As they rounded the corner, the road ended abruptly, like a neck brutally severed. At the end of the alley stood a wall of peeling plaster covered in scrawled graffiti.
A dead end.
Li Jie stopped the Patrol Van, tossed the shotgun to Wilson, and leaned lazily against the vehicle with a hand resting on his holster.
Less than a minute later, a gray Ford followed them in. The driver jolted in surprise at the police vehicle parked in the middle of the dead end. Its red lights rotated silently in the shadows, washing the mottled walls in an ominous, bloody glow.
"All right." Li Jie smiled, his eyes turning cold. "Game over. Get out! Keep your hands where I can see them!"
The driver's window slowly lowered, revealing a slightly panicked young face. "Officer? Is something wrong? I... I think I'm lost."
"Lost?" Li Jie walked over, his voice edged with mockery. "You followed us six intersections from Gotham General Hospital, and now you've gotten so lost you followed a police vehicle into a dead end? Hands on the steering wheel!"
He yanked the door open, hauled the driver out, and deftly twisted his arms behind his back before pinning him against the hood. Wilson glanced toward the alley entrance and began searching the car.
"Driver's license... vehicle registration... what's this?"
Wilson lifted a bag and pulled out a white robe. "Why does this look familiar? Is it..."
He tried pulling the white robe over his head. "Doesn't look like the oil-producing kind, does it?"
"Isn't that... isn't that the church we saw the other day?"
"Right, right." Wilson remembered too. "What was it called, the Eternal Church? I knew something was off when they claimed they were doing charity work that day. That bread looked fucking awful."
"Talk.