Commissioner James W. Gordon flew down the hallways of Gotham Central like a bat out of hell. He paid no regard to the people he passed or the doors he thrust open because his mind was elsewhere. As he ran up the stairs to the seventh floor, his mind raced with questions he felt needed to be asked of the widow of Bobby Billiard. Rushing out of the stairwell, he barreled down the hallway and toward his office at the end of the path. He paused outside the threshold, taking a deep breath and adjusting his tie and jacket. Just then, First Lieutenant Harvey Bullock stumbled out of the elevator, heaving and coughing in a fit. He stumbled over to his old partner and leaned against the glass.
"Why do you have to run so fast, Jim?" the overweight cop mumbled between gasps for air. With an amicable chuckle, Gordon opened the door and stepped inside.
Suzanne Billiard, the wife of the infamous Bobby Billiard, rose from her chair when she heard the door creep open. She was a beautiful woman whose youthful features belied her forty-three years. Her bright auburn hair hung down in thick curls that had obviously gone out of style years ago, yet still looked fetching on her. The thick black shadows under her puffy red eyes seemed to hold all of her age and sadness. The roots of her hair gleamed silver in the light, and it was obvious she had not died her hair in quite some time. Gordon smiled as he walked past her and Lieutenant Bullock stood up against the wall behind.
"Good evening, Missus Billiard. I am Commissioner Gordon and that is Lieutenant Bullock." Gordon reached out to shake the woman's hand and sat down in his large, leather chair. "Please take a seat, Miss-"
"Suzanne," she replied timidly, "but you may call me, Suzy."
"Thank you, Suzy and you may call me Jim." This air of friendliness brought a smile to the widow's face. She had worried at first that she would be shunned and hated, and possibly even arrested, for the atrocious act her husband had committed. "Now, Suzy, I hear that you have brought us some of your husband's belongings, is that right?"
"Yes sir, Jim." Suzanne Billiard pulled a medium sized cardboard box off the floor and set it on the Commissioner's polished mahogany desk. She began to pull out random items, such as clothes, cologne bottles and receipts. "I brought anything I could find that was clean, I didn't want to bring you his dirty underwear you see, and I even found the receipts from different purchases like the rifle-"
"I understand you found a tape with your husband's belongings, is that true?" the Commissioner asked, leading the distraught widow in his direction.
"Oh, yes, that's right here." Suzy pulled out an old silver tape recorder and set it on the desk. She pulled out a cassette tape from her purse that was marked with the date one day before the incident that made her husband famous. "Would you like me to play it for you?"
"If you would be so kind…"
"Ahem, if you are listening to this tape right now, then I must have done it. I must have killed the Batman. Before I explain why I did it, I want you to tell my wife Suzanne that I love her. Tell my son James that I haven't forgotten him, and give my little princess Abigail a kiss on the cheek. I say this because I don't believe I will live long after the deed is done. I'm sure some crazy will off me for doing what he never could or some self righteous pig will go medieval on me out of some misplaced sense of revenge. Also, I ask you to tell my family I love them because I am not an animal. I am a man, like you or you or anyone else in this crazy, mixed-up, world. Never forget that bit of information. I ain't no killer crocodile man, or some sick albino freak, I'm just plain old Bobby Billiard, a nobody from the narrows.
"Now I guess it's high time that I answer the sixty five million dollar question; why did I kill the Batman? Well I'm gonna answer your question, with a question of my own; why not? Day in and day out, all I hear are people complaining about the Batman, but no one's got the balls to do anything about it. Think back to before the Batman came to Gotham City. There was no Joker, no Penguin; not one of those freaks came here until the Batman showed up. Ask yourself, do the freaks draw out the Batman, or does the Batman draw out the freaks? And then there are those goddamn cops who call the Batman a menace to society and then light up a fucking signal to draw him out. A bunch of goddamn hypocrites, that's all they are!
"Well I ain't about to be one of those hypocrites. I agree with the rest of this city of cowards, that the Batman is a plague that must be stopped. How long do we gotta live in fear that the Batman is gonna bring out some killer who's gonna waste one of our kids or our friends? I for one ain't gonna take it any longer. I'm done with it. I'm gonna do something the cops in this town should have done a long ass time ago.
"I'm gonna kill the Batman.
"Now I know it sounds crazy; I mean a nobody like me, offing the Batman? HA! But every famous person started out as nothing. Einstein was a patent clerk for crying out loud but now EVERYBODY knows his name. And think about Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray; both of them were nobodies until they killed someone who was larger than life. And then there is me; Bobby Billiard, the mail clerk. If I died today, nobody would know my name, but if I die tomorrow everyone will know my name. To have that kind of power makes me God…
"By now I'm sure you know I worked in the mayor's office, but I'm gonna give you a little treat. I'm gonna tell you how I found out about tomorrow. You see, I've been a mail clerk in the mayor's office for twenty years now and I work unsupervised. I saw the mayor had a letter to be sent to the governor, and I had a special feeling about this one. So I opened it; but I didn't just tear the seal because that would be too obvious and I couldn't go to prison yet. It wasn't time. So I used a heat lamp to burn the sealant and open the letter without a trace. I saw the mayor's plans for tomorrow and I knew what I had to do. She wrote that she was keeping it a secret and so I knew nobody would be expecting anything. So I bought me a gun and tomorrow I'm gonna rent me a loft and I'm gonna shoot the Batman. And there ain't nothing you can do about it!"
The breathing on the tape suddenly became quicker and more frightened. Bobby Billiard seemed tenser now than at any other point on the tape.
"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, folks. Now, I ain't gonna go back and change what my plans now. I'm gonna kill the Batman no matter what. But as I watch that clock tick closer and closer, I'll admit I'm getting a little bit scared. Now don't get me confused, I ain't scared of y'all and I ain't scared of death, but I'm scared I may be making the wrong decision. But then I guess I'll never know, will I?
"I love you Suzanne. Sincerely, Bobby Billiard, the man who killed Batman…"