The area surrounding Piccolo and Davidson, in what had been the city's medical center until the Joker blew up Gotham General, was all but deserted. James Gordon had no trouble in navigating his unmarked car down the narrow cobblestone streets. They were vacant of any traffic. He wasn't alone in this after dark midtown race. He was in the lead of three other patrol cars. Sirens howled like a pack of wolves, and the swirling lights slapped back the things alive in the shadows as they drove past.
Gordon screeched to a halt in front of a vacant office building. Before the engine even had a chance to finish sputtering, he and Bullock were racing inside, weapons drawn, and bodies at the ready for whatever it was that the damned Joker may have left for them. Following them was a handful of plainclothes officers, and at least two dozen uniformed officers.
"I want a sweep of all floors," Gordon snapped in a cool, crisp voice. "Swanson, take a handful of men and check the lower floor and basement. Morgan, you and your men search this floor. I want the rest of you on me. I don't have to tell you to be careful, you know that already. I will tell you that if you find anything unusual or that seems outta place, you are to radio immediately for back-up. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now, let's go."
He headed for the stairs then, a general in full command of his troops and of the situation at hand. On the outside, he was the epitome of everything he should be: cool, calm and collected. Inside, he was a man struggling with an almost desperate need to cast off the mantle of civility and go down to where the Joker was being kept and put a bullet in him.
How the hell the Joker was managing to terrorize the city locked up as he was inside Blackgate Penitentiary completely baffled him. Whoever the Joker had working for him remained a mystery. As did whatever the clown was hoping to accomplish with this plan of his. Gordon couldn't figure out just what the demented lunatic was after. Not that he cared to figure it out. Stopping him before any more dead bodies ended up in the morgue was all that mattered to him.
A minute later he was standing just in the open doorway of the first room he came to. He holstered his gun before pulling out his flashlight. He shined the light into a small office with a desk coated in a decade's worth of grime. A host of bookcases sat along one wall, each shelf containing a cornucopia of web-encrusted textbooks.
None of them had seen the light of day or a dust rag for well over a month. He didn't need to look at the door to know that this was once the office of Doctor Micha Rolamanov, a tenured professor at Gotham University, top-notch researcher in the field of Neurology, and a well-respected Neurosurgeon.
The beam of light fell on the body draped over the desk. It was unmistakably the corpse of Doctor Rolamanov. Gordon knew who he was without looking at the man's face. The gold cuff links with diamond lettering confirmed it was the doctor. The smell of death was thick. It was a cold familiar for a veteran cop like him.
Finding Rolamanov here was not a shock.
When he received the note about where to find his body, he had known what to expect once he arrived. It was the sight of the other two bodies in the room that had the hair on the back of Gordon's neck crackling with unease. They were an anomaly he hadn't counted on nor been warned about.
Gordon had been in attendance at many crime scenes. He had seen many dead bodies. Even he wasn't prepared for this, though. The two women were poised in the chairs in front of the desk, each with a folder in their hands, and missing two key elements that might have helped in identifying them once they got taken to the morgue: their hands and faces.
"Go downstairs," Gordon told the officers behind him. "Secure the area."
"Yes, sir."
"And have somebody get the medical examiner up here."
The officers nodded and quickly left. Quite a few of them looked decidedly green around the gills. Ah, the days of a rookie, was Gordon's perversely amused thought.
"Check the names on the files, Jim."
Gordon aimed his flashlight at the first folder.
"Rachel Tate." He swung it over to the second one. "Erin Dawes." He frowned. "What about them?"
"Don't you get it?" Bullock indicated the women. "A dark-haired woman in a suit? A ginger in a nurse's outfit?"
"What're you talking about, Harv?" Gordon's voice snapped with impatience. "Because I'm just not seeing it."
"Look at the names, Jim." Bullock tipped his fedora back. "Dawes and Tate."
Dawes and Tate? What was... Gordon's eyebrows shot up to his hairline as realization dawned. "Rachel Dawes and Erin Tate?"
"Yep." Bullock nodded. "He just reversed their names. Just like he did when he told us where Dent and Dawes were located."
"But." He frowned. "Why would he name them?"
How does he even know Erin Tate? was Gordon's first question. Had he crossed paths with her at some point? He looked again at the woman in the nurse's outfit. Is it possible Erin Tate worked at Gotham General? He made a note to find out.
"This is a personal address." Harvey pulled the toothpick from his mouth and aimed it at the red-haired woman. "The Joker is telling us who he plans to kill next." He grunted. "Had to stab a guess at it, I'd say he's doing all this with the hopes it'll lure the Bat outta hiding."
"Why does he think that this could bring Batman out of hiding?"
"'Cause he knows Batman's still eaten up by ADA Dawes's death." He stuck the toothpick back between his lips. "Knowing the Joker plans to murder another woman? It's almost guaranteed the Batman will come out of whatever hole he's hiding in."
"Like the son of a bitch hasn't killed enough people with his games?" Gordon rasped. "What the hell does he hope to accomplish with this? What's his endgame?"
"I dunno, Jim," Bullock replied calmly. "But we better figure out the answer to that and fast. He's also let us know when he's going to have whoever he's got working for him kill Erin."
"What?"
Bullock pointed to where a Gotham Times obituary dated with the next day's date was propped in the lap of Erin Dawes. It read simply: "Erin Tate, the sister of slain GCPD officer, Ethan Tate was shot and killed during the ceremony honoring her brother. Doctors at Gotham County confirmed that Miss Tate was DOA after being shot through the heart by a high-powered rifle. She was thirty-nine years old."
A picture of Miss Tate had red X's drawn through the eyes, and in the same red, all over the paper was scrawled:
SHE'S MY ACE IN THE HOLE. IS BATMAN YOURS?
"My God," Gordon breathed out. "We have to stop him."
I have to stop him, he corrected as he moved out of the coroner's way. I have to stop him before he kills Erin Tate.
Before he revealed the truth about Dent to the world.
"C'mon, Harv," he said tersely. "Let's go."
"Where we going?"
"To pick Erin Tate up from her apartment and stash her somewhere safe."
"Yeah?" Bullock lumbered after him. "Like where?"
"I don't know." He jogged down the stairs. "But we'll figure it out."
...
The Joker watched the storm break over Gotham from the quiet comfort of his little cell. The battle for Gotham's soul would begin in less than an hour. Told you I wasn't getting into a fistfight with you without having an ace in the hole. Mine's a pretty nurse. What's yours?
The spirit of this city would be shattered by this time tomorrow. Soon as they found out the truth about their martyr. They'd look at the real Harvey Dent, see how he killed five people in retaliation for his having blown up his main squeeze, and break.
It should have been nine dead in total, but you just couldn't stop Batman before you killed the Gordon family, could you, Harv? His mangled lips twisted into a petulant sneer. Just couldn't do the one little thing I needed to finally push Batman into breaking his one itty bitty rule.
No matter.
The people of this city would find out the man they were hailing as their hero was really the monster and the man they were crucifying was their real hero. The criminals would be back on the streets then, and Gotham would finally understand what true heroism looked like. I'm not giving them a better class of criminal, he thought as he waited for the fireworks to begin. I'm simply giving them the hero they deserve!
His high, keening laugh ricocheted throughout the cell block, unnerving the guards on duty, and annoying the doctor quietly studying one of the dozens of textbooks he requested be brought to him so he could continue his research during his unjustified imprisonment.
...
Squad cars lined up in front of Erin Tate's building. Gordon parked and raced up the steps, followed by Matheson and Bullock. Two armed patrolmen stood outside apartment 1D while others patrolled the second and third floors, guns at the ready. Nobody took any chances, not with the Joker being the one behind everything going on.
"Miss Tate is not at home, sir," one of the officers informed him soon as they spotted him. "Lady in 1B says she ain't seen her since the night you showed up to tell her about her brother dying."
James Gordon stifled a few choice words. "Someone go and find me the damned Super!"
"Yes, sir."
Ten minutes later, a balding man in a sweat-soaked t-shirt and tattered gray sweats faced off with the furious police commissioner.
"I'se tellin' youse," the man mumbled in a monotone. "Movers showed up a couple of days ago and packed up the place. Gave me two weeks' notice, and a brick fer my troubles."
"And you have no clue just who these movers worked for, do you?" Gordon barked. "You don't have any idea if these men might have kidnapped Miss Tate, if they're holding her hostage, if they've..."
Bullock clapped a hand on Gordon's shoulder, interrupting his tirade. "C'mon, Jim. Let's get outta here. We ain't doing Erin any good standing around and bitchin' about what mighta happened to her."
"Do you think I don't know that, Harvey?" Gordon fairly crackled with impatience and fear. "Do you think I don't know that we are wasting time? We should be out there and trying to find her!"
"You know it's not going to be that simple, Jim." Bullock pulled off his fedora and moped his brow with a rag he pulled from a pocket of his jacket "Nothing's ever simple where the Joker is involved. You saw that with what he pulled at the Prewitt Building."
"Every second we waste here is another one that we could be using to try to find her before it's too late."
"It could already be too late."
"No," Gordon snapped. "There's no reason to believe Erin Tate is dead!"
"No point thinkin' she's alive, either."
"Until it's proven otherwise, we will continue to operate under the belief that she's alive, and that we will find her alive."
"Sure, Jim," he said quietly, gritting his teeth. "We'll do everything we can to rescue Miss Tate."
Gordon wiped an unsteady hand over his face and nodded. Then he said in a voice charged by emotion, "I have to save her, Harvey."
Harvey drew in a breath and released it slowly.
"What's this all about, Jim?" he asked him somberly. "Why are you so damned fired up about savin' her?"
It was a fair question, Gordon realized. The only other time he had been this unhinged was the night the freak killed Rachel Dawes. Gordon would never admit that guilt was driving him. Guilt about Officer Tate, Harvey Dent, and the betrayal of a man this city needed more than ever.
"Erin Tate is a cop's..." he began but Matheson came up to them then with a grim expression. "What is it?"
"We've got another body," Matheson told him quietly. "Female. Late 30's. And definitely a ginger from what the officers at the scene are saying. Boys say it could be the Tate woman."
"Where?" Gordon and Bullock demanded at the same time.
Matheson hesitated for only a second before saying, "Avenue X."
The color drained from Gordon's face. No, dammit. No, no, no... Not there. Please don't let her be there.
"Mobilize all units!" he yelled as he sprinted towards his car.
A/N: Hello, all! Hope this finds you well!
