Tim awoke in the mid-afternoon. His dreams had been strange, convoluted things in which he'd been chasing something or someone through one door after another. Every time he thought he was getting close to his quarry he found himself in a long corridor lined with identical portals. All of them were locked, and although he had a key in his hand there were far too many passageways for him to check before his time ran out. No matter where he started or how many locks he jammed the key into, he never found the right one before a child's scream rose in the distance. A despairing ache filled his slumbering mind as he was warped back to the beginning of the course over and over again.
His subconscious might have wanted to treat the case at hand like a video game, respawning him in the same spot as if he'd only failed a level, but things were far more serious than that. In a few short hours it would be dark, and any child out shopping in Gotham would be at risk. It was for that reason that he skipped changing into day clothes, bypassed the kitchen, and went straight down to the cave. Blinking blearily, he dropped into his usual chair and began to click back through the documents they'd gotten from the Commissioner. There had to be something, anything, somewhere in all of this...
Dick took up the seat beside him before long, but they didn't speak beyond saying hello. Photos, coroner's reports, and interviews flashed by on both screens. Tim skimmed some pages and picked others apart, but found nothing. The families had no enemies, the police had no leads, and he was quickly reaching a point of having no hope. Had the murderer left home yet for the night, he wondered, left home and headed for this evening's killing ground? If they had, then it seemed only a lucky car accident or a sudden bout of food poisoning would be in position to intervene with their nefarious plans. At this rate Robin and Nightwing certainly would not.
A note from the second night's killing caught his attention. An emergency exit had been used that time just as it had been at Westbrook Plaza. The store manager had remarked on the fact that the alarm hadn't been triggered, telling the police that the system had just been serviced a couple of weeks earlier. Their monitoring panel had shown everything working fine since then, including the door in question.
"...Dick," Tim breathed as a possibility struck him. "How many of the stores had deactivated emergency exit alarm? Three, wasn't it?"
"I think so. But they were all on different systems."
"Different hardware systems, yeah. But that doesn't mean that there isn't somebody out there who knows how all three types work. I'd bet that big, public spaces like shopping malls are required to have their life and safety set-ups serviced regularly. And if they are, don't you think there's a good chance that servicing companies know how to work with multiple types of systems?"
Dick's eyes narrowed as he considered Tim's suggestion. "So you think maybe these stores have all been serviced by the same alarm system company, and now one of their employees is taking advantage of that inside knowledge?"
"It seems plausible, don't you think?"
"What about the stores where nothing was disarmed? The ones where the killer used the employee or service doors instead?"
"Well, if the killer's been in these places before in order to work they might have gotten a pretty good look at the way the back areas are set up. Why risk setting off an alarm if you know you can get what you want in another way? Plus, if an employee saw them before they snatched a kid they could always make the excuse that they'd been called out for a system error or something."
"Hmm...I could see that. Let me give the commissioner a call and see what his guys can find out about the company or companies that have been keeping all these systems properly certified. You keep reading," Dick said as he stood up. "You're obviously getting further than I am with the evidence."
Reinvigorated by his find, Tim returned to the case file and began to re-read everything for the half dozenth time. He had no other strokes of genius before Alfred insisted they come upstairs and have dinner, however. Sitting across the table from Dick, Tim stared down at his pot roast and tried to think harder. Was a potential third party connection between the businesses really the only clue the files had to give him...?
Dick's hand stretched across the table and grasped his wrist without warning. "Stop beating your brains out, Timmy," he counseled. "Gordon said he would get men on it right away. We'll check in with him first thing when we hit the city."
Tim sighed. "I just feel like we're running out of time."
"We are running out of time. We are, and I hate it too. But we're doing everything we can. Try and take a mental break from it all." A faint smile appeared on the older man's face. "You've got to stop being so Bruce about it all."
"You didn't seem to be ascribing to that philosophy last night."
"No, I'm sure I didn't. Don't get me wrong, I...I want to tear this guy apart. And I don't want another child to die. But we can't take care of this murderer – we can't protect tonight's child, or any of the ones that might come after that – if we don't take care of ourselves. Bruce has a hard time acknowledging that, at least when it comes to himself, and I don't want to see you fall into the same bad habit. Self-denial only works for so long before the positive gain flat-lines. We need to eat and rest from time to time if we're going to do our best possible work. Got it?"
"...Got it." Dick was right, he knew, but it was hard to stop thinking about the mangled little body they'd seen the night before. Placing all of his focus on cutting his food into identical-sized pieces helped a little, but the specter of the serial killer still hovered over his shoulder. It seemed there would be no real escape until the bastard was apprehended and the killings stopped.
Their first stop that night was police headquarters. "Commissioner," Nightwing greeted as he stepped out of the shadows slightly ahead of Robin. "Any progress on what we discussed earlier?"
Gordon had jumped when he heard Nightwing's voice, and now a mild scowl twisted his lips. "You know, I had hoped that with Batman out of town you might come in without scaring the living daylights out of me."
"Sorry. Old training dies hard. Anyway...news?"
"I do have some news, yes. Your hunch was right; all five locations have their alarm systems serviced by the same company, Gotham Fire and Safety."
"Nice job, Rob," Nightwing said, grinning. "You called it."
Tim began to swell with pride at the praise, but his private celebration was cut off by Gordon's next words. "The problem is that all of their employees check out. We've been putting everyone on their payroll through the third degree, and there's nothing. Everyone from their dispatcher to the company's owner has a solid alibi for at least one of the last five nights."
"...Could it be a group thing?" Nightwing postulated. "Maybe more than one of them are in on it. I couldn't begin to give you a motive for one person wanting to murder children at Christmas, let alone several, but still."
"It's a thought, and one that hadn't escaped me," the commissioner nodded. "But the issue of a motive for collusion isn't the only hurdle for that idea to jump. There's also the fact that every single staff member save one was at the company Christmas party when the second killing occurred. That exception was at the hospital with a sick child. They picked up a prescription on the far side of town not five minutes after that evening's victim went missing."
Robin felt his rising mood deflate. "So it's just a coincidence that all of the stores are serviced by the same alarm company."
"It looks that way. But we're not writing the connection off completely, though. Just to be on the safe side, I've assigned officers to every large retailer in the city that's used Gotham Fire and Safety in the last twelve months. The upper management of each location has been briefed that they're to call 911 immediately if a child is reported missing. If the alarm service company is the link, we'll at least have people in position to respond the minute a call comes in."
"Do you have a list?" Nightwing asked. "We'll try and focus our patrol in the areas with the highest density of potential targets."
Gordon rifled through the stacks of paperwork on his desk. "Here," he said after a moment. "We mapped them all earlier. It's fairly spread out, but I'd appreciate some extra eyes in the air. We'll have a couple of helicopters scanning from above, too."
"Great. If we're not already in the area when they strike, we'll come running."
They left on that note. Back in the alley where they'd parked the Batmobile, they examined the map Gordon had given them. "He's right," Robin remarked. "These places are scattered all over the city. We can't watch all of them."
"No, we can't. I think the best thing we can do is split up and just swing by each place as many times as possible tonight. Even if we don't see him, he might see us in the area. That plus the extra police presence could be enough to make our guy decide that tonight's a good night to go home without killing anyone. Sound good?"
"It's a plan, which is more than I have."
"Cool. Here..." Nightwing creased the map down the center and tore it neatly in half. "You'd better take the north side. Some of the locations to the south are near Red Hood's territory, and he's less likely to try and jump me than you if we have to pursue the perp over his lines."
"Right." He hadn't even thought about what they would do if one of the targets turned out to be in the second Robin's self-proclaimed zone of control. Fortunately Red Hood's neighborhoods weren't the sort of place conducive to legal business, but as Nightwing had pointed out the bad guy could easily make a break for it if he was already in the area. "Well...see you later, then."
"Yup. Keep your radio on the police band; if anything comes over, we'll meet wherever the action is. Call me if you need anything." Nightwing tossed him an encouraging smile, then rose into the darkness.
Two hours later Robin's arms were aching. He spent plenty of nights grappling around the city in Batman or Nightwing's wake, but the activity was almost never this concentrated. Swinging for fifteen or twenty minutes in order to do something on the ground was his normal; this evening his feet had barely touched down at all. Finally he had to take a break. A high building overlooking one of the north end's bigger malls seemed an ideal place to do so, and he sat down on a corner to watch the sprawling complex below.
The police band had been busy tonight, but not with what he was listening for. Several times he had nearly turned off of his circuit when the sort of thing they would respond to on a normal slow patrol night came over. As Nightwing had said, old training died hard. As he sat massaging his sore muscles, he let the familiar dispatcher voices wash over him. Domestic dispute on West 114th; suspicious activity near a jewelry store downtown; stolen vehicle outside a nightclub in the old industrial district. Simple, soothing bush league tasks, any one of which he would have preferred to his current occupation. Why couldn't the worst crime in existence be robbery, or theft, or even assault? Such things could be recovered from, but murder was permanent.
Just as he was about to stand up and continue his rounds, it happened. "920c at Covington Center," rang in his ear. "Repeat, 920c, Covington Center. All available south side officers on special duty respond."
Robin leaped to his feet. 920c was code for a missing child, and unless he was greatly mistaken Covington Center mall had been one of the locations marked on Nightwing's half of the map. The remaining burn in his arms and sides vanished as adrenaline hit his system. Turning south, he fired his grapple and took off. If only they weren't too late...
It took just over ten minutes for him to cross the city and land in the police-car heavy parking lot of Covington Center. The sight of an ambulance with its rear doors flung open and no stretcher inside wasn't comforting, but if the paramedics had been in a hurry maybe there was a chance the victim was still breathing. Dodging through the many unknown officers who had converged on the site, he turned the corner and passed into the building's receiving zone. On the far side of several semi trailers he found a small knot of people standing in front of several dumpsters. "Sergeant Redding!" he addressed the first person he'd seen whose name he knew. "Did we get them?"
Redding looked up from the notebook he'd been frantically scribbling in. "No. But the boy's alive." He jerked his chin to where a trio of EMTs were working. "Pretty beat up, though. It looks like the guy dragged him from that door there," he gestured to a nearby emergency exit, "back behind the trash bins to work. I guess he must have seen us circling the building and decided he didn't want to risk doing it in the open. When we got the 920c, me and Froelich ran around to check all of the back exits. The kid managed to kick the dumpster as we went by. Thank god we heard him," he grimaced, "or we might not have known he was there until it was too late."
"What about the guy? The killer?"
"He bolted as soon as the kid made noise. We got a couple of shots off at him, but I don't think we hit him. We were going to chase after him, but Nightwing beat us to it."
"Nightwing." Robin's eyes widened. "Where is he?"
"He went after him. They ran that way." Redding pointed down a side street. "It was only Froelich and me on scene still, so we figured we'd let Nightwing snag him while we took care of the kid. I don't think he's come back yet, though. Maybe he's still chasing him; the guy was pretty quick for as old as he was."
"Old?"
"Yeah. Ancient-looking old codger with a big bundle of sticks. Don't know why he didn't drop those when he took off running, but it didn't seem to slow him down any, so..." Redding shrugged.
"Right. Thanks." Robin turned away and stared down the street the sergeant had indicated. Nothing moved down it as far as he could see. "Nightwing," he asked into his radio after he'd switched onto their private communications frequency. "...Nightwing, are you engaged?"
There was no answer. Robin shifted uncertainly. His brother had vanished in the direction of Red Hood's territory, just like they'd discussed might happen. Hood was the last person Robin wanted to meet tonight, especially on his own, but he couldn't just stand around while Nightwing chased a serial killer by himself. And even if the other vigilante took down the suspect without incurring any injuries or having to face down another mask, there was his icy mood of the night before to consider. For all that Nightwing was dedicated to the family's no killing rule, Robin sensed that leaving him alone with someone who had been caught in the act of beating a child to death might end badly.
"Nightwing," he tried one more time, his voice strained with concern. When nothing came back, he balled his fists and steeled his nerves. If he had to risk Red Hood's wrath in order to make sure that Nightwing didn't do something he would regret for the rest of his life, he would. "...I'm on my way," he told the empty air on his radio, and took off running.
Author's Note: I know some of you are probably wondering what this story has to do with Christmas other than the timing. I promise that all will be revealed in tomorrow's chapter. Happy reading!