SHINING BRIGHTLY IN THE DARK

By Jason McDonald

Early Evening
Lower East Side
A Non-Descript Apartment

After a long day’s work, Margaret Pye closed the door behind her, and simply collapsed on the sofa. The middle-aged woman closed her bloodshot eyes and sighed, curling up with the pillow, enjoying the release of her overly-tensed muscles.

It had been difficult, to say the least, not to be tempted by any of the jewelry from the little niche store she was now working at. Baubles and Trinkets, a small mom-and-pop place off of Thirteenth Street, specializing in homemade jewelry. All kinds of quartz and ruby trinkets, handmade necklaces and bracelets in very eclectic shapes and colors and sizes. The elderly couple who owned the store had hand-polished every single item on the racks, and Margaret had been mesmerized about how pretty and shiny all the jeweled wonders were.

Pretty and shiny. Pretty and shiny.

Margaret began to drool slightly at the sides of her mouth. She scolded herself suddenly, opening her eyes and wiping away the saliva. Quickly, she sat up on the sofa and yanked out a pack of cigarettes from her purse on the tabletop. She pulled out the lighter and lit one up, her hands still shaking as she concentrated on her breathing.

The ex-prisoner remembered the rehabilitation facility she’d been sent to, following her prolonged stay at Arkham Asylum. Margaret smiled warmly, remembering how understanding the lead psychiatrist on Margaret’s case had been concerning her illness, which happened to be a fanatical addiction to bright and shiny objects that lead to a somewhat prominent career as a deadly jewel thief. Her reign of terror came to an abrupt end after her last untimely meeting with the Batman, of course.

Madelyn Van Buren – the psychiatrist in question – had helped Margaret understand the complexities of her illness, and how that total, all-consuming obsession stemmed from herfather. He’d called Margaret his little Magpie, and she couldn’t help but remember how safe and loved she felt whenever he pulled out his book of fairy tales and read to her. The Bejeweled Princess was her favorite – a tale of a peasant girl who became a princess, after meeting and marrying a charming prince who went on to buy her all the baubles and treasures of the kingdom. It was a silly children’s tale, but it always held a warm place in Margaret’s heart.

Throughout all the robberies she committed, all the time she’d served in Arkham Asylum and all the therapy sessions at the clinic, she’d still managed to hold onto that simple book of fairy tales. Miss Van Buren had said that the theft of the jewelry was not so much about the jewelry itself, as it was about holding onto a piece of her past. About going back to a time when everything was simpler, a time when she was innocent.

A time before her father had walked out on her mother, leaving Margaret and her to fend for themselves. A time before her mother spiraled into addiction, and Margaret had to spend her teenage years pulling needles out of her mother’s arms, and wondering what tricks her mother was turning on a daily basis to keep a roof over their heads. A time before the policemen came to the door instead of her mother, and told the teenaged girl that nothing could ever be set right again.

The diamonds, glittering in their showcases, were merely symbols of the simpler times. Miss Van Buren had helped her to let go of the past, and to accept that bad things sometimes happen to even the best of families, and the healthy thing is to move on and deal with the loss. The diamonds, the necklaces, the jewelry were all things holding her back, she’d said.

Margaret knew all these things, but it hadn’t made the day any easier. All that jewelry in those cases had been calling out to her, and she almost had heard her father’s voice speak to her from within the sparkling bracelet in the counter by the register. The purple one, with shining blue charms dangling from the sides, shaped in a beautiful pattern that made her daydream of the brilliant heists she’d once staged.

Pretty and shiny. Pretty and shiny.

She shook the thought from her head. Margaret knew she was better now, cured of her illness. Finally, now that she was firmly on the road to recovery, she was ready to take responsibility for her actions and start living a better life. The letter in the mail had been an omen – a Help Wanted ad for the tiny shop as a second-shift cashier. Margaret wondered who slipped that letter inside her mailbox. She’d only been renting the apartment for a few weeks now. Nevertheless, regardless of how it happened, Margaret knew it was her chance to prove how far she’d come since her days as a master jewel thief.

Why, it would have been only two short years ago that the thought of lifting every last shiny, pretty item of jewelry from that small, defenseless shop would have made her mouth water. The thought of lying in that pile of pretty and shiny things, reveling in how they made her feel would have been nothing short of overwhelming.

Pretty and shiny. Pretty and shiny.

Margaret suddenly realized how hard she had been breathing, and how flush her cheeks were getting. She breathed out, steadying her pulse and hugging herself in a desperate attempt to calm her shaky arms.

Water, she thought to herself. I need a glass of water.

She crushed the cigarette out into the ashtray, adding another one atop the growing pile, and walked quickly toward the sink. Turning on the faucet to wash her hands, she thought she saw a flash of something blue and purple.

Margaret gulped at the glass, quickly washing away the indecent thoughts. The villain-turned-cashier knew it would be difficult to avoid the temptation, but she was proud of herself. Three weeks of working at the jewelry shop, and she still had locked up every last jewel in the cases and had avoided all the shiny, dangling trinkets that kept calling out to her. Like every night, she’d meticulously taken inventory and made sure that everything was in its place before closing up shop.

The brunette sighed. She had been trying to shake this addiction and get better for so long now, and felt safe in the knowledge that she’d not been tempted to go back to her dark ways. She felt safe, knowing that she was finally free.

Pretty. Shiny. Pretty. Shiny.

Margaret took another sip, and didn’t notice the purple bracelet hanging from her wrist, with shining blue charms dangling from the sides. Instead, she made her way to the bedroom, laid herself down and turned out the light, dreaming in the dark silence about simpler times, and days gone by.

Upper East End
The Romeo Palace
Seven O’Clock Sharp

The noise was the first thing Bruce noticed. The crowd was certainly excitable tonight.

Bruce Wayne – one of the most well-known playboy philanthropists in the den of sin that was Gotham City – stepped out of the limousine and was quickly greeted with the flash and clicks of nearly two dozen photographers. The excited guests and ravenous paparazzi were just barely held in check by the thick burgundy rope barriers and the colossal brick walls which were only sometimes known as the Romeo Palace’s fleet of burly bouncers. Bruce noted with interest as the crowd surged in his presence, raising his eyebrow and showing a winning smile that was sure to end up in the papers by the morning.

The playboy billionaire had made no secret that he was back, and wanted to do his public reappearance in style. The Romeo Palace, one of Gotham’s most exclusive night lounges, was exactly the kind of place to do it. It swallowed three blocks of the city and regularly featured socialites of the highest classes. Business executives, CEO’s, millionaires, lawyers, actresses, models and even movie stars were housed inside the massive marble building. Bruce Wayne had thought he saw Bruce Willis dining there once, and the embarrassing conversation that had resulted from the meeting was still one of the stories Bruce Wayne regularly told to this day.

The front of the lounge sported a massive statue of Atlas holding a colossal sphere which simply spelled “ROMEO” in a digital frenzy of optical illusions and blinking lights along its globed surface. Inside were several dance floors and dining halls, all of which sported statues of different Greco-Roman gods and goddesses and were decorated with a bizarre hybrid of Roman architecture and art deco influences. Only the richest of the rich tended to get behind the barrier of burly musclemen who guarded the night lounge so vigorously. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, slipped by with nothing but a wave and his winning smile.

The top floor was even more exclusive than the bottom floor, and no one was admitted without a reservation, weeks in advance. It was a hard and fast rule of the night lounge which Bruce simply waltzed by, patting down his crisp one thousand dollar tuxedo and sitting down at the most lavish table in the room – which happened to be the single open table, saved solely for him. The playboy watched all the eyes in the room zoom in on him for a brief moment. On days such as this, owning a place like the Romeo Palace had its perks.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t the attention of the crowd that Bruce Wayne sought today. After all, the excitement downstairs was more than enough to help cement his image once again as Gotham City’s sweetheart and publicize his return. Amidst the madness and mayhem of the lounge, the billionaire had only one thought on his mind.

TAP.

TAP.

TAP.

TAP.

He heard the echoing tap-tap of high stilettos sound off against the pristine marble floor, and brought his eyes up to a sight more beautiful than the hand-crafted statues or the lush, ornamental waterfall fountains that surrounded him and all the other guests of the executive suite.

His eyes focused on her elegant red dress first, tightly hugging her every sensual curve save one long slit down the side that showed off her heavenly legs. Bruce’s eyes traveled up across her shapely hips, were bedazzled by the sequins studded across the top of the strapless dress, and settled briefly on her ruby necklace, its pattern elaborate beyond reason or description and yet somehow perfect for this evening in particular. The deep red of the ruby necklace matched her dark red lipstick, beautifully outlining her well-practiced pout. His eyes weaved in and out of her fiery red hair, which fell across her shoulders playfully, curling up in all the right places. Her smile, her skin – so soft and tempting – even from across the room. Everything about her was absolutely stunning.

Nevertheless, it was her eyes that did him in.

Those gorgeous eyes that sparkled in the lights, and seemed to stare directly into the billionaire playboy’s heart, the intensity of her gaze almost overwhelming. Those eyes, he could tell, were hiding a dangerous, wild side that he couldn’t wait to uncover. He’d seen many, many wonderful, lovely women over the years, but few could take his breath away like she could.

“Veronica,” Bruce Wayne smiled, standing up as the supermodel approached him with a slight smirk.

“Bruce,” Veronica Lavigne purred in her seductive Russian accent, playfully tapping her finger against her chin in thought. “So this is what you meant by intimate conversationover dinner?”

The billionaire playboy looked around their loud, gaudy surroundings and smirked. “Of course. I hold all my intimate conversations here.”

He walked over to the other side of the table and held out her chair as the smiling model sat down, placing her designer purse upon the table. As Bruce sat back down, Veronica leaned in across the table, lowering her voice and pointing towards the left with her sparkling eyes.

“You realize that those two people over there are taking pictures of us on their camera phones,” she said. “With them and the reporters outside, we’re probably all over the internet by now, and all we’ve done is sit down.”

“A very successful start to a conversation I’d say. We should be very proud of ourselves.”

“Bruce, you are absolutely ridiculous!” Veronica laughed, rolling her eyes.

Bruce thanked the waiter as he delivered two martinis to the table, and set the menus down on the side. Bringing his attention back to Veronica, he smirked and winked.

“Perhaps, but it is a ridiculousness you thoroughly enjoy.”

“I plead the fifth,” she said, retreating with a small sip of the delicious mixture. She cleared her throat. “In all seriousness, Bruce, why did you not call me back? It has been nearly two weeks, and I’d heard nary a word, save from your very polite and patient butler.”

“You should see him when I throw dinner parties,” Bruce chuckled. “He has the patience of a saint.”

Bruce took a sip of his own glass as Veronica leveled her eyes at him.

“However, he has been wonderful throughout this whole thing. Alfred might have told you that I had a nasty case of the flu for the past two weeks?”

Here’s where the lying starts, Bruce thought to himself bitterly. The red-haired beauty nodded, and Bruce noticed her brow imperceptibly furrow with concern. Bruce pursed his lips and clenched his teeth. The lies were the price he promised himself he’d pay, so that the Batman could continue to fight crime in the dark city. It was necessary in times like these, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“I’m afraid it was much worse than that. A new strain of the West Nile virus.”

“My God!” Veronica covered her mouth.

“Yes. I think I picked it up in during my visit to Cairo some weeks before. I had to be air-lifted to a hospital in Prague where they’d developed a treatment. There have only been a few cases in the States like mine, which happened to be highly-resistant to any of the vaccines we have here. However, there have been more outbreaks overseas and as such, they have a better understanding of how to cure this particular strain and deal with the specific symptoms.”

“I told you that trip to Cairo would be the death of you, did I not?” Veronica chided him.

“Don’t worry, I’m okay now,” Bruce said. “I just didn’t want you to see me or hear me in the state I was in. Alfred was so worried, and told me I had been extremely delirious and incoherent, rambling and paranoid for days. In fact, there are two or three entire days where I don’t remember anything at all. Three days, gone like that. After the fever broke, all I can remember is waking up in the hospital with a host of feeding tubes and needles in my arms. It was – it just wasn’t good all around.”

“I understand,” Veronica said with a small frown. She reached across the table with her delicate fingers and slipped her hands into his, staring into his eyes with a look of hurt. “I just wish I knew what was going on, that’s all. You know that I would have understood.”

“I know,” Bruce hung his head and heaved a heavy sigh. “I told Alfred not to mention the West Nile, and that I would explain everything to you after I’d recovered. Besides, my illness would have just been a distraction for you. After all, you did have that photo shoot last week in the Bahamas for your spread in . . .”

“Vogue,” she completed his thought quickly. “That’s a sweet thought, but you forget, I am a professional. Keeping my composure, despite any matters in my personal life, is perhaps ninety percent of my job.

She paused.

“You treat me like some delicate flower to be protected. You forget, I’m Russian. I grew up in the harshest of winters, and fought my way from the bottom of the food chain to where I am today. I can take whatever you throw at me, Mister Bruce Wayne.”

She smiled, and he tried not to admit to himself how much it warmed his heart.

“Besides,” she continued. “Delicate flowers would not survive our harsh climate.”

They laughed as the impeccably-dressed waiter brought two Caesar salads to the table, laying each platter in front of the couple with a practiced ease that made Bruce think of Alfred. Bruce and Veronica placed their napkins upon their laps.

“So how was the Bahamas, anyway?”

Veronica laughed, knowing he’d waited until she had a full load of food in her mouth to ask the question, just to drive her nuts. He sat there with his head resting on his hands, innocently waiting for her to finish with the lettuce as she glared at the mischievous smirk on his face.

She pointed the fork at him, and smirked. “The Bahamas, my dear, were a delight. Especially the freak thunderstorm that swept the entire beach, mid-shoot. Oh, do I have a story to tell you about that . . .”

The rest of their dinner was light, filled with witty banter and hearty laughter, and the uncertainty of the last few weeks simply faded away as the two slipped into familiar patterns amidst the glitter and the glamour adorning every last square inch of the Romeo Palace.

Several Nights Later
The Murdoch District – Levinex Towers
Overlooking the Fifteenth Floor

Amidst the glittering spires of the uptown Murdoch District high rises, a dark silhouette sat silently in the shadows of a lonely rooftop overlooking the towers. The shadowed figure peered across, looking at more than just the glitz and the glamour of the towers that lit up the night sky. Behind him, his jet-black cape swirled psychotically in the heavy breeze like a rabid, schizophrenic animal. His cape’s fanatic movements in the winds perfectly reflected the rage building inside his dark heart as he bore witness to an atrocity in the making. He pressed a button on the side of his night vision goggles, and the view zoomed in, crossing the distance between the two buildings, into the open bay windows of the tower’s fifteenth floor. Silently, the Batman watched the scene before him in dark hues of jade light.

The bay windows displayed the wide open living space of Apartment 1510 – a lavish, luxurious suite which happened to be the current stomping grounds of Atticus Martin. As a senior manager and partner at Templeton Technology, one of several legacy IT firms located right in the middle of the Murdoch District, Martin was a figure to be respected. The man called Bruce Wayne had dealings with him and Templeton Technology several times in recent years. Just a few weeks ago, when the firm was called to assist with Wayne Enterprises’ chronic networking difficulties, Martin invited Wayne on a golfing trip to discuss an exclusive partnership with Templeton. An offer which Bruce had politely declined.

From his silent vantage point, Batman watched Atticus, typically an impeccably-dressed professional, being dragged from his bedroom in his underwear. He had duct tape over his hands and mouth and was missing the girdle he usually wore to conceal his ever-expanding girth. Clearly disheveled, he could see evidence of a physical confrontation all over the poor man’s face which had not ended in Atticus’ favor.

The frenzied maniac who was dragging Atticus out of bed at gunpoint was Paul Finch. Paul had recently been laid off from Templeton Technology in the midst of a particularly-nasty bout of corporate downsizing. Paul had been clearly perturbed about this state of events – as his previous victims would have attested to, had they still been among the living. Batman had done his homework – Paul Finch had been a very busy man in the past week and a half. It had taken the Batman until tonight to discover the link between the murders, and trace the patterns of the killings down to this particular individual. Thus, tonight was the night that Paul Finch was going to be brought down. Hard.

Batman had been following the gunman throughout the night. He could have nabbed him at any point since then. Were this only about bringing this one man in particular to justice and avenging the victims of the previous few nights, he certainly would have.

Tonight was about far more than that, if the Batman had his way.

The dark figure unlatched his grappling hook from his belt and gripped the trigger in his hand, calculating the wind speed and the distance he was from the window as he watched the killer throw his intended victim onto his knees and presumably ordered him to stay right where he was.

Doing this right in front of an open bay window, Mr. Finch? Batman thought to himself as he armed the grappler gun and pointed at the building across from him. Rookie mistake. Giving me all the time in the world . . .

Paul turned his back to the window, certainly addressing something to the darkness behind him as his movements became more and more animated, filled with a righteous anger. Batman didn’t need to know what he was saying – he’d heard this speech before. Or at least several variations of it.

Three separate times, in three separate videos. All uploaded to one despicable, disgusting, vile foulness that should never have become a website. It was a pit from hell, a digital Pandora’s Box where amateur murderers all across the globe had come to upload their murder videos, leave comments on each other’s brutal slayings and offer helpful hints to evade the boot heels of justice.

The name of the website was Zsaszed.com. It was the lasting legacy of a professional murderer by the name of Victor Zsasz and his nascent accomplice, Nemina Verde.

That was tonight’s enemy. Not just the lone madman with a gun.

A low, bestial, guttural growl escaped the dark knight’s throat as he fired the grappling cable and soared through the distance that separated the two buildings. His muscles surged beneath his costume and he gritted his teeth as he crashed directly through the bay window, just as the would-be killer began to point his gun at the badly-injured Atticus. Paul Finch didn’t even have time to gasp as two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and kevlar-weave batsuit crashed into the softest parts of his stomach, doubling him over like a broken heavyweight boxer at the final blow of a title fight.

Landing on his feet like a champion gymnast, the Batman untied the roughed-up Atticus and pulled the duct tape from his mouth, eliciting a sudden shriek from the would-be victim. The shriek, however, wasn’t from the pain of the ripping duct tape.

“Jesus . . . Jesus Christ, you’re the . . . you’re…” Atticus stammered in terror.

The dark knight leveled his eyes at the man. He spoke with a voice of tempered steel. “Go into the next room. Call the police. I’m not finished with this one yet.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, sure. You got it.” Atticus nodded compulsively and compliantly as he darted into the next room, rubbing his mouth where the duct tape had been pulled off from. Before he shut the door behind him, he leaned out and half-smiled at the dark knight. “Thanks for saving my life, Batman. You’re alright.”

Batman responded with a grunt and listened to the door shut behind Atticus as he turned his attention back to the broken man in front of him. Paul Finch was still laying on the floor, staring at the dark knight with a palpable terror in his eyes.

The angry silhouette glared at the murderer, rather than the video camera which Paul had set up earlier to record what would have been his fourth murder. The very same video camera that was still currently feeding live images of everything occurring inside the apartment directly to the despicable website. Instead, the dark knight merely kept his gaze locked upon the killer, and suddenly cut through the hushed silence with a voice that bored straight into the man’s soul.

“Paul Edward Finch,” the dark knight bellowed, making sure his grating voice could be picked up clearly through the speakers. “You thought that wearing a black suit and a black facemask could conceal your identity. You thought wrong.”

Batman kneeled over next to the terrified man and ripped off his mask, revealing his true face for the cameras. The dark knight kept his gaze on the killer, and reveled in his terror as he held the mask up for the world to see. “This might conceal your identity, but it doesn’t mask your ISP address. The one that you uploaded your disgusting videos with. Half an hour was all I ever needed to find you.”

An exaggeration. It had taken a bit longer than that, but the viewers didn’t need to know such details.

“Paul Edward Finch. Twenty-nine. Divorced, father of two. Former employee of Templeton Technology. Programmer, turned corporate downsizing victim, turned murderer.”

“They cut me out like I was nothing,” Paul wept, feeling the pain from the earlier impact as he laid curled up on the floor. His voice swelled with anger as the painful memories resurfaced. “Just like my no-good cheating wife. I was their best programmer, goddammit – those rat bastards –!”

In the blink of an eye, a dark metal object dug itself deep into the wall just inches about Paul Finch’s scalp. Paul hadn’t even seen the dark knight move. Looking at the batarang, the trembling killer wisely truncated his outburst, kept silent, and cradled his stomach as the moving black shape before him continued.

“Catherine Bates. Thirty-four. Married, mother of four. That was the co-worker you slaughtered two nights ago. Ned Hoffman. Sixty-five. Father of three, grandfather of one. He was the junior project manager who you executed yesterday. Forest Yates. Forty-one. Re-married, step-father of two, father of one. You took their lives like they were nothing. Tell me, what will your children think of you, now that they know their father is a cold-blooded killer? What will they think of you, when you tell them of all the other children whose parents you robbed from them?”

Batman’s voice descended into a furious growl as Paul Finch began to weep. The dark knight detective turned his attention away from Paul and turned to face the camera, which was still-rolling.

Batman strode over to Paul and pulled him to his feet, displaying his sobbing face to the camera. Tensing his jaw, the Batman stared into the camera and directed his words to the hearts of the viewers.

“Look at this man. This is what you are watching. This is the kind of person you idolize by tuning into these broadcasts. A weak, pathetic man performing weak, pathetic acts, because he is too afraid to rise up to the challenge and face the world around him. This is all a murderer is when his tools are taken away from him. This is a murderer’s nature, stripped down to the core. This is the true strength they possess. I ask you: Is this what you idolize? Is this what you want to be?”

The dark knight released Paul from his iron grip, letting the murderer drop to his knees as the Batman stood over him, his cape swirling calmly in the wind. The quiet sounds of sobbing filled the room as the camera continued to record with a steady, dispassionate gaze.

Gotham City Police Department
The Rooftop and the Batsignal
Sometime After

Unseen by Commissioner James Gordon, the dark knight detective landed silently on the rooftop, with the speed and grace of a samurai. He crept closer to the police commissioner, letting his cape ride wild on the wind.

“Jim.”

Gordon’s back tensed up, and quickly relaxed as he pulled his cigar from his mouth and stomped it out onto the dusty rooftop, circling around to face his longtime partner.

“I wanted to thank you for staying with Finch until my men got to the scene,” Gordon said as he adjusted his glasses and placed his hands on his hips. “We’ve got that sick killer locked down and under suicide watch now. He’s been weeping inside that cell ever since he was processed, so we figured that it might become an option for him.”

“Good idea.”

The dark knight glared into the police chief’s wizened face as Gordon smiled. “Site viewership has dropped by half since you exposed Paul Finch for the coward he is. Several killers with videos on the site have given themselves up to the police in their areas, rather than risk meeting you. Others seem to have gone to counseling – to get themselves help rather than risk becoming what Finch became. You’ve made quite an impression since your ‘coming out’ party on Zsaszed.com.”

“It’s a start.” Batman grunted, walking toward the edge of the roof and peering off into the abyss. The silence hung in the air for a beat, and Gordon began to step forward before he heard a different tone emanate from the dark knight. “I have to admit something to you, Jim. I was tempted to make him pay for those crimes, for all those families he destroyed. Sorely tempted.”

“I read the files too, Batman. I know how you feel.” Gordon walked over to the edge beside the Batman, staring off into the darkness. “Don’t worry, when we’re through with him, he’ll wish he’d answered to you instead of the courts. He’ll answer for all those murders, all the families he’s destroyed, and more.”

“I know he will.” Gordon was one of the few people who could hear the regret in Batman’s low, gravelly voice. The same bittersweet regret he himself had felt so many times in so many similar murder cases across so very many years. He heard the leather in the caped crusader’s gauntlet tighten as it was balled into a mighty fist, and Gordon knew the helplessness swimming inside the man’s heart. Knowing a criminal was behind bars did little to ease the pain of the innocent families left in his wake. Gordon sighed heavily, and shook his head.

The commissioner put his hand on the dark knight’s shoulder. “I know you feel for them, old friend, but you know as well as I do that beating Paul senseless wouldn’t have brought those he’d slain back to life. Besides, if you’d been the one to make him pay instead of the courts, it might be you I’d have to drag in there, right alongside Mr. Finch. Assault and battery of an unarmed man is one of those things the courts don’t look too lightly on, if I recall correctly. Especially when a website records it and transmits the video feed across the globe. Body of evidence, and all that.”

Gordon almost saw a smile etch its way onto the Batman’s stony facade, but after blinking his eyes a few times, the commissioner was sure he was imagining things. With a chuckle, the police chief strode over to the Batsignal and tapped on the face of it. “Knowing you’re out there, keeping the criminals scared – it’s what this city needs and you know it. The courts can deal with the rest.”

Before the Batman could speak, James Gordon pulled out another cigar and lit the match, drawing in the thick taste of tobacco into his chest and breathing a tuft of smoke out through his nose. He turned his gaze toward Gotham’s skyline. “On a different note, there have been some suspicious fires recently that you may not know about. At the–”

“–Old Gallagher Motel building, before it moved up north?” Batman completed the commissioner’s thought. James Gordon raised an eyebrow.

“Hmph. Of course you know, don’t you?”

The Batman replied with a slight smirk.

“The investigations have revealed signs of arson. Apparently, the areas were covered in gasoline before they were ignited. Most of the fires have centered on the Lower East Side.”

“I’ll check it out.”

“Good,” Gordon harrumphed, taking a hard drag off his cigar. “The last thing this city needs is . . .”

He turned around, greeted only by the whisper of a chill breeze before him. He sighed, and shook his head. Turning away from the spot where the Batman had stood just moments ago, Commissioner Gordon gazed up into the expansive blackness of the night sky and sighed.

The Next Day
Wayne Enterprises
Chief Executive Office.

Turning away from the heap of reports and requisitions lining his mahogany desk, Bruce Wayne gazed up toward the rather frazzled woman before him and sighed. Madelyn Van Buren, head psychiatrist at the Wayne Foundation Clinic for the Emotionally Troubled, had just stormed into his office, breezing past his beleaguered secretary with a practiced ease. The slender, grey-haired woman had cut a line straight through the chill air of his lavish office like a woman possessed, storming across the expanse, digging her heels through plush carpet in her trailblazing pathway to the lavish desk. Slamming several case files on Bruce’s well-ordered desktop and almost toppling over his lightweight computer screen in the process, the psychiatrist addressed the CEO of Wayne Enterprises with a manic fervor that bordered on hysteria.

“Mr. Wayne, I would like to have words with you!”

Bruce Wayne raised his eyebrows as his secretary came in right behind her apologetically. “Mr. Wayne, she just flew right by me! I tried to tell her she needed an appointment, and that you were very busy, but she just wouldn’t–!”

Bruce smiled back at the poor woman and held up a hand to try and calm her down. “Don’t worry, Dorothy, everything’s just fine. I’ll take care of this. Hold my calls, would you?”

“Yes, sir!” Dorothy Hines smiled and excused herself quickly, shutting the door with nary a peep as Madelyn turned back towards the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, furrowing her brow with a mild impatience.

Bruce simply looked up at her and flashed his well-practiced smile. “Miss Van Buren? Please, do come in. I’ve just had new carpet laid down so please, tread lightly.” He gestured to the deep impressions Madelyn’s flat heels had left in her wake.

Madelyn crossed her arms, less-than-amused. “Mr. Wayne, you know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t an emergency.”

“Of course I do,” the Wayne Enterprises CEO said, thumbing through the large cluster of files Madelyn had placed on his desk. “You know how important the clinic is to me. I know how much good you do for Gotham City, by helping those patients transition into a safe, normal life. I’m all ears.”

“Burt Weston and Margaret Pye have both checked out of my facility!”

A flutter of bat’s wings sounded off in the darker parts of Bruce’s Wayne’s mind. The gears began to turn and tumble, but Bruce Wayne – the billionaire playboy executive – couldn’t give any sign of such concerns.

“Burt . . . Weston? Margaret Pye? Two of your patients, I imagine? Forgive me, I’m afraid you’ll have to refresh my memory.”

“Burt Weston, otherwise known as the Film Freak! Margaret Pye, otherwise known as Magpie! Two notorious, dangerous criminal masterminds. Both guilty of larceny, theft, robbery–”

“Oh yes! That’s right, those two.” Bruce slapped the desk, pretending to remember. He furrowed his brow and pursed his lips in thought. “Still, if I recall the news reports correctly, they were hardly masterminds. The papers called them petty criminals. Wasn’t Batman the one who nabbed them and sent them straight to Arkham Asylum?”

“Yes, he did. However, as you know, our clinic receives many of the lower-tier offenders from Arkham for a more proper rehabilitation that Arkham’s limited psychiatric facilities can provide. If you ask me, all that asylum does is drive these criminals even madder than they already are.”

Bruce Wayne nodded. He remembered the Joker’s pasty white face laughing at him from behind a padded cell during one of the Batman’s many visits to the sanitarium. He remembered how the strait-jacketed maniac had the other prisoners climbing the walls after an hour of that endless, horrible, non-stop shriek. The hairs on Bruce Wayne’s neck stood up and he couldn’t stop himself from shuddering at the memory.

“From what I hear, it’s not the best of places for recovery,” the CEO agreed. “It’s one of the reasons why I established your clinic, in fact.”

“Exactly! I must, of course, thank you for your continued and generous support of the clinic.”

“My pleasure.”

“Which is why I thought you needed to be informed immediately about what was going on. Mr. Weston and Ms. Pye checked out from the clinic under mysterious circumstances, and I can’t fathom–”

“How did they check themselves out? Weren’t they transferred over from Arkham?” Bruce interjected.

“They were voluntary patients,” Madelyn said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “They have already completed their mandatory hours and served out their sentences, but were choosing to continue in-patient therapy for the last several months.”

“They were voluntary patients of the clinic? Doesn’t that mean they were allowed to check out of their own volition at any time?” Bruce noted how the woman was growing more and more frustrated with each interruption.

“Yes, that’s true, Mr. Wayne. They’d served their debt to society, according to the courts and the paperwork and all that. It’s the reason they checked out that concerns me. Both of these patients were making considerable progress under my care.

“Weston was becoming less fixated on the movie-obsessions that had led to his psychotic outbursts and thefts, and Pye was gradually overcoming her addictions to pretty and shiny valuables. Yet suddenly, without warning, they simply came into my office and told me that they’d found new jobs and would no longer be needing my help. First Pye, then Weston just a few days later.”

“What’s so strange about that, Ms. Van Buren?”

Madelyn began pacing back and forth, lost in thought. “It was the jobs they had been offered. I told them that these were steps backward. I tried to convince them that the therapy should not be interrupted at such a critical stage, and that it would take at least another two or three months before their fixations could truly be–”

“What jobs were they offered?”

Madelyn Van Buren sighed, and bit her lip. She glared directly into Bruce Wayne’s eyes, and he could see the unbridled fear that lay hidden inside her soul. “Movie theater usher, and jewelry store clerk.”

The flutter of bat’s wings inside Bruce’s mind grew almost too loud to bear. The gears inside the detective’s sharp mind were already turning. Suddenly, he knew there would be a full night’s work ahead of him.

Later That Evening
Baubles and Trinkets
Just Off Thirteenth Street

Batman peered down toward the small mom-and-pop store with his night vision goggles. The dark knight sighed, taking a bite out of an energy bar Alfred insisted he bring with him on tonight’s stakeout.

The waiting. It was always the hardest part for him.

The crime scene that was once the Gallagher Motel had definitely showed signs of arson. There were several points of origin for the fire, ruling out any accidental causes for the massive blaze that had collapsed the entire structure into nothing more than rubble and ash. From the evidence he’d collected from the scene and processed in the cave, he could tell the debris had been utterly saturated with gasoline. The accelerant was a very specific mixture that he’d seen several times before, unfortunately. The Firefly might as well have just left his entire flameproof armor at the crime scene, the result was so obvious. Unfortunately, the detective had found no trace of Garfield Lynns as of yet. The man was a ghost – Lynns had simply left no trail to follow ever since his presumed breakout from Arkham Asylum.

Batman scowled, adjusting the lens on his night vision goggles and peering at the entrance to the small jewelry store. The caped crusader prided himself on being able to find the trail of breadcrumbs to his quarry, no matter how small those crumbs were or where they might lead him. Without any leads so far, the arson investigation would have to wait – Madelyn Van Buren’s tip about Magpie and Film Freak were the immediate priority now.

The Batman had tracked Magpie to this neighborhood – to this store. She wasn’t using an alias, surprisingly enough, and all his investigations seemed to indicate that Magpie was legitimately trying to go straight. Nevertheless, the Batman knew how powerful her addiction to bright and shiny things was. She was utterly compelled to committing these robberies since, in her mind, the bright and shining jewels brought her closer to her past. As least, they brought her closer to the past she wanted to have – one where her heroin-addicted mother never overdosed in that alley and her deadbeat father hadn’t left the family. It was a tragic story, and the dark knight felt for Magpie, but he knew what she was. He knew how her mind operated, even against itself.

He was certain tonight was the night the Magpie would strike, whether she really wanted to or not. He had been certain of that fact for the last three hours now. Regardless of how much he hoped he was wrong.

The Batman swore to himself that he would not make the same mistake he did with Nemina. Margaret Pye was a criminal. Despite her attempts to go straight, if she did show up at the jewelry store tonight, he would be forced to treat her as one, and bring her in.

Nevertheless, someone had given her the position at this store, just as someone had given Film Freak his new job as a movie theater usher. The question was, what was the motive? Who would want these reformed criminals to suddenly switch back to their old ways? Who benefits from this?

The dark knight suddenly smelled a strange aroma in the air as the wind began to pick up.

The smell of burnt wood, ash and soot. The draft from a chimney, perhaps? Batman thought to himself. He gazed down across to the jewelry store and searched the ground level around it. Definitely not the smell of acidic compounds eating through the store’s lock. Couldn’t be coming from down there anyway – the wind direction isn’t right.

Batman looked off toward the right – the origin source of the wind – and searched the bright lights that peppered the bustling city. His eyes travelled from building to building as the aroma became stronger and thicker with each breath. Batman gazed at the skies above, and finally saw the source of the smell.

A massive black cloud of smoke swirling up into the winds. A cloud that might be produced if say, an entire building were suddenly engulfed in flames.

“Lynns,” the dark knight scowled as he pocketed his goggles, reached for his grappler and fired a line toward the next building. As he left the small jewelry store and dashed across the next rooftop, he noticed how the bright burning bits of fire travelling up through the massive plume of ash looked like little fireflies buzzing in the breeze.

What he did not notice, however, was the nervous woman walking up to the jewelry store dressed in a strange skintight outfit. Her costume was red and white, with a bird-shaped design along the front and back that travelled along the length of her bust line. Her long, slender legs were clad in fishnets, courtesy of a small lingerie shop around the corner from her house. Her mask was a red affair decorated with jewel and studs, with an outline shaped like feathers on the sides. The mask was obviously hand-made, and it concealed her bloodshot eyes quite well. She’d been up all night making this costume – or rather, recreating this costume – as her previous ones had been destroyed following her stint in Arkham.

The process had been a difficult one – ripping apart her new clothes and sewing them back together in familiar patterns, and her eyes had been wet with tears for most of the night. It was a task she hadn’t wanted to do, but she simply couldn’t help herself. The lithe woman couldn’t take being away from those jewels any longer. She simply had to have them. Every last one of them.

She licked her lips, feeling her heart racing beneath her chest. The heavy metal object in her pocket had drained much of her meager savings, as had the ammunition. The gun had been costly, but it couldn’t be avoided. Gotham City streets were dangerous, full of people who would try to take her jewels from her, and she just couldn’t have that.

She could hear her father right now, reading to her that wonderful book of fairy tales from within the shop. Margaret knew he hadn’t left her.

Daddy would never leave his little Magpie.

Next: Firefly vs. the Batman! Magpie vs. the jewelry store! With a strange kidnapping thrown into the mix! All in a day’s work for the dark knight detective.

Join Batman and his nefarious rogues for the simply-titled tale called “Burned.”