To Play the Fool
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tex was hanging from the rafters of an old, mostly empty, hotel when Batman found her. Directly above his head, too. "Pst!" she hissed, waving him away. He shot his grappling cable up into the ceiling and joined her shortly. "What are you doing here?"
"I need a favor." He shifted his position so he was more comfortably seated in the exposed ceiling beams.
"Can it wait?"
"Yes. What's going on?" He took out a pair of binoculars to watch the lobby below.
"A meeting of a couple local gangs, supposedly. Someone insulted someone, so they'll be taking it out on each other here tonight. I was hoping to prevent that."
"How exactly?"
Seven men, or more accurately, boys entered the hotel lobby, exchanging insults and threats and throwing gang symbols around. It seemed to be a fairly even fight; three against four. They were dressed like typical gangsters from the ghetto from the baggy pants to the dirty hoodies. The boys were probably all in high school or close to that age, but acting like they had been on the streets far longer than that.
Tex readied herself to jump down. "Just like the last time I was in the rafters."
"Do you want any help?" He noticed that the kids had started pulling out firearms.
"Nope. Just stay put." Tex let go of the rafters and landed right in the middle of the group on all fours. Instantly, the shouting and fighting stopped.
"It's Tex!" one of them shouted. The boys had one of two reactions: run away before someone got hurt, or just plain shoot her. Three of them opted to shoot her, two ran, and two failed to react at all. Tex waited a second for the kids to stop shooting. When she didn't fall down dead or even fight back, the shooters approached her for a closer look.
That was the opening she needed. She leapt to her feet, grabbed a gun with each hand, and kicked a third guy in the chest that was standing right behind her. "What are you kids doing with these?" she said as she crushed the guns.
"We're not kids," said one Hispanic guy who looked like he was about eighteen. He reached for his belt to grab another gun, but Tex grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm until he was on his knees before letting him go.
"You're about as tall as me. You're kids." She picked up one of the fallen guns and smashed that too. "You're barely even worth my time."
"You think you're better than us?" said a black guy who was at most twenty. "You have no idea what it's like for us!"
"I do not think I'm better than you. However, I do know how insignificant you are. You see that?" She pointed up to the ceiling where Batman was sitting.
"No," said the first boy.
"What you do not see is Batman." He waved for Tex's benefit, but he was fairly well hidden in the shadows. "He's here for me. He's not bothering with you. You barely show up on his radar. I'm here because it's stupid to see kids as young as you killing each other. There's no reason for it."
"What are you going to tell us that everyone else hasn't already said?" said one of the other gangsters sarcastically. "Stay in school?"
"That's not a bad idea. At the very least, get a job. Now, shoo! Go home." With their weapons destroyed and their fighting skills not nearly up to par with Tex, they decided to do as she said. "No, not the front door," she said to a couple trying to go that way. "Take the back way."
As the others left, Batman joined her on the ground. "What's wrong with the front door?"
"I'm expecting a drive-by. A lot of these kids have older brothers." She peeled the serial numbers off the guns she had just crushed to look up later.
"How did you find out about this scuffle?"
"Facebook. It's a Private Investigator's dream come true. I programmed a bot to watch facebook for trouble, but I mostly get a lot of empty threats. Every once in a while, something like this turns up."
"You should probably stick to the police scanners. No one was going to get hurt here tonight anyway."
"I dunno. Scared kids with guns? These were all loaded properly, safeties off. They probably weren't planning on killing anyone, but it could have happened anyway. So what did you need me for?"
"Can you come with me to the city morgue?"
There was a squeal of tires just outside, followed by gunshots from a sub-machine gun. Tex calmly slipped the serial numbers into her jacket, and Batman pulled a few batarangs and spike grenades from his belt.
"Sure. Why not."
Batman kicked open the front door to a shower of bullets from a Honda driving by. While he briefly took cover, Tex ran out and raced directly for the car, drawing their fire. The little green Honda with three proper gangsters with heavy firepower made a U-turn just down the street and came back for Tex. On its way back to the hotel, Batman came out and threw the spike grenades at the car.
The driver swerved to avoid the blast, but the spikes shredded the tires and the car had no choice but to stop. The three men in the car stepped out, firing at Tex as they did so, but she did not fall. Batman let his batarangs fly one after the other. He hit the driver's right hand, knocking the gun out of his hand, got the shotgun passenger in the cheek, and the back-seat one in the arm. Then Tex caught up with them and knocked them out with a few solid punches and a round-house kick.
Batman provided the handcuffs, but let Tex take care of securing the gunmen. It was her bust after all. After destroying and collecting the serial numbers of the guns, she turned to Batman and said, "Well, let's go!" as chipper as a scrambled voice could sound.
"Why are we breaking into a morgue?" Tex complained as Batman helped her slip through the window and step down from the sink.
"There's a body I want you to look at." He turned on an overhead light and started looking at the labels on the metal drawers where the bodies were stored.
"Morgues give me the creeps."
"Because of the bodies?"
"Well, after waking up in one, suddenly the fear of being not quite dead before they gut you doesn't seem so far fetched." She edged away from the gurneys.
He found the door he wanted, lifted the latch, and rolled out the body which was covered by a white sheet. "This is Melissa Jones. Some kids found her body near the playground in a park on Sixth Avenue. She was eighteen years old, just barely starting school at Gotham City College. She was originally from Nebraska." He glanced at Tex to make sure she was still listening. "They haven't done an autopsy on her yet, but based on her profile, I think I know who did this to her."
"You think she was murdered?"
"I do."
"Jenny says that it's best to not to form theories before you have the evidence. It distorts what you find."
"An admirable motto." He pulled the sheet off her face, revealing a girl with long blonde curls, black eyes like a raccoon, pale, ashen skin, and a faint look of fear etched on her face. "Examine her skull."
Tex touched the corner of her right eye and bent closer to the body, making a semi-circle sweep around her head. "What are you looking for exactly?"
"Something in her eyes."
She straightened back up. "There's definitely something there, but it's not her eyes. It's the sockets. They've both got holes in them. I just don't understand how they were made. The skin's not broken and the angle is weird." She lifted up one of the girl's eyelids and looked under it. "Oh."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm not a medical professional, but I think there's damage to her brain as well, like a spike was drilled through her eye. Have you ever seen Sucker Punch?"
"I don't watch movies."
"You wouldn't, would you."
"Tex." She liked to run his patience thin for some reason.
"She's been lobotomized. Someone took a thin spike like an ice pick, put it between her eyelid and eyeball, hammered it through the thin bone of her eye socket, wiggled it around a bit, and took it out to do the same to the other side."
"Lobotomies aren't fatal, though."
"Not if they're done correctly. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing can cause a brain hemorrhage."
"Can you tell if whoever did this was trying to kill her or if it was an accident?"
"I cannot. Everything I know about lobotomies comes from Sucker Punch, which is apparently where our killer got his info." She yanked the sheet back over the girl's face and shoved her body back into the locker. "It's not fair, you know. Even if she wasn't killed by this hack, she could have lost her mind, her personality. What kind of person is he if he thinks he has the right to play with someone else's brain?"
Batman closed the latch on the door. "That's all I needed to know."
Tex took a step back and studied him as he moved back to the windows. "Okay, spill. Out of all the dead people in Gotham, why is she interesting?"
"She was lobotomized. Isn't that enough?"
"You knew that before you brought me in. How?"
"The black eyes."
"Lots of dead people have black eyes. Please stop lying to me."
"As soon as I talk to Gordon."
For once, Batman's call hadn't been urgent. Gordon was surprised to find both Batman and Tex waiting in full view of the door. "I take it you have something interesting or else you wouldn't keep me away from Barbara's delicious meatloaf." That last part was laced with sarcasm.
"What's wrong with meatloaf?" Tex mumbled.
"Gotham has a serial killer," Batman announced.
"You'll have to be a little more specific."
He produced a thick file from under his cape and handed it to Commissioner Gordon. Tex looked over his shoulder to read it too. It was a collection of photographs and details on three girls who had been killed in Gotham in the last six months. They were all teens, had blonde hair, and were found wearing blue dresses, white aprons, and black ribbons to hold back their hair. The latest one was Melissa Jones. All of them had black eyes. The first two had Starvation listed as their cause of death. Melissa's case was pending.
"They were all lobotomized?"
"The report says they were also likely given Electroshock Therapy. We've got an amateur psychosurgeon on our hands," Gordon declared.
"It's not just them. Five years ago, the FBI was investigating a string of killings remarkably similar to these girls. Eight girls were killed, as well as three men over the course of three years and four states – Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Then they just stopped and the case went cold."
"This sounds really familiar," Tex commented.
"Did they have any suspects?"
He shook his head. "Several, but there were no prints, no useable DNA, and no identifiable relations between the victims. They think the killer was looking for girls that looked like Alice." Batman handed Tex a copy of Alice in Wonderland. "Not only were all of them lobotomized, but they also had a copy of this left at their house. I found this at Melissa Jones' apartment. The unofficial name for him is The Mad Hatter."
"They're not supposed to name the serial killers," Tex grumbled.
"I can see how the girls look like Alice, but why were the men killed?" Gordon said.
"Supposedly they got in the way, but some agents believed that they portrayed the Dormouse and the March Hare. The men were found dressed in Victorian suits and the medical examiners found tea in their stomachs."
"Is there reason to believe he's going to strike again?"
"Yes, and soon. He doesn't usually dump a body without having another girl in mind to kidnap."
"Then we'll have to bring in the FBI and soon. Do you remember which agent led the original case?"
"Not at the moment. Tex and I will be on the lookout for any girls that could be potential targets."
"And we'll start narrowing down medical professionals that moved here in the last two years. The Rachel Dawes Memorial Hospital doesn't help matters much there. The Wayne Foundation pulled in the best and brightest from around the country to get that place running. I'll take that," he said to Tex. She handed him the book, which he took with a latex glove. Then he looked back up to Batman only to find the man had disappeared. "How does he do that?"
"Bugger if I know. Be nice if he could warn me." She pulled a cable out of her pocket and attached one end to the edge of the roof and jumped off.
"I know the feeling."
The dump site was still cordoned off by yellow police tape, but Batman ignored it and ducked under it. Tex was following him up until that point, but did not want to put her footprints in the scene. "There's nothing here," she snapped. "The Hatter dumped her body here, that's it."
"The police might have missed something." He crouched down next to the ground that the body used to occupy and scanned the vegetation.
"Right, because they're all incompetent and you're the only one that can solve this."
He could see the rage radiating off her body without needing to look at her. "Is there something you'd like to say?"
"The Mad Hatter case goes cold in Connecticut two years ago, and you somehow connect it to a murder in Gotham City."
"The cause of death was unique." It was wet on the night Melissa's body was dumped, but dry when the kids found it. There were a few lumps left in the ground from the killer's shoes.
"Then why didn't the two other girl's lobotomies clue you in?"
"I didn't happen to investigate them." He started combing through the grass in one possible footprint.
"Does the fact that they died before I showed up and you started digging into my personal life have anything to do with it?"
"I had the Penguin case at the time. I was busy." There was some soil in this footprint that didn't quite match the color of the dirt in the rest of the park. It could have been sand from the playground, or it could have been from the killer. In either case ...
"So it's just a coincidence that my dad was the lead agent on the Mad Hatter case. That was why it sounded so familiar." Everything about her tone of voice and body language said she didn't believe that at all.
Batman gathered a sample of strange dirt into a glass tube and put it in a compartment of his utility belt. "I thought your father was on Missing Persons, not Homicide."
"He is. The Mad Hatter case started out with a missing person. Did you go through my dad's cold cases?"
"I went through all his cases. I thought you were using him as a source." He stood up and left the crime scene, passing by Tex.
"Do you understand that if his bosses find out that you've gone through his reports, that it will make him look like he's a leak? We could get him into some serious trouble."
"Only if he didn't take the proper precautions. Which he did. It's the FBI that should be worried about their security. Especially their firewalls."
"They're not going to take kindly to that."
"With something like the Mad Hatter case to look forward to, I don't think they'll mind."