Commissioner Gordon arrived only five minutes after Kristen Wolf. He knew Jacob Kane well enough that when the head of Kane Industries said, you need a secure location, one that won't come with prying eyes or ears, Jim had taken him seriously.

"Commissioner Gordon, come on in. Grab a drink," Kate said in a fairly accurate imitation of a game show host, almost exactly what she had said to Laurel's boss just a few minutes earlier. It was an impromptu gathering that had at its core a poisonous seed, but that was not going to stop the sisters Kane from making the most of it, and in that they were in the majority.

"Sharon is asking me if I want to hang out with her and celebrate Boxing Day with some of her fellow ex-pat Canadians," Trish said as she read the message from her coworker. "Canada is playing HC Sparta Praha in something called the Spengler Cup."

"Tell her you are otherwise engaged, and that you hate hockey," Laurel said as she rolled another lime before cutting it in half and squeezing it into a glass. "Anyone else want a Moscow Mule?"

"Who said I hate hockey?"

"I'll take one," James Gordon said as he hug his coat on the rack by the front door of Kate's apartment. "What smells so good?"

"Take out from Minghin Cuisine," Julia said as she picked up another pot sticker, dipped it in a mixture of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce, and bit it in half.

James Gordon hugged his daughter. "How are you?" he asked quietly.

Barbara kissed her father on the forehead. "I'm fine. How are you?"

"I've had better days. John Dorazio should be here any minute. He's not going to be happy with where this is going either."

"You trust him, right? Whatever's going on, he's not part of it? We know this?"

Jim was as confidant of that fact as he was of anything. But still..."I'll stake my life on it. But not yours. Maybe you want to let us handle this? Take the evening off? Go do something else?"

They both knew what something else he was talking about, but Gotham didn't need Batgirl tonight, not as much as Commissioner Gordon needed his daughter at his side when he explained how it was that someone in his police department was connected with three gruesome deaths, which were themselves connected to something far more sinister. She had told him the bare bones of what she'd learned earlier, and he'd shared it in turn with Kristen Wolf. The phrase WMD had been the major incentive for the meeting that was about to happen.

"This is the strangest secret meeting I have ever attended," Kristen Wolf said as she stirred her Bloody Mary with a stalk of celery before taking a sip, "and that is saying something." It was her first actual visit to Kate's less than humble abode. Her Facetime video chat, not quite forty-eight hours earlier, during which she had heard enough to give her tacit approval for the late night visit to the CCME's offsite storage facility, didn't count as an actual visit in her opinion.

"It's a combination secret meeting and goodby party for Trish," Beth said as she stood next to her partner in not-quite-crime. The two women looked at each other and smiled, and not for the first time, despite her firm rule of not dating anyone from work, Trish wished that Beth was unattached, and a bit more fluid in her sexuality. For the past couple of days, however, those thoughts had been more and more taken up by a woman with much shorter hair. Trish would have been pleasantly surprised to learn that similar thoughts had been running through the new object of her affection's mind as well. Kate had seen the footage from Navy Pier just like everyone else on the planet, and she had immediately been drawn to the very attractive woman who had displayed fighting skills that made even Batwoman envious, but she had never expected to meet the woman in person; and as much as she attempted to hide it, or convince herself otherwise, she was definitely attracted to her sister's friend.

"So you're abandoning us then," Jim Gordon said as he approached the woman he had met the previous summer. As introductions went, his and Trish's was one of the more memorable ones, and he was in no danger of forgetting her, and not just because he had himself watched the video of her and Sharon take down two hired assassins using nothing but their hands and feet while his hand picked men and women stood and watched.

"You have more than enough help right here as it is," she replied. "Besides, Jess and Misty might benefit from another pair of hands."

"So you're really not going to let Kyle know." Beth said, a statement, quietly spoken, in place of a question.

Trish's response was just as quiet. "No. And you know why. As soon as I tell Kyle..."

Beth knew Kyle Richmond only a fraction as well as Trish did, but she knew enough to finish Trish's statement. "Kyle takes over the entire operation."

"Would that be a bad thing?" Julia asked. The trio were position such that their soft voices could not be heard by anyone else. Kate already knew about Beth's (and by extension Julia's) contract work for Kyle. Kate was still very much in the dark on the subject of how Beth and Trish (and Julia) spent many of their evenings; though no more in the dark than Trish was about how Kate spent her own evenings. That the two had been making clandestine eyes at each other had escaped almost no one's notice, and Beth's eyesight was just as good as anyone's (except Trish's). If she was being honest with herself (which she tried to be these days) she was equal parts eager and jealous where those two were concerned. Jealous of a new found friendship that didn't require her to lie about almost every aspect of her life (which she already had with Julia, and guarded just as closely), but eager to share that life, every part of it, with her sister.

"Kyle is too comfortable with covert black ops, and the organizations that run them, whatever side of the Blackwall they run on. He would keep everything quiet while he handed this whole thing over to his wet work division. And while I find that idea very attractive, I think it's high time that we dragged the assholes behind this fucking mess out into the open before we shoot them in the head."

"The WMD mess, or the murder cover up mess?" Julia asked.

Trish took a sip from her glass of Goose Island IPA. "Both."

Their private conversation had been receiving glances from the rest of the occupants of Kate's apartment, so they had increased the volume of their voices once the subject of Kyle Richmond had disappeared in their verbal rear view mirror. Julia's cryptic question, and Trish's equally enigmatic response, were heard by everyone.

Kate hadn't been privy to the private conversation. She was confident that Beth would share any critical information in her own time. Until that happened, Kate thought it was time to draw the groups collective attention away from the three woman standing next to the large glass windows that looked out over Lake Michigan and redirect it to herself.

"Are we sure that's what it is? Someone killed these three men as part of a cover up of the WMDs?"

Julia had been heavily involved in the work to uncover what was being built in NYC, though from a distance, and she did not hesitate to voice her confusion.

"If that's what it is, then how did they end up here? They were building those things in New York City and San Diego. The chief scientist was found murdered in Manhattan. Why kidnap these guys just to bring them here and kill them?"

Kristen pointed an index finger towards Julia to emphasize an important detail. "They were tortured before they were killed."

Julia was not ready to give up her own salient point. "But you can do that anywhere. And then you can bury them where no one will find them. So, again, why here."

When James Gordon answered that question his voice was flat and emotionless. "Because it would appear that they have resources in our fair city, capabilities that they might not have in other locations."

That sounded at least plausible to Trish, which her nodding head indicated before she spoke. "All the primary players would have bolted across the closest border when their plans became toast. A lot of the secondary ones too." A thought occurred to her in that moment. "Might be why they were building close to the oceans. Have a boat hidden away, get out into international waters and then motor to Mexico or Canada and hop on a plane."

Laurel thought she saw where Trish was going, and continued along that line of reasoning. "So being a little thin on the ground due to everyone getting out of Dodge, they need to hire it out, and they find a contractor in Chicago? Seriously?"

Barbara recognized the tone of her father's voice when he answered, and it did not bode well. "In Chicago, and in the CPD."

Kristen Wolf's head flopped backwards, her chin pointed at the ceiling before her left moved up to cover her eyes. Her voice when she spoke sounded like someone who was just informed that their cancer had returned. "Jesus. Not again."

"Again?" Beth asked.

Jim was about to reply when he was interrupted by the sound of Kate Kane's doorbell.

"Sorry I'm late. This is Detective Meg Chander, a member of the task force," John Dorazio said as he stepped inside a moment before the dark skinned woman he had just introduced.

The entire room was silent. Kristen Wolf was first to break the silence as she asked the police captain a question. "What part of secret meeting was not clear?"

Meg felt the temperature in the room drop in inverse proportion to the tension, which was rising. She had been about to remove her coat but masked that movement by redirecting her hands into her pockets. "I can leave, it's not a problem."

"You can stay, and it's still not a problem," Captain Dorazio said with authority, Police Commissioner and State's Attorney be damned, "she's the one who cracked this case. She's the one who grabbed pictures and prints from the last guy. If she'd been in on it, we still wouldn't know shit."

"In on what?" Julia asked as her eyes scanned the faces of the men and women who were standing in Kate's spacious living room. It was clear to Julia that something was up, and that those of Kate's guests with official connections (she counted Babs in that group because, well, you know...) knew more than the rest of them. But Julia's group had private knowledge of their own, and at some point everyone was going to have to put their cards on the table. And when that happened...

Kristen Wolf's words broke the tension, even if it didn't answer Julia's question. "Apologies. I thought we were done with this. I'm having flashbacks from 2012. Of course you can stay. You should stay. We need people we can trust."

"Will someone finally tell us what exactly is going on?" Julia asked.

James Gordon offered a suggestion that proved quite prescient. "Everybody should grab a drink, and then we need to sit and talk."

Junk yards, mall parking lots, parking garages, anyplace someone might choose to hide a car. They were close enough to the Navesink River that said someone might have just driven it off a pier, or down an embankment and into the water. With the windows closed it might have floated for a while, though neither woman had any idea which direction it would have traveled.

They had been at it for a while when Beth's first call halted their search. They moved with a purpose after the second call, covering terrain at almost a manic pace, and Jess thought they were rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns, and that they would have to head for home and pick it up again tomorrow. Neither woman had thought far enough ahead to bring a flashlight, and it was now a choice of finding a store and buying a couple, or admitting that they had not been prepared for an overnight search. Jessica's feet had been almost numb when they had called a halt and found the nearest establishment where they could get a drink and a snack and let their frozen body parts thaw out.

Misty was eating, but only as a buffer for the alcohol, since she was the one driving. "It's just too much ground to cover for two people. Maybe we should tell Red Bank PD about the WMD connection. That should get them interested."

Jessica was only eating because Misty told her they weren't budging from their chairs until she did. It had been touch and go for a minute which of those options Jessica would choose, but she finally started digging into the pile of french fries that occupied the center of the table. "It'll get them to shit themselves, and then call in the feds. You want to see how fast somebody can fuck up a situation, give it to the United States Government."

It wasn't that Misty disagreed, but the call from Beth made both women feel that they had a finite amount of time to find what's-his-name's car; a very, very finite amount. Whether that was true or not, Misty wasn't willing to take anything for granted. "But it would get us more bodies."

"It would get us nothing. They wouldn't let us within a fucking mile of this once they took over. Them and their suits and ties and special agent in charge of jerking each other off titles. We'd be done. We're nothing to them."

"Would that be a bad thing?" Misty asked Jessica. She had been asking it of herself for the past fifteen minutes. She had agreed to help Jess look for a car, mainly because Jessica didn't have a car of her own at the moment. But also because she liked Jess. She liked being around someone who was almost as different as Misty herself was, someone she didn't have to explain anything to. Jess didn't pry. It wasn't that she didn't care, it was that she had a ton of her own shit to deal with, and she didn't want anyone prying into her life, and she paid everyone she met the same courtesy. But Misty was starting to get real PTSD vibes about this job, and her mind kept flying back to Midland Circle, and herself covered in her own blood, and her arm...

But she wasn't going to give in to it. She wasn't going to leave Jessica, who she was sure was feeling exactly what Misty was, alone to clean up something that wasn't even her mess to begin with. They were a team until they put this thing to bed. Then they could hand it off with a clear conscious.

Misty's mind was brought back to the here and now by Jessica's voice answering the question that had sent Misty's thoughts off on a tangent.

"Yes. No. I haven't a fucking clue. Trish asked me to dig up info on a dead guy. I asked you and Colleen to help. Then it blew up in our fucking faces. Do you want to hand it over to the feds? Go home, sleep in our comfy beds? Pretend this isn't hanging over our heads? Hope that some imbecile with a shiny badge and a little plastic ID card doesn't infect the entire east coast? And can you live with it if he does? I don't think I can. I want to run home and drink myself stupid and not leave my apartment for a month and pretend I never heard of... But I can't. I won't."

Misty was quiet for a few seconds. To both women the silence seemed to go one for an eternity.

"One more day. Then we call it in. We need to wrap this up quickly; us, or someone else. We take to long, or somebody else does, it could literally blow up in our faces. Deal?"

"Deal."

Kristen Wolf began. "Anyone remember Ben Bartlett? Crooked CPD Sergeant. He and his crew terrorized anyone living in, or even in the vicinity of, the Ida B. Wells housing projects. They planted evidence, they fabricated charges, extorted money from drug dealers. We vacated over two hundred convictions that were tied to him and the bent badges who worked for him."

Kristen Wolf had just joined the State Attorney's office in 2012, just as the shit really began to hit the fan. Ten years later, now holding the highest rank in the office, she and her team were still dealing with the aftershock. The last year alone eight more convictions had been vacated. For Beth, it had all occurred back in the bad old days, and none of what SA Wolf was recounting had been anywhere on her radar. She was sure that the Detective Sergeant in question must have worked with Carmine; Mr. Falcone had hooks into any and all criminal organizations in Gotham, especially if members of that group also wore badges. Beth had spent a good deal of time in the city back then, but anything of this sort would have been little more than background noise. Not that the Daughters of Lilith were above such things, they just aimed much, much higher.

Beth was first to speak. "Holy shit."

When Meg Chander spoke they were the first words she uttered since her offer to leave. "Someone tampered with the photos of the three men. Someone replaced their prints with a set that wasn't in the system. Then someone stole the originals, along with everything else. It's definitely someone on the inside, either CPD or CCME, and the medical examiner's office has no history of corruption. CPD does."

"But murder? Torture? Seriously?" Julia asked. Her eyes traveled to each of her friends in turn, and the looks on each face informed Julia Pennyworth, the voice in the dark, the brain that directed the bodies that were the muscle and sinew that stood between the criminal and the defenseless victim, how naive a question she had asked.

"Seriously. Benny Bartlett never killed killed anyone, not that we know. But Piotr Kaczmarek did. Seven people, again, as far as we know, while he was working for Ed Falco's organization. He ate his gun in 89 rather than go to jail, at least that's what it looked like. Some people think it was a hit to keep him quiet," John Dorazio answered.

"Why did he do it?" Laurel asked. She had been firmly ensconced In Seattle while everything they were discussing was going on, so it was all news to her. She could look it up in the SA's archives if she was interested, which she wasn't, not really. She had seen enough of it before moving east. It had been one of the reason she made the move; a fresh start of sorts. She felt vaguely stupid for thinking at the time that things would be different.

Jim Gordon fielded that question deftly. "Why do people do anything? For love or money. And it wasn't love."

"So what do we know, and what do we need to find out?" Kate asked. For Kate those years, and the events that occurred during them, were a blur for a different reason. Barely two years had elapsed since her less than honorable departure from the USMA, and she was still wallowing deep in a pool of self pity, alcohol, and sex.

"Thanks to all of you, we know a hell of a lot more than we did forty eight hours ago," James Gordon said. "John's heading the task force, I'll let him fill everyone in, but I have to admit freely and clearly that the only reason we know any of this is because of you, all of you, and your friends in New York, and Jacob's contact in DC. We owe you a lot."

"You have no idea how true those words are, Commissioner; but you're about to find out," Trish said as she looked at Beth.

John Dorazio had been mentally reviewing what he would say, but Trish's foreboding statement broke his train of thought. Her words felt vaguely like a threat, though he had no idea why. But he reacted the way he always did when he felt threatened.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked in a flat voice that sounded like metal scraping across stone. He seemed to expand in that moment, taking up more space in every direction, and Meg, sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with her superior, unconsciously moved away from him as her right hand slowly went to her waist and unsnapped the thumb brake on her holster. Trish recognized John's demeanor, and Meg's motion, immediately, as did Kate and Beth.

Ruh roh.

Kate's reaction was also unconscious as she moved her drink to her non dominant hand and shifted her weight so that she could propel herself out of her chair and towards the two police officers with her left leg. Beth made a quick mental assessment, and then took the opportunity that the brief silence provided to defuse the situation. She looked at her partner, and Trish was looking back, shaking her head and smiling in that way that Beth had learned to read like handwriting.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

"Probably we should start at the beginning," Beth suggested gently, the smile still on her face as she continued to look at Trish.

John Dorazio had been under the impression that he had been about to do that. He did not know how mistaken he was.