The banging upon the door roused her at 6 a.m. Normally she would already be up, but living with Harley outside of cells was always challenging, Harley's sleep "pattern" depended completely upon how much caffeine and sugar the blonde had consumed that day, and would dictate how long her sugar-crash induced slumber lasted the next morning.
The only sound she heard from Harley's room as she passed by was a mumbled "I love you too, Puddin'." that made her lip curl in disgust as she rounded the corner in the hall and came to the front door.
The house was a simple little 2 bedroom, 1 bath affair on the outskirts of Gotham. It was cheap and poorly furnished, but it had running water, electricity, and air conditioning; a serviceable place to make a fresh start, or so she thought before she peered out the side window by the door and saw the unpleasant sight on her front step.
The door creaked open, she needed to oil those hinges, "Detective Bullock... Something I can do for you?"
Bullock looked at her suspiciously for a moment without a word, his tooth pick shifting from the right side of his mouth to the left with a slight twitch of his clenched jaw. Bullock was bear of a man. Many a Gotham thug and even some of the GCPD's finest dismissed him as an over-weight, past-his-prime desk jockey; they didn't know that under his sloppy appearance there was a rather keen deductive mind, and that behind his doughnut built paunch he was a true bruiser. His massive hands and arms, thick as tree trunks, could easily knock the sense out of anyone who came across him the wrong way.
He was slow and lumbering, but like any tortoise he could surprise even the fastest of crooks, his unexpected intelligence and a preference for a .357 rather than the standard glock sidearm carried by most police officers, made him one of the more meddlesome and irritating cops on the force; at least, as far as the Rogue's were concerned.
"We got a warrant to search yer place." He said at last, grinding out the words through clenched teeth. The rough edge in his voice seemed to cut into Pamela's mind like a well-sharpened pruning shear, slicing away her idle musings about the detective and bringing her back to reality.
"I'm sorry?" she asked, eyelids fluttering in surprise.
"Your place." He stuffed a piece of paper into her hands. "We're searchin' it." He gave a sharp whistle and from the drive way just out of sight came a row of police men and women, trooping past a bewildered Pamela Isley and into her house.
"Search every inch, pull up the damn carpet if you gotta, I don't wanna have to make a second trip out here folks!" Bullock's barking voice instructed with booming finality as Isley numbly stepped back from the door, watching the police officers in shocked disbelief as they began to quite literally tear apart the measly excuse for a home.
In any other city in the world getting a search warrant was an officer's nightmare, but here, in Gotham all it took was a hunch by one of the cities top psychologists, a little greasing of the wheels by the DA to speed up the paper-work and give the GCPD the clearance they needed.
As the police began their search Harley came scrambling out of her room squealing like a piglet, wearing nothing but a pair of diamond bedazzled panties and a bright red baby doll tee. "Red, Red, there's somebody in the house, there's somebod- Ooooh HI Bully!"
Harley threw her lithe arms around the surprised Detective, who quickly shoved her away with a grumble. "Get off'a me, Quinn!"
"Aaaaw, why ya gotta be like dat Bully, we never spend any time togeth'a anymore!"
"Stow it, we're here on police business!"
"Oooh Police Business!" Harley puffed out her chest, and her cheeks, in a mockery of Bullock's frame and bulk. "What sort'a busin- Hey whaddya doin' to our house!"
Bullock stared at her for a moment. It was hard to tell whether he was thinking, or if his brain had just shut down for the final time, leaving him little more than a brain-dead animal. Finally he blinked his beady eyes and then exclaimed in a rumble just beneath roaring, "We're searchin' it, whaddya think!"
"But we didn't do nothin'!"
"Maybe YOU didn't!" He fired back, then he cut his eyes suspiciously to Pamela. Harley followed his gaze, blinking in bewilderment before the dots finally connected in her mind. "Hey wait'a sec, Red's been here with me all night she didn't do nothin' either!"
"Oh gosh, I'm sorry, lemme right dat up then!" Bullock pulled out his notebook, then mimed writing upon it while mumbling loudly. "Ex-con vouches suspect, says she's innocent!"He dragged out the final word as if it were a foreign expulsion unwelcome upon his tongue.
"Hey, look Red, he's got one of those invisible pencils just like mine!"
The explanation from Harley stopped the wheels in the detective's head. Pamela could almost hear the gears grinding at the frantic shouts of mental engineers as they tried to figure out why they'd lost power. Harley Quinn was one of the only people in Gotham who could throw a curve ball so wild that even the best people on the force would be left with their jaws flapping noiselessly in the wind, scrunching up their faces and scratching their heads in a vague attempt to understand.
As Bullock tried to recover from Harley's mind-numbing statement Pamela pounced upon her opportunity.
"Might I ask why the accusations against me are, Detective?"
"Conspiracy!" He replied sharply.
"Conspiracy to what, exactly?"
There was a long pause. The confused expression returned as Bullock lifted a thick hand and rubbed his greasy face as though to wipe away the disoriented feeling that had laid claim to his brain. It was all Pamela needed, they had nothing, this was probably an effort brought on by the suspicions of the DA or Dr. Arkham. It wouldn't be difficult, she was a paroled felon, they required very little provocation to initiate a search of her property. All she could do was wait, she'd done nothing wrong, they'd tear the place apart trying to prove she had, but she was innocent and she was patient.
She never lost her temper, even when they uprooted her house plants, even when Harley burst into tears because they sliced open her stuffed animals to check inside them. She waited, like a house cat beneath a bird bath she waited. Finally the police concluded their work, a few last vague probing questions intended more to try and provoke Pamela than get actual information from her, and then they were gone.
Pam shut the door when they left, then turned and walked down the hall. She found Harley standing in her room with her bottom lip hanging out in a massive, dramatic pout. The bed had been stripped bare to check in and under the mattress, the stuffed animals had been sliced open, the closet had been emptied, the pictures had been taken off the walls. She sighed as Pam came up next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"We didn't even do anythin' wrong." She whispered in a pathetic sulk, lifting her pretty blue eyes to look up at her friend.
"I know, Harl. You know how they are, this was bound to happen sooner or later. At least it's out of the way now."
"I guess so..."
"Thatta girl," Pamela cooed consolingly as she hugged the blonde. "Now, pack your things, we're leaving."
"Wha-! Leavin' for where!"
"I have a friend who said that if things didn't work out here she would sponsor us."
"Huh!" Harley exclaimed, slapping her hands onto her hips and squinting at her friend. "Who in their right mind would do that for us?"
Pamela paused at the door and glanced back over her shoulder with a sly smirk. "Selina."
Harley was still shouting at her by the time she got to the end of the hall and entered her own room. The three of them had an on-again off-again love-hate relationship. Sometimes they could be the best of friends, other times they'd attempted to kill each other. None of the other Rogue's ever knew what side Catwoman would settle on, but they could always trust that if Batman got involved Catwoman would quickly become a liability to any villain's best laid plans. Judging by the pitch of Harley's screams she couldn't fathom any sort of benefit to their staying under the same roof with Gotham's infamous feline fatale.
Author's Note: Sorry this one took so long folks, I've been swamped preparing to the return to college and decided to just hold off on writing until I had enough free time to type up this chapter without feeling frenzied or forced. Stick with me, the end is drawing near. ;)