Most of the lights in the stairwell were broken. Li Jie climbed the stairs, each footstep echoing off the concrete steps.
The paint had peeled away from the walls, exposing dark gray bricks. Someone had spray-painted "FUCK THE POLICE," then someone else had covered it with white paint, though they had barely bothered to do the job.
The light at the end of the fourth-floor hallway still worked, casting a sickly white glow over the door to apartment D.
He stood outside and listened. Nothing. Then he rested one hand on his holster and knocked with the other.
"GCPD. Anyone home?"
"That's right, Jervis Tetch. I remember that guy. Didn't even come up to my knees. Looked like a hedgehog with an apple on its head."
The middle-aged man behind the desk seemed to remember something funny and burst out laughing. "You know, officer, everyone liked playing harmless little pranks on him back then. That meant... ha ha, we liked him, right?"
"Including you?"
"Oh... heh... I don't really remember. Maybe." The man spread his hands. "Who cares about that stuff?"
"Right. Exactly." Li Jie stared at him and nodded. "Everyone? No exceptions?"
"Of course. Who would want to hang around someone who looked so... uh, wait..."
He frowned, thinking back for a moment. "No, there was one girl. Her name was... what was it? Alice? Right, Alice Dee."
Only his own echo from the far end of the hallway answered Li Jie.
He knocked again, harder this time. Flakes of old paint fluttered down from the doorframe.
"Alice Dee? Are you home? We need to make sure you're safe."
He pressed his ear to the door. A smell seeped through the crack, faint but unmistakably there. He had been a cop in Gotham long enough to know