EPILOGUE: The Killing Joke

:::Two years-prior to the events of SHADOW OF THE BAT: Best Served Cold:::

5:28PM

Today felt normal but something was different. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It was like when you were trying to remember someone's name but couldn't and the name was right there just beyond your recollection.

Well, in Gotham City, an insidious feeling of something different usually meant that something was terribly wrong.

"Daddy, I'm going to make some coffee. I bought this new flavor from Coffee Bean called Heavenly Mint. You want some?"

It was a lazy Saturday evening and I had come over to my dad's house to help him with some archiving. He's a chronic scrapbooker and chronicles all of the major exploits of Gotham City from elections to charity functions to vigilantism—especially vigilantism. I don't mean to brag on myself too much, but he even had a scrapbook that chronicled the media's hype about a certain female vigilante that emerged wearing the mantle of the Bat. As Robin predicted, the media gave me the same name that he gave me during our first meeting.

The scrapbook was the only interaction I had with my father in regards to my alter ego. Batman explicitly forbade me any contact with the GCPD—most especially the Police Commissioner—under any circumstance while acting as Batgirl. He claimed that I was too close and it would be a conflict of interest that would seriously compromise our operations.

"No, thanks. But, since you're in there, could you grab me a beer out of the fridge."

"Sure, daddy," I replied from the kitchen.

I watched dad contemplatively turn the pages in one of his many scrapbooks and then close it before checking a text message on his phone. Then he stood, stretched, and moseyed into his study from the living room out of view.

"Are you going to make a phone call?"

"No, honey, I'm looking for a specific scrapbook. It has a certain article about an arsonist that I want to look at. I just don't remember where I put it."

"There's better way to catalog your stuff."

"I'm sure. I just don't have the kind of time necessary to play librarian."

Once I started the coffee-maker brewing, I went across the living room into dad's study. He was on his knees digging through a crate.

"Alright, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to go to the electronics store and buy you an external hard-drive. Then I'm going to scan all of the documents and pictures in your scrapbooks so you can store them on it. That way you can make electronic scrapbooks instead of having billions of boxes full of dust and books. It'll be much easier to find specific articles that way."

"I don't know, honey. Part of the fun of a scrapbook is the cutting and pasting. All that computer mumbo-jumbo just sounds like it's going to make it difficult."

"It'll take you just as long to scan and organize the documents as it does to cut and paste. Except that now you won't have to worry about glue getting everywhere. And, the data will last longer."

"All these scrapbooks have lasted me this long."

"Yep. And, you're about two scrapbooks away from being legally classified as a hoarder."

"You're exaggerating."

"No, I'm not. If you had a wife, she'd agree with me."

"That's why I'm not married, honey."

"In any case, you have to upgrade someday. Times change you know."

"I'm just not into the whole social-media thing."

"Daddy, this is an external hard-drive, not an open forum."

"What about hackers?"

"You don't have anything a hacker wants."

"I am the Police Commissioner—"

"Hackers want money, not police commissioners. Accept this,you're upgrading and you're going to be better for it."

He resigned himself with a sigh and sat up to stretch his back and adjust his glasses.

There was a knock—a drumming would be more accurate—at the door to the beat of Shave-And-A-Haircut.

"I'll get it." I was in the doorway between the living room and the study and closer anyway. "You expecting somebody?"

"No one in particular. That's probably Carla from next door."

"That lovely brunette with the green purse? Really?"

"She just comes over once in a while to get sugar or whatever."

"I bet. You kids these days."

"Barbara—"

"You're a sweet guy." I said turning and making my way to the far end of the living room. "I can't blame her."

"Barbara, please."

Out of habit, I looked through the peephole leveraging myself against the door with both hands. All I could see was an eyeball pressed to the other end trying to look in. Apparently, our visitor was unaware that peepholes only worked in one direction. Perhaps, Carla was not as bright as I had assumed—assuming also that our visitor was, in fact, Carla. Suddenly, I was not so hip to the idea of her spending time with my father. Who was I to judge, though?

I craned my neck around the door to greet our visitor as I pulled it open and was instead greeted first by our guest's empty expression and then the blood splattered all over her chin, neck, and blouse.

She slumped against the door head-first, shoving it open ahead of me. Her eyes were stone despite the impact.

Confounded, I stepped back allowing the door to open.

Carla's cheek slid across the surface of the door until it had opened far enough for her to plunge in and fall to the floor unhindered. I would have rushed to catch her had I not been so paralyzed by what I saw standing behind her.

There was the barrel of a revolver—a shiny circle attached to an equally shiny cylinder against a brightly colored background. There was a camera hanging from the neck of the person behind the gun-arm. Behind the camera was the same background—a loud yellow and green Hawaiian shirt. Above that, beneath a huge purple brimmed hat, was a terrible, pale grimace that instantly stretched into an enormous, profane smile outlined in red and filled with yellow-brown teeth. And, above that, surrounded by black, were two hateful, brown eyes overflowing with murder.

"Fortune favors the bold!" His lips contorted as words escaped his cannibalistic smile. The sounds of his voice were simultaneously flat and sharp, treble and bass, and climbed with the sudden excitement and the pizazz of a singer energized by the reaction of his audience.

My feet were instantly cinder blocks cemented to the floor and my heart rattled as disbelief instantly transformed into unbridled fear.

"Barbara?" my dad called to me when the strange voice tripped his personal danger sensors.

There was no time to answer. There was no time to scream. No time to plead. No time for anything. Not in the amount of time it took for him to wink at me and then depress the trigger with an unclean finger…

BOOM!

"Barbara!" my dad screamed when he heard the gunshot.

A conflagration erupted in my gut. My hands went instantly to my stomach as my legs gave out. I fell through the glass-top of the side table next to the door landing next to Carla's body. The pain was so crippling that I couldn't unlock my jaw to close my mouth nor swallow the saliva that had pooled in the back of my throat blocking my airway.

"Oh my!" he exclaimed, his voice becoming childlike. "I like little Puss, her coat is so warm. And, if I don't hurt her, she'll do me no harm; so I'll not pull her tail nor drive her away. But Pussy and I very gently will play."

Then there was laughter—devilish, evil laughter that wasn't at all funny and made the pain more extreme. And, he danced a jig in his purple wingtip shoes and his knee-high lilac socks.

"Eve'ning, Commmm-ishuner!"

I could hear my dad screaming but that's all remember…