To Play the Fool
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The FBI and GCPD raided James Carroll's house in the Palasades as soon as Jenny was reported missing. Agent Harkness led the charge into his mansion, right up until his supervisors caught wind of the entire situation and threw him off the case. Not to be outdone, Agent Jeremy Harkness marched into GCPD headquarters the next morning, right into Commissioner Gordon's office.
"I need to talk to you," he announced, interrupting whatever conversation had been going on.
Gordon told the other detectives that they would finish their discussion later, and sent them away. "Have a seat Agent Harkness," he said.
"I need to know what they found in Carroll's place. Are they any closer to finding my daughter?"
"I cannot tell you anything about the progress of the case. We are doing everything we can to find Jenny, but it will take time. In order for this to work, you need to trust us to do our jobs."
"Commissioner." He grabbed the back of the chair and leaned forward. "My daughter is missing, and I am not allowed to look for her even though I know this man better than anyone else. How is this fair? How do any of you expect me to just sit back and not do my job?"
"There is nothing I can do for you, I'm sorry. I can't go over the FBI's heads."
"I'm not looking for official help. Just tell me if you found anything, even if it's preliminary. Dirt, blood, a shoe, a journal – "
Gordon cut him off. "Agent Harkness, I know you're worried about Jenny. I know how desperate you can get when your family is in the hands of a murderer and there's nothing you can do. I know you'll do absolutely anything, even at the cost of your life or livelihood. But this is not the way to find her. You need to let us do our jobs and go be with your family."
Jeremy let his head fall. "Right. The Batman. I'm sorry, I forgot about that. How can you stand to be in the same city as the man who nearly killed your family? I can barely contain myself."
"We'll catch him. That's the comfort I live by." He sighed. "I can get you in touch with Tex. She can keep you updated," he offered.
"Thank you, but I'm already in touch with her. She's ... uh ... inexperienced."
"Dad!" Jackie, Agent Harkness' other daughter, appeared just outside the door. "What are you doing?"
"Right now, your family needs you more than the police do," Gordon assured him. "We're doing everything we can."
He nodded and shook Gordon's hand. "Thank you Commissioner. Sorry for interrupting your meeting." He left the office, pulling Jackie to his side. She wrapped an arm around his waist with a hand that had nails painted silver. Just like someone else he knew.
As soon as Agent Harkness was gone, the Commissioner closed and locked the door to his office. Then he opened the top drawer of his desk, found the switch hidden inside just behind the lip on top of the drawer, and pulled it. A panel fell open to the drawer's left with a quiet snick, revealing a small cache with a black untraceable cell phone. Gordon turned it on and wrote a text to the only recipient the phone was able to deliver to. Agent Harkness has been removed from the Mad Hatter case.
Batman tapped on Jackie's bedroom window a few times before picking the lock and stepping inside the dark room. He had thought the room was empty when he opened the window, but a middle aged woman with short red hair walked inside at just the right time. She instantly spotted him, reached for the bat next to the door and lifted it over her head to swing it at the intruder. Batman raised a hand to brace himself, but Jackie ran in a split second later and grabbed the bat from the woman's hands before she could swing it.
"Sorry Batman," Jackie apologized before turning to the woman. They had a frantic discussion, Jackie signing something defensively with her hands, and her mother responding in kind with a furious expression plastered to her face. After a few minutes of this, the older woman turned to Batman with an expectant expression. "Mom, this is Batman," Jackie grumbled, signing as she spoke. "Batman, this is my mother, Judy." Mrs. Harkness signed something to him, which Jackie translated. "Nice to meet you, Batman." To cut the conversation short, Jackie turned her mother around and sent her out of the room. Then she turned her attention back to her visitor with a face that was bright red. "I wish you would just use the door," she grumbled, grabbing his cape and pulling him into the living room.
"Like mother like daughter," he remarked.
"I have yet to attack you with a bat, but if you sneak up on Mom like that again, there is a distinct possibility that I will."
Agent Jeremy Harkness had taken over the living room, covering it with maps, photos, notes, post-its, push pins, and red string. The television had been swept up and thrown away, leaving a distinctly empty space in the living room that Agent Harkness had been quick to take advantage of. By the looks of things, Jenny's family had cleaned up every sign of violence in the tiny apartment. Even the doors had been replaced by the landlord already.
Batman took a closer look at the map showing places that James Carroll had last been seen and possible locations for his hideout, along with the locations of every victim: where they were taken from, where they lived, and where they were found. "Impressive," he said.
"What are you doing here, Batman?" Jackie's father asked evenly.
"I heard you were taken off the case. If you would like to stay involved, I want to help you." Batman noticed that Jackie was signing everything the two of them said to her mother.
"I don't need your help. You need mine."
"Then tell me what I need to know."
Jeremy turned to his wife and signed something to her. Jackie translated for Batman's sake so he wouldn't feel left out. "Are you sure you want to know all this?"
Judy signed back with determination. "I want to know what's happening to our daughter," she replied with Jackie as her voice. "I need to know what's going to happen to her. What can I expect?"
"Alright," Jeremy began, returning his attention to Batman. "He is called the Mad Hatter because his wants to create the perfect Wonderland, specifically the tea party. He spends the most time trying to find the right Alice. He'll go through three or four girls, often taken from wealthier, upper-class communities. He can spend up to a month turning her into Alice. We think he uses water-boarding, solitary confinement, stress positions, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomy. We don't know if he uses ECT to change their personalities or only so he can lobotomize them easier. Sometimes they die from the lobotomy, sometimes they don't respond anymore, and he has to start again. If he's still not happy with his new Alice, he'll abandon her, starving her to death."
At this point, Jackie could barely form the words with her fingers. Judy suddenly shot out of her seat and ran out of the living room. "Just keep going," Jackie begged. "She's going to ask me later."
Jeremy swallowed some guilt at leaving his wife to deal with her emotions alone, and continued. "When he does have an Alice he likes, he finds two men, one much smaller than the other, to play the March Hare and the Dormouse. He doesn't spend as much time on them, just uses ECT and lobotomizes them automatically to make them compliant right off. After they finish their party, he ties them to their chairs, starves them to death or suffocates them, then removes their bodies and leaves them in various locations around town, still dressed up. We have never found a dead Mad Hatter, so we believe he plays the part himself."
Batman nodded, having gathered all the information he needed. "We need to find his hideout as soon as possible."
"Which means we have to go back to James Carroll's place. The police might have missed something." He threw on a brown wool coat that covered his shoulder holster, and grabbed a bag of tools for some minor burglary.
"Are you coming?" Batman asked Jackie.
She shook her head. "I think I should take care of Mom. Besides, Dad will be more help than I will."
Agent Harkness used a key to cut through the FBI's Keep out, Crime Scene sign that was attached to the back door and the frame, put a bump key into the deadbolt, gave it a tap with a rock, and unlocked the door. "Come on," he said to Batman who followed him inside. "My men won't have left us much to work with."
"I'm not interested in the evidence," Batman said as he gave the house a cursory sweep.
"What are you looking for, then?" He shut the door behind him.
"About ninety years before Walter Blackwell gambled away his fortune and his mansion was repossessed, his great grandparents ran a Speakeasy known as the Bearcat. It was well known to everyone who could pay, but the authorities couldn't ever find it or prove that it existed."
"That would explain why no one could find Carroll. His house staff said he was home, and no one saw him sneak out."
"We should stay on this floor or lower. The Speakeasy was underground."
The two of them took opposite wings on the first floor. While Agent Harkness knocked on all the walls to find a hollow point where there shouldn't be, Batman was studying the carpets with a flashlight. He had done some preliminary research on Blackwell Mansion. The blueprints hadn't been very cooperative in revealing the house's secrets, but carpets could be more than talkative. Specifically, carpets that were made of wool: expensive stuff that lasts for decades. Judging by the lack of respect the youngest Blackwell had for the mansion, he likely had never replaced it.
There were trails through the carpet that stood out when the light hit it at the right angle. The ones down the hallways were particularly deep. Then others peeled away from the main path into rooms. The master bedroom had the heaviest trail, just slightly lighter than the corridor. The office had a well worn path, the smaller rooms with displays and artwork were less traveled by. This wasn't out of the ordinary.
What did surprise him was small, barely visible path into a wall. Well, not into a wall. It ran straight into a massive mahogany grandfather clock. Batman changed the angle of his flashlight to catch the color of the carpet. There were a couple footprints leading up to the clock, left behind after the owner stepped into some gray mud that looked familiar. One of the footprints landed squarely underneath the clock, half in, half out.
"Agent Harkness!" he called. "You should see this!"
The agent followed the sound of Batman's voice into the West wing. "He has eight rooms with tables full of teapots and mismatching chairs. What did you find?"
"Half a footprint."
Agent Harkness studied the print for a moment before coming to the same conclusion Batman had already arrived at. He put his shoulder to the side of the grandfather clock and tried to push it aside, but it wouldn't budge. Then he tried pulling it so it would swing out like a door. That didn't do the trick either. "Maybe there's a switch somewhere."
Batman opened up the glass front of the grandfather clock and pulled on one of the extra levers. The other two showed signs of wear from regular winding. There was a grinding of gears, and the entire clock rose off the ground. It stopped about six inches above their heads, forming the top of a narrow doorway.
"You know, you could have said something," Agent Harkness grumbled.
Batman responded by handing him an extra flashlight and taking the lead down the tunnel. The stairs carved into the rock under the mansion had seen quite a bit of use recently as evidenced by the footprints left in the dust. Agent Harkness found a massive switch on the wall and lifted it. Lights flickered above their heads for a moment before the entire tunnel was lit. The light bulbs were old, made in the 1930s and still hadn't burned out yet due to lack of use.
They followed the tunnel down to a wide open cave. The remnants of the Bearcat Speakeasy filled the entire room. There was a dance floor, dusty tables with chairs stacked on top of them, a bar with an empty cabinet and stools with torn leather upholstery, a stage with torn-down curtains, and art-nouveau prints for absinthe that had faded and torn over time. A great deal of time and effort had gone into this place to make it a habitable, thriving business, which had suddenly shut down and been sealed up when prohibition ended. No one had come back to rescue the Speakeasy.
Batman followed the trail left by the recent footprints. They didn't go anywhere near the dance hall or the bar, choosing instead to give them as wide a berth as possible. Agent Harkness' curiosity got the better of him and he had to take a look at the massive bar. "There's still some whiskey bottles left. Empty, but still." He ran a hand over the counter. "What is all this stuff?"
Without having to look, Batman knew exactly what he was talking about, having to live with it on a day-to-day basis. "In a cave? Either mouse droppings or bat droppings."
Agent Harkness rejoined Batman a second later. "So he knows about the Speakeasy, but he doesn't care about it."
"Probably because he just needed to use the back door." He pointed to a tunnel that was hidden in a corner of the cave. "If there was ever a raid or a fire, they would have to have a way to get out. There's probably another one for getting the alcohol in here."
They followed the tunnel, which led them well away from the mansion and into the quarry grounds. "Now we know how he got out," said Agent Harkness, "but why isn't he using it to keep the girls down there? All he would have to do is install some bars, a better door ..."
"Because the neighbors already knew about it. He bought the house, intending to use it as such, but he realized too late that it just wouldn't work out."
The next night, Batman was let in by Mrs. Harkness through the living room window. Nice to meet you, he signed to her.
She smiled at the gesture and returned it in kind. Then she left to fetch her husband. He entered the living room with a newspaper in both hands, turned to the local section. "He's starting to collect his players. A dwarf was kidnapped last night, probably to play the Dormouse, and a sex offender has gone missing." Batman gave him a confused look. "Every animal has a breeding season. For hares, it's in the spring. Sometime around March."
He nodded once, understanding what he was getting at. "I brought you these." He handed Agent Harkness a brown envelope.
He set down his newspaper and opened it up, pulling out several photographs. "What are these?"
"Everything I could get from the memory card in Jenny's phone. In a few cases, the card was too damaged to get a good image, and there are a few that were unrecoverable. They might have been deleted."
He raised an eyebrow at him. "You took evidence from the scene of a crime?"
"My equipment's better and I don't have a backlog of several other cases."
"Have you thought about helping the police to upgrade their equipment?"
"Several times."
He noticed something at the bottom of one of the photos. "Jenny knew she was being followed. She was taking pictures of license plates."
"I already ran what numbers I could get from the pictures. I'm still waiting for results, but it's not looking good."
"No, look at the mud." He found a magnifying glass in the junk drawer in the kitchen. "Those are wood chips, kind of like you would find at a playground. Wasn't one of the victims found at a playground?"
Batman shook his head. "That one used gravel."
"Ah. Still, the mud was thrown deliberately on the license plate. It wasn't accidental. We should be looking for this car." He turned to another picture that had the green sedan filling more of the frame, but it was somewhat blurry. "I think it's a Honda." He turned through the rest of the pictures, but that was the best one. The next one, though, held his interest. It was of the sedan's window. The quality of the photo was even worse. Some parts were pixelated, others were just blank. Still, a shadow of a man could still be seen. "Is that Carroll?"
"It looks like Jenny took pictures from the back of the car to the front. Most of the pictures missing were from between the back license plate and the front license plate. I can go back and try to pull something else out of the memory card, but there's not much more to glean from it."
He shook his head. "I'll need it back so it can be used as evidence. I'll call my team and have them put an APB out for this car. If I was him, I definitely would have abandoned it."
Batman crossed his arms and became lost in a thought that just occurred to him. "Agent Harkness, in your opinion, how does the Mad Hatter choose his male victims?"
"In the past, it's just been convenience and based on body type. It was Alice that really mattered."
"But now a dwarf and a sex offender have gone missing. He's picking these characters more carefully now, with a lot more detail in mind. He's upping his game. Why would he do that?"
Agent Harkness looked up, also losing himself in thought for a few moments. "I'll have to get back to you on that."
"I've never seen so many people go missing at once, even in Gotham," said Batman, pinning another photo to the wall to join several others. "The press know something's going on. They won't accept the silence from the FBI for much longer."
"We don't buckle easily. It's not time for them to know about the Mad Hatter just yet. Right now, we just need them to worry about James Carroll."
"Nothing in his profile suggests that he's capable of kidnapping this many people."
Apart from the March Hare and the Dormouse, seven other people had gone missing, all of them from the middle class. "What does he need all these people for? He's already got enough for the tea party."
Just then, the front door opened and closed as Jackie came inside with a massive white plastic bag over her shoulder. "Hiya!" she chirped.
"Where have you been?" her father asked her suspiciously.
"Around ..." She shifted her eyes nervously.
"Have you been shopping? That bag is from a dress shop. That sells prom dresses." He let his disdain show through his voice.
"Is it?" She looked at the name on the bag: French Collexion. "Huh." Then she carted her haul back to her room before returning to the living room. Standing in front of the collection of photographs with her hands on her hips, she started a conversation to remove suspicion from herself. "So ... people are going missing. What do we have?"
"Four college students, a professor, and two high school seniors," Batman summarized. "All have gone missing within the last twenty-four hours, all were taken off the school grounds, all had a copy of Alice in Wonderland in their possession."
Jackie squinted at one of the photos. "He's got eyes like a lizard," she remarked, pointing at one of the high school students. "Hooded eyes, kind of like Moriarty. What's his name?"
"William Harris," said Batman.
"And that professor has quite the nose," Jackie continued, putting her fingers to her own nose to emphasize the shape. "It looks like ..."
"A hawk?" Batman suggested.
"Sherlock Holmes?" said her father.
She wrinkled her nose at each of the suggestions. "Nuh uh. A Gryphon."
This only made Batman confused, but it gave Agent Harkness an idea. He wrote Bill the Lizard under the lizard faced boy, The Gryphon under the professor, Duchess' Cook under one of the female college students who apparently worked as a line cook at a diner, The Knave of Hearts under one of the students who had been kicked out from a previous university for theft, and The White Rabbit under a student who worked as a bicycle messenger. "New city. New chapter."
Batman finally understood what he was talking about. "It's the court scene when the Knave of Hearts stole the tarts."
Agent Harkness saw the quizzical look his daughter was giving him. "It was my favorite book as a kid. And I've had to read it at least five times over the course of this case." His defense was interrupted by his phone ringing. He eagerly answered it. "Please tell me you have some good news for me." He turned away to have his phone call.
"You already knew that he was using the court scene," Batman told Jackie. "Why did you have to play that game with your father?"
She gave him a sheepish shrug. "I'm Jackie now, the idiot of the family. It's easier if he just arrives at the answer on his own without having to argue over it with me. Plus, this way it doesn't look like I'm getting involved in something dangerous that might kill me."
Batman furrowed his brows, although she couldn't tell due to the cowl. "What are you up to?"
The caller was beginning to annoy Agent Harkness. "Yes, my daughter has met him. Doesn't he have any family?" His face went from angry-annoyed to grim and furious. He hung up without a closing salutation. "They've just found James Carroll."
Agent Harkness glared at the body on the gurney. The signs of decay were quite evident in the man's shriveled fingers, sunken eyes, and maggot-eaten flesh on the side of his face. A bullet went in like a pinprick between his eyes, and exited like a cannonball out the back of his head. It was an execution. The rate of decay, according to the coroner's report, said that this man had died three days ago, just after Jenny was kidnapped.
He placed a hand on Jackie's shoulder. She had a cold expression etched into her face. "That's James Carroll," she confirmed. The coroner pulled the white sheet back over his face before leaving to give them a moment. "We were wrong."
"We followed the evidence," her father replied. "Everything suggested he was involved."
"Then we read it wrong," she growled.
"Not entirely," said a new voice. Agent Harkness turned to Batman who had just slipped into the room. Jackie continued to ignore him. "This is the man that attacked Audrey Garrison. But it also explains why she was different. He was trying to be the Mad Hatter. He's not the original."
"If he was a copycat, how could he have known about the lobotomies? That was one of the details that wasn't revealed to the press."
"He's not a copycat. He's more of a March Hare."
"An accomplice," Agent Harkness deduced. "He used Carroll to pick the victims, then does the killing himself, keeping himself out of the picture. Carroll fits his profile almost perfectly, he's the face that witnesses see, he has the background in anesthesiology, and he takes all the blame."
"What if he just committed suicide?" Jackie asked. "What if he killed himself so we couldn't ask him where Jenny is?"
"He couldn't have," Batman replied. "There was no blood spatter where he was found, lividity showed that he was moved after he died, and he was washed clean with bleach. He was dumped there after being executed."
"The angle of entry is pointed down, like the shooter stood over them," Agent Harkness continued to explain. "There aren't any powder burns on his skin either. He would have had to hold the gun away from his head and shoot himself right between the eyes when it would be a lot easier to just put it under his chin."
"How does this help us find Jenny?" Jackie snapped.
"We'll figure it out," said her father. "Right now, we're going to find out who he knew and how he could have met the Mad Hatter. It's just going to take time."
"Jenny doesn't have time."
He grabbed her arm and roughly turned her around to face him. "Don't you think I know that? I'm worried about her too, but there's only so much we're capable of doing. Getting angry is not going to help. Do you understand?" he nearly yelled.
"We have other options! You could send me – "
"No. That is out of the question." Jackie rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. Without having to say anything, Agent Harkness preempted Batman's question with, "Don't even ask."
"Jacqueline."
She didn't jump at his surprise entrance. Instead, she just waved him inside from her seat on the couch in the dark, staring at the intricate web her father had created to follow the evidence. "I think I know why Jenny was mad at me. Not just mad, she was furious. It's only been a few days, but I want her back. And when she's back, I never want her to leave ever again. If she ever comes back," she added woefully.
There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence, which Batman filled. "I know the feeling," he whispered.
"But I just up and left. As soon as I graduated high school, I was gone. I didn't think anything of it because I thought, as long as they know I'm alive, that's enough. I wrote letters, I called, I sent home souvenirs, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't realize they were still recovering from losing me." She paused to blow her nose. "Did you, uh, come here for some reason?"
"Yes." He produced a Ziploc bag of papers and handed them to her. "I thought you might want these."
Jackie opened it and pulled out the first letter and read it slowly, laughing at one part. "This is the one where I got shot in Bangkok and she wanted to know if I was capable of taking a cannonball. For science. I thought I lost these. Where did you find them?"
"Grayskull cave."
Jackie raised an eyebrow. "What were they doing in there?"
"It was one of your old hideouts, wasn't it?"
She was indignant at the thought. "Hey, I like being homeless and all, but I've never been live-in-a-cave homeless. I prefer sleeping on picnic tables or in a tree."
He put two and two together, mentally kicking himself for not doing so earlier. "Then that wasn't your hideout I stumbled on. It was the Mad Hatter's."