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.Nursery Stiff.

| Avalon Heights, BLÜDHAVEN

| July 19, 23:36 EST

"We're looking for someone to identify the body now." The lie was obvious but the report continued as Sergeant Amy Rorhbach walked the rows of a lighted greenhouse of a nursery-garden center in Avalon Heights, four blocks from Saint Anthony's nursing home.

The report was from a man whose speech and affect echoed ennui all too well. Perhaps it was because of his crooked nose or the radical humidity of the room's atmosphere. Did plants really need all this humidity? How was it possible that it was this hot so late in the evening? Regardless of it being July, it was too much.

"But it's another one of those suicides that have been going around." The officer spoke of the suicides as a disease and closed his empty notepad. He then clicked his pen, twice, because he had forgotten that he hadn't written anything.

"Is it now..." Amy discerned that that was the closing of the report and knew all too well that this bunch were somewhat incompetent. The feeble report wasn't all that gave it away.

Two laid-back officers continued to converse about the night's earlier events: a Gotham Griffins game. They had spoken for over fifteen minutes near the greenhouse entrance and one held a cigarette in his hand. The brunette shook her head at them while gritting her teeth. In the least, they had competency enough to close off the scene with caution tape.

"My team will handle it from here." Amy informed the officer with a crooked nose who had given a poor excuse of a report. She approached him. On normal circumstances, she would place a statement to the higher ups against the lot of them but knew better than to do that. This was Blϋdhaven after all. She would only be reporting officers for insubordination, lack of professionalism and hints of corruption to someone who was no different, if not more so.

"Sorry serge." The apology came as if in response to her thoughts but of course, that wasn't the case. An uncaring hand came slowly down on her shoulder and squeezed false comfort and support. Amy eyed him cautiously as he walked passed her to join in on the sports conversation. She then turned from him and looked down to the bloody stiff slumped over a muddied and cheap rolling table.

She inhaled sharply. "Grayson?" The brunette couldn't help but breathe the name. There was no answer. Not from the lifeless body. "Rivera!" Amy barked angrily. Behind her towards her left, a short man with excessive facial hair approached. "Did that group touch anything or do anything…to disturb this scene while I was canvassing outside?" The man shook his head. "Well?" Amy impatiently barked, awaiting a verbal response.

"No." Rivera spoke up. He then pulled out a small digital camera and began capturing shots of the insides of the greenhouse. For now, he remained in the row and started with the dead body. Despite earlier pictures taken, Riviera heard his team leader state that their team would be taking over. Thus, a fresh set of pictures were in order.

Amy nodded quickly. "Okay." She stepped towards the glass wall behind the corpse and peered at her reflection, as she could see nothing else. It was very dark outside. She wiped her brow, then turned around and continued to take in the mess before her. It was all she could do while Rivera was capturing the scene.

She gritted her teeth. The person was so young. It always bothered her when young people were involved in such cases. She sighed. "Where the hell is Grayson?" She complained. He had called to check in with her and to inform her that he would be running late. He had some unexpected car trouble.

"Here" Dick Grayson announced his presence, slightly panting. He maneuvered his way into the greenhouse past the first group. "I'm here." He reiterated as he checked his watch.

| 23:46 EST

Amy shot him a look before allowing it to linger as she absorbed him and his behavior. He looked as if he had just run a marathon. With his cheeks slightly flushed, there was some sweat at his brows. Amy noticed that as he set right to work his cobalt blue eyes drank in the untidiness before them prior to giving the corpse a quick run over. His jaw line tensed slightly.

"About time." Amy eyed him. Dick gave her a half-smile as a form of apology while he collected his breath. She wasn't taking it, so he cleared his throat and quickly smoothed his hand over his dark blue tie. "How's the car trouble?" She asked.

"Troubling." He answered with a small grin. "I had to leave it behind." He sounded only a tad cheerless.

Halfway on his way to Avalon Heights from the outskirts of Gotham City, his car had stopped running. Under quick inspection, he presumed it could be anything from of a faulty coil wire to a problem with the fuel pump and everything in between. He couldn't be too sure of the problem yet, but with a nonfunctioning car, which he swore should be in pristine condition unless a certain devilish 'boy wonder' had anything to do with it out of resentment for being hugged and pretty much laughed at a little over an hour ago, Dick used other methods of travel to take him to Avalon Heights: a couple of buses, a few train rides and then by foot the rest of the way.

He had replaced his gun to its holster and discarded his windbreaker, leaving it in his car. He wasn't exactly accustomed to the bulkiness of his officer uniform and the July temperature and the moisture of the greenhouse wasn't making it any better. Not only that, the humidity also made the smell of death stronger than usual. Oddly enough, it didn't faze him that much; however, it wasn't on his list of the best top five smells.

"So, what do we have here?" Dick asked. Rivera answered him as the man continued to move around, snapping shots of the scene from differing angles.

"Suicide. Male. Early to mid twenties. We don't have an ID on the body yet. We received a call at 10:20 PM from a resident at St. Anthony's who claimed to have heard a loud noise at about 9:30 PM."

"The lapse in time?" Dick inquired as he began walking in and out of the rows, scanning the floor and benches.

"The lapse in time," Amy took charge of giving Grayson a quick briefing and continued, saying, "was because the resident is confused. The staff assumed the resident heard fireworks. They themselves had heard the loud noise, obvious gunshot," Amy said as she motioned towards the dead body with her hand. "But assumed it was a firework. However, once half an hour passed without any further noise, they got suspicious and decided to call Blüdhaven PD." Amy finished.

There was a long pause as Dick nodded his head.

"Any thoughts?" Amy inquired once Grayson stood in the row of the stiff. She was a little irritated. It wasn't towards Grayson, but about this scene, the location, the victim, and the circumstances that were all involved.

By the looks of the stiff, it might have actually been a typical suicide; however, the brunette was too stubborn to believe that. After all the sudden outbreak of suicides, adding another to that list was too bizarre. Amy knew it wasn't typical for Blϋdhaven to have too many suicides. It was Blϋdhaven. If there was a death, it was someone killing someone else. Therefore, as for this being a suicide, she wasn't buying it, rather, didn't want to. There was something more; something here that was missing. There had to be.

She looked to her rookie. The feeling came to her that he felt the same way and yet he had just entered the greenhouse, never minding his recent addition to the force. Her eyes narrowed. She wanted him to get his feet wet but something inside her told her that his feet had already been soaked in such work. For a long time too, more than her ten years spent in the Blϋhaven Police Department. He carried a peculiar finesse and though it wasn't unusual for people to have natural instincts, Grayson seemed too…trained.

"Well," Dick began. He breathed normally again. He closed the five feet of space between him and the corpse, minding Rivera who was still clicking away at the camera and the blood stains that decorated the floor.

Besides the obvious evidence, a slumped body with a gunshot wound through the dead man's right temple, a gun in his right hand with his index finger still tickling the trigger, the large amount of blood that vomited on the various vegetation and wood tables, there was something unnatural about the body position. It wasn't just the way the soles of his shoes were facing up, but upon closer observation, Dick noted beneath the corpse's chest, propping the body up on the wheeling table, there was something hidden. He reached for his latex gloves and donned them.

"What do we have here?"

"Wait, Grayson." Rivera tried warning. Too late. Dick was already lifting the man's chin and tugged at the object wedged between the tabletop and chest. He gently placed the head back on the table. "What is that?" Rivera lowered his camera.

"A tape recorder." Amy answered for Grayson. Her brows furrowed as she approached him, donning her own gloves. She hadn't noticed that and she had been at the scene for well over thirty minutes. "Start it up, Grayson." Dick pressed the play button on the bulky recorder.

There is light static noise. It lessens once a man's voice begins. "Nightwing." The voice is breathy and desperate but suddenly evens when the words continue to pour out. "I was hoping you would find me first. The 'haven's police are useless. They haven't figured the plan out yet. The big BANG plan… But enough of that. I'm tired of waiting…living. I will end my life."A loud gunshot explodes and the sound of a body falling long and hard is the last sound of evidence on the tape before…

The recorder clicked to a stop shortly after. The play button popped up into its original position. The bulky recorder sat at rest.

"Suicide." Rivera reiterated after a short moment of silence. Amy looked at him. "What?" He spoke defensively.

"Are you sure that the first group didn't touch anything?" She pressured him again with the same question.

"Yeah, why?"

"Because," Dick interjected. He shook his head. It bothered him that the voice on the tape spoke to Nightwing. 'Is this what Bruce had meant?'He thought. The words of his mentor echoed in his head.

'You should have been there in the first place. If anything's happened, it will be on you.'

Because Dick had been in Gotham, he missed the opportunity to help this man. However, there might not have been much for him to do since it was a suicide. Somehow, Dick didn't feel right calling it that. Still, he should have been in Blüdhaven in the first place. He pressed his lips together, the sudden feeling of inadequacy growing within him. It was a feeling he could never shake, especially when it came to Batman.

Amy looked at him. "Grayson?" She began. His demeanor changed suddenly.

His cobalt blue eyes narrowed and darted over the dead body and glasshouse. He also stood up straighter. For a man he wasn't exactly tall, rather average, being just a few inches taller than Amy who stood to five feet, seven inches. She continued to watch his tense body language but before her eyes could measure him, he dropped to the floor, rather squatted quickly and drastically.

How does he manage to keep his balance? She pondered.

"What's on your mind, Grayson?" She squatted beside him slowly and followed his eyes as they surveyed the blood tarnished underbelly of the tables and then to the floor beside them where blood and dirt were smeared in circles and sharp, thin lines. She believed she began seeing what he was getting at.

"This is an old model voice recorder." Dick stood up. Amy followed and blinked, as what he said was not what was on her mind. "As we just saw, they can't rewind themselves." Dick pressed the play button down but it immediately shot back up. "Once the tape stops, someone has to rewind it. So, I think we can assume that someone touched this because—"

"When we listened to it, it started from the beginning. Someone had to have tampered with it." Amy agreed.

"But who?" Rivera asked. He eyed the three men by the greenhouse entrance, all too ready to accuse the incompetent first bunch.

"Unless when he fell forward, he somehow managed to press rewind, but… That's unlikely." Dick wasn't so quick to place blame anywhere as he looked at the tape recorder. He couldn't see how this man could rewind the tape with dead weight but he looked at Amy. Her lips pressed together to form a thin line.

"So, not counting the victim, we have to re-investigate the time lapse of when the shot was heard and reported." Dick nodded in agreement. "We also need to find any sort of witnesses." Amy shook her head, doubtful that there would be any witnesses to this case, reported as a suicide. "I wonder if the others were the same." She said lowly to herself.

Dick looked back at the body, shrugging. "And then there's the floor and tables with blood. The gunshot wound should have instantly killed him but it looks like he was trying to clean up." Dick surveyed the floor and then the body. There was no other physical damage to it, besides the hole in the man's temple.

"Alright," Amy said, gathering her thoughts. "Get someone to ID this body now and bring in the other teams. We need fingerprint analysis, ballistic fingerprinting and a forensic footwear evidence team here. Let's go. We have work to do. Grayson, we need to access those surveillance tapes." She pointed to a camera in the corner, high near the ceiling. "For now, it's all we have."

"You got it." Dick nodded. It was going to be a long night of investigation that would span across several days.

| To be continued...