Robin toyed idly with his last slice of pizza. The diner was deserted but for a couple of construction workers and a sour-faced waitress. A TV set in the corner was blaring the evening news.
"Horrific scenes in Czernberg today, as the entire city was obliterated in a bombardment by an unknown super-weapon. Observers say that despite civilians being given three days to evacuate, over 80% of the civilian population remained when the bombs fell, making the attack a war crime of historic proportions…"
"Goddamn jerries," said one of the construction workers, guzzling beer and letting out a loud belch. His friend didn't reply.
Robin took a sip of water, replaced his glass on the table and rotated it slightly. Barely visible on the glass's side was a dark splotch: the reflected doorway of the art supply store across the street.
"Critics say Governor Gallejo's plan to transport the homeless off-world in Gordanian ships amounts to enslaving humans for the crime of poverty. Governor Gallejo says that transportees will be given secure jobs and housing in the neutronium mines of Zarnax IV, and will be free to return to Earth at any time provided they can pay the spacefare…"
The construction worker said, "These governors have it all ass-backwards! Shippin' the humans off world and keepin' the aliens here? Bet they'd find homes for the homeless quick enough if they were Martians." This time, his friend felt he'd earned a grunt of agreement.
When Robin put his cash down, the waitress looked at the money, then at him.
"Been a while since a kid your age paid with cash, sweetie," she said. "Didn't think your generation knew what it was."
Robin smiled. "I was raised old-school," he said.
The waitress leaned closer and lowered her voice. "You was raised right. They control the banks, you know. They're always watchin'."
Out on the street, the crisp air hit Robin like a shot of caffeine. The last of the daylight was ebbing away in a grey haze. Streetlamps were already lit, and by their glow he saw his mark disappearing around a corner.
Passers-by hurried to and fro. The storefronts were a jumble: small, mom-and-pop corner stores run by aged immigrants, somehow clinging to existence beside giant, impersonal fast food corps. Abandoned warehouses and factories crumbled, awaiting conversion into retro pubs and housing for students, hipsters and creatives.
The mark tottered along darkened lanes, weighed down by large packages. From the back he was a pathetic figure: a spindly, underfed young man in ill-fitting clothes that spoke of true poverty rather than thrift store fashion.
Robin felt a rare moment of pity for his quarry. He'd always had a soft spot for artists and oddballs. He guessed it came from having circus folk as parents. Jump City's upper crust, who posed with Robin in public photos and praised him as a role model for troubled youths, would've crossed the street to avoid coming near him if they'd seen him out with his original family. To most people, carnies were no better than trailer trash, junkies or hoodlums. And circuses reminded everyone of the Joker: nothing good came out of them.
But Bruce had seen something good in Robin. He'd taken the raggedy circus boy out of foster care. Given him the best education and training money could buy. Polished his manners, put him in a suit, taken him to dinners with the city's elite. Taught him to speak well, wear the right pocket squares and cufflinks, present himself with confidence.
Somehow people looked at Dick Grayson's blue eyes and dark hair and thought: that's a fine young man who comes from old money. They didn't see the orphaned son of gypsy circus freaks. But then, Bruce had always been a master of misdirection, of keeping things hidden in plain sight.
But Bruce's little charity project had ended a while back. The mask of Dick Grayson, respectable heir to the Wayne fortune, had been cast aside. Gone were the classic dark suits, in place of skintight costumes in colours the Gotham Ladies' Philanthropic Society would call "garish, vulgar and un-American." Now Robin lived in a giant tower with a human robot, a sorceress, an alien strongwoman, and a one-man menagerie.
He almost smiled to himself. You can take the boy out of the circus…
An instant later, he snapped back to seriousness. He couldn't afford to be distracted while tailing a killer.
The mark came to a halt outside a dilapidated townhouse and began fumbling for his keys.
"Paulie? Paulie Macarthur?"
Paulie jumped, sending his packages tumbling to the ground. He spun around. "You scared the bejeesus out of me," he said, squinting at Robin through the gloom. "Who are you?"
"Sorry. My name's Rick Petrusso. I've been dying to meet you, Mr Macarthur. I thought I recognised you from the Art Factory. I'm a buyer from an art gallery Northside, the Glass Menagerie. Maybe you've heard of us?"
Paulie reached out a trembling hand and took the card Robin offered. He peered down at it in the twilight, then looked back at Robin's face.
"It's a little creepy," Paulie said, "you just appearing out of nowhere like this." Bending down, he picked up his packages, transferred them to one arm, and fished out his keys. "I… I'm afraid I'm pretty busy right now."
"I'm sorry. I saw some incredible work on your website last week, and I got so excited, I've been trying to track you down since then. You're not an easy man to find. But I've just been haunted by those paintings… that series of portraits you did, Temptation of the Virgin?"
Paulie jerked, almost dropping his bundles again. "What? Where did you see those?"
"On your website. Or it might have been another gallery's page, I can't remember exactly."
"But that series has been taken down. It hasn't been showing for months. You're saying you saw it a week ago? That can't be right."
"I definitely saw it recently. It must still be up somewhere. I guarantee if I'd seen it sooner I'd have made you an offer that much quicker. You are still interested in selling it, aren't you?"
Paulie's face was pale, almost corpse-like in the darkness. His eyes flickered to the business card clenched in the hand which held his keys.
"Mr Petrusso, was it? I think you'd better come in."
Sadly, a three-girl killing streak didn't make the front page in Jump City. It came halfway down Page 8, in small type, between a story about a psychic cat and the new mascara worn by influencer Catalina Costello.
What made the murders interesting to Robin was not the failure of police to make any progress in two months. The city had so many cold cases, the coroner's office needed a warehouse just for files marked: "cause of death: living in Jump City."
No, what caught his eye was the resemblance of the victims to Raven.
It was clear why no one had made the connection. Only the Titans saw Raven on a regular basis, and she'd hardly removed her hood in the first six months Robin had known her. But he knew her features well enough now. One victim had the large violet eyes, another the oval face, another the sharp hairline.
So he'd looked at the cases a little more closely, and something else had jumped out. Each of the victim's bodies had been disfigured with unusual cuts made on the forehead and spine.
While other kids had been falling asleep to bedtime stories, Robin had been snug in his blankets listening to Bruce's soothing voice as it recounted forensic case studies. And while other kids had been asking questions like, "How much do you love me?" to be told "I love you THIS much, little hare," Robin had been asking, "Could Don Maestroianni have been rehabilitated? Did he feel remorse? Was he an ordinary man living by a violent code of honour, or did he meet the criteria for clinical psychopathy?" only for Bruce to reply, "You have sufficient data to make the call yourself, more than you'll ever get in the field. Just remember, if you choose wrongly and he kills again, you'll carry those deaths on your shoulders for the rest of your life."
So recognising a pattern of ritual murder was as easy for Robin as reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
That had led him to weeks of poring over police files in his spare time, retracing the victims' steps, revisiting their last known locations, interviewing their friends and family. He'd fared no better than the cops–until he tracked down an artist one of the victims had modelled for.
Paulie Macarthur was the author of a series of fantastical portraits involving a dark-haired girl drifting in starry voids. A oddly familiar-looking girl. These paintings, from Macarthur's hastily-deleted website, had filled Robin with unease. Strange occult symbols seemed to writhe off the screen, and the otherworldly abyss the girl was suspended in felt geometrically impossible…