CHAPTER 21

A handful of muscle relaxant pills were necessary every six hours to ease the soreness in his joints, ligaments, and muscles. Bruce was laid up in bed, not sleeping, just thinking and resting. Alfred had called up Audrey Lerner, one of the masseuses that Bruce used from time to time to heal muscle and joint pains. Audrey was one of the best in the business, and was therefore expensive, but worth every penny and probably more. Bruce had learned a long time ago just why the best professional fighters had their own private masseuse—his one-man war on crime demanded it, also.

After spending most of the day lying around and doing nothing, Bruce got up to walk about the grounds of Wayne Manor. The sun wasn’t out today, it was overcast but so far no hint of rain. These grounds had once been a place of much joy and play for him and his childhood friends—Rachel Dawes, Jean-Claude Boyd, Tommy Elliot—and they had moved about on countless acres that, to a child, had seemed to go on into infinity. At a little over 109 acres, it usually seemed that way to adults, too.

Random memories passed like ships in the night. He walked a little stiffly, recalling a picnic where he leapt onto the back of George Buschman, an old friend of his father’s, who used to run around fast with little Bruce hanging on, pretending he was flying. George had been a shipping tycoon and very charitable with his money, hence his friendship with Thomas Wayne. He was also an avid smoker, and he died ten years ago of lung cancer. Around the same year George had died, Merle Thornton had been killed in a mountain climbing accident. Bruce remembered Merle being one of his mother’s business associates, an artist who had paintings in galleries all over Gotham, and who often attended the same big picnics and was always ready with a good joke she had heard and logged away for use later. Bruce still used her jokes today whenever entertaining guests.

He walked through the hedge maze, and tried to recall how many times the maze’s path had been altered. When Bruce was little, his father had enjoyed inviting friends and family over ever spring to share in the maze, the old pool, and the acres upon acres of open fields where they had once owned a stable and rode around on horses.

Thunder rolled off in the east, yet still there was no sign of rain. It placed him in an even more brooding mood. It seemed the kind of day for reflection.

All his life, Bruce had been surrounded by movers and shakers of Gotham City and the world. He’d also traveled to a great many places, and had the best tutors money could buy while they journeyed as a family. Those expeditions had left an indelible impression on him, fertilizing an already active imagination. He had had experiences that very few people could relate to, and quite a number that no one on earth could ever share. For whatever reason, thinking about humble George Buschman and the vivacious Merle Thornton brought home everything he had been mulling over. They hadn’t been very exceptional people. Sure, they had owned a business or two in their lifetimes, but none of them ever reached a true titan’s status. Even so, Gotham had been their home, and they had been happy enough in those days that they never seemed to really fear the kind of monsters the city now harbored.

But then, maybe Alfred had been right when he said that this kind of sickness was nothing new, or even exceptional. Maybe Bruce was only looking back through the perfect lens of nostalgia, which was never cracked and always revealed the past in broad, hopeful strokes. Maybe George, Merle, Bruce’s parents, and everyone else at those picnics had just been hiding the ugliness from the children, the way Bruce now pretended to be an oblivious businessman in order to serve one purpose in the daytime, and then pretended to be a maniac on the verge of a killing spree in order to serve another purpose at night.

Had his parents known about the sickness in Gotham? Were they only wearing masks, too? he wondered.

Bruce’s reverie was broken when the sound of approaching footsteps on gravel caught his attention. “Keeping tabs on me, old man?” he said, without turning around.

“Yes, sir,” Alfred said. “I came up to give you your dinner and bring you up to speed on a few things, but you weren’t in your bed. I checked the cave, then called your cell phone, and started to get a little worried. Then, one of the new groundskeepers said he spotted you just milling about out here.”

“Sorry, I just needed some time to think,” he said. “So, what’s up? What do I need to be ‘brought up to speed’ on?”

“Mr. Fox has been trying to reach you,” Alfred said. “He says he’s happy to report that the coordinated effort between the security officers at Wayne Enterprises and the FBI’s tracking experts was a success. They’ve captured all of the hackers, it seems. The leader is a fellow named Lionel Curran, and it seems the FBI has him in custody within the city. He lived just on the outskirts of Gotham.”

Bruce sighed. “Well, that’s good. Maybe we’ll get something out of them that’ll lead us to Nygma.”

“He also said that the FBI and Commissioner Gordon have instructed both you and him not to discuss this with the press just yet.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. They don’t want Nygma knowing that they’ve captured some of his people. They’ll interview the Parasyte people, and then see if they can use them to lure him in.”

The old man looked at him at length. “Master Bruce…” he said, and then hesitated.

An unseasonably cool wind blew between them. He looked at the old man. “What is it?”

“Well, sir…it’s just that…well, you had an experience last night. You very nearly died. You were alone, isolated, and even though Commissioner Gordon came to help you, he wouldn’t have been in time to save you. I’ve been thinking about what you and I talked about a little over a week ago, about your thoughts on quitting.”

Bruce turned away from the maze, and started walking. Alfred fell in step beside him. “So, you’re now having second thoughts?”

“Well, not exactly, sir. I merely wanted to bring it to your attention that Commissioner Gordon cannot be everywhere at once, and neither can these new FBI friends of yours, or Mr. Fox, or any of the other few people you trust. They’re not as mobile as you are, and they don’t know the underworld of Gotham like you do.” Alfred shrugged. “But maybe…maybe you ought to start considering having someone else along with you?”

Bruce smiled. “Are you volunteering to start coming out with me, be my partner?”

“That’s not exactly what I was suggesting, sir,” he said, “but some partner wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“If I did that, Alfred, I would have to bring someone in from the outside, someone that I could absolutely trust with my secret. And they’d have to keep two separate identities going, same as me. That takes a special sort of discipline, Alfred, an uncanny personality capable of balancing it all, and someone extremely committed, athletic, tough of mind, and also relatively young so that they’d be as sharp as I was when I first started training. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but this job isn’t easy. It takes a very special sort to qualify to do what I do.” He shrugged. “There’s a reason I’m the only one doing it.”

“I’m sure you’re right, sir. But you can’t think of anyone who you might trust, at least from time to time, to go out with you and ensure that you don’t get trapped alone again?”

Bruce thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “Not a single name comes to mind. I see what you’re getting at, though, and it would be a great idea if there was someone I could trust, but that just doesn’t seem feasible at this time.”

Alfred nodded. “Well, it was just a thought, sir.”

“Not a bad thought at all. Sometimes, I think you’re thinking about some of this stuff harder than I am, with a much greater long view.”

The old man chuckled. “If I don’t keep you on your toes, then who would?”

“Well, the Riddler’s certainly giving me a run for my money.”

“Patience, sir. I have every confidence in you.”

“Thanks, Alfred,” he said. Then, they paused when they came to the other end of the hedge maze. “I want you to know something. When I was in there, and I didn’t think I was gonna make it, I heard you. I mean, I heard voices, like some of my old instructors, my mother, my father, people who taught me things, and I definitely heard you, too. Maybe I don’t get to say this enough, but I love you, old man. Thank you for…well, for everything. I wouldn’t be who I was without you.”

Alfred smiled, and, for just a moment, it looked as if he were holding back tears, but he maintained his usual stoic yet lighthearted composure and said, “Nor I with you, sir. Nor I.”

Bruce smiled, and then he remembered the reality of their situation. “You know, all of this could be over soon. He knows…everything. We’re not safe. There’s no longer a shroud that covers us. Maybe…maybe you should leave for a while. I know we talked about this, and you already said no, but now things are different. He’s serious about getting to me, Alfred. This man isn’t like the others, he’s armed with a great deal of knowledge about me and about the physics of the world.”

Alfred’s answer was classically him. “For now, Master Bruce, let’s have that dinner. Come along, you must be hungry.”

* * *

THE INTERROGATION DIDN’T start until Sarah Essen arrived. She had been on the phone with Washington all morning, and then she’d been busy talking with other agencies that had helped Interpol throughout the evening: the French DCRI, the Irish G-2, the Brazilian ABIN, and the Japanese Naicho agency, just to name a few.

Gordon was waiting just outside the hotel room where Lionel Curran was being kept. An FBI agent stood guard outside, chit-chatting with him. Inside the room, three agents kept the hacker under watch.

A text from Barbara had just come in. She said her and the kids were still doing fine, and that James, Jr. was asking about him more each day. He texted back, saying he would try to come down for the weekend, but a lot of things were going on here that required his attention, and he didn’t feel comfortable taking a vacation right now, considering what was happening with both the investigation and his reputation. Just that morning, page 3 of the Gotham Informer had included basically a repeat of the story on Police Commissioner James Gordon’s heated exchange with Mayor Walden; the only update was that Gordon still wasn’t commenting to the press, which was true. His avoidance of the press had been recommended by Sarah. “Get used to ignoring them,” she had told him yesterday.

Sarah was also liberal with lots of advice. “You’re a police commissioner now,” she had said, “a person with real power, and I think you’ll find that there are just some people you need to delete from your life if you want to actually accomplish anything.” Sarah didn’t mince words, and, in fact, everything she did exuded this kind of behavior—she certainly seemed like the kind of person now who could drop negative people like a bad habit. “You don’t think the press has written things about me? It rolls off me like water off a duck’s back, Jim. You need to learn how to let the same happen to you. You’re gonna need thick skin in the years ahead.”

Gordon had hoped she wasn’t suggesting his wife should be one of those people he deleted from his life, or especially his kids. He knew that Sarah had had great success in whatever approach she had taken to life, and he was starting to wonder if that was why she was still single. He was also wondering if he kept on like he was, staying committed to attacking Gotham’s foes, would he end up just like her? Would he be alone, with only the job to keep him company?

Is that what it takes to really get things done? Certainly the Batman had to be alone. What woman could tolerate that kind of behavior?

Gordon shook away the thought. He wasn’t ready to give up on his family man plans yet, but he also wasn’t ready to give up on Gotham. Both were important to him, but they both required him to enter separate worlds, to be two different people. If the bat can do it, so can I, he thought. He sent Barbara one last text, one that simply said: I love you.

When Sarah came walking up to him, she said at once, “I heard he pissed himself. Please tell me that happened.”

Gordon snorted, and pointed to the room where Curran was being kept. “Yeah, they gave him a change of pants and underwear. He’s inside. They’re waiting on us.”

She smirked. “Well, what’re we standing out here in the hallway for?”

Inside the room, two agents stood near the only window, while the third was sitting and watching TV beside the suspect, who was cuffed to his chair. On the television, Mayor Walden was at a podium again, talking about developments in the ongoing investigation into the Riddle Killer. He was urging anyone with any knowledge of the killer to come forward with the information, and assured the people of Gotham City that they were safe, that they would survive this nightmare, as they had survived so many others. “You can count on me as your mayor,” he told them. “I will not rest until this dark cloud has passed.”

Gordon shook his head, and opened the room door for Sarah. Lionel Curran sat slumped in his chair, looking pale and sickly. When Gordon and Sarah entered the room, his head snapped up quickly, as though he were expecting a bullet to the back of the head. Sarah looked at one of the agents by the window, and he started moving a table around. The hotel room had two chairs by the window, and he set them up so that they were facing Curran.

“Are either of you my lawyer?” asked the young man. He was just short of thirty years old, but in that moment he looked twelve.

“No,” Sarah said in a flat tone that suggested he wouldn’t be getting any lawyer. She had a file in her hand, and a little black satchel, the contents of which Gordon knew nothing about. “I’m Special Agent Sarah Essen, and this is Police Commissioner James Gordon. Mr. Curran, you’re in a lot of trouble,” she said, getting right to it.

“I…I…” He couldn’t seem to form any plausible defense. Curran was a deer caught in several headlights, and he didn’t know which pair to leap from first. His whole world had come crashing down within the last twenty-four hours, his cloak of anonymity, so valued by black hat hackers like him, was forever lifted now. He was exposed, naked in front of the world, with nothing to cover him up.

Sarah took advantage of his timidity and steamrolled forward. “You used to work for Brison Interior, is that correct?” He didn’t answer, and Sarah didn’t need him to. “You worked on mutating encryption algorithms. You were a real hotshot, doing math-based security, encoding things based on mathematical coding principles.” She shuffled through more papers. “You got fired for unspecified unethical hacking. You kind went quiet for a while. Then you met Lacey Harrison, AKA CoderElite, and together you created Parasyte.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Curran made as if he hadn’t heard. He looked to one of the agents standing nearby, as if seeking some kind of mercy. He’s really freaked out right now, Gordon thought. As he should be.

“You guys have been busy over the last few years. You were very careful, though. You avoided sites using https, and instead went for sites with http, because, well, they’re easier targets, aren’t they? GCPD’s cyber crimes people followed you through numerous websites you set up yourself a few years ago, including genericapps-dot-com, where you created cell phone apps that were free, generic versions of more popular apps, only your apps contained malicious code that allowed you to hack into the phones of the people who bought your apps.

“After that, you guys jumped around a lot. Eventually, you went big-time. You siphoned money from a government funded program that gave more money to states considered at greater risk of terrorist attacks—you helped develop a program that caught the transactions as they were meted out by the organizations the U.S. had trusted to divvy up the funds.”

Curran licked his lips, and shook his head.

Sarah pressed on. “Some of the other stuff you guys have done was bad enough, from identity theft to credit card fraud, but that one is a big one. You defrauded the United States government, Mr. Curran. You’re going to pay for that. Big-time. That means going to Big Boy Jail, understand?”

“You can’t prove any of this,” he said, his voice quavering a little.

“No?” she said, and lifted the black satchel up onto the table. She unzipped it and dumped the contents out. Out poured several portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CD burners, SD chips, and portable video game systems. “Let’s see here,” Sarah said, sorting it all out and arranging it so that it was almost like an evidence display in a courtroom. “Hmmm, now I’ll bet that inside each one of these are backups or project WIPs.” Of course, by WIPs, she meant “works in progress”. A professional black hat made his living off of steady freelance work, and would need various projects ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“You’ve got a lot hidden in these drives and video gaming systems,” Sarah said to the fearful young man. “Lots of encrypted data. Our own white hats tell us it’s encrypted in C-plus-plus computer code, or something like that.” Curran continued looking away. “It’s all utter gibberish, except for the person that has the right cipher, or someone who can crack it. And I assure you, Mr. Curran, we have the best crackers in the world.”

Curran looked down at his lap. “I…I need a lawyer now, please.”

“Later. Right now, I want Nygma.”

“I don’t know that person—”

“Edward Nygma,” Sarah pressed.

“I don’t know that name!”

“Keystrokes, Mr. Curran. Are you forgetting that we can go through your keystrokes and the logs on your computer?” she said. “Mr. Curran—Lionel—you’re not stupid, because you can’t be stupid and accomplish what you’ve accomplished. What you are is too bold. You had nothing to fear because of your anonymity, and you were never stupid. We’re not stupid, either. We went to great lengths to make sure neither you nor your friends knew you were being monitored—we have at our disposal an extensive benign IP base, and our people are terrific at IP spoofing. We listened in on your conversations for quite some time,” she bluffed. They had only been listening in on Parasyte for the past couple of days, yet Gordon was willing to keep quiet and go along with it if it got them what they needed.

“Talk to us, Lionel,” Gordon said.

At first he thought it might be futile. Then, all at once, Curran cracked. “He…he just said it was for some lulz, and to make a statement. He only wanted us to help him upload some of the viruses. He wrote most of the script himself! And he’s good at it. We just did some polishing to better suit our methods for delivery, that’s all. The…the viruses and worms were mostly his creation. He paid good money to have us upload it, though.”

“In what way did he pay?” Sarah asked.

“Transfers to offshore accounts that me and…the others have set up.”

Sarah nodded, and looked at Gordon, who had remained quiet. “Do you have any questions you’d like have clarified on that topic, Jim?”

“Just one question,” he said, looking at Curran. “Why do you do this?”

Curran looked away shyly. “Whattaya mean, man?”

“I mean, why do this? You’re a smart guy, so why not use that brain to help people?”

“Help them do what? Catch guys like me, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

Curran’s countenance changed, and he laughed mirthlessly. It was a surprising sound coming from a guy who’d been on the verge of tears moments before. He’s losing it. “And I suppose that anybody I helped you catch, you’d ask them the same thing, huh? And if they flipped, and started helping you catch other hacktivists, you’d ask those hackers why they weren’t interested in helping catch other hackers. On and on like that, right?” He shook his head in disgust. “You jerks. Without us, you’d be out of a job, just like everybody else in this country. Be thankful you have us.”

“So, what, your criminality is doing us all a public service?”

“Pfffft! Criminality? It’s called hacktivism, you old fossil. Hacktivists stand against the government control of information, and against media outlets that play to the government, pharmaceutical companies, and—”

“You helped a man who killed Patrick Tralley and his entire family,” Gordon said. “You helped Edward Nygma hack into the power plant so that he could hack into a bank to steal a dead man’s money, just so he could make a statement. Only his statement wasn’t for the freedom of information, it was that he’s smarter than everybody else.” Gordon shook his head. “I’m not buying this, son. I’m not buying that—”

“I’m not your son, gramps.”

“And I’m not your gramps, boy,” Gordon said, leaning in. “And I’m not buying that you didn’t know Edward Nygma was the Riddle Killer once you heard about it on TV or the Web. You must’ve started putting two and two together. You had to know because you’re a smart guy.”

“I might’ve suspected, sure, but I had no proof.”

“You could’ve come to us once you suspected.”

“And risk implicating myself in multiple murders?” Curran said. “Or risk bein’ the Riddle Killer’s next victim? Are you stupid?”

“Lionel, look at where you are right now,” the commissioner said, pointing to the agents all around the room. “Look at where your life has gotten you. Now, I’m sure your intentions in the beginning were to be just a ‘hacktivist’, but somewhere along the way you crossed the line. Now, you can undo some of that damage today, and avoid ‘Big Boy Jail’ maybe altogether, if you’ll help us.”

“One of the agents said that you’ve already got all of us,” Curran said. “You’ve got all of Parasyte in custody. What’s left for me to help you with?”

“I think you know.”

Curran sighed. “Nygma.”

“Yeah.”

“That guy’s…he’s another level of crazy, man. He’s gifted in a lotta ways. If he’s the Riddle Killer, how do I know you can protect me?”

“You’ll be in protective custody, under witness protection.” He nodded towards Sarah. “Agent Essen here can help you with that transition.”

“I’ll have to testify eventually, though, right? And face him?”

Gordon shrugged. “Probably.”

“Yeah, well, no offense, but in case you hadn’t noticed, GCPD’s reputation for protecting people while in court isn’t exactly stellar lately.” He was referring to the Joker trial, obviously, and the sad example that Roy Higgens had set. Gordon could sympathize with what Higgens had done, he had wanted swifter justice than the system was allowing, too, for himself and for his dead friends, yet all he had done was given the Joker exactly what he would’ve wanted.

And Higgens is making my life difficult right now with this interrogation. “That won’t happen to you, Lionel,” Gordon said. “You have my word. Besides, what other choice do you have?”

Lionel Curran leaned back in his chair. His right hand was cuffed to the arm of the chair, so he rubbed at his eyes and neck with his left hand. Finally, he looked at both of them and said, “What do you need me to do?”

Sarah took back over. “We need to know how you made exchanges with Nygma.”

“We usually just sent him messages via a fire-and-forget e-mail account,” Curran said. “And as for any modified software, or special code he needed doctored, we left it in an online drop box. But…sometimes we had to drop off serious hardware, or he’d drop some off for us.”

“Did you ever see him in person?”

“No. With Nygma it’s always dead drops.”

Smart of him, Gordon thought. Dead drops are the way I’d go. Then, once Gordon thought about it, it was the way he’d gone with the bat. It was how they swapped information these days. The Riddle Killer was no slouch, the more they knew about him the more sophisticated he appeared to be as a criminal.

Sarah said, “Where did you do these dead drops at?”

“Different places. Usually around Vincefinkel Bridge, on the eastside where the Vauxhall Opera House sits,” Curran said. “There was a place just under the bridge where I was supposed to leave a chalk mark whenever there was something there for him to pick up, and he would leave another one that indicated he’d gotten the package, and he’d leave an e-mail address written on a wall nearby that would tell me where to contact him next time.”

“Did you have any other work you were supposed to do for him at the time we captured you?”

Curran thought for a moment. “No. S’far as I can tell, he was through using Parasyte for the moment.”

“Could you arrange a meeting?” Sarah asked.

“Face-to-face? Probably not.” Then he gave it some more thought. “Although…I might be able to convince him that I’ve got something new and hot for him. He’s always on the lookout for new and unorthodox tech. I occasionally make special drives or augment operating systems so that they help obscure a hack’s origins; that’s one of the services I provide to my clients.”

Gordon nodded. “Could you arrange a meeting to see if he’d be interested in getting one of these devices from you?”

“I dunno, he’s always been pretty cautious. A real paranoid guy, which is why he’s never been caught.”

“Do you know how to contact him to at least try?” Sarah urged.

Curran thought for a moment. Then, he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I can, but…”

“But what?”

The hacker had a look of great dread and reluctance on his face. “To be quite honest, I’m not entirely confident in your ability to keep me alive, Commissioner. No offense,” he snorted, “but I don’t think even witsec can help me here.”

“How come?”

Curran shrugged.

“How come, Lionel?” Sarah said.

He licked his lips. “Something I haven’t told you yet…” He trailed off, then found courage from someplace. “This guy…he’s everywhere. I mean, everywhere. He can be anyplace, anytime, with a click of a button. I mean, he’s sick.”

Gordon nodded. “We know that just by what he did to Theresa Fuller.”

Sarah whispered, “I think he’s trying to say Nygma’s skills are very good. You know, sick.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Gordon wasn’t always up with the lingo of the youth.

“Yeah,” Curran said. “Damn good. I mean, the code he was writing…he could’ve done it all on his own, he just used us to create a little distance between himself and the actual act of uploading it. But he’s like one of those guys at the Black Hat Conference in Vegas that discovered how to remotely open up all the jail cells in a penitentiary at the same time, like the guys who figured out how to open up car doors just by sending a text message. This guy’s skills…are outta this world, man.”

Gordon shook his head. “That’s impossible. Things like penitentiaries can’t be opened just by hacking from your mother’s basement.”

“Actually,” said Sarah. “They can. And quite easily. You’d be amazed what’s accessible with a computer.” She looked back at Curran. “But what’s that got to do with protecting you?”

“Everything, lady! You ever been to a hacker conference? Guys like this walk around with RFID readers and antenna in their backpacks and take credit card info right out of your back pocket! The only counter to that kind of scanning is to have a metal-lined wallet, and how many people got those?” Curran said, looking more desperate. “This kind of hacker, he’s big leagues, way bigger than us. This is that kind of hacker that probably has three dozen different fake IDs, probably stays on the move, has private servers at remote installations, warehouses he rents out in various cities, burns them every month or two and moves on. I’ve seen the sophisticated stuff this guy creates, and so I know he’s gotta have some pretty serious capital—somebody powerful is funding him.” Curran looked away from them in disgust. “With that kind of power behind him, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here—you guys are pressing me, but you gotta understand this guy will monitor everything you guys say and do. Hell, he probably already knows we’ve all been caught!”

Sarah shook his head. “That’s not possible. We’ve kept your capture and that of all your pals out of the press—”

“Doesn’t matter! This guy’s sharp, one of those really, really dangerous hackers! I saw some of the code he wrote—some of them attack a PLC…that’s a programmable logic controller, a networking component. And it’s not like with IT stuff where you can just create a quick patch! I’ve talked to other hackers who’ve dealt with Nygma. This guy’s into communication systems and other stuff that’s important to civilization. He’s everywhere, and the stuff he makes is like Stuxnet’s more evil brother.”

Gordon looked the question at Sarah.

“Stuxnet,” she said, “was a pretty serious virus back in July of 2010. No one knows who created it, but it’s widely considered to be the most sophisticated computer worm ever created, and it infected industrial computers primarily in Iran. Because of coding characteristics, most experts believed that Israel created Stuxnet, but its origins are still unknown. Scary part is, Stuxnet’s code is now freely available on the Internet for anyone to look at, copy, modify, and use to control factories and machinery. Welcome to the computer age.”

“He’ll monitor you every way possible,” Curran said. “And he’ll know I’m helping you.”

“That’s impossible,” Gordon said. “No one can monitor everything all at once.”

Curran chuckled. “You guys really are behind the times, aren’t you?” he said. “Guys like this will do classic ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks, installing their own cell phone towers to intercept your calls before passing them on to the real mobile carrier,” he said. “You’ve got video cameras on almost every street corner these days, and they’re all connected to a central hub and completely hackable.”

Sarah nodded. “Some cities have already seen that kind of problem,” she said. To Gordon, she sounded like she was as concerned as Curran was.

“Yeah, but he won’t stop there. If you’re anywhere near his sphere of surveillance, he’ll be able to monitor file-sharing, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi on any devices you have.”

Gordon thought about how the Riddle Killer had somehow hijacked his radio signal just last night at Parnes Industries. If Nygma was even half as good as Curran was suggesting, then he could see why the young hacker was so worried. Whatever sting operation they set for their unsub, he’d be able to monitor them as long as they used electronic communication. If he was as good as Curran was suggesting. “He won’t get to you,” Gordon said. “I give you my word.”

“In this day and age, Commissioner, you can’t give your word on something like that. Nothing’s safe anymore. Nothing.”

* * *

THE GARBAGE TRUCK was harder to drive than a regular car with a stick shift, Harley was finding out. It turned so slowly, and took such wide turns. Still, she was getting used to it as she practiced again and again in an abandoned basketball court deep in the Bowery, near the same place where she had found the young man willing to sell her the Walther PPK.

She had seen the two garbage men ogling her when they drove by her apartment. They had done this before, when she happened to be outside during their weekly trash toss. Harley didn’t know where the inspiration had come from, but she’d gone with it as soon as it occurred to her.

They were easy to tease, easy to trick. Harley had been amazed at her own power over them. All she had to do was walk outside in a bathrobe, and then wink at them as they drove past. The guy on the back had hopped off to get her trash, which she had pushed to the curb. “Here, let me get that for ya,” he had said. She had removed the eye patch now, her eye had mostly healed, and so she had batted her eyes at him and flirted while he worked. When she asked if there was someplace she could go with them where they could be alone, and where she could show her gratitude for all their hard work, Harley had been surprised that they had both actually taken her up on it. Men are so easy. Her college roommate had taught her that.

“You boys wanna have some fun?” The words had leapt from her mouth before she’d realized she was going to say them. From the flirting to the invitation, it all just happened so easily. A shy girl all her life, it suddenly came so naturally to her. The garbage men, hardly believing their luck, were all too eager to take advantage. Harley had just hopped in the front seat, watching with interest at the twin smiles from the garbage men.

They drove around for twenty minutes, looking for a good spot to have their play with her. They tried to have their fun right there in the front seat. The driver had been the most eager, and had nearly ripped off her robe before she pulled the pistol and fired into his face. The other one had screamed and tried to run, but Harley had taken careful aim and fired at his back before he could get halfway across the little-used and secluded back road where they had taken her. She dragged the bodies into the overgrowth around an old set of tires that someone had left stacked and forgotten, and then drove the garbage truck behind a building that looked like it had once been a car garage.

That night, she slept beside the corpses, pretending that the driver was her Mr. Jay, reaching down to his hand and putting it on her face. It was the best sleep of her life.

The next morning, she woke up and walked around in the woods, basically frolicking like a little girl. It was good to frolic, she decided. She hadn’t done that since, well, since before her father had done what he’d done to her.

Finally, she went back to the bodies, and on another inspiration threw them into the back of the garbage truck, packing garbage on top of them, and drove around the area, getting used driving the big machine. Her lesson in driving a stick shift hadn’t prepared her for the sluggishness of the garbage truck.

Tonight, after finishing with more practice, she hid the truck along the same secluded road where they had taken her to have their play, and walked four blocks before she called for a cab. She found that most cabs wouldn’t come anywhere near the Bowery, so it took about half a dozen calls before she found one that did.

Back at her apartment, she walked naked about her bedroom, naming the ants that crawled out from underneath her fingernails.