Chapter 5

The three men walked alongside the facility. Cash held his hand out to the man.

"What did you say your name was again?"

McFinn eyed Cash's hand like it was slime. "I never said."

Cash was slightly amused. He dropped his hand. "Alright. What's your name, sir?"

"Jason McFinn. And I just work here, sir."

"Nobody is accusing you of anything, McFinn."

"Not yet," said McFinn. He gripped the bucket a little more securely.

The three of them headed toward the back lot. There were leaves rustling on the ground from the wind. It occurred to William how quiet it was. He peeked through a stained window. The facility was empty.

"I sent everyone home," explained McFinn. He was eyeing William now. "I didn't want them to see it. And I figured it'd be less trouble for you."

Cash nodded. "You figured right."

They reached a chain link fence. There was a motley of dirty piping and chemical tanks on the other side. McFinn brought up the ring of keys. He hesitated a moment before opening the fence.

"I'm not a man that's revolted easily, Officers, as you can tell by the smell," said McFinn. "My line of work doesn't suit the weak of stomach."

"Agreed," said William. He was beginning to feel lightheaded by the mix of chemical and waste.

"But what I saw in there. I—I can't describe it."

Cash stepped up. "You just us handle that, sir."

McFinn slowly slid the key into a lock and twisted. He pulled open the fence door and stepped aside. He set the bucket at his feet. "When you 'round the corner, she's on your right."

It was clear that McFinn was not going to go any further. William hoisted his belt and waited for Cash to take the lead. Cash, however, had different ideas.

"You're point man on this," said Cash. "Go on."

There was something unforgiving in Cash's eyes that made William wonder what happened to the lax, easy-going man he had been with earlier. But William followed the order: he was not going to cower in front of these two men. William hoisted up his belt and his courage, and he walked through the fence. Cash followed behind.

On this side of the fence there was not much to do but follow the pathway between the pipelines and water tanks. There was much steam and haze coming from the pipes. The air was harder to breathe. And it was stuffy. William felt the slick sweat developing underneath his arms, between his thighs. William inched forward suspiciously, watching his footing with extreme care. It was getting harder to see from the steam. At some point he noticed he had his hand on his gun, which made him feel a little silly because what was he going to shoot? Cash, however, did not say a word. He was perfectly silent behind William. It was unnerving.

Then the Will rounded a corner and came to a dead-end. There was nothing there.

William turned around to Cash. "Was there another way through the piping that I missed or—?"

She was lying underneath the pipes, tucked away like an unused toy underneath a bed. And she was mutilated: her torso ripped open and ragged, like something had clawed out her inner organs. Her eyes were gone, seemingly gouged out at the sockets. But the rest of her was surprisingly intact—her limbs and her clothes were undisturbed, except for all the blood. And her mouth was gaping. Like she was screaming. That's what William remembered the most: the gaping mouth and the two holes where her eyes should have been.

William stepped backwards. He hit his head quite forcibly on a pipe meter, but he didn't feel much hurt. It was an objective pain, one that he acknowledged but dismissed.

Cash saw William's reaction and so was a little better prepared when he saw the body. Cash looked at it for a long time and then shook his head, looking at his shoes. "My, Jesus, my."

"Officers?" called out McFinn's voice from the steam. "You all alright in there?"

William felt something rushing up his throat. His legs turning into jelly. He couldn't catch his breath.

"Trevor, take it easy," said Cash's faraway voice. "Just take it easy. She ain't gon' hurt you."

William bolted away. Jason McFinn was waiting on the other side of the fence, and when he saw the look on William's face, McFinn kicked out the bucket. And William, in a moment of lucidity, understood that McFinn was a very shrewd man.

William fell onto his knees and vomited his coffee. The sound of his dry heaves was the only music of that morning. He stayed like that for several seconds.

Cash came out eventually through the fence. He was still shaking his head. "This city, I swear."

McFinn suddenly produced out a towel and handed it to William. William accepted it silently. He dabbed at the corners of his mouth. That's when he noticed the specks of vomit all over McFinn's boots.

"Shit, I'm sorry, sir."

McFinn looked down at his boots. He shrugged. "Happens."

Twenty minutes later, the parking lot was swarmed with yellow tape and police units. Crime Scene Services were unloading equipment out of a van, while the men from the Coroner's office waited idly for the police to finish their investigation. Across the street, a small crowd of people looked on with curiosity. Murder always drew people's interest.

William, meanwhile, had retreated to the bathroom in McFinn's office. It was old but clean, and most importantly, private. William didn't want people to know he was shook-up and terrified. He knew that he was a rookie, but he didn't want to be known as that rookie.

He splashed water onto his face. He was trying to forget that girl's face: her missing eyes, her silent scream. But the more he tried not to think of her, the more clearly his mind sculpted her out of the grey matter of his memories. Now he could picture her eyebrows; they had mascara; now appeared her lips; they had purple lipstick.

He looked himself in the mirror. He suspected that he would see her face again in his sleep. That's usually how it was with him. And he was resigning himself to this reality when the bathroom door opened. A tall woman walked in. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. She wore a trench coat over a black pantsuit, which did nothing to conceal the black Glock at her hip. And her blue eyes, normally a watery tone, were today hardened like glacial ice. Her name was Lily Greene, and she was his commanding officer.

"Lieutenant," greeted William in a ragged voice. "I think you have the wrong bathroom."

He tried to sound at ease, but he could hear the trembling in his voice.

"Don't tell me you're falling apart on me, Trevor," she said. She leaned against the post of the doorway. "You act like you've never seen a face-less woman before."

William washed the back of his neck with water. He could see her in his periphery. She folded her arms while leaning against the post. The gesture relayed her sudden impatience.

"If you want to make detective, this is the type of shit you're going to see."

He turned the water off. Now it was a little more quiet without the noise of the running water.

"You got some cajones or not, Trevor?"

"Lieutenant," said Will in a tired, tight voice. "I'm not sure if there's one pair of cajones in this room right now."

Her face hardened immediately. She pushed off the wall and reached into her trench coat.

"You need to give a statement, Trevor. And I can't have my reputation ruined by a blabbering boy. Drink up."

She produced a flask from her coat.

"A little early in the day for the sauce, isn't it?"

She stepped a little closer to him, as if she might take a swing him.

"Right now there's a dead girl lying on the blacktop, Trevor. And there's a son of a bitch responsible for that dead girl. And every second you spend in here feeling sorry for yourself is making it harder for me—"

William took the flask irritably. The alcohol burned in his throat. He handed it back to her and dried his face on coarse paper towels until his skin was red. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a scared young man.

He threw the paper towels in the trash. "Lead the way, boss."

They stepped outside into a bedlam of movement. The CSS team was all over the body, and Jason McFinn was talking to a couple of detectives. William quickly recounted everything that had transpired, and Greene religiously wrote down everything he said onto her notebook. Cash. Meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen.

"And you think he did it?" said Greene, pointing toward McFinn.

"No," said William quickly. A little too quickly.

Greene arched an eyebrow at him. "Really?"

"It doesn't add up. Why call the cops if you did it?"

"Maybe that's what he wants you to think."

William shook his head. "I don't know. He didn't seem that type."

The shadow on Lily's face made it clear that she didn't much care for William's opinion. "Wait for me here, Trevor."

She went over and dismissed the other detectives and introduced herself to McFinn, then she began with the questioning. Her hand worked speedily on her notebook while McFinn spoke. Ten minutes later, she came back over, tucking the notebook into her pocket.

"I don't think it was him," she said lowly.

"You seem disappointed."

"I am. Because we have either a bunch of wolves on the loose, or there is a murderous cannibal running around Gotham City."

"There's been more than one?"

Greene nodded irritably. "I have two other who-dunnits on my rotation that match this butchery: the first is a tennis coach out in the Canary Boondocks, and the other is a forklift operator by the storm drains on the other side of Old Gotham. Both deceased were brutally mutilated and partially eaten. They fit the same profile as this poor girl. That's why I had Cash bring you to this scene. He knows about the other two. We started calling them 'wolfpack' because it looks like a wolfpack had eaten—"

William raised a hand. "I think I get it."

That girl's eyeless face appeared before him again. William closed his eyes. He tried compartmentalizing. He made a deal with himself: there would be plenty of time to be scared later. Right now, he had to focus.

When he opened his eyes, he found Greene looking at him. She had a strange look on her face, as if she was trying to do math in her head. Then she shifted her attention to the crime scene.

"I'm sorry to spring this on you like that," she said quietly. "Rook or not, it wasn't right of me. But that's what the job is often. You want to stay on for detective? You're going to see a lot more than this."

"Really?"

Greene was silent. She continued to look out on the crime scene. "No," she said finally. "This one is fucked up special."

Suddenly, Cash appeared before them. He was stirring a cup of coffee in his hands.

"What you got, Aaron?" said Greene. "And where the hell did you get that drink?"

"McFinn's office," said Cash. He kept stirring. "CSS is doing prints right now. There are no bullet fragments, shells, or powder. No murder weapon has been found. Maybe we should see if the zoo is missing a lion or pack of wolves."

"ID on the body?"

Cash shook his head. "She had no ID on her. But from the make-up on her face, the product in her hair, and the smoothness of her hands, we can confidently believe she wasn't working here. She's probably a university student. Or a bank teller, for all we know."

Greene exhaled forcibly. "Shit. A tennis coach, a forklift operator, and this girl."

"That's a hell of a lineup," conceded Cash. He suddenly switched his attention to William. "What about you, Rook? You look like you're thinking up a storm over there."

William shook his head. "I don't have anything."

"Bullshit."

William smiled softly: there was something about the three murders nagging at the edges of his intuition. But he didn't have enough. He had fragments, and he couldn't see the whole story from the pieces. But there was one word that kept coming to mind. Water.

"Maybe they all went fishing," said William.

Greene and Cash both looked at him as if with flat expressions. They were waiting for him to explain.

"The boondocks have pipes that feed into the estuary, and the storm drains in Old Gotham lead the runoff from the city into the rivers. Maybe they're fisherman."

"And do you see many fishes out here at the waste facility, Trainee Trevor?" asked Greene.

William's heart sank. "Right."

"Of all the ides, Trevor. You say 'fishing.'"

"Lily, c'mon," said Cash. "You remember when you first started."

"I didn't say I had anything," said William with a hint of defensiveness in his voice. "I just thought there might be a connection."

"Of course, there's a connection: they're all dead," spat Greene.

Greene's cellphone suddenly went off. She stepped away to take it.

Cash stirred his coffee with a sympathetic sigh. "Don't take it personally, Will. She's been on this one for weeks."

William watched Greene on her phone-call. She had the phone pressed tightly to her cheek, as if she was trying to crush the phone. She wasn't talking but listening, and her eyes were watching the crime scene as if it were miles and miles away.

Cash finally took a sip of his coffee. He made a bitter face. "Normally, all you need are two or three questions to solve a homicide case. Nine out of ten times, it's an ex-husband, a drunk uncle, a stupid bouncer. Usually men, to be honest. I don't know why. Maybe we stupider than women. But this shit with the wolves? We haven't seen anything like this in a long time."

William asked before he could stop himself. "How long?"

Greene was coming back. Her expression was hard again.

Cash gave William a look. "About twenty years."

"That was Yindel," explained Greene. "She wants a report on this, Cash."

It was clear that Greene intended for Cash to deliver the report himself.

"Let me guess Yindel's theory." Cash closed his eyes and probed mystically with his hands. "It was the Batman."

"That murderous thug is still out there, Cash," said Lily in a serious tone. She looked back at the scene. "I wouldn't be too surprised if he was involved with this."

Cash dropped his hands. It looked a pleading gesture. "Lily, you were a child when he was around. He wasn't like that. Was he an asshole? Absolutely. Did he annoy people? Yes. But he didn't eat people."

"And in the twenty years since the Massacre on City Hall, I made Lieutenant, whereas you're still a Sergeant, Cash," said Lily in a cold tone. "So don't tell me how to do my fucking job, Cash."

She walked away to the parking lot. Her coat billowing in a sudden gust of wind. Cash didn't look to hurt so much as disappointed. William shifted quietly in place.

"She ain't normally like that," said Cash finally. "She's a mean bitch, yeah, but she's a good mean bitch."

"What the hell is up with her?" said William.

"It isn't my story to tell. But between you, me, and this shitty coffee, she blames the Bat for her parent's death. They were killed went all that stuff went down between Dent and the Holiday killings."

"He killed her parents during the 'Long Halloween'?"

Cash snorted. "'The Long Halloween.' How the hell do you know about that, Trevor?"

"I read about it somewhere," said William in a throwaway tone. But this time Cash was not fooled. He was looking at William with a knowing expression.

"You read an awful lot for police, Trevor."

"So he killed them?" said William, ignoring Cash's comment.

Cash threw the empty coffee cup into the trash. "Like I said: it isn't my story to tell."

The CSS were carrying equipment back to their van, evidently having finished their preliminary forensics. Now the sports-jacketed detectives were walking over with cups of coffee in their hand, talking hurriedly to one another. The white-suited men from the Coroner's office meanwhile were still waiting crime by their van. This investigation was only getting started.

Cash, who had been watching William closely, put a hand on his shoulder. "You handled yourself well, son. Now we got to get back to Division. C'mon, lunch is on me."

"I'm not hungry," said William. That eye-less girl was coming back to him now. And he had no appetite for food. He suspected he wouldn't want to eat for a long, long time.