To Play the Fool

Chapter Thirty-Five

"There is absolutely no excuse for it," said Hilda Stofferson, an ordinary citizen and mother of two. "It's been three years and the police have gotten nowhere. The Batman still roams the streets like he owns them. Then they catch his little protege and just let her go How am I supposed to feel safe letting my children walk to school when two vigilantes have free reign?"

"I don't think they want to catch him," said Robbie Hooper, a hippie living near Millcreek park. "Batman and Tex are doing their jobs for them. They don't care if they beat everyone into submission, so long as they get the bad guys. It's police sponsored brutality."

"I think Jackie is a good role model for girls," Britney Maxwell, a short haired blonde college student said. "She's just a powerful person. She sees something wrong, and she fixes it. No beating around the bush about it. Personally, I wish I was half as brave as she is."

"I don't want to see her anywhere on the streets," lawyer James Norris snarled. "Batman was a dangerous precedent, and Tex is just as bad. How long until she starts killing cops the same way Batman did? She needs to be locked up and – "

I turned off the TV and threw the remote somewhere between the couch cushions. No more being informed, I decided. Ignorance is bliss. I threw myself back on the sofa and closed my eyes. Once again, I tried to come up with a plan of attack, but my mind was tangled up by three factors. One, I have no idea what I'm attacking. Two, I have no idea what Jackie's plan's already are, and she seems to have put some into motion. Three, Batman is supposed to be the enemy, but my plans, whatever they are, inevitably turn to how I can keep him out of the police's grasp. Everything could be solved if I would just turn him in, which I know I can do, but I always find myself finding a reason not to.

Jackie opened the door and entered the apartment looking like she had tried to make an omelet and failed hilariously bad. Egg yolks and whites were dripping off her armor and face and eggshells were stuck in her hair.

"That bad?" I remarked. She only nodded with her lips set in a tight line. "Should I get the hose?" She dropped her bag of toys and nodded again.

I climbed off the couch and walked downstairs with Jackie. Her fists were clenching and relaxing in a strangely comforting rhythm, at least for her. "I wish I knew where everyone was getting this produce," she joked. "Yesterday tomatoes, today it's eggs."

I pulled out the hose that was hidden by the side of Imogen's apartment complex just as one of our neighbors walked by. "Hey, that's not yours!" a middle-aged man in a hoodie yelled at us.

"We live here!" I shouted back. "It belongs to all of us."

"We don't want no vigilantes living here," he replied. "Tex should be run out of town before someone lynches her!"

I aimed the hose head at the jerk like a gun, but Jackie caught my hand and shook her head. "But he's being an idiot," I argued.

"I know. You still have some decorum to maintain. Let's just get this done with."

Jackie stood in the middle of the lawn with her arms outstretched while I turned the water on full blast. In the middle of November, this wasn't a pleasant task for either of us, but I can't imagine Jackie enjoyed the icy water on a cold afternoon. While I finished spraying off the egg on her suit, I noticed a few cars with obscenely expensive cameras poking out of the windows that were aimed at us. Whether they were here for Bruce Wayne's newest girlfriend or for Tex's walk of shame, I had no idea. I turned down the sprayer a bit. "Face." Jackie scrubbed down her face while I sprayed it, then I turned to her hair. Once the last of the eggshells were out, I turned off the water, coiled up the hose and put it away before we marched back up to Imogen's place.

I threw a towel at Jackie once we were inside so she wouldn't have to drip all over the carpet. "Why were you downtown in the first place? You know they hate you a lot more than anyone else."

"Went to talk to the Commissioner." She patted down her waterproof suit and let a few drops leak out that had managed to find their way in.

"Wearing your armor." I didn't think there was any way she could have been more obvious. It was almost like she was trying to make a statement.

"They like to throw rocks at me." Her head disappeared under the towel as she scrubbed out the last bits of moisture.

"A wig would do wonders, I think. So would a change of clothes. I have a closet full of disguises."

"I feel more comfortable in my armor, Jenny. I spent several years wearing it. Now that everyone knows I'm Tex, I don't see any reason to hide exactly what I am."

"But you're not Tex," replied as gently as I could. It was something that had been bugging me for a long time. "Tex was a mercenary that killed for a paycheck and inevitably died every time she was resurrected by Church and Alpha. You're as opposite of that as anyone can be. Why would you name yourself after her?"

She took off her jacket and hung it on a chair next to the door. "It's what everybody thinks of when they see me. A lot of people don't like me, but there are some that do and they like seeing me in the suit." Her boots were removed next, unlaced with expert fingers and pulled off (the right one with a bit of difficulty as it had to fit under the monitoring anklet) so their stench could hit me full in the face.

"Maybe you could try not sleeping in it," I suggested through a hand over my nose and mouth. "Or showering every once in a while."

A rare chuckle escaped her lips. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget how much Americans bathe." The next piece of equipment to come off was a utility belt that most people didn't see because it was hidden under her jacket. It was a stylized bit of black leather with four pockets, two hidden ones, and a rope used for grappling fastened to the back of it. Even without the armor, it would have been fashionable.

"Why are you carrying so much stuff?"

"The police wanted to make sure I wasn't carrying any weapons, so I brought them everything I own. They confiscated my batarangs. I was totally going to frame them." She needed a little help with getting her corset layer off. I unlatched the back of it so Jackie could breathe a little better. The only function it served was to provide some protection against bullets. Had she been wearing it that day at court, her heart probably wouldn't have stopped. As soon as it was off, she bent over to give her spine a break. "Okay, shower time." She left her things by the door and headed off to take a shower. "Oh, one more thing." Her head poked out from the bathroom. "Commissioner Gordon is coming over to talk to you."

"When?" But the door slammed shut and the water started running. I sat back down on the couch and turned the TV to something not related to Tex. Sherlock was on; that's always a diverting distraction. Gordon was not one of the many people I wanted to be talking to at the moment.

Two episodes later, Jackie was in my room working on something she didn't want me to know about. Someone knocked on the door, and I sat up. I don't like answering doors of places I don't really belong in. "Imogen, door!" I called.

"You go get it," Imogen shouted back. Her voice was muffled by a door and the running of water. Right. She's in the shower now.

"Jackie, door!"

"On the phone!" she replied. With her mysterious lawyer who she hadn't allowed any of us to meet, no doubt.

I rolled off the couch and scrambled to the door. Peering through the peephole, I saw a man in a worn coat and a heavy pair of glasses with thinning brown hair and a matching mustache. I recognized him vaguely from that one brief time we met. Unlatching a few locks, I opened the door. "Commissioner."

"Ms. Harkness."

"Jenny, please." I admit, my tone was stony cold, but I still had to be polite for Jackie's sake. There was a very good reason she saved this man.

"Jenny, may I come in?" I held out a hand and allowed him to walk past me before I closed the door behind him. "I just have a few questions for you."

"Jackie said. Taken you a while to get to me. Coffee?" I went to Imogen's kitchen to grab a couple mugs.

"If you don't mind. The DA wanted to focus on Jackie while we still had her. Now that she's been bailed out, we're widening our inquiries." He took a seat in an armchair in the living room, throwing his coat over the arm. "How have you been?"

"I'm doing great," I answered honestly. I poured our coffees, adding a few sugars to mine and found out what he wanted. "I'm still employed at a job I love, I have a wonderful boyfriend, I still have all my friends, my apartment hasn't been stripped by the police and then by an angry mob, I don't get rotten vegetables hurled at me on my way home, I don't see my picture plastered like a mug shot all over the news every few minutes, I don't have strangers calling me a cop killer on the street, I don't have to be followed everywhere I go by less-than-subtle detectives." I set our mugs down on the coffee table with a distinct clink. "I can't say the same for Jackie."

He laced his fingers together and gave his next sentence some thought. "I'm sorry, Jenny. I'm sorry about the way everything has gone."

I sunk into my seat gracefully. "But how could it have been different? Jackie's one of the kindest, most selfless people you'll ever meet, but at the heart of everything she's done, she's an outlaw. A famous outlaw." If the Riddler hadn't made her famous, who would have noticed or cared that she worked with the Batman? Maybe he's the one I should be mad at.

"How is Jackie holding up?"

I took a sip of coffee that burned my tongue. "Jackie says she's been through worse. I believe her. Thing is, she's a runner. Her survival skills amount to, run first, fight later. The only time she stands her ground is if she has no other choice but to fight. Based on what she's done in the past, I thought she would have broken out of jail. Instead, she waited for someone to bail her out, and then didn't even go into hiding in the city. She's standing, Commissioner. That scares me because it means she's been backed into a corner. A corner I put her in and I can't see."

"If you hadn't exposed her identity, she would have died," he assured me.

"And if she hadn't saved you, I wouldn't have been put into this position. So I guess this is all Jackie's fault. She's the one who put on the suit in the first place."

"I don't think there's any one person we can blame. If anyone, we should be hunting down the sniper."

"Deadshot," I added helpfully.

"Excuse me?" This surprised him.

I forced down a swallow of coffee. "His name is Deadshot. Jackie's met him before."

"When was this?" He pulled out a notebook and prepared to take some serious notes.

"When dealing with Jackie, it's better to say 'Where' instead of 'When.'" I retrieved an iPad from my purse and started sifting through the files until I found the specific one I wanted. "Cardiff. A minor political head was shot despite Jackie trying to protect him." I handed him the tablet with the local news articles pulled up. "She chased him for a few weeks before he disappeared completely."

The articles held his curiosity for a few moments. "How did you find this?"

"Google." Alright, I followed her adventures a bit. I keep a massive number of files on her, enough to keep that specific iPad entirely occupied. Sue me. "If you want to know more about Deadshot, you'll have to ask Jackie yourself. Somehow, I don't think she wants to talk about that part of her life."

"Right." He pulled his gaze away and handed my iPad back to me. "I need to know how long you've known your sister was working with the Batman."

I couldn't help but noticeably bristle at that man's name. No, his title. No one spoke his name without a hint of reverence, Jackie more than most. She practically worshiped the man, and becoming Tex was like being his disciple. "The day Tex, the Batman and I took down the Penguin. I had no idea Jackie was even in Gotham before that night."

"She moved in with you shortly after, correct?"

"Yes. That night. She was living on the streets." Would Jackie have just left Gotham if I hadn't run into her and demanded she move in with me?

"Did you know that she was acting as Tex while she was living with you?"

"She saved my life that night. I recognized her armor immediately." Could I have stopped everything just by letting her go at that point? She could have run away as soon as the Penguin was in custody. "So, yes, I knew the entire time."

"What did you know about her nightly activities?"

For some reason, my brain transcribed that as 'knightly.' As in Dark Knight. "She told me everything that happened every night. She loved working with the Batman." Of course I had to add a 'the' before his name. Even I couldn't say his name without a 'the' most of the time. The one and only. The first and the last. The great and powerful Batman. When did he deserve to earn such a distinctive prefix?

"She said that?"

"It's the entire reason Tex existed. She had an unhealthy fixation with him before she disappeared. When she came back and Batman had killed several people, I thought she would lose faith in her hero. But Jackie is stubborn. She didn't believe he had done any of those things."

"Why not?"

A question I had posed for my sister many times before. How could she possibly fly in the face of all fact and evidence to hold on to a sliver of faith for Batman? With Jackie, though, it wasn't hope. She knew for a fact that he was innocent. Well, he wasn't a murderer at least. What I should have recognized from the beginning was that she followed her own path of inquiry instead of taking the newspaper reporters' and police's word. That's what it all came down to, wasn't it? If Jackie was wrong and Batman had killed four policemen and DA Harvey Dent, then she was no better than he was. If she was right, then she was still kind of a vigilante, but not as bad of one. The problem, then, lied in the fact that Jackie had linked her good name to Batman's. Clear Batman, and no one would hate Tex.

Finally, I had a course of action to save Tex. I set my mug of coffee down and sat back with a hint of a smile in Commissioner Gordon's direction. "You were there, weren't you? You watched Batman take your family hostage and kill Harvey Dent."

"Yes," he answered hesitantly. "That doesn't have anything to do with – "

"Oh, no, of course not. I just find it fascinating is all. Despite the fact that you were there and obviously told the truth in your report, Jackie adamantly believes that Batman has never killed anyone after conducting her own line of inquiry. I don't know how she could have possibly arrived at that conclusion." I met his eyes with as innocent an expression as I was capable of mustering. "Do you?"

"Um, no." He looked away from me and continued with his questioning. He placed his coffee mug in between us, subconsciously putting distance between us. "How did your sister contact the Batman?"

"He gave her a radio during the Riddler's blackout."

"Does she still have it?"

"No. Jervis Tetch broke it when he kidnapped me." I watched Gordon's reaction closely. Was that relief I saw? "Batman must have taken the pieces if you don't have them in evidence already."

"She mentioned that Batman calls her," he continued. His eyes darted to the right and down for a fraction of a second.

"Occasionally. The number is untraceable."

No surprise to him. Was it because he expected Batman to cover his tracks? Or because he was familiar with the practice? "Does he ever come to your apartment in person?"

"He surprised me once. I hit him with a bat." Gordon's eyebrows shot up. "He knocks now."

He gave me a dubious look. "Really?" So the Dark Knight doesn't knock for anyone else. Well, I guess no one else has ever given him a concussion. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"Just before the Mad Hatter kidnapped me. He was looking for my Dad. Honestly, I've only talked to him a handful of times. I have no idea what his patterns are yet."

"Does Jackie?"

I shrugged. "She follows trouble, and then she runs into him. I know she does it deliberately, and I know she has this sense for which kinds of trouble he'll be involved in, but … she plays it by ear. I have no idea how to replicate it, and I know she'll be avoiding him. I can't help you catch him that way."

"What if we brought you in as a consultant?" A micro-expression of disgust passed across his face. Even for me, it was difficult to catch. Did he not like the idea? Maybe bringing in outsiders bothered him.

"Jackie told you about my skill set, I see." When does she not?

"That, and there's the work you've already done for the FBI."

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "Do you want me to find Batman?"

"Yes," he replied too quickly. His eagerness felt forced. "You have a better chance at – "

"No," I said emphatically, cutting him off.

Relief again flitted across his face, but also a touch of surprise. "Excuse me?"

Sitting back, I crossed my legs. "I will not help you track down the Batman. Why? For three reasons, Commissioner. First, you already told me you don't want him caught."

"I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. Arresting the Batman is the MCU's highest priority."

"My mother is deaf. She taught me how to see the world at a much higher visible caliber than most others. Specifically, she taught me how to read faces and catch micro-expressions. They're little flashes of the emotion on your face that are a little more telling than what you're actually saying. When I told you that Batman's radio was broken, you were a little happy, which you shouldn't be because it's another lost lead. Now, that could mean you just hate working with electronics. However, with a talented forensics team at your disposal, I doubt that that's the case. Now why would you be relieved at having you case stalled? That brings me to my next point." I stood up to refill my coffee.

"Second," I continued. "You know how to contact the Batman, and you've done it recently. Jackie will not have told you how Batman got in touch with her for fear of exposing her partner. You lied about that, baiting an answer out of me, no doubt. Yes, you lied. When you're fabricating a statement, people look to the right, the creative side of their brain. I've been watching. You are familiar with the way he contacts his allies. Furthermore, you've taken to carrying a second cell phone. There's one in your coat that you use for family and work. There's a second in your pants pocket that you keep closer because you don't want to lose it. It weighs you down. Is that how Batman contacts you?"

"This is ridiculous, Jenny," he snapped.

Ignoring him, I sat down. "Third, you won't talk about the night Dent was murdered. I could understand it if the thought of your family being threatened was a painful one. But do you know what I see when you think about Batman pushing Dent off a three story drop? Not anger, which is what I should be seeing. Anger at being betrayed by a close ally. Anger at Tex and Jackie for subverting your efforts to catch the Dark Knight. You should be furious."

He couldn't quite look me in the eye. "She saved my life."

"Doesn't matter. She did it for Batman, and you know that. What I see is guilt, Commissioner. But guilt over what? Not protecting your family? For letting Batman get away? Or for blaming the wrong person entirely?"

Gordon shot to his feet. "You're making all this up."

my shoulders raised and fell. "Possibly, but your reactions say otherwise. What happened to Harvey Dent, Commissioner?"

"I think I have everything I need," he declared, throwing on his coat. "Thank you for your time, Jenny."

"Not a problem." He couldn't leave fast enough for his liking. As soon as he slammed the door, I chugged the last of my coffee, jumped over the couch, and raced for my room.

Jackie was sitting on my bed talking to someone important, judging by her stance. "As far as I can tell, he's been active for only a year – "

"New case. Get out," I ordered.

She's seen this look only a few times. "Beirut, I'll call you back." Her phone found its way back into her pocket as she backed away from me towards the door. "Want any help?"

"Nope. It'll be more fun this way. Don't worry. I'm only trying to prove Batman's innocence." With that, I gave her a hard push out of my room and locked myself inside. I opened my laptop, closed all my homework, and started looking up every bit of publicly available information on the Batman killings. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the ecstasy of research.

#

My phone rang hours later, although it felt like I was being interrupted just as I was getting started. As it was a Saturday, I nearly ignored it, except it was Bruce calling. I turned it on to speakerphone so I could keep working. "Hi Bruce."

"Hey, Jenny. What's up?" he asked casually.

"I have a case. Like, a real one that's going to be hard. Such a tangled web of lies; it's going to be spectacular."

"What's it about?"

"Batman." I grabbed a stack of papers from my printer and started highlighting what I needed. "I need to find out if he's a murderer."

"I thought Commissioner Gordon said – "

"He says a lot of things. I need facts, not opinions. The problem with everything we know is that it all hinges on his report. All the evidence found fits his statement. Where are the outliers?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Because you don't build a case before you have all the facts, otherwise the facts are cherry-picked to fit the pre-written case instead of the case being built on the given evidence. It smells of shoddy police work the whole way through."

"Are you alright? You don't sound good. You sound … manic."

"I'm fine. I just won't be eating for the next few days. I could use your help, though. I need a Watson to bounce my ideas off of and Imogen said she's never doing that again, never ever, even if I paid her or threatened to kill her dog, she doesn't have a dog, why does she say that?" I paused to mull that one over for a second. "So?"

His voice was full of worry and dread. I couldn't miss it, but I disregarded it immediately. "I'll be right there with takeout. Stay away from the caffeine."

Caffeine? Who needs that? Not only do I have a case, but I can do something for Jackie for a change.