Just once, just one time does he wish this city would let him rest and go home to Barbara and little Jim. Just the one time does he wish the city would just take a break from its chaos. But this is not that time. No, it is not. The email was taken seriously. The fact that they had gotten it so dispersed to the people they wanted to see it caused a panic, the hectic 911 call from the young Miss Crowne's PA had sent a shock wave of sudden harried worry through everyone but Gordon.

Because Gordon didn't see the Joker behind it. There was no joke to be had here. He was never so esoteric as to play with taking back power and anarchy. He wanted to cause wanton madness to cater to his own sick sense of humor. This was not his kind of joke.

No this was different and he could feel it. This was someone new... and that horrified him.

From behind his bifocals, he looks at the young seventeen-year-old girl crucified to the barren wall. Her nude body stained crimson with her own blood. There was message galore here. Painted on the wall, carved into her supple flesh, and in his hand, printed out from his work terminal. He could hear Bullock breathing heavily in the background as he tries not to lose his cheap, greasy dinner all over the crime scene floor.

The Crime Scene guys were already trying to figure out where to start their evidence and trail of events tagging. Though with all the blood they couldn't figure out where to go with that just yet, "We're wasting time. If we have fourteen hours, we've wasted twenty minutes just getting down here and staring at the body."

"Jimbo, at least she ain't grinnin'." There was that one lone upside. The Joker would tell you a time table and then completely flip it over and do everything in his power to catch you off guard. But Mackenzie Crowne wasn't grinning.

No, the look of subdued terror was frozen on her soft features. One of the men in a pale blue body suit pulls his hood and mask from his face to sigh, "I've got no idea where to start here, this alone could take the fourteen hours, trying to pin everything, point of entry, to where she was held when she was killed, there's so much blood here it's washed away footprints and... this carpet is useless to us, Lieutenants. It's washed away a lot of possible evidence here."

"She was just a kid, why in the hell was she livin' by herself?!" Bullock's thick, bravado-filled voice trembled as he asked the obvious question. This was a one bedroom apartment. This wasn't a bachelor pad her father could have brought people to. This was lived in, there were pictures, posters, the sheets were still wrinkled from where she had lain in them last. There was no possible way this was somewhere she'd come to simply screw around. Gordon would recognize that.

Bullock would have called it soon as he walked through the door.

Sure his partner was crass, but he was a good detective, "Does this feel personal to you? There's a... intimacy here that doesn't feel right. Why would she be stripped naked if this was only about class?"

Gordon's voice bounces off of the walls as silence meets him in an answer. A humming sound of Bullock mulling the possible answers in his head before a voice answers from a suddenly open window. The sounds of traffic stories below rush up to meet them as the intruder speaks in a low, gravel filled tone, "Because they wanted to embarrass her, wanted to show us that everyone comes into the world the same way."

Bullock startles, his words cut off as he brings his worn and tattered fedora down to cover his chest, pantomiming a sudden heart attack, "Jesus Christ, how long you been there?"

No answer comes back to meet him. Gordon doesn't want to turn around as he brings his left wrist up to look at the time, "We have a thirteen and a half hours left. Mayor James wants to put the city in a state of Martial Law over this... so called 'Terrorist Threat'. Branden and Loeb are chomping at the bit to unleash the Emergency Response Team onto the streets in full force, the only sane ones here are me, Dent, and... I'm guessing you."

Finally, the prematurely aging Lieutenant turns to greet their visitor. His tired green eyes land on the man clad in black and gray. A tight bodysuit stretched over obvious armor and a body built to break concrete with a solid punch. He's seen it happen. The pointed ears of the cowl and the pale whites of the eyes seeking his out don't comfort him any.

Because he can see the discomfort in them, the unease that's starting to wash through the one man that isn't supposed to feel unease or discomfort in these kinds of situations, "Have you read the-..."

Gordon's question goes unanswered as their Detective visitor uncoils himself from the window sill he was perched upon to fully enter the room, "Dent forwarded it to the secure email I gave the both of you."

Heavy footfalls squelch in the blood-soaked carpet as Batman slowly approaches, his heavy black cape flowing around his shoulders, hiding his arms from sight. In a sweeping motion, he pulls it away to show a pair of goggles held in his hands. Slipping them over his head he flicks them on and the dark room goes from platitudes of shadows and crimson light to a bright, fluorescent blue that flickers and hums in front of his pale green eyes.

Gloved hands adjust wheels faceted around the lenses as he approaches the body of the victim. Adjusting the visuals as he searches for anything other than blood. Saliva, fecal matter, urine, semen. Materials that show up in varying shades of neon hues; ranging from white to bright orange. Nothing scans. Lifting them from the bridge of his nose, he focuses on the knife marks dug into her abdomen.

"Step one," he repeats quietly to himself as his left-hand trails up over her abdomen to grip her slack jaw and straighten her face as he hunches to meet her hooded, lifeless eyes. Folding the goggles up against his chest he slips them back into their pouch before pulling out a long pair of black, stainless steel tweezers to venture into her mouth. The lack of anything to grab and pull out has him retrieving them relatively clean.

Depositing them back into their space, he uses the gloved pad of his left thumb to pull her upper lip up and peek inside of her mouth. The light too dark he reaches down and pulls up a small flashlight which he places between his teeth to peer into her open cavity. Just as he had thought. Her tongue had been cut out.

Pocketing the flashlight he and without turning to look at the watching CSI Member he points to the open bathroom, "Check for a tongue in the bathroom."

There's an audible gasp that shakes the air at the insinuation as it's interrupted by a sudden wet retch from Bullock as he makes his way towards the open window. A slight twitch of the Bat's head as Gordon steps up behind him, inspecting the cavity for himself with his own pocket light, "They cut out her tongue? Why?"

"Could be symbolic of the statement they're trying to make." His voice is softer, concerned less with hiding his identity and more with working with the clues he has at hand so far and what they can add up to.

"They?" An innocent question. Gordon is no idiot, he could do this himself if he wanted. And he knows he relies a bit much on his friend in costume, but the man standing in front of him was a better detective than anyone else in Gotham City. Probably anyone else on the East Coast combined.

"Yes, it's a group. There were at least six people in here. Although this, was the work of one man. The carvings in her abdomen, do not match the painted words above her head. Someone else did those. These," He hovers his left hand over the message scrawled into her taut flesh, indicating them fully, "These are quick, violent, hateful. Lustful. There was a sexual component to this for whoever killed her. They had to have been attracted to her when they did this-..."

"There's no tongue!" The answers come back in a yell as the Crime Scene man leans back into the room, his eyes wide, sweat beading on his brow.

"The killer took a trophy." In a sudden move, the Batman's right hand comes up to grip the blade twirled into her blonde hair to jerk it out of the wall. Blood and plaster cake the blade and he nods, confirming what he already wagered to himself, "But he left the murder weapon. A trade-off."

Bagging the blade a beeping sound radiates up from Gordon's watch and he looks down, "Thirteen hours left."

"This will be our one concession. They'll have wanted us to marvel at the first step before overwhelming us with the next move." The Bat hands the bagged blade over to Gordon and finally meets his bespectacled eyes, "This is only the beginning. This is a group, hellbent on violence and destruction. The motive is unclear. The language is far too vague for it to be truly class motivated. There would have been a treatise of everything wrong with the system that they intend to fix in the email."

"There wasn't," Gordon adds, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead to rake a hand over his face with a groan, "Christ, it never ends does it."

"No. And it never will."

The CSI Member from the bathroom comes to take the knife and draws the attention away from the Bat long enough for a hushed whisper to fill the air, "I'll be checking for security footage..."

Bullock and the other Officer look around confused, as Gordon laughs in irritation by the disappearing act, "He does that."