squished in more together, it was an older district, some buildings were still cobbled, and gargoyles were on any and all that were taller than one story high.
"They've been finding all the bodies near the courthouse and the Ace Chemical plant." Batman informed curtly.
"So, the perpetrator should be holding out in that area." Dick finished the thought.
"And since the last 'Alice' he used was dumped recently, he should be in search of another. He targets young girls with blonde hair, but I haven't figured out why he's killing them."
"If these girls are always found in table cloths-"
"They're not, this is the first girl found in that cloth." Batman corrected.
"So that's a new clue." Robin caught on and Batman nodded, turning down a few different streets. "And so you might catch him in the act? Or are you hoping to find him before he hides again?"
"I figure that he believes himself to be setting up a tea party, and for some reason these girls are upsetting him. At first I thought it may be a woman, believing that she was the Queen of Hearts, getting revenge on 'Alice,' but cutting off her head would make more sense, rather than the poison being found in their systems."
"These girls were poisoned?" Robin repeated, he felt a little surprised and sickened, but kept those emotions out of his voice, sticking more to a hollow curiosity.
"Yes and this poison seemed strange. I had analyzed it earlier this week, off of one of the bodies I had a chance to scan and analyze myself." He paused a moment, "it seemed just short if being a type of truth serum."
"With the Queen explanation it would also make sense, considering she may be trying to get a specific answer from Alice and getting upset that it wasn't working."
"But the method of murder doesn't seem right. Or perhaps, incomplete." Batman, pulled over and came to a complete stop, leaving the bat mobile, and Robin followed, going down the alley.
Cautionary tape was still placed, with a few cops standing by. "This doesn't seem ideal," Robin mumbled. After a few blows with the Maroni crime family, Batman had been placed on Gotham's most wanted list, and Maroni sat behind bars with friends like the commissioner, awaiting Batman's arrest. "Where to now?" He whispered, turning to see that his mentor was gone, only the bat-mobile there to keep him company.
With a reluctant sigh, he looked up to see, Batman jumping from one roof to another, stubborn to check out the scene. Robin leaned on the vehicle, ready to move in on a moment's notice.
After a short while some gruff voice yelled out about Batman being spotted, and Robin came to attention as he watched a few of the policemen pull out guns. A gas pellet suddenly went off in the ally, Robin got into the bat-mobile, seeing his mentor slip over the roof while coughing cops tried to find their way out of the smoke. He sped off in pursuit of Batman.
He turned on the vehicle's tracking system, to which could be used to automatically send the bat-mobile to Bruce while keeping autopilot from fully engaging; which was harder than he thought, but safer for pedestrians.
He turned the next corner, and a thud was heard on the roof of the car, a sly grin came to the boy's face as he disengaged the tracking and Batman slipped in through the passenger window. "GCPD, and step on it."
Robin complied, a widened grin on his face, as he was at least trusted enough to drive the car with his mentor in it. Robin pulled up to a building adjacent to the Gotham City Police Department headquarters, and turned to leave the vehicle.
"Go home, and wait for further instructions," Batman ordered while exiting.
The boy-wonder turned to him wanting to be further involved with the case, but Batman had already closed the door, and disappeared from sight to the rooftops above. "I hate it when he does that." Robin muttered with years' worth of resentment.
...
"I don't like the looks of this Jim," Commissioner Loeb muttered over reviewing some papers. "Girls are disappearing off the streets of Gotham, and parents are frantically placing blame on the police 'cause we can't find this sick-o! Tell me details, Jim, details!"
"These girls are being drugged, and an autopsy is being done on the latest victim." Lieutenant Gordon replied gruffly.
"That's all you're giving me!" Loeb yelled, standing up, both hands on the desk and scattered paperwork. Patience around the city was running thin, and the pressure on the Commissioner was felt throughout the department.
"No one understands more than me, what these parents fear, sir, and no one wants this guy put away for good more than I do. But I'm telling you, the latest we've found from these victims is drugs, we've got our forensics team looking at what kinds, and the abrasions on all the girls have told us some struggle. No rape. And bruising on the torso shows consistency with CPR, this guy tried, hard, to keep most of them alive longer." The Lieutenant added with some foreboding.
"So this guy's not trying to kill them, just keep 'em doped up, why?" The Commissioner mumbled more to himself, finally having calmed down some, sitting back down in his leather chair.
"If you could just read my report, instead of calling me to your office, I could probably gather more information on this case." Gordon scoffed, reasoning that it may be impossible to find anything on that desk of his, but turning to leave anyways.
"Watch that mouth of yours, Jim, and tell me when you find out anything!" He called out as Gordon closed the door and continued down the hallway, into his office. When he closed the door and turned on the lights, he was taken aback by the dark knight leering out the window.
Gripping his chest a little then tossing his trench coat on the coat rack near the door, he mumbled casually, "What's the pleasure of your visit?"
Without even a glance in his direction, the dark knight responded, "I need access to the last victim of the serial killer you're chasing."
Jim nodded a little, mostly to himself. "If they find you in here, we'll both be in trouble." He muttered, with a smirk on his face. When no response came, he nodded again, "I'll need to ask the forensics team to leave, so give me about ten minutes." He rolled up his cuffs, and left his office. Sauntering down the hallway, past the restrooms, down the stairs, around a corner, and through the chase doors, where two men and a woman were examining the small girl's corpse. The dress hung nearby, and the body was covered up to her chest with a white sheet.
"Lieutenant!" One of the men blurted, holding a swab close to the girl's face.
"Come 'ere I need to talk to you three." He pointed around to the three of them; each of them looked to each other.
"What for?" The woman questioned, standing from the chair, she seemed extremely concerned.
He knew how to play this, "Beyond the point of evidence gathering we still need to contact the parents. Have you-" Gordon started.
"And I've already contacted the girl's mother," she started, "Ellen Walters, ten, lived with her single-mother, Victoria Walters, thirty, and disappeared two weeks ago, she's heading over now."
Jim was caught slightly off guard, but quickly recovered, without even the slightest twitch of expression. "Well, we can't be crowding the room when she gets here, so out until she's here!"
They seemed to understand the validity of his statement, though their eyes questioned the reasoning, but nodded, solemnly leaving the room. After weeks of dealing with little dead girls every few days they all felt too exhausted to argue too much. He sighed, about to turn to return to his office and tell the vigilante, when he noticed Batman already standing over the corpse. "What are you expecting to find?" He asked, as one of the most wanted men in Gotham analyzed the girl, touching his cowl, and at one point kneeling. Gordon was slightly nervous that one of the forensic anthropologists would return for some reason, and spot Batman analyzing the girl, and him just standing there letting it happen.
"Motive," the masked detective responded.
Gordon was far from surprised, having known the caped crusader for years, he always seemed to catch the bad guys on even the smallest slip up they might've done. He peeked over his shoulder through the small round window, and sighed through his nose. He was helping Batman, a criminal, to help Gotham get this serial killer of young girls. "Do you need more information?" He assumed Gotham City's knight had already accumulated quite a bit of information over the case if he was already looking at motive.
"Blonde girls, attempts to resuscitate, use of a heavy psycho-hallucinogen," he pulled a cotton swab from his belt, "and traces of saline on her face, but not from her eyes." He looked to the dress, touched his cowl and narrowed his gaze. "On her dress as well."
Gordon looked at the young girl; her mother would be here soon, she would cry, he'd offer her a handkerchief, as he would watch her weep over her daughter's body. It brought him to thoughts of James, his son, whom he hadn't seen in 18 years, and Barbara, his daughter, and how he would feel if he suddenly had a phone call to receive the news of either of them having been killed by some psychopath the police had yet to catch. But he tried to shake the thought from his mind, to focus instead on catching the crazed man, and turned to speak; "If you find this guy quick-" he stopped, placing his hands on his hips, "I hate it when he does that." He mumbled, the forensic team returning, and the older of the two men stepping forward with a solemn look on his face.
"The mother is here now to identify the girl." He said, the other two looking to him.
Lt. Gordon nodded, and the four of them set up the room, so that the girl was alone, with nothing around her, while Gordon left to bring the mother in.
Meanwhile, a boy's mother was being held for questioning by "The Roman" Falcone, being accused of having told the police of the Falcone crime family's movements.
Batman could not be in all places at the same time.