The case had fallen apart in a matter of minutes. A case that Reid had spent months working along side her uncle over. After everything this criminal had done, he wasn't even going to spend a single day in jail. Why? Because Gotham was where regard for the law and for the sanctity of life came to die. It was no surprise to Reid, since she was living in a city where a man who thinks he can get away with anything he does, he can. And in the words of the world's worst DA, they had no evidence.

"Harvey, it's ridiculous! How the hell can he say that we 'have no evidence'? There's motive and opportunity! There's video of of him in places the different victims frequented. Hell, there's DNA evidence linking him to two of the crime scenes!" Reid was up to her eyeballs in frustration, as she stood defiantly at her desk yelling at her uncle. The fault wasn't on him, Harvey had done everything that he could to see this man arrested, the fault was on the Assistant District Attorney. A man who deserved no name, and a man who deserved to be replaced.

Her uncle, however, was sitting in front of her desk, seemingly as exhausted about the whole situation as Reid was, the only difference being that while Harvey saw it as a problem: it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. At least that's what he kept telling her. That it was what it was. That she knew this coming into her job. That the bad guys in Gotham didn't get what was coming to them, they passed it off to someone else.

"It's all circumstantial," he let out in an exasperated breath.

His annoyance at the matter did little to calm Reid down, all it actually did was make her more irritate. Harvey was supposed to be on her side. He was supposed to be just as mad about this as she was. He wasn't supposed to just roll over and accept defeat.

"DNA evidence, Harvey. That's not just circumstantial! That puts him in the locations of two of the victims! Two of the women that he strung up and bled out! Why are you so complacent about this? Why aren't you just as mad about this as I am?" Reid was at her wits end, and she wasn't making any effort to hide it. Her mouth was stuck in a permanent frown, there were dark circles under her eyes, her usually maintained hair was loose and relaxing into their waves. Nothing, short of this murderer getting his due, was going to make her feel better.

"I don't know what you want me to tell ya, kid," Harvey started to list off the ways that their 'evidence' wasn't going to be enough to secure a conviction. "Jones's DNA was found at two drop sites. But one of them he works at, and the other one he frequents. The locations of the other sites have video because their popular places. The motive is what? That he hates women? While I'm sure that's reason enough for some, it ain't enough for the court system. His alibi is weak, but we don't have a witness to contradict it, or a murder weapon."

She knew, logically, that her uncle was right, it was unlikely to see this case succeed at trial, and that a not guilty verdict would likely be returned. But that didn't make her feel any better. It actually made her feel even worse. Reid wasn't stupid, and knew that the 'good guys' couldn't always win, but did the bad ones get to have an advantage like this? All the people that got hurt and victimized, and no one to actually hold those responsible accountable? It was enough to make her sick. "Okay, so what are we supposed to do? Just let him keep going around and killing women?"

"No, that's not what we're gonna do, Reid," Harvey said as he stood up to look her in the eye, trying to get through to her, "I'm gonna keep lookin'. But you need to accept the fact that this might not go anywhere."

"Well it should."

Her continued despondent and irked tone finally seemed to have pushed Harvey to the end of his rope, and he snapped, "Alright then, what should happen? Why don't you tell me what the outcome should be, since reality clearly ain't good enough for you!"

"Ideally?" The question came out far more condescending then she had originally intended, but if Harvey wanted to know, she'd tell him, "Well, ideally, he'd be strung up and bled out as slowly as was humanly possible. Death by a thousand paper cuts. Ideally he'd get exactly what was coming to him, but, evidently, no one else in Gotham shares that sentiment!"

The two stood in her office staring at each other, one on the angry side, the other on the concerned side. Harvey had never heard his niece speak that way before, and it wasn't something he knew what to do with right away. He knew that she wasn't talking about actually doing those things, that this was her at her own wit's end, but it wasn't something he would have ever pictured coming from her. Reid was a collected woman, she was understanding and reasonable, she wasn't one to seek out vengeance.

Deciding that he wasn't ready to see where this conversation was set to go, Harvey told her that she should just do whatever it was that she wanted to do. "In the meantime, I'm gonna get back to work, and see if I can find anything to actually catch this guy. Instead of sitting here thinking about 'what's coming to him'."

While Harvey had his entire focus Reid, he didn't hear a knock on her office door; nor did he hear it open, adding another person to the tense room. "What's coming to who?"

Jumping and quickly turning around to address the intruder, "Jesus, Christ, Nygma! What the hell is wrong with you? Why the hell do you keep sneaking up on people? It's annoying and creepy as hell."

Reid watched as Harvey got mad and flipped out at Ed, and how Ed looked dejected just as quickly, she stepped in. Her uncle could be mad and frustrated all he wanted, that didn't mean that he got to take it out on Ed for no reason, "Harvey, why don't you go back to work and leave Ed alone. You can be pissy with me all you want, but you can leave him out of it."

"Yeah. Don't think we're done with this conversation. We're gonna be coming back to this," with that Harvey made his way out of the room, shaking his head as he went.

Reid knew that he wasn't going to be quick to let what she'd said go, but could he really blame her? She had learned that some people deserved some things, and she always felt that people should get their due. She was trying to embrace that, to live that. Reid was working at trying to make sure that good people had good things happen, and those who did bad things should pay for it. It was hard for her to wrap her head around the fact that her uncle and her did all the right things in situations like this one, and the bad guy gets the win.

Ed spoke up soon after Harvey left the room, in an attempt to pull Reid out of her thoughts, "I assume the two of you were talking about the Greg Jennings case? I know that you two were meeting with the ADA today."

"Yes, we were, unfortunately." Allowing her anger to drip away slowly, she felt herself become overwhelmed with exhaustion. Long before this case, Reid had felt herself winding down, but it seemed that she had finally tipped over to the 'done' side of dealing with how Gotham worked. And she had only been in Gotham for seven months. "He's mad at me because I said that Jennings should be strung up himself. Death via a thousand paper cuts."

A quick smile making it's way to Ed's face told Reid that he was prepared for something like that. "Both a punishment and a sweet reward, it will befall both fool and lord. It is a spiritual scoreboard, your every did it does record. It can reward you with riches, or leave you with stitches."

For the first time that day a laugh left her mouth. She wasn't sure if Ed was trying to be obvious, or if the answer just spoke to her soul, but it was defiantly fitting to the situation. "Karma is something that Gotham needs, wouldn't you say, Ed?"

"I wouldn't say that it's needed, Gotham would be able to continue without it, of course. I would say that karmic justice would be a welcome addition to the city though."

A wide smile settled on her face and she took in Ed's response. If one thing was for sure, Reid knew how lucky she was to have someone like Ed in her life. It didn't matter to her if people were assholes to her or the rest of the world, because Ed would always wonder in and spin off a well placed riddle. Always effectively bringing her back from whatever negativity was threatening to take over her in the melancholy that was Gotham. "That's supposed to be our job, working with the police, no? To help dole out justice?"

"True, but sometimes things need to be go beyond that. The justice system isn't always just, is it?" The smile on Ed's face was small and sad, but was quickly taken over by a one completely bright, "But we'll get back to that, I came to ask you if you were aware that there is a new employee re working with us."

Shaking her head to clear the whiplash that her friend gave her, she told him no, "Now, when you say 'working with us', do you mean with us, working in the forensic/medical sections of the department, or someone new to the GCPD in general?"

Holding on to the puppy dog demeanor that she loved so much, Ed's face got all the more bright and he moved all the way into her office. "The latter. I don't know her name yet, but she's going to be working in the archive room. I caught her in Captain Essen's office."

This caught her attention for two reasons; one, she had been waiting for another woman to work at the GCPD that she could actually be friends with, and two, Ed said he caught her in the Captain's office. Reid was not sure which one she should address, or if she should just pick one, and let that dictate the direction of her conversation.

Making the decision for her, Ed spoke up again, never one to let a silence go on too long when he was excited, "I know that you've been looking forward to not being one of the only women working here. Since she's not an officer or a detective-"

"Not all detective's a bad. Montoya is nice. We like her."

"Yes, but officers and detectives are far more likely to be hopeless when it comes to being friends with someone they find to be less than."

"Hey, I'm not less than anyone!" Her faux offense was enough to get Ed to redirect what his speech.

"Of course you're not. The people that are less than someone would have to be the one's that think that, for some reason, their brute mentality is superior. Those people lack intelligence are the bottom of the barrel."

Laughing again at the sudden change in Ed's demeanor, "Is that right? What does that make me then?"

He looked offended that she even posed the question, as if Reid should have already know the answer. "Well obviously your intelligence is far superior to most others. You're highly capable, and you're incredibly nice and open, you have overcome adversity, and you're clearly one of the smartest people in Gotham. If anyone were to consider you the bottom of anything, they'd be deranged."

"High praise. You're pretty nice, too, ya know?"

"Of course I am. I'm not deranged enough to think I wasn't."

And we're at it again. Reid has lost it with the ineffectiveness of the Gotham legal system, and we're going to meet a new character. I wonder who it is, it's not like I was subtle. :)) I have no claim to Gotham the show, nor any characters created in the Batman universe.