Batman (16 page)

Beyond the intersection, the hall broadened into a room, and in the center of the room stood a wooden framework in the shape of a question mark. Ignited by the fire from the explosion, the question mark burned brightly, illuminating the entire chamber. On the far side of it was a stairwell.

“Okay,” Robin said. “I’ve gotta admit, that’s pretty slick.” He didn’t know if the Riddler was listening or not, but it never hurt to stroke a megalomaniac’s ego. It was often the best way to disarm him, or get him to show a weakness. And it
had
been pretty slick, setting up a flammable sculpture so that it would be lit by the explosion.

It gave new meaning to “burning question.”

It encouraged him to know the Riddler wouldn’t have bothered to build it if he didn’t intend someone to see it. So he was still setting up puzzles with the expectation that Robin could survive them.

I guess stroking the ego works both ways
, Robin thought.
But I’ve still got doors five and seven ahead of me
. And number seven was the outlier. If the pattern held, he would re-enter the chessboard through door number four, confront another puzzle on the other side of number five, and then—assuming he lived that long—come back through door number six.

So seven was… what? The lucky number? For who?

Maybe
that
was the burning question.

A powerful breeze blew down the stairs from somewhere above, pushing the smoke away from him, offering momentary relief. Robin got to the top stair and followed a short hallway that angled away at ten o’clock. That would lead to…

Sure enough. He reached a door, opened it, and found that the chessmen had shifted their positions again. Just to be sure he wasn’t missing something, Robin gamed out the possibilities for the knight and bishop, even though he had already used them. The bishop was out, since he was on a black square and door number five was next to a white one. There was no way to execute four knight moves without landing on one of the chessmen.

That left the rook. The lack of a fourth option bothered Robin more now—the puzzle behind door number seven was becoming maddening. Yet there was nothing he could do, so there was no sense in dwelling on it.

First he had to make it back through number six. So he marched out into the room four squares, faced right, and walked straight up to door number five.

Two rook moves.

No sense putting it off.

As Batman had said, the clock was ticking. So Robin opened the door and walked through.

Posted by JKB

Wednesday, 1:55 p.m.

As soon as Batman finished talking to Robin, an automated message from Oracle pinged in his ear.

“Five minutes left in the current countdown.”

As he approached the Batmobile he arranged the pieces of the puzzle in his head. In truth, there were far too few of them. Factor one—the death rooms, each themed and each somehow connected to a villain the Riddler had brought in as a partner. Factor two—the murders of people who appeared to have been brought in to provide technical expertise in the construction of the traps. Factor three…

The rogues’ gallery?

The old steel mill?

Maravilla?

That was the problem. There really
wasn’t
a factor three—or if there was, it was maddeningly elusive. The death rooms were leading to something. They had to be. That was the Riddler’s modus operandi, to use an old, worn phrase. He had a grand, insidious plan of some sort, and still he dangled it out of reach.

He was dragging them through several of the same locales where they had pursued the Joker and his associates during the culminating violence of Protocol 10. That much, at least, seemed clear. But why? How did it relate to his endgame, his ultimate goal?

Is it possible the Joker is alive?
That would explain the deliberate echoes of previous events. But it was unthinkable. Batman had seen the Joker’s body. Gordon had watched it burn, and helped dispose of the ashes.

He was gone.

Unless he’d employed a disguise, or a body double…

No
, Batman thought.
Not this time. There was too much evidence.
They had confirmed it every way possible.
Then why am I still clinging to the chance that he might have survived?
He had fought the Joker for years, and come close to death on more occasions than he could count. He should be joyous that it had ended, yet it seemed as if he had lost someone terribly close.

Perhaps he had. That was what Alfred and Robin had been hinting at, before the arrival of the package. As bizarre as it seemed, as much as he hated to admit it, Batman knew that in some twisted way, the Joker was still a part of him.

A man’s greatness can be measured by his enemies.
They had defined each other for so long. So much of Batman’s identity, his history, was tied up in the seemingly endless battle against his opposite number. Batman stood for order, the Joker for chaos, but it was more than that. They were worthy adversaries. Their minds were evenly matched, and through all of the horrors he had perpetrated over the years, the Joker had forced Batman to be
better
.

If the Joker really was gone, might it be that Batman’s finest days were behind him?

No, not “if,”
he thought.
The Joker
is
gone, and I was Batman before he ever appeared, and I’m still Batman without him. Gotham City is what defines me, not the homicidal lunatics who plague it.

From his vantage point parked near Ace Chemical, Batman watched a pair of Gotham City Police Department cruisers navigate the rubble-strewn streets, followed by a Special Operations van designed to handle Mr. Freeze. The first car pulled up next to the Batmobile, and Gordon himself got out of the passenger side.

“How are they doing with that fire?” Gordon asked, looking past Batman at the plume of smoke stretching from the Gotham Merchant’s Bank downstream over the West River.

“I haven’t been keeping track,” Batman replied. “Too many other things to do.” He gestured toward the factory. “Mr. Freeze and six of his men are inside. Some of them will need medical attention.”

“We’ll see to it,” Gordon said.

“What did you find out about other phone numbers linked to Conundrum Solutions?”

“There are two. One belongs to a man called Pierre Ouellette, who runs a chemical supply company. We’ve got him at a safe house. We haven’t been able to trace the other one. It’s a burner phone, probably already in the river. We’re trying to identify what other numbers it might have called, but that kind of a trace takes a little more time.”

“Where is the safe house?” Batman asked.

“I shouldn’t tell you,” Gordon said. “You’re—”

Batman’s comm pinged.

“One minute,”
Oracle said.

“Commissioner, wherever you took Pierre Ouellette, the Riddler will have someone watching. We can be certain of that. He’s been controlling the playing field ever since this little game began. If you don’t give me the location, you’ll have another body on your hands.”

“On my hands?” Gordon shot back. “They’re not coming after me, Batman. They’re coming after you.”

This was true. The Riddler and others like him didn’t spend their time concocting schemes to entrap police officers. To them, the ordinary cop on the beat was little more than collateral damage.

“Forty-five seconds.”

“Fair enough,” Batman said, “but if you withhold this information from me, there’s nothing I can do to protect Ouellette.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Gordon shot back. “Or what if his next target is the other number?”

“Consider how this has worked so far,” Batman said. “The Riddler has guided our every step. He’s got each of us slavishly following a pre-arranged pattern, and we’ve done nothing to break free from the pattern. He doesn’t want me running around Gotham City, hunting for a missing person—that doesn’t fit with his scheme.”

“Thirty seconds.”

He saw Gordon wrestling with contradictory impulses. He wanted to save lives, wanted to trust Batman, but he also needed to follow the procedures by which he lived and breathed, and show faith in the abilities of his own department to protect the citizens of Gotham City.

“This is the opportunity to break the pattern, and force the Riddler to relinquish control,” Batman said, pressing the point. “Unless we do so, we keep dancing to his tune.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

“I’m not giving you the safe house location,” Gordon said. “I can’t. You couldn’t get there in time anyway. You’re not the only one watching the countdown.”

“Then someone is going to die.”

“I’m telling you, you can’t get there in time!” Gordon snapped. “We’re doing everything we can. You’re chasing a lunatic in a green suit, Robin is off God-knows-where, and I’m the one dealing with an assassin loose in my city. You handle your part of the problem and I’ll handle mine.”

“Zero,”
Oracle said.

“All right,” Batman said. He felt weary. He was chasing, always chasing, with the Riddler and his cronies always one step ahead… and now another person was dead. All they could do was wait for the report.

“Commissioner!” one of the officers in the nearest car shouted. Gordon turned. “There’s been another one.” The officer listened to his radio, then repeated what he had just heard. “It was Theresa Gray.”

Gordon looked shocked.

“Who is Theresa Gray?” Batman asked.

A strange combination of shame, anger, and sadness twisted Gordon’s face.

“She manages shipping and receiving at Gotham City police headquarters,” he said. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Or did. She was—when I talked to you this morning and told you I had the manager interviewing staff, that was her. That was Theresa.

“Now we know how the Riddler’s package got there, don’t we?” he added bitterly.

We know something else, too
, Batman thought.
We know the Riddler has an hour to plan how to get at Pierre Ouellette inside the safe house.
He didn’t say it, though. He had to give Gordon a few minutes to adjust to the loss, and to the thought that the Riddler had infiltrated the Gotham City police.

“She’s good people,”
Gordon had said that morning. This would be a personal betrayal, and the murder of a colleague. Gordon would take it hard… but there was no time to grieve, or indulge in self-doubt.

They had one hour. One hour for the Riddler to scheme, but it was also an hour for Batman to plan, to figure out the inner workings of the Riddler’s gambit, and understand how it all fit together.

“You were right, Batman,” Gordon said. “This one’s on me. I trusted her.”

“No, Commissioner. You were right. It was the other number. Even if I’d gone to the safe house, Ouellette wasn’t the target this time.”

“That means he will be next time,” Gordon said.

Batman nodded. “We have an hour. I have some things to do. I’m sure you do, too.”