CHAPTER 2

A first-year detective wouldn’t have missed the cause of death. The ligature marks pointed to strangulation. However, there was still signs of blunt force trauma, because there was blood. The bodies were lying on the floor of the rocking sailboat, laid there unceremoniously and without any real attention paid to covering up the deed once it was done. That much was immediately noticeable. In addition to strangulation, there was evidence of blunt force trauma to the head, but the object that had been used wasn’t immediately obvious. The boat had obviously rocked hard in the storm, because the blood coming from the older victim’s head had crawled away from the body in all directions on the otherwise bare and spotless floor, and was just starting to dry.

Relatively recent, Gordon thought, slipping on his blue slippers and gloves to enter the crime scene. There were two bodies, one a middle-aged blonde woman, and the other a child, a golden-haired girl.

Gordon winced, and ran a finger over his mustache. Despite all he’d seen in his day, a dead kid never got easier. It just didn’t. But, a long time ago he’d been told by an aging veteran cop, who was nearing retirement, that when entering a crime scene with a dead child, you had to just trick yourself into believing it’s just a small adult. Gordon had thought that was a terrible act of denial, and no way to interact with the sanctity of a dead body. But, he had to admit, after he tried it one time, it became his only saving grace in these instances.

Two forensics men were dusting for prints in the kitchen, where the most fingerprints could usually be found. These days, a handheld device could be used to check a fingerprint almost immediately, cross-checking them with local records, the FBI’s IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) and others across the globe.

Half of the search team waited on the dock, while the other half was still on the boat, maintaining it after it had been secured. Gordon allowed everyone to walk onto the boat before him. This was really no longer his job. He’d certainly helped with forensics before, but remembered how much he’d hated it when higher departments sent in their own people, as if they hadn’t trusted Gordon or his teams, so he allowed Adam Paxton’s forensic team to have the first look. When he’d entered, Paxton had looked up at him in surprise. “Jim? What’re you doin’ down here? You can relax, old friend, this isn’t your dirty job no more.”

They shook hands briefly. Gordon pushed his glasses up. “I was in the neighborhood, heard it called in.”

“Still listening in on the radio? Can’t kick the habit, eh?” Paxton chuckled. “It’s as bad as smoking, Jim. And it’ll kill you just as fast.”

“That’s what my wife keeps telling me.”

“You keeping her up late waiting on you?” Paxton tsked, and knelt down beside the body of the dead woman. “I dunno, pal. I think I’d be with a woman livelier than this one right now, if I had the chance.” His smile faded when he saw that Gordon didn’t appreciate the humor.

Gordon wasn’t capable of shutting off his own policeman’s instincts, not even after a year of being commissioner. It wasn’t in him to speak to politicians, and to essentially become one himself. He was sure of that. He had told his wife that, he had told some of his friends at the department that, and he had even told the bat that, but none of them had listened. They all had pretty much told him the same thing. Jim, you can do a lot of good in this position. That was his wife’s voice. He’d heard that over and over again, and while he understood it was possible to effectuate change from a commissioner’s desk, life at the desk was too…inert. He needed to get out. He needed to be there on the streets again, to see and hear what the new guys were doing, to listen to the newest rookies and make sure they were getting the training they needed, but most importantly to make sure that all the work he’d done in weeding out corruption didn’t get reversed by his absence.

You’re not the only man trying to save Gotham, Barbara said. There are others. Not many. He hadn’t told her that, but he felt it was true.

“Any ID on the victims?” Gordon asked.

“Not yet. They’re running prints right now.”

“Anyone know the owner of the sailboat?” he said, just as the boat lurched in a random large wave, making a crime scene photographer reach out to Gordon’s shoulder for support.

Paxton sighed and shook his head. “Things are movin’ a bit slow. I guess you noticed only one patrolman out there maintaining the perimeter?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re spread pretty thin right now, Jim.”

“I know.” Right now, Gordon didn’t want to think about it, and hoped there wasn’t an insinuation in there about his inefficacy as commissioner. “Tell me about the sailboat.”

“Helton says that they traced the number. It belongs to a Filipino guy who died in a bar fight about a year ago. The sailboat was bought in his name eight months ago, and it’s been sitting here at the docks for six. Rent and docking fees are all paid up.”

Jim Gordon nodded. “Someone steals his identity after he dies, maintains enough bank records to make it appear to the system as though he’s alive, and as long as no one finds the contradictions, they can buy sailboats in his name.” A very old story, one that spoke of organized crime. Anyone who went through all that trouble probably hadn’t just premeditated the murder, they had kept this little boat as a back-up for lots of things. Maybe smuggling dope, maybe smuggling people, who knows? And then, they needed a place to get rid of some people, and figured this sailboat’s days were probably numbered anyway once someone noticed the name of the owner on the lease belonged to a dead guy.

“Who called it in?”

Adam said, “A neighbor. The guy who lives in one o’ the sailboats across the way. He called nine-one-one and reported hearing shouts in here.”

“What time was that?”

“Around seven o’clock.”

“What time did he call it in?”

“About nine-thirty.”

Gordon blinked. “He waited two-and-a-half hours to call it in?” he said. “Why?”

“You tell me, man. I only work here.” Then, changing the subject from murders and dead bodies quickly in only the way that a lifelong forensics man could, Adam said, “So, how is the view from the corner office? Better than down in the dungeons, gotta be.”

“Oh,” Gordon sighed. “You know.”

Adam must have heard the exasperation in his tone. “Some o’ the guys said you were having trouble with Walden. Something about the upgrades to the SWAT equipment?”

Gordon shrugged. “The mayor and I have had our differences,” was all he would say about that. It really wasn’t any of Adam Paxton’s business what the status was between the city’s commissioner and its mayor, even if he happened to be right.

Adam dropped that subject, but opted to pry in another. “How’s the overall investigation coming with that Paul Stewart guy, or whoever? Any luck finding him?”

If we had, you’d know it, wouldn’t you? He sighed, “It’s Stewart-Paulson. And no. Nothing. So far he’s still a ghost. But we’ll find him,” he added.

Adam nodded and looked up at the team’s blood spatter investigator, who had just tapped him on the shoulder to have a word with him. Gordon was glad that that subject had been dropped, too. The GCPD’s inability to find Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson had been a sore spot with both him and his old friends at the precinct for six months now, and it was one of the most touchy topics when talking with Mayor Walden. The public didn’t like the idea that Carmine Falcone might still be running things from inside Arkham, but those rumors always persisted, such as those that said the Joker was still calling the shots, despite being placed in the maximum-security wing under “no human contact.” The public, and of course the press, wanted justice for the Falcone family’s new consigliere, and they wanted it now. The new commissioner would love nothing more than to give it to them. If only he’d show his face somewhere.

But Stewart-Paulson was elusive. Many officers claimed that he wasn’t half the threat that Carmine Falcone or Salvatore Maroni had been, that he was nothing more than an upjumped thug who’d filled a void in the criminal underworld at a pivotal moment, that he’d just been the first to make use of the opportunity for leadership. Stewart-Paulson had done those things well. His had been a brief but bloody fight for recognition and legitimacy, to prove that he served the one and only Carmine Falcone and had his best interests in mind. He’d had it out with the ragtag Dreaded Sun gang, who had tried to fill the hole left with the Falcone crime family’s downfall, but once Stewart-Paulson had proved authentic, the rank and file had dutifully returned to serve the Falcones. Order and balance had been restored in Gotham’s underworld, and now the police were fighting a familiar battle again, only the rules and players were changing, and they in turn reshaped the battlefield.

Gordon moved around the forensic photographer, getting a dirty look since he’d blocked the man’s shot from that angle. Another forensic specialist was bent down on her haunches, picking up a number of cigarettes from an ashtray. She was filling out the information on the small evidence tag: description of item, case number, date, location of collection, collector’s name, and all the necessary additional info.

“Getting many prints?” he asked the woman.

“No, sir,” she said glumly. “No dishes in the kitchen cupboards. No plates, no glasses, nothing. There’s a bookshelf beside the bed, but no books on it. This place doesn’t look very used.”

Gordon nodded. He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose, and walked over to check a table that was, like all the furnishings of the boat, bolted to the floor. Pictures had fallen from the table and the glass had shattered. That probably happened in the storm, he thought. But maybe there was a struggle. He knelt down to examine the pictures.

“I looked at those, too,” said Adam, putting his hands on his knees and squatting down. “But I’m pretty sure those pictures came with the frames. They’ve got advertising markings all over the edges and on the backs.” Gordon lifted one anyway, flipped it over, looked at it. Blank. “Reckon you were called in for that mess Downtown Eastside, right?”

Gordon pulled himself away from the picture. “Yeah,” he said, putting it back down.

“How bad was it? Was it like the news made it sound?”

“Worse.”

Adam whistled. “That’s a shame. They know who did it?”

“Security cameras at a gas station across the street caught a good angle on the Muslim Center,” Gordon said, standing up and moving into a small sleeping area with no walls besides the boat’s hull, feeling himself get a bit queasy when the boat suddenly lurched again. He gently lifted a few sheets, looking for any spatter patterns, knowing that if there were any, others probably would have found them by now. “I’m told that Angela back at the precinct is examining the video, and may even have a good lock on the faces of the last few people to walk inside the building before it blew up.”

“Hope for a lucky break then, right?” Adam said.

“Right.”

Adam went quiet for a moment, and then couldn’t help himself anymore. He had to gossip. “The clown’s trial’s finally comin’ up soon, ya know?” At this, Gordon only nodded. “There’s not been an attack like what happened at the Center since he was doin’ his thing. He helped Falcone for a time. Think Falcone an’ the clown had somethin’ to do with it?”

“Doubtful. The Falcones aren’t too happy with the Joker these days.”

Gordon had seen a lot in his lifetime. Mothers who had stuck their infants in a microwave to stop them from crying, friends and colleagues who had flipped to the dark side, and a hospital utterly destroyed by a painted-face madman. All in all, what had happened earlier that day at the Gotham City Muslim Center had been nothing compared to other great catastrophes in Gotham’s history…and yet it had still gotten to him. Twenty-seven dead by an apparent suicide bomber, with only one living witness, who, Gordon had heard, was still at the precinct babbling and trying to recall everything the suicide bomber had said to him just before he told him to leave—the janitor, whose name was Tariq, was so far their primary suspect in the attack, because his story was just that bizarre. Gordon had heard the gist of it, and found it as likely to believe as not.

As far as the clown’s upcoming trial finally getting kicked off, Gordon tried not to think about that, and hoped that Adam, and others, would drop it henceforth.

“The building itself was completely destroyed?” Adam was asking.

Gordon dropped the bed sheets, and turned around, looking at the floor. “Mm-hm.”

“That’s…insane.” Adam laughed mirthlessly. “Ya hear about Muslim terrorists all the time, but someone doing a suicide bomb on a Muslim Center? Think it might be somebody thinking to give back some o’ their own medicine?”

“I dunno.” Something was bothering him about the sailboat.

“Hey, you hear about those bodies found in the sewers?” Adam went on. “Crazy shit, eh? Like they’d been gnawed on, or something. You hear about that, Commissioner?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, where the lights were dimming, dying. Gordon was only half listening to Adam, giving him minimal attention. His mind was half at the scene of the bombing earlier today—seeing the smoke, the firefighters in their rescue equipment, the fire trucks nearly slamming into one another as they fought to get an angle on a fire still raging inside—and half on the sailboat he stood in. Something was still bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it yet but it was there, staring him right in the face. What was it?

Then, slow realization dawned on him. “This place is very empty,” he said.

Paxton snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it. They probably cleared out everything to use it as a dumping ground for the woman and the girl—”

“So why didn’t they do a better job cleaning up the bodies?” Gordon asked. “If nothing else, the smell would eventually call attention. Why not dump them?” He shook his head.

“Thinkin’ somebody wanted these bodies found?”

Gordon shrugged, said nothing, and moved about the room. It’s really very empty, isn’t it? Something crunched beneath his foot, and he paused to look down. It was the glass from the picture frames that had fallen to the floor. He knelt to inspect them again. “These…these are all that’s left. They’re just sitting here in this big empty boat.”

“Maggy dusted ’em for prints already, Jim. There’s not a print to be found.”

“Weird. Because somebody brought them here.” He looked around at the empty cabin. “Somebody bought these frames, left the commercial pictures inside the frames, and then just left them behind after committing a murder.” He looked at Adam. “You said the sailboat’s been docked here six months?”

“Yeah.”

Plenty of time for someone to move in and create a nest, if they were so inclined. So, the question was, why hadn’t they? Jim Gordon looked down at one of the picture frames. Inside it was the picture of a smiling young boy and a girl. He pushed some of the glass aside, sifted it out, and removed the picture. He turned it over. Blank. Nothing there.

He reached for another picture, this one of a mustached man in a sports jacket and standing with his back to a duck pond, also smiling. Gordon removed the picture, flipped it over. Also nothing. Completely blank.

He reached for another, this one of a little girl in pigtails blowing soap bubbles, and flipped that one over…and there he found writing. Gordon pushed his glasses up further onto the bridge of his nose, and squinted. His lips moved as he read the handwriting.

“Anybody here good with riddles?” he called out.

Adam looked up from a clipboard where he was signing off on evidence gathered. “Why?”

Gordon stood up, walked over to where Adam was, and the two men read it together:

I am uttered first, before all others like me,

These others are my twins, yet not exactly like me,

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

In this poem, there are fifty-two like me,

In myself, there are, in fact, three of me,

What am I, exactly?

Adam snorted. “Huh. You think it’s something?”

“I dunno, Adam,” he said. “I doubt it.” They stared at it a few seconds more. Gordon was about to ask him if he knew the answer to the riddle, but just then his cell phone twittered. He predicted it would be his wife, and he was right. A text message was waiting on him: When r u comin home? Call me to let me know you’re okay. Barbara was a patient woman, but he had kept her waiting for most of the twelve years they had been married. He had let his dinner get cold yet another night, and being married to him had endangered not only her life, but their children’s. The least he owed her for her years of faith and loyalty was a phone call.

“I, uh, gotta make a call,” he said. Adam smiled and winked at him as he stepped out of the boat and onto the dock. The rain had let up, and the air was fresh and bracing. The wind whipped his coat against his legs as he walked down to the end of Pier 4 of Dixon Dock, looking for a good signal in this weather. The phone only gave half a ring before it was answered, and he said, “Before you say anything, Barbara, I’m sorry.”

A long, long sigh. “I’ve been texting you for an hour, Jim.”

“Really? I didn’t hear my phone go off. I’m sorry.” Of course, his cell had been inside the pocket of his long coat, and it was on silent, so that was no surprise. It was a cheap way to get out of trouble.

“When are you coming home?” At this point, Barbara knew any answer she got would be a ballpark figure at best. Work had swamped him, more than he had even expected it to when he took the job, and he had expected quite a bit. Jim Gordon thought it was unfair of his wife to expect so much of his time when it was the very job that she had pushed him towards that had taken him away from her and the kids, but that was an argument they had already had, and would have again, no doubt, but not right now.

“In about an hour,” he said, checking his watch, the gold one the department had given him back when he had hit ten years of service.

“An hour? You’re sure about that this time?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, really feeling the promise was solid. After all, the harbor had only been on his way to the house, and he’d heard about the investigation before driving by the area, so it wasn’t like he was needed here at all. He’d just been…well, what had he been doing? Sating his nostalgia? Was he really feeling nostalgic about his old job already? He’d done the job for a long time. The gold watch was proof of that. They don’t even hand these out anymore. Everyone tells time on a cell phone. He felt old.

“James says he’s going to wait up for you,” Barbara said.

“Well, it’s already getting late. Get him into bed.”

“I can put him to bed, but I can’t make him go to sleep. He’ll wait for you. You know he will. Don’t keep us up all night.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “Look, I’m headed out right now.”

“All right. Drive safely. Love you.”

“I love you, too, Barb.”

“Bye.”

Gordon hung up and stood for a moment looking out across Gotham Harbor. He watched the dancing, twinkling lights in the water for a moment, those that reflected the expanse of the city across the way. For a moment, he was struck by how much he really loved this city.

He turned around and started walking back up the pier, and was just replacing his cell back into his pocket when he realized he hadn’t dropped the picture that he’d picked up from the crime scene. Gordon started walking back to the boat, and was met halfway by Adam, who was pausing to take a break. He took a sip of water from a bottle and pointed at Gordon, saying, “FBI office just called. They got a hit on the fingerprints we ran on the IAFIS.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Margot Tralley, and the little girl is probably her daughter, Jessica. They lived on Fenton Street.”

“Fenton? That’s an upscale neighborhood. How the hell did they wind up down here?” And murdered by some criminal who bought a boat with a fake identity and credit, no less?

“I dunno. They’re still looking for the husband, thought. He’s missing.”

“Known history of violence for the father?”

“Chuck’s lookin’ into that. So far, zilch.”

Gordon started to ask something else, but then his phone rang again. If it was Barbara again, he would have a difficult time keeping his temper in check. When he saw the name Pamela Brighton, Gordon tensed a bit. She was the personal assistant of Marcellus Walden, Gotham’s new mayor, and she seemed to only exist to make sure that no one could come into direct contact with her boss. She was also one of the reasons that Gordon had started regretting his acceptance of the commissioner’s position, and why most days he contemplated throwing his cell phone into the river. She called day and night, at the behest of Walden. “Hi, Pam. What’s up?”

“Commissioner, how is everything?” she asked.

“Fine for now, I guess. What’s up?” he asked again.

“Just checking in. The mayor is planning on making a speech early tomorrow morning about what we’ve found out about this attack in Downtown Eastside so far. Is there anything else I should have his speechwriter include in tomorrow’s press conference? Anything new to show we’re doing everything we can?”

“Not yet, Pam. Did you get the ACS report alterations for our SWAT guys?”

“I did.”

“Did you hand them to the mayor? I talked to Connie down at the precinct, and she said the proper paperwork never saw signatures. How much longer is it going to—?”

“Well…I’m sorry, Commissioner, but the mayor has actually decided not to support the upgrades you requested.”

“How do you mean?” Gordon said. In front of him, Adam stood looking at him, trying to follow the conversation. He waved his hand in the universal sign of “scram,” and Adam shrugged and walked away.

“Well, the mayor said to tell you that he didn’t think that the city could get the council to fit more SWAT upgrades into the budget. He also doesn’t see the need for more upgrades.”

“Doesn’t see the need?”

“He says training will make up for what they lack in equipment. After all, didn’t they get some pretty advanced training from Germany’s GSG-9 group?”

Gordon sighed. That was true, a couple of years ago Interpol, in a kind of exchange program, had helped different countries involved in the International Police Organization swap information about tactics and intelligence-gathering. GSG-9, the elite counter-terrorism force of Germany, had sent five of its best operators and instructors over to Gotham to help in the aftermath of the Joker attacks. The training had been helpful, certainly, but according to his guys on SWAT, it wasn’t enough. They were complaining about old armor and outmoded equipment-carrying systems. Tactics were great up until a point, but when things in Gotham had shown clear signs of escalation, and had proven to be a kind of magnet for any lunatic interested in making themselves as famous as the Joker or the Scarecrow, it had become clear to SWAT, and therefore to Gordon, that an upgrade was necessary. Criminals in Gotham were becoming far more technically savvy than the Bloods and the Crips in L.A., or Cosa Nostra in New York.

Things are changing, he thought. And the mayor’s going to have to change with it. Gordon’s job required him to be a kind of liaison between the city’s police and its politicians. So far, he found far less communication in this new mayor than he’d hoped. He’d only gotten face time with Marcellus Walden twice before, all other contacts were either minute-long Zoom calls or quick, precise demands given through his assistant Pamela.

Walden is cutting us off. Gordon had suspected this for some time now, and it was only confirmed more and more each day. He passes down these commands and then makes himself unavailable, cutting off any chances of him having to lose a debate. Walden hadn’t listened to Gordon in one single instance yet, it was almost as if James W. Gordon didn’t exist in his eyes, and neither did his position as commissioner. Yet, he expected the commands that he passed down to pass without any guff, because it was coming from Gordon, an old veteran of the precinct and a friend to the other detectives and sergeants and lieutenants, and therefore it would somehow be sugarcoated, and then accepted by all.

One of the oldest ploys in politics, and it was working like a charm. “Pam…our people need those upgrades. They’ve got harnesses as old as I am, they need better body armor, and they need more tactical holsters, ones that secure more easily so they can train more aggressively and more often—if training is so important to the mayor, then he has to give them the tools so they can at least continue training safely.” He sighed. “Look, my people tell me what they need, and they’re never wrong about this. They know their jobs better than either the mayor or myself know it. Is the mayor there now? Can I speak to him?”

“I’m sorry, Commissioner. But Mayor Walden has left for the evening. And he doesn’t like calls to his home or his cell after he’s gone home for the day.”

“Then tell him to expect a call from me tomorrow. Can you at least do that?”

“I can do that, Commissioner.”

“Thank you. If there’s nothing else, I need to go home to my wife.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, and sorry it was so short notice. We were just going live with this tomorrow morning, and we needed all the information we could get on the Downtown attack.”

“It’s fine. Not your fault,” Gordon said, and hung up without any other formalities. He turned and looked back at the boat. The coroners were bringing out the first of the bodies in a smaller black bag than usual. The little girl. Gordon pretended it was just a short adult inside there, and it helped a little, just like that old cop had told him it would so long ago. Adam was signing something on a clipboard as the body was being placed on a gurney. Gordon started to turn away.

Then, his phone rang again.

Biting back a curse, he checked his phone’s screen. It was Evan Doherty. Doherty was the lieutenant on duty when the bombing happened in Downtown. Gordon had conferred with him briefly earlier that day, when the last of the fire trucks had been pulling away from the Muslim Center. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Jim…er, Commissioner.”

Gordon smirked. He’d known Evan Doherty for six years, and neither one of them had gotten used to his new title. “What’s up, Evan?”

“Uh, Daniel and Tim are wrapping up the latest interrogation of that janitor at the Center. His name’s Tariq Hussein. We got a weird story outta this guy, but he’s finally pieced together everything that he claims happened.”

Gordon checked his watch. He still had plenty of time to get home to Barbara, the kids, and a reheated supper. “Hit me with it.”

“Mr. Hussein describes a bomber about six feet in height, wearing a brown jacket and blue jeans, who entered the Muslim Center and pulled out a gun—the way he described it, it sounds like a Glock—and then told him to leave, but not before he said something weird to Tariq. Made him repeat a poem back to him, or something like that.”

Gordon’s ears perked up at that. “A poem?”

“Yeah. Something weird…um…lemme see, I wrote it down here somewhere…oh, c’mon, where the hell…here. Um, let’s see. All right, here goes. You listening?”

“Mm-hm,” he said, standing to one side as the gurney bumped across the wooden planks of the pier. The little body inside bounced with each bump, and Gordon tried not to watch.

“‘I am the god of truth, no one can deny,’” Doherty said. “‘Yet if you master me, on my answers you can rely, On both my incarnations, which are both short and long. And know this, you, In all of history I’ve never been wrong.’” It sounded like he was sliding papers around on his desk. “Took us two hours just to get all of that out of him, but he seems sure that that was the poem he was told. Hussein said he was having trouble remembering, which is understandable if his story’s true. Kinda weird and stupid I know, but to me it sounded like the lyrics to a song, or maybe a verse from the Bible or Koran, talking about god and truth and stuff, but it rhymed a bit too much for that, I think. So I was thinking maybe it’s—”

“A riddle.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. So I did an Internet search for those exact words, and bam! There it is. It’s just some old riddle.” He waited a moment for Gordon’s reaction, and when none came, he said, “The answer is math, by the way.”

Gordon couldn’t speak for a second, because in his hand was a picture of a girl in pigtails blowing soap bubbles that held his attention. He flipped it over, read it, and shook his head. No. No, it’s just coincidence. Gotta be.

“Also, I thought I’d tell you that Angela got back with us on the forensic video analysis of the security camera footage from across the street,” Doherty went on. “She was able to zoom in on an individual fitting the description Hussein gave us, who entered exactly one minute and fifty-seven seconds before the bomb went off. She was able to enlarge, highlight, and perform clarification techniques on the individual, and we just released the photo to some of our journalist friends under confidentiality. One of the journalists actually recognized the guy in the footage, said he’d interviewed him a year back for a piece in the business section of the Gotham Times. His name’s Patrick Tralley, and he’s a real estate broker, a pretty rich guy with only one unpaid parking ticket to his name, so it’s hard to swallow that he would do something like this. He’s got family somewhere, a wife and a daughter, but nobody can seem to find them right now. We’re working on that. But in other news we got results back from the lab as to the explosives used. Definitely Semtex, which is too bad because it’s not exotic enough to trace the sale. Not surprising since it’s usually very hard to detect, but in this amount used we easily found traces…”

Doherty kept going, but Gordon wasn’t listening. At least, not completely. He looked up, found Adam Paxton walking over to him, yawning and signing another clipboard for the mother, who was just being pulled out.

“Yo, what’s up, Commish? You gonna stay on the phone all night or are ya gonna go home to your wife at some point?”

Gordon lowered the phone. “I think I found the missing husband,” he told Adam.

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

* * *

ADAMANT ABOUT NOT being late yet again to supper, and breaking yet another promise to his wife, Jim Gordon drove just above the speed limit, using the flashing bulb and siren still in his car to get him through two traffic lights without having to stop.

He pulled into the parking lot of the police station, which was actually more populated with cars than even on day shift. They had ramped up the third shift, hiring fourteen new cops fresh out of the academy and basically flinging them out onto the street. They had needed those cops on nights, because that’s when Gotham’s underworld really came awake. Gordon had made a push for that, and had gotten it—the single concession that Mayor Walden had given him, just before the other shoe had dropped and Walden used that to justify to city council precisely why there was no more room in the city’s budget for anything else for law enforcement. The mayor had basically said, “I gave you more than a dozen new cops, what else do you want?”

Commissioner Gordon had made a rookie mistake in the world of politics: he had accepted an opponent’s acquiescence too easily, assuming that no other harm could come from it. Gordon swore to himself that he would remember that lesson.

He parked his car in the police chief’s spot (he wasn’t in this time of night) and stepped through the doors of Precinct 15 for the first time in probably two months. Almost at once, he was assailed by calls from familiar faces, some of them he would never forget, some of them he kind of wished he could.

“Yo, Commish! What’s up, boss man?” This from Eddie Gibbons, a guy that had been a rookie under Gordon’s wing just two years ago.

“Hey, it’s the Commish!” shouted big, rotund Rory Horton, stepping out from his office and reading a file in his hands. “Come down from Among High to grace us with his presence! How the hell’ve you been, Jim?”

“Not bad, not bad,” he said, shaking hands briefly. He stepped around Rory’s office and made for the men’s room, as though he had an emergency. “Just passing through the neighborhood on my way home, needed to take a leak is all. How’s things with your son?”

“He’s got one more appointment for chemo, and then they say he’s done.”

“That kid’s strong like his dad.”

“You bet,” Rory said, smiling. “He’s already fired up to get back into baseball again this season. I keep telling him it’ll take some time to get his strength back, but…”

“He’s stubborn like his dad, too, then, eh?” Gordon chuckled.

“Damn skippy.”

Gordon went into the bathroom, waited a few seconds at the sink, and thought about what he was doing. Probably one of the reasons he wasn’t so popular with Mayor Walden was because of what he’d come to Precinct 15 to do tonight. Gordon’s reputation was…unusual. As unusual as Gotham City and its bizarre turn in the last six years. People blamed the bat for a lot of things, and there were those said he was to blame, too, for having facilitated and encouraged the kind of behavior Gotham was coming to be known for.

But what choice did I have? he thought, looking up into the mirror above the sink in the men’s room. Indeed, what choice did he have even now? Gordon had grown up in the streets of Gotham, had gone to college here, had walked a beat here, and had seen its evolution. A strange song of rebellion, which grew more sonorous to Gotham’s criminals each passing year, had also been heard by him. By now, Gordon had developed a sixth sense for these things, and knew when more strangeness was brewing.

It’s in our culture now. It’s Gotham’s culture that’s the problem.

Still, what else could he do? No others took these threats as seriously as Gordon or his “partner” did. They seemed to believe it was a passing fad, and that normalcy and sanity would return any day now. He didn’t want to be cynical, but he just didn’t see that happening. At least, not at anytime soon.

After he’d waited what he gauged was five minutes, Gordon stepped out of the men’s room, slowly at first, looking around. Rory and Eddie were chatting with Homer Garfield over at his desk about something, and the only other person nearby was Patty de Matteo, and she was distracted by a problem with a file cabinet.

Gordon walked briskly down the hallway, not looking guiltily over his shoulder at all, and made his way to the stairwell. He went up three levels to the very top, and then used his old key to get access to the stairs at the end of the hall. As long as they hadn’t changed the locks, he would still be able to get up to the rooftop.

They hadn’t changed the locks, and a ten seconds later he was on top of Precinct 15, looking out over Harold’s Deli across the street, where the best subs in the city could be had and practically made its way in the world by cops alone who opted to save on gas and money in this troubled economy by jogging across the road. Gordon had saved enough money by eating there to probably put his son and daughter through college. Again, he knew this city, and felt his pride and love for it swell.

At the center of the roof was the thing he had come for, and the real reason Mayor Marcellus Walden hated Jim Gordon’s guts since the day he took office.

* * *

GORDON HAD HAD to explain keeping the giant Klieg searchlight around by saying that, since the Batman was a criminal, he had to keep the signal he’d left Gordon as evidence, possibly to be used against the Batman one day when he was finally brought to justice. Gordon had explained that, regrettably, the evidence lockers didn’t currently have space to fit such a large item, so the rooftop would have to suffice for now. So far, that excuse had worked well for him, as did the story that he sometimes used it in the hopes of calling the bat and ensnaring him in a trap, but, regrettably once more, Gordon couldn’t convince the vigilante to come out of hiding. At least, that was his story.

Walden had made it clear he wanted the so-called “bat signal” gone, but so far Gordon had continued to justify using it, at least enough for those who ran Precinct 15, and Walden had to let it slide. After all, if the mayor came down to the police station himself, he might actually have to interact with someone, perhaps the SWAT officers who were demanding better equipment, and, for the moment, those cops had Jim Gordon’s back in anything that pissed City Hall off.

Gordon and the Batman no longer met atop the rooftop of the police precinct. No, that wouldn’t do at all, too many eyes looking for him now, it didn’t make sense. The bat signal now merely contacted Batman and sent the message that Gordon would be waiting at a predetermined meeting place that they had decided on over a year ago, and that, if he could make it, Gordon would be there waiting for him. Batman showed up about half as often as he didn’t, but whenever he did show up they caught up on all that had been going on. The bat signal worked better for their style of communication than did text messaging or e-mails, which could be traced and implicate Gordon someday down the road. Better to keep up the guise that he was still looking for the bat, trying to bring him in, all the while handing over information in exchange for whatever Batman had dug up in his own efforts.

In Gotham City, that was the only way Jim Gordon had found to get anything done.

There was only one way for him to inform Batman that it was absolutely imperative that they meet immediately, and that was to use the signal twice in one night. That was only for emergencies and Gordon had never once been that desperate to meet with him. Tonight was the usual routine. He had no reason to believe anything terrible was about to happen, just a gut feeling and a few interesting pieces of evidence.

Gordon pulled the dusty tarp off of the large, modified Klieg searchlight. It was pointed down, so he aimed it upwards at a little more than a forty-five-degree angle, the hinges squeaking a bit from neglect, and lit it up by pulling the two main switches upward. The large emblem flashed across the sky, the light splashing against the roiling storm clouds that had since settled down, but nevertheless brooded over the entire city. Now that it was lit up, Gordon could spot a crack at the center of the light, which affected the image in the sky only a little. He had repaired it once, after smashing it himself when the hunt was first on for the Batman, when the chase had been at its most heated, but that time had passed now.

The days in Gotham were getting…stranger. Gotham City’s criminals and cops followed their own new set of rules, something that had, incidentally, baffled the minds of the German GSG-9 units when they had come over to swap information with Gotham’s SWAT teams. Special police force units in every part of the world practiced specialized, unique tactics for what they specifically encountered in their own respective cities; GSG-9 had come to know the meaning of the phrase that many Americans had started using in reference to the city: “If it’s in Gotham, it’s nowhere else on Earth.”

His phone rang. Gordon looked at it. It was Barbara. He was now way, way too late to make any more excuses. There would be an argument when he got home, no doubt about it.