CHAPTER 12

Underneath where the U.S. flag and the Gotham City crest hung over the judge’s bench, the bailiff stepped up to call out, “All rise! The trial of The People versus John Doe is now in session, the Honorable Judge Troy S. Cavanaugh presiding!”

Everyone in the courtroom stood at once, all except for one police sergeant who, during an attack on police vehicles during the Joker’s run through the city before his initial capture, was left unable to ever walk again. Sergeant Roy Higgens had shown up today, wheelchair and all, along with three other survivors to be present at the trial’s onset. Everyone knew the score, so they knew what to expect. The clown would be pleading insanity. At least, that’s what all the conjecture from the journalists and pundits led one to believe.

And that was the truly unbelievable part, as far as Roy was concerned. Playing it down from premeditated murder didn’t make any sense, because the terrorist had so obviously premeditated each of his attacks. How could he not have? There were copious amounts of evidence to point to the clown’s careful planning and machinations, as jury-rigged as some of them were.

Still, wonders never ceased. The people at Arkham Asylum had conducted their interviews, had come up with some conclusions that had astonished the press and therefore the public, including a claim that the Joker wasn’t “insane” in any conventional sense, rather he was in possession of a previously unidentified form of “super-sanity”, a kind of ultra-sensory perception that had only recently come into study, and was now a trendy new topic in psychiatric circles. According to the most recent research, this super-sanity inundated sufferers with information from heightened senses and insights about their environment and the people around them, to a degree that no human brain could stand up to or remain balanced. It would mean that the Joker had no actual personality control, and was therefore a different person at any given moment.

The underlying theory behind all of this was reflected in a paper released many years ago by Dr. Jonathan Crane, AKA the “Scarecrow”, himself a patient of Arkham Asylum now, which told you all you needed to know about the bizarre world the courts were now dealing with.

The work on defining super-sanity had been continued by a Dr. Harleen Quinzel, one of Arkham Asylum’s current resident psych doctors, who would be testifying later at trial. It stated that “perception is defined as the process of attaining awareness or understanding of one’s environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information, and it has been shown that sensory overload can indeed cause both trauma and misfirings of neurons in the brain, without necessarily influencing one’s IQ; in fact, in many cases it bolsters intelligence.”

It was outrage, because, after all he’d done, the Joker was claiming victimhood in all of this, and he had sane doctors agreeing with him? To Roy Higgens, who had felt the brunt of the clown’s attacks and would never walk again, nor see several of his fellow officers and friends ever again, this all stunk of a desperate attempt by the modern psychiatric community to grasp at what they felt was a real “find” for their studies. They wanna interview him for the next thirty years, like Charlie Manson, and he’ll never shut up, never stop influencing new generations of young, impressionable people who’ll wear his face on T-shirts like idiots. Indeed, there were already a number of disenfranchised teenagers, lonely housewives, and plain old weirdos writing to him in prison, telling him that they understood what he was going through, that they were here to listen if he needed someone to talk to, that they cared.

No, wonders never ceased.

Judge Cavanaugh finally stepped in, a big man with a keg for a stomach, who Roy knew was an occasional flake in trials. Not the ideal judge for taking on such a monumental case. “Be seated,” the judge said as he took his chair. Everyone sat down, and waited.

The defendant hadn’t been brought in yet, which was extremely unconventional because everyone must be in their place and prepared for the trial to start before the judge would enter. But things were being changed up today, Roy knew. This case was exceptional. The jail and City Hall had already had many threats made against the Joker’s life, and the clown had received anonymous letters while incarcerated that promised street justice. As well, Roy happened to know there was a rumor floating around that Falcone’s people were out to silence the clown, since he knew a great deal about their operations. Word was, Nate was looking to take him out.

A few minutes went by, and finally the side door opened, and out came three armed cops. Roy knew all of them—Malloy, Garstadt, and MacIntyre. They walked out slowly, MacIntyre in the lead, looking around the courtroom and its audience for just a moment before turning back, giving the okay signal. In walked the defendant, flanked by more guards on each side.

He shuffled in, looking pathetic and feeble. It was something he had been doing for a year, because he knew cameras were always watching—no cameras were allowed in the courtroom today, but sketch artists were working furiously to draw the would-be clown, now deprived of his make-up and long, dyed hair. His head was shaved completely bald, and he was dressed in a loose-fitting red prison uniform. No matter what the doctors at Arkham thought, nobody thought it was a good idea to give him access to a necktie, or anything else he might use to strangle someone, as he’d already attempted to do at least once while incarcerated. However, he was hobbled in chains, and his fingers had been zip-tied together in a cluster, which Roy found strange. Did he attack someone with his fingers before coming in? Everything about this trial, from the defendant to the way it was being carried out, was bizarre, and lots of things happened without explanation, everyone trusting the guards behind the scenes to see to it that everything was under control.

Roy knew the drill. When his legs had worked, he’d performed the same function in special cases. Vans had driven around the courthouse several times, trying to draw the attention of angry crowds that beat against the windows as they drove past, all of them believing that the Joker was in one of them. Meanwhile, Roy figured, the Joker had probably arrived in an armored and rather plain-looking vehicle, one typically used for undercover work, and deposited quietly around the back while photojournalists thrashed against one another for better vantages to snap their shots.

The Joker’s defense attorneys awaited him at their allotted table. He kept his head down mostly, but he did look up once to gaze at the audience. It was the first time Roy had seen the monster in person in over a year. The scars on his face, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, were just as Roy recalled them, jagged and in that permanent, gruesome smile.

Roy could feel everyone in the room hold their breath when the Joker entered. In fact, he was sure he didn’t hear anyone move at all.

What must it feel like to wield that much power? Sergeant Roy thought. And to know it? It must make a person high on the power. And that was what the prosecution would try to prove today, and in the coming weeks: that the Joker was not only perfectly sane now and when he committed the crimes, but that his sole purpose was intimidation, to flex the power of fear over others, to terrorize, all for a titter and a high. The Joker wasn’t “super-sane”, he was a junkie who got his fix by harming others and inflicting them with the fear of walking outside their door.

The jury was now allowed into the room, only six at first, and then after a few minutes the other six came in. Very bizarre. The court stenographer waited beside the witness stand, her hands poised over her keys. Once the clown had taken his seat, and after Judge Cavanaugh had finished exchanging a few whispered words with his bailiffs, the gears of justice ultimately, finally, started to move. Cavanaugh cleared his throat, and said, “Let the record show that the trial of The People versus John Doe is now commencing.”

A few papers were shuffled around, and a couple of questions were asked of the bailiffs again. Judge Cavanaugh beckoned both the lead prosecutor and the defense attorney to the bench, where he exchanged a few words with them. They all nodded in agreement of something. Roy sighed, along with a few others in the audience. The wheels of justice, it seemed, still had a bit of rust.

Cavanaugh reached for a glass of water, took a sip with the slowness of a man who knew how to hold an audience in breathless anticipation, and then said, “Are we all present and accounted for?” The bailiff gave the affirmative. “Good. Now, the defendant, identified for convenience as John Doe, is charged with the crimes of terror, murder, theft, arson, kidnapping, blackmailing, and destruction of property. To the crimes of terror, the following are enumerated. One count of…” And so it went, a litany of charges to dwarf anything Roy had ever heard at any trial in his entire life. “To the charges of murder, the following are enumerated. Seven counts of first degree…” On and on and on, until finally, “How does the defendant plead?”

At this, the clown’s head turned up. The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. The Joker cleared his throat, and spoke smoothly, concisely. “I have been…advised by the healthcare professionals in charge of my well-being…to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, Your Honor.”

Roy shook his head. You sorry son of a bitch. He’d known it was coming, had prepared himself to hear the words, but he still felt sickened.

“All right, then. We will now hear the opening statements.”

A couple of minutes went by before this got underway.

“Your Honor,” said the Joker’s defense attorney, standing up from his chair. He was a high-price lawyer named Andrew Beckett, who was strangely taking on this case pro bono; all the major networks and the Informer had commented on this, thinking the man either fame-hungry or else incredibly insane himself. “I am only going to state what I expect the evidence to prove, and that is that the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity,” Beckett said. He brought up the revolutionary new studies being done inside Arkham by Drs. Quinzel and Bates on the subject of super-sanity, a phenomenon little understood because of its extreme rareness.

Roy was only half listening to the nonsense Beckett spewed. “—and can therefore show that the defendant had no idea himself of what he was about to do, even up until the moment of each offense committed—”

No idea? He fired a ballistic missile at a police car, which is why I’m in this damn wheelchair! He carried out plans involving thousands of gallons of ammonium nitrate wired to timers! How much more premeditated can you get?

As if to answer this, Beckett said, “And there’s actually every indication that many of these designs attributed to my client were actually planned and carried out by those who would seem to be in his employ—in other words, men who saw how ingenious my client is, and yet how delicate and easily manipulated he can be because of his mental state. With super-sanity, one can both know and not know that they are being manipulated. This is because of what is now believed to be severely damaged corpus callosums—the corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, facilitating interhemispheric communication. In brain surgery patients where the corpus callosum has been cut, you literally have two people occupying the same body; the left brain personality, and the right brain personality.

“The severance, or damage, to the corpus callosum, combined with a variety of other cerebral traumas—ranging from physical to psychological—has been shown to produce unique personality disorders that defy contemporary classifications. This has to do with the extreme rarity of so many factors coming into alignment to create this complicated mental disorder.”

Here, Beckett paused to look at each of the jurors, and Roy felt like punching the man, or any lawyer who would even think to defend the clown.

“I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying, ‘It takes one to know one.’ In this case, you may think of it as one ‘off’ person recognizing another person who is also ‘off’ and segregated by society. Many of the people involved in my client’s criminal run were insane in their own ways, able to recognize a damaged psyche like their own, even if they only understood that he was ‘damaged’ in a way that made him as ostracized from society as they were. In fact, some of the people working with him were even escapees from Arkham Asylum. So, Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I believe that in the course of this trial, you will begin to see just how the defendant was used repeatedly and—”

Roy shook his head. He had to hand it to Beckett, that bit was a stroke of genius. If the prosecution ever showed a moment where the Joker had clearly shown forethought, the defense could chalk it up to his “other brain hemisphere” exerting that particular bit of control at that particular moment.

“Is it your wish then to see this plea of insanity accepted so that the charges should all be dropped from capital one offenses?” the judge asked when Beckett had finished.

“It is, Your Honor.”

“And has the prosecution had adequate time to prepare to dispute this plea?”

“We have, Your Honor,” said Helena Kingsley, the lead prosecuting attorney. What would follow would be weeks, perhaps months of presenting the state’s evidence.

Roy had been watching the clown closely all throughout the proceedings, and he was four rows back, but, in the moment that the trial officially began, he thought he heard a slight titter escape from the monster’s lips.

Roy gripped the bars of his wheelchair. He felt so sick he could vomit.

* * *

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to keep it out of the newspapers, too many officers had gone to the rail yard now and too many of them had started telling their wives and their husbands about what they had seen out at Old Parker Station. And, of course, Theresa Fuller’s family was speaking to the media about the horrors their daughter had endured. Gordon hadn’t been so foolish as to think he could keep it all out of the press, but he’d hoped that at least the more horrific portions would be omitted. They weren’t. In fact, they were highlighted in great detail, including one crime scene photo of the trapped area itself, which had gotten into the hands of someone at the Gotham Informer and was now all over the front page.

Gordon hadn’t known what to say to Barbara. Even as he watched her pack her bags with barely quelled rage, he thought of something he could say to make her stay. She moved about the bedroom where her friend Alison had let them stay, packing what little she had unpacked the night before, indifferent to the tears of their children, who no doubt thought Mom and Dad were separating for good.

Are we? he wondered. Jim Gordon had always known there were things he could do to utterly destroy his relationship with his wife, but he’d always had confidence in himself to head them off at the pass and prevent himself from making those mistakes before they cost him everything.

“Barbara?” he said softly, walking over to put his hand on her arm. “Barb?”

“Don’t,” she said stoutly, pulling away. “You lied to me, Jim.”

“How did I lie?”

“You said this had nothing to do with us. Those messages came to me, to us, Jim. Now, look at this!” she shouted, picking up a copy of the Informer and throwing it onto the bed between them.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“I know. I’ve seen it. I was there.”

“You pulled that woman out of there?” she asked, wiping tears away with her sleeve.

“We did, yeah.”

“Then you should have an even better understanding.”

“Of what?”

“Jim, for God’s sakes! I’m not stupid! Look at that mess! A train rigged to tear a woman in half?” she shouted. Behind her, James Jr. sniffled. “What kind of monster does that and sends the clues to the wife of the police commissioner? Jim, we’re being targeted. Again!”

“Nobody’s targeting us specifically, Barb,” he said, watching her go back to her packing. “I might’ve kept you in the dark about what I suspected—”

“And what did you suspect?”

He sighed. “That these riddles were given to me by the Riddler because he’s aware of my relationship with the Batman, okay?” He held his hands up in a gesture that asked for understanding. “I’m sorry I didn’t come right out and say that. Please, forgive me. I didn’t want you and the kids worrying needlessly.”

“Needlessly, Jim?” She pointed to the two police officers down the hall. “We’re being watched by police officers, for Christ’s sake! The kids figured out our secret language so that they could find where we hid the Christmas presents, so I’m fairly certain they can decipher what’s currently happening.”

“I just need you to stay calm, Barb—”

“I’m through staying calm!” she said, zipping up a bag and putting it beside the door. Barbara called to the police down the hall. “Guys, if you want to make yourselves useful, please pack these in my car outside.”

“Barbara, just hang on. Would you please just listen? Just listen!” He had raised his voice, something he almost never did with her, but she was being unreasonable. His wife looked at him with steely, unmoving eyes, waiting for his big excuse. “Things have gotten a little dangerous now, I’m not going to argue with you on that. But I have it from the mayor’s office that we’re going to be getting some help. Professionals who work in witness protection and some pretty serious federal investigators for the FBI are coming in to help. Mayor Walden called me an hour ago to tell me.”

“Who from the FBI?” she wanted to know.

“A special task force made up of people who specialize in hunting down terrorists, fugitives, serial killers, you name it.” He didn’t mention that it was at Walden’s request, and that one of the stipulations he’d had was to hunt down the Batman, as well. “The attack on the Center and now this; Gotham is starting to gather some pretty serious national attention, not all of it good, but it’s a start. We need the help anyway. For once, Walden and I are in total agreement.” That was true enough. Normally he wouldn’t like the FBI coming in to step on their toes, but with GCPD so short on good people, they could use all the help they could get.

“I meant, who from the FBI is coming here? Their names?”

This was the part he had dreaded telling her the most. He sighed. “Sarah’s heading up the task force.”

His wife raised an eyebrow. “Sarah?” she said. “Sarah Essen is coming to assist you?”

“Her team is coming to help us secure a few things—”

“But you and her will be working together?”

James Gordon plopped his hands at his side. “Yes, Barbara. Sarah’s coming and we’ll be working on these cases together. She’s moved up. She tracked down that serial killer in Trenton, New Jersey, last year, remember?”

“I remember. I saw her on TV.” Barbara nodded. “So, you’re going to stay here with the bat and Sarah, while I take the kids safely outside of the city? You’re not even going to come with us?”

He was sickened by this debate. He didn’t need this right now. His mind was still on the poor girl who’d nearly been ripped apart the night before, he was expected to testify before a jury in the Joker’s trial within the week, he had an understaffed police force, a killer sending messages to his wife, and a mayor who seemed bent on ignoring the needs of the GCPD. He didn’t need his wife taking the children and leaving him right now.

Or maybe I do, he thought. Maybe this is something she has to do, just like I have to stay and do my job.

Barbara looked at her luggage, and then at the officers in hall. “Well?”

They looked at him, and Gordon nodded once. The officers came into the bedroom quietly, reluctantly, not wanting to be in the midst of a fight between the commissioner and his wife, and uncertain of what else they should do.

Once she was packed and the kids were buckled up in the back seat of the station wagon, Gordon went over to kiss his children on the head. “It’s going to be all right, guys. I’ll come down to Grandma’s house real soon, and then we’ll all come back home together.”

“Are you and Mommy getting a divorce?” his daughter asked.

Where do they learn about these things? he marveled. He said, “No, sweetie. No.”

In the front seat, Barb was crying behind the steering wheel. When they backed out of the driveway, Gordon stood and waved, still smiling. It wasn’t until they were gone that he started crying, too. He walked away from his house so that the other officers couldn’t see. He went for eight blocks, just walking.

His phone rang. Sighing, he answered it. “Gordon,” he said.

It was Chief Chapman. “Jim, there’s been another body found,” he said. There was hesitation. “We…we think it was him again.”

* * *

BATS FLUTTERED IN the darkness behind him. “It’s not the hideousness of the crime that shocks me,” Bruce said, looking over the video that his HUD had automatically recorded throughout his ordeal the night before. Everything he had seen or analyzed had been recorded to his batsuit’s onboard computer for analysis later, and he now watched from his chair on the dais as an enhanced first-person-perspective video showed him every second of what he’d been through. It was like reliving a bad dream over and over, but it needed to be done.

“Oh?” Alfred said. “Then what is it you find most shocking, sir?”

Bruce watched on the computer monitor as the first-person video showed him searching around the locomotive for more traps. He watched as the bear trap snapped shut, and wondered what might’ve happened if he hadn’t thought to look for more traps.

“The immensity of the project,” he said, standing up and lifting a cup of hazelnut coffee—Alfred made the best, just the right mixture. “Think about the careful planning needed for something like this, Alfred. The mechanics, engineering, timing, the selection of just the right riddles. The location itself would require a great deal of scouting just to be sure you had the kind of peace and quiet necessary to finish the job. And this would all occur to him before he ever selected a victim.”

“It seems Gotham breeds these maniacs these day,” the butler put in, producing a rag out of a pocket and wiping away the coffee ring on the table where Bruce’s gear lay; a habit that Alfred had never been able to put to rest even while discussing the most heinous problems of the world. “First the clown, and now another just like him.”

“No, not like him, this one’s different,” Bruce said, finishing his coffee and setting it down. He went to pour himself some more from the pot, but Alfred’s hands were quicker with the refill. “The Joker had no point. Well, he did, but his point was that there was no point. No point to anything we as human beings do.” He shook his head and accepted the cup of coffee back from Alfred, then walked over to the table where the STACS sat. Lucius had come through with getting the R&D project adequately lost, and Alfred had been at the right place and the right time to pick it up. He was now working on a way to implement it into at least one suit of armor.

“And the Riddler? What do you suppose his point is?”

“Well, he’s obviously intelligent. And despite the fact that most of his nonsensical ranting was engineered to hide more riddles, both of the stories he told were about the same thing: stupid people running the world,” he said, looking over the schematics of the STACS and examining the battery pack. “He speaks derisively about people of lesser intelligence, but he’s also aware that his behavior would be normally considered that of a narcissist—he said as much when we spoke over the phone.” He looked at Alfred. “What did we find out about the Bat Hawk?”

Alfred cleared his throat, and walked around the worktable, unconsciously wiping dust from its edges. “I got the work order from Mr. Fox today. Two of the pieces have already arrived in India, another in Japan, and I was assured the others will be arriving at their destinations within the next three days. With express shipping, we should have all the parts back here to assemble by week’s end. They’ll come in different shipments, of course, and I’m using our usual sorters and receivers at AG International to change the labels on them as soon as they arrive.”

“Make sure you pay them well,” Bruce said. “They do good work.” Wayne Enterprises worked closely with Archie Goodwin International Airport in creating greater infrastructure for their operations and better security for the skies above Gotham. Various receivers at AG International, and at docks, train yards and other airports owned by WE were what helped him move packages around without attracting suspicion, and they even delivered from time to time, when the shipments needed to be brought in on a large truck, such as the Bat Hawk’s various pieces. The receivers never knew what was in the shipments, and likely assumed it was just another rich playboy’s secrete plaything.

Bruce examined the Strength and Tactical Assist Combat Suit, or STACS, or Stacksuit. It was the latest Mk. III version of Wayne Enterprise’s powered exoskeleton/underlay suits, designed for military personnel. It was very lightweight, and yet would enable a soldier to carry heavy objects, up to 155 kg. (341 lbs.) while running or climbing stairs at normal speeds, depending on how high the power was dialed up. Not only could a soldier carry more weight, he/she could wield heavier armor and weapons on top of the Stacksuit.

The thing looked like a diver’s suit, only about half an inch thicker. It was a formfitting body-glove, one easily pulled on by simply stepping in and allowing it to seal itself in the back with an advanced adhesive.

The way Bruce understood the technology, whenever the user moved his or her body, nerve signals were sent from the brain to the muscles through the motoneuron, moving the musculoskeletal system. Small biosignals were detected on the surface of the skin. The suit caught these signals via the sensors attached to the skin of the wearer. With this communication complete, the power unit moved the limb simultaneously with the user’s muscle movement. The suit would help provide free movement based on a robotic system which worked together with the ACS (autonomous control system).

Because the Stacksuit’s legs could lift as easily as the arms, a user should be able to leap more than twice the distance they normally could, and could run at the speed of an elite athlete. This made it a potential aid down the road whenever he became too old and worn to be the Batman anymore. Bruce was anxious to merge the STACS with his existing batsuit and try it out, knowing that some things would need to be reconfigured.

While flipping through the user’s manual, which Lucius had created himself, Bruce happened to glance up at the TV hanging on the wall, which was turned to GCN and muted. The picture showed numerous artist sketches of the first day of the trial. Alfred followed his gaze, and said, “It started today. I was reading about it in the paper. He’s pleading insanity, of course.”

“His lawyers are pleading insanity,” Bruce corrected. “He’s just playing his cards as best he can.”

“You think the defense will make a good case for it?”

Bruce shook his head. “The severity of the crimes? Not likely. It’s a desperate move.” For the past few days, Bruce had distanced himself from information pertaining to the trial. His focus was elsewhere—Nate, the Dreaded Suns, Carmine Falcone’s remaining operations, and now the Riddler, had all taken precedence. He had done his part in bringing in the Joker, and now it was time to let the courts do their part.

“I’m surprised anyone’s even taking him seriously,” Alfred said, looking up at the sketch artist’s rendering of the clown’s scarred face. “After all he did to this city.”

“You know,” Bruce said, testing the power settings of the STACS, “one thing that’s been bugging me is that he said them. He said it twice. First, over the phone, he said, ‘I’ve given you everything you need and the means to rescue them all.’ And he repeated that on the recording he left with Theresa Fuller. I don’t think that’s a slip of the tongue, either. Everything he says is deliberate, rehearsed so as to leave the clues precisely, he said so himself and he clearly demonstrated it with the word games.”

“Master Bruce?”

“I mean,” he went on distractedly, “why formulate the word games so precisely, and then say ‘save them’ instead of ‘save her’? It has to mean something?”

“Master Bruce?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” he said, slipping his arm down one sleeve of the STACS in order to get a feel for it.

“Sir, look at the TV.”

“Alfred, I’m not focusing on the Joker right—” But when he looked up, he saw that the story of the Joker trial had been interrupted, and now there was another story on GCN. At the bottom of the screen it read: WOMAN FOUND DEAD AT THE COMB INN – POLICE CONFIRM THE BODY OF AMANDA RIDDLE WAS FOUND…

“Turn that up,” he said. Alfred found the remote, and un-muted the TV.

An anchorwoman was speaking. “—and we are getting reports that the body was found at the Comb Inn, a hotel located on Nth Street just on the other side of Mooney Bridge and owned by the Comb family, Abner J. and Sally Q. John Seyfried is live on location with the latest details. John?”

Another screen superimposed over the anchorwoman’s own, and the reporter said, “Well, Mellissa, the police are telling us that the body of Amanda Riddle was found inside the Comb Inn, which you can see here behind me. Family members reported Mrs. Riddle missing two days ago, after she not only failed to show up for work that morning, but to show up at a scheduled family reunion later that evening. Now, what we’re finding out right now—and bare with us because information is still coming in—is that she was found dead in the hotel room under incredibly unusual circumstances. Reports we’re getting now involve at least one hotel room being booby-trapped with a kind of gun jury-rigged on the other side of the door, one of the traps injuring one officer and causing the whole building to be cordoned off, as well as all of Nth Street. The police commissioner has sent in bomb squads and wheeled robots, which are just now beginning to sweep through the Comb Inn.”

“Now, John,” the anchorwoman put in, “I understand that the owners, Abner and Sally Comb, were both out of town for these past two weeks, and that they’ve been on vacation in Hawaii?”

“That’s right, Melissa. The Comb family arrived home today and went about reopening the hotel to guests, when apparently Mrs. Comb went through the hotel, room to room, making sure that everything had been left undisturbed when she came across the body of Amanda Riddle.”

“John, this is all so shocking. Is Police Commissioner Gordon making any statements right now? Because this obviously sounds so similar to what we’ve been hearing this morning about the incredible story with Theresa Fuller, and with the story of the booby traps and the pictures that of course appeared in this morning’s Gotham Informer—it just all seems striking. Are the police confirming yet whether or not the person responsible for this is the same individual responsible for the kidnapping and torture of Theresa Fuller?”

“Mellissa, right now we’ve not gotten confirmation on that. Not yet. But we’re talking to other residents and business owners here on Nth Street, and what we’re finding out is—”

Bruce didn’t listen to anymore. He bolted up the steps and went to his computer, switching off the video of the night before and pulling up the file he’d kept of all the riddles thus far. “What did I miss?” he said, going over them again. “What did I miss? I don’t get it, what did I miss?”

“Master Bruce, this was not your fault,” Alfred put in, coming up beside him.

“It’s not right…it doesn’t make sense…what did I miss?”

“Master Bruce?” It was useless, though, because Bruce wasn’t listening.

His mind raced as a lump grew in his belly, one born of sickness and anger at himself. He ran through everything he’d seen and heard. He thought back on the voice that had come over the loudspeaker at the rail yard. He went back over the conversation he’d had with the Riddler over the phone at the gas station. Faus for us, he thought. Phosphorous. The periodic table. That was the connection. I made the right connection or else I wouldn’t have found Therese Fuller at all. So what did I miss?

Alfred put a hand on his shoulder, but Bruce ignored it.

The word games, he thought. Did he leave more word games? Spoonerisms like the ones at the rail yard?

Bruce closed his eyes, retracing any strange or out-of-place words that might have indicated something about Amanda Riddle. I’ve given you everything you need…

Bruce considered something, and then he typed it all out on the main screen. He typed the original number sequence that had given him the phone number: 7716225742. I originally thought about handing out all the hints periodically, the Riddler had said. All of the hints. All of them? Including the original riddle answers?

He knew that 7 on the periodic table was nitrogen, represented by N, and that 1 was hydrogen, represented by H. Then there was C, for chlorine, which was 6 on the table, and B, for boron, which was 5. Twenty-two and forty-two had double letters; Ti for titanium and Mo for Molybdenum.

That gave him: NNNHCTIBMO

Bruce pulled up the Internet, and went to the anagram encoder service. He typed in the letters, and got only one possible combination when all the letters were used: comb, inn, nth.

How? he thought. How was I supposed to know?

I’ve given you everything you need, and the means to rescue them all.

Then, Bruce suddenly had an epiphany. There was something else the Riddler had said to him over the phone, something that had again seemed so nonsensical, and spoken so quickly, that he had at once written it off. Bruce had demanded to know where Theresa Fuller was, and the Riddler had said, You’ll be looking for a man to riddle, too, I suppose?

Bruce had ignored it, and had continued making demands for Fuller’s location.

A man to riddle, he thought, looking up at the screen filled with riddles. Amanda Riddle.

Bruce looked down, his fists clenched tight and knuckles resting on the desk. It could be no coincidence that he had selected a woman with that name, or that he selected such a subtle play on words. Had the Riddler really hoped that his modus operandi of leaving riddles at the other scenes of his other crimes would draw attention to the missing person with such a fortuitous name? If so, it revealed something else about him. It showed that he was making an object lesson out of Amanda Riddle.

I know what I’m saying and doing.

Bruce walked away from Alfred, who looked on concerned and called after him. “Master Bruce?”

The Riddler was speaking to them all. Listen to me, he was saying. Listen to me, all of you, because there is a price to pay if you don’t.

Bruce walked away from the dais, and into the darkness of the cave. He screamed, awakening the immense colony of bats. They swarmed around him, and he was lost in the black.