GCPD Meeting, Batman's Deduction

Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) headquarters had never been so busy.

Telephones rang like strings of firecrackers, one after another, without pause.

Uniformed officers with coffee in hand and dark circles under their eyes raced through the corridors, knocking over files and spilling both drinks and what little hope they had left.

"Report! Maroni's and Falcone's crews are fighting in the south! Eight dead so far!"

"Fuck! Black Mask's men have made their move in the west! They're trying to take Penguin's casino!"

"The Tax Bureau called! They want to know if we arrested God, because who else could dig up decades of Penguin's dirty books overnight?"

Commissioner James Gordon stood in his office, feeling as though two electric drills were boring into his temples.

The whiteboard before him was covered in arrows and question marks. Every lead tangled with the others like a ball of yarn a cat had played with, and all of them pointed to one enormous blank space.

Penguin had fallen.

For more than twenty years, he had festered in Gotham's underworld. Overnight, someone had cut him out with surgical precision.

And with that enormous power vacuum, Gotham's entire underworld had gone mad.

"Meeting. Now!"

Gordon grabbed his coat and strode into the smoke-filled conference room.

His captains sat there looking as though their fathers had just died.

"Let's hear it. What leads do we have?" Gordon's voice was hoarse.

"Commissioner, I think Falcone did it. He's the only one with the means and the motive," said a potbellied captain.

"Bullshit!" another captain shot back. "That old fox Falcone only works from the shadows. Something on this scale is more Maroni's style!"

"Could it be a new outfit from outside the city?"

"Come on. Who'd dare come to Gotham and take a bite?"

The conference room erupted into arguments. Everyone attacked everyone else with gut feelings and prejudices, but no one had a scrap of solid evidence.

Gordon wearily rubbed the space between his brows. His headache was getting worse.

He knew this group would never find the answer.

He waved the meeting to a close, then trudged alone toward the roof.

At some point, a cold rain had begun to fall again.

Gordon walked to the edge of the roof and lit the pipe he always carried.

He looked down at the city in chaos. Red and blue police lights flashed through the darkness like wounds bleeding in vain.

He took a deep pull on his pipe, then turned toward the enormous searchlight.

He reached out, hesitated for a moment, and finally pressed the switch.

Hum—

A massive beam pierced the rain, casting a huge bat symbol with pointed ears against the gloomy sky.

Gordon leaned against the searchlight's cold metal housing and waited in silence.

He did not know how long he stood there. Perhaps a minute. Perhaps a century.

When he turned again, a black shadow, immense as a mountain, stood silently behind him.

"Good evening, Jim."

Batman's voice was colder than a Gotham winter night.

"You've seen it." Gordon did not look back. He merely pointed at the city below. "Penguin's down, and now every mad dog in the city is off its leash."

"I've seen it." Batman stepped beside him, and together they looked out over the city of crime.

"We can't find a single lead." Frustration filled Gordon's voice. "The scene was cleaned up. The IP addresses behind the financial attack came from dozens of different countries. This wasn't a gang war. It was... a war."

"No," Batman said. "It wasn't a war. It was an execution."

Gordon froze and turned to him.

"What have you found?"

"This wasn't Falcone or Maroni," Batman said, his voice carrying the weight of a verdict. "They use shotguns and explosives. Whoever did this used a scalpel."

He paused, then continued. "First, a diversion: multiple fires in the west drew away the bulk of Penguin's forces. Then the foundation was pulled out from under him: hacking methods we still don't understand brought down his financial empire. Only then came the final strike. Whoever did this dragged him off his throne in front of Gotham's elite."

A chill ran through Gordon.

His officers had examined those details too, but none of them had linked them into a chain of reasoning as clear as Batman's.

"That approach..." Gordon suddenly remembered something. "I've seen it somewhere before."

"Arkham," Batman said for him.

Gordon's pupils contracted.

"That unprecedented mass breakout!"

"Exactly." Batman's tone grew graver. "The same flawless diversion. The same precise exploitation of fear and human nature. The same deep understanding of security flaws. The same person was behind both events."

"Harley Quinn?" Gordon asked instinctively.

"She doesn't have the mind for it," Batman said flatly. "It was the man who escaped with her. Link."

Link.

The name pierced Gordon's thoughts like a needle.

A ghost who had appeared out of nowhere, with a file that was completely blank.

"What does he want?" Gordon's throat felt dry. "He's already brought down Penguin. Why throw all of Gotham into chaos too?"

"He isn't trying to plunge Gotham into chaos." Batman turned, his black cape snapping in the wind. "He's using this chaos to tell everyone the old rules no longer apply."

"He's reshuffling the deck."

"A new criminal has stepped onto Gotham's stage. We know nothing about him, except that he is highly intelligent and frighteningly capable."

Batman's voice held a gravity Gordon had never heard from him before.

"He's harder to predict than Joker, smarter than Riddler, and understands tactics better than Bane. Jim, we're in serious trouble."

With that, Batman's figure melted into the darkness behind him like a drop of ink and vanished.

Commissioner Gordon stood alone in the cold rain, watching the bat symbol in the sky disappear beneath the gathering clouds. For a long time, he said nothing.