The explosion finally died down and the flames were put out; but after that, there was no trace to be found about where the Joker and his goons had disappeared off to. There was once again neither hide nor hair of the Joker or his accomplices, and certainly no sight of the young girl he'd kidnapped. Each passing moment, every dragging hour was excruciating for the police, Batman and Robin, and most of all, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.
The hours drudged on slowly; every passing minute, each hoping to hear some word from the police, some discovery, some break in the case, something. But as the night continued, all was quiet; and that silence was eating at Bruce and Dick, who had returned to Wayne Manor once it was concluded any further search on their parts for the night would be futile considering all the ground they covered.
At first neither said anything about the matter because each was trying to keep their minds off of it. The more they thought about it the more they considered all the horrible possibilities of what the Joker might have done to the girl. Finally, Dick drudged up the thought that had been eating at him all night.
"Do you think he killed her?"
Bruce knew he would have to be careful as to how he would answer that question. Dick already blamed himself for what had happened, no sense pouring salt into those wounds.
"I doubt it," he replied, "He needs her for something, otherwise he wouldn't have kept her involved in his dirty work for as long as he has."
"Well maybe she outlived her use to him," Dick commented, "It's hard to put anything past him."
"I know," Bruce said, "But I still find it hard to believe he would've just killed her. There's a reason he picked her for these jobs, somebody with no known family, who can't be identified. He picked her out for a specific reason, he needs her to stick around for something, I just haven't figured out what yet."
"Well if he didn't kill her," Dick responded, "Then what's going on? Why wasn't she with him last night? Where is she now?"
The tall blonde woman in the white doctor's suit and coat came out of the dark room carrying her medical bag. She was one of the finest physicians whose services were offered under the table to the members of Gotham City's criminal underworld. She'd seen to the best and treated the worst; the scales weighed more in the latter and she'd had to draw the sheets over a good number of her patients, if nothing else, to spare anybody else from looking at the ghastly details until somebody made an anonymous call the police to pick up the bodies. With this experience under her belt, it was obvious from the look on her face that the news she was about to present wasn't good.
"Well?" the Joker asked.
"Well," she replied in a similar tone, "She's very sick, she has a high temperature that shows no sign of dropping anytime soon. At this point it would be very unwise to move her around much, she must be kept in bed and allowed to rest," she took a package of pills out of her bag, "She'll need to be given these every six hours and the fever should break by tomorrow. If she doesn't show any improvement by tomorrow night, I'll return and examine her again."
The doctor turned to leave and saw two of the Joker's henchmen standing by, glaring at her.
"I can show myself out," she told them, and proceeded to do so.
The Joker, not saying a word to anybody, entered the dark room the girl was kept in and went over to where she was sleeping. She was dead to the world and her whole body was covered in perspiration. The last couple of days everybody had noticed she had begun acting very strange, even by their standards. When she slept for 15 straight hours he knew she wouldn't be in any condition to take out on another job; he needed her alive for what he had planned so he had his boys send for the doctor. However he knew the caped crusaders were watching for his latest appearance and he simply could not disappoint them; he had to show his face in public again. So he had gone out, lured them to a place in the middle of nowhere and set off a bomb. The explosion would have everybody chasing their tails on that one trying to find out the motive for the explosion, the meaning behind that location, and the beauty of it was there was none. It was just what he needed to buy some time until the kid was of use to him again.
Three days the doctor had said, the Joker thought about it, grinning to himself…sounded like enough time to carry out the next part of his plan.
The next couple of days seem to drag on like somebody had poured molasses into an hour glass. Everybody in Gotham wanted to know where was the mystery girl, and what was the Joker up to?
One afternoon, Bruce found Dick asleep on the couch with the TV turned on to the news. He'd fallen asleep waiting to hear the first word about a break in the case, after staying up for two nights trying to find one. Bruce turned off the television set and sat down, trying to think.
"Sir?" Alfred's voice carried down the hall before he actually appeared in the doorway, "Welcome back, sir."
"Shhh."
Alfred looked in and saw Dick asleep, and he smiled as he stepped into the room, "You won't wake him sir, I saw to that earlier."
Bruce sat back and laughed, "You always think of everything, don't you, Alfred?"
"I try, for the most of it," he replied.
"I don't know what I'm going to do, Alfred."
"Do you really think the girl's still alive?"
"I hope so…I wish I knew what the Joker's plan was."
"Yes, don't we all?"
"And you know if anything has happened to her," Bruce pointed to Dick, "He'll blame himself for it the rest of his life."
"Yes, and we can agree that's the last thing we need," Alfred duly replied.
"I just don't know what I'm going to do," Bruce said, "We've had no luck in finding out where the Joker goes when he pulls one of his disappearing acts."
"Might there be a way of finding out where he's liable to strike next?" Alfred asked, "All these robberies and attacks that have taken place lately, is there any known connection?"
"None that I can figure," Bruce answered, "He's robbing from the rich, the middle class, businesses, individuals, his crime spree is spreading in all directions."
"So this time he's deliberately committing a string of unrelated crimes, but for what reason?"
"To keep us running in circles, try to make us go crazy, and I think it's just about to work too," Bruce said.
"Well sir," Alfred said as he went over to the table and picked up a newspaper, "I've taken it upon myself to do a little investigating of my own accord. While there's no distinctive pattern to be found in all of the recent robberies he's committed, several of them have occurred at public settings for the upper crust of Gotham City."
Bruce took the papers Alfred had and saw that he was right. All the old articles mentioned riots and break-ins at banquets and award dinners and grand openings.
"Hmm, should've guessed."
"And, sir," Alfred told him, "You'll note that there's an upcoming banquet dinner celebrating the more…financially well off people of the city, yourself included."
It took him a minute but Bruce was able to make the connection.
"And when is it?"
"Tomorrow night, sir."
The promenade room was crowded with the who's who of Gotham City and it seemed everybody and his brother was there. Bruce looked behind him to see if anything looked amiss yet, and then looked back to Dick who sat at the opposite end of the table, pulling at his collar.
"If it weren't for the chance the Joker might make a guest appearance," Dick told him, "I wouldn't have come, I don't feel up to it."
Yes, that much, Bruce could tell. He didn't know if Dick had gotten wise to Alfred putting sleeping pills into the food or not, but he knew that Dick had spent a better part of the night before, and all of that day, awake, and a nervous wreck.
A man came up to the table and told Bruce that there was a phone call for him. He got up from the table and went over to the phone. "Hello?"
"Sir," it was Alfred calling from the car, "I just thought you might like to know, several men have just sneaked in through the back way. They were in the shadows so I couldn't tell what they looked like or what it was they had with them, but they struck me as appearing mighty suspicious."
"Could you tell if she was with them?" Bruce asked.
"Afraid not, sir."
"Okay, thank you," Bruce hung up the phone and headed back to the promenade room.
Dick was on the verge of falling asleep when Bruce came back to the table and said to him, "Alfred saw some people making an unexpected entrance through the back way, we'd better get ready."
"Right."
Dick got up and followed Bruce out of the room.
A few minutes later, the main entrance doors were busted open and a purplish smoke filled the room. Everybody screamed and started to get up from their seats. As they did, several goons in purple trench coats carrying Tommy guns entered the room and started ordering everybody to back up near the walls and hand over anything valuable they had on them, and nobody would get hurt.
Nervously, everybody obliged, men handed over their wallets and their watches, women handed over their necklaces and earrings. Oddly enough, of all the people holding up the room, the Joker wasn't among them, in fact, he was nowhere to be seen.
A moment later, Batman and Robin burst into the room and immediately set into acting of restoring the peace. Batman grabbed two of the thugs and bashed their heads together, knocking them out, Robin tripped another one and in turn took down four of them like a set of bowling pins. Then he grabbed the arms one who had snatched the diamond necklace off a woman's neck and knocked him against the wall before telling him, "Give the lady back her jewelry."
In a mere matter of minutes, most of the gang was down for the count but a couple remaining goons tried to make a break for it. One of them tried firing the machine gun but it jammed after a couple of bullets let loose. Batman clocked him and he fell to the floor, and Robin took after the last one who had escaped from the room.
Robin took off through the dark hallway, down the stairs to the first floor and out the back way, into the alley behind the building. Looking around, he saw no people and no cars; he tried to find the guy who had just ran through here, but couldn't find him. As he stopped and tried to figure out what had happened, somebody reached out and pinned him against the wall. As he tried to pull the hands off of him that held him there, he felt something press against his face and he heard a sound that sounded strangely familiar. He realized with great horror that whoever was in the alley with him, was forcing a batch of the Joker's nerve gas into his system. Robin tried not to breathe it in but it didn't seem to matter. He struggled with the strong man who kept him pressed against the wall; but slowly he could feel his strength leaving him. His head was starting to throb and everything was starting to look weird. Certain things he could make out in the darkness seemed to jump out at him like a 3D picture. Every muscle and bone in his body was thriving with pain and he soon fell to the ground, unable to get up, hardly able to move.
That wasn't the worst part of it though. He didn't see the things that were before him now. Instead he saw the memories that had been buried in his mind for years. He watched helplessly as his parents died; and he watched it through the eyes of the confused, scared, furious and vulnerable kid he had been when it happened, instead of the young adult he was now. It was like going through a time warp back to that exact moment and reliving the tragedy exactly as it occurred all over again. He screamed, he pounded his fists against the floor, he tried to move but he could not. Now he didn't know where he was or what was going on, what was real and what was not, it all merged together and he didn't know how to get out of it.
He was oblivious to the two men grabbing him and jerking him to his feet. One man reached down and removed Robin's utility belt and tossed it aside and they got him out of there before there were any witnesses to what had happened. Robin himself, was not aware of what happened because he was trapped somewhere between the past and the present, between reality and a nightmare, and he couldn't find a way to the end of it.