The Edge of a Blade
Chapter 5
By Draco664
Commissioner Gordon trudged through the devastated house, clear plastic bags tied over his shoes to prevent contamination of the scene. An eerie feeling of deja vu settled uncomfortably in his stomach as he mentally checked off the facts of this seemingly horrific case. Here, again, electronic devices refused to work correctly, and several people had reported that their cars had started by themselves just before the explosion. Another explosion with no epicentre. Admittedly, one of much smaller intensity.
At first glance, the murder scene did indeed appear demonically horrific. Blood caked the walls of the room and was even spattered on the ceiling in an impressively grotesque amount. But it covered the floor of the small room to a point where there was no single tile without a thick layer of drying blood. At a simply ridiculous depth. Even a rudimentary understanding of mathematics would enable anyone to calculate that the amount of blood in the room exceeded that held within a human body by about an order of magnitude.
Harrison had taken one look and retched, sending his breakfast a fairly impressive distance. In an effort to prevent further contamination of the crime scene, Jim had sent the rookie out to the police line to ensure no one got through.
Jim shook his head, an odd feeling settling in his bones. It certainly wasn't the first time in his long career that a crime scene had been staged, but whoever had assembled this one either hadn't known the first thing about creating a realistic scene, or assumed that the GCPD were so inept that they wouldn't spot an obvious fake.
Several dozen blood samples from various parts of the room were sent away for examination and testing. Most likely, it was a blood substitute, or animal blood. There wasn't much chance that it was the all the victim's, and in that case, she would have had to have been an active participant. Perhaps a plan she hatched with someone else to fake her own murder. Her blood would have had to have been taken several times, perhaps even hundreds of times, to create such a mess.
Jim pushed his thick-rimmed glassed up onto his forehead and gently rubbed his eyes. He felt a headache coming on.
Once more, he settled his glasses on his nose and scanned the room. It was, minus the blood and corpse, a pretty normal room. Tiled floor, dining table along one wall, two wooden chairs tucked neatly under the table.
The naked body of Elle McGinty was tied up with blood-soaked rope in an elaborate way on the large coffee table, allowing her attacker to sexually assault her easily. Her head was lying behind her, face down in a pool of what was supposed to be her own blood. Three simple stools were positioned at arms length away, one between her legs, the others to either side of the body, a tray on each.
Several bloodstained knives, pliers and other grizzly tools were arrayed neatly on the tray to the victim's left, like a surgeon's scalpels. Like the rest of the room, they were covered with blood and gore, looking for all the world like they had just been used. Gazing at the set of implements gave Jim a cold shiver at the potential pain they could have caused, and his only relief came from the fact that they had obviously not been used. Well, used on Mrs McGinty, at least.
Elle's body was unmarked and remarkably healthy, with the exception of course of the fact that her head had been removed. Unlike the other decapitation earlier in the week, her head had been severed with a carving knife. It would have been both painful and terrifying, having her head slowly cut from her body.
The metal tray to the body's right was even more gruesome than the blood encrusted tools. Four oddly shaped lumps of gristle lay on it, lumps which stumped the homicide squad. Hopefully, the coroner would know what they were. Jim shook his head once more, wondering what they meant; wondering if Gotham had attracted yet another homicidal maniac that Batman would soon do battle with, before being locked away safely in Arkham.
"Jim."
With a wry smile, Jim turned around to see Batman crouching on the table in one corner of the room, his cloak twisted tightly and hung over his shoulder like a scarf to prevent it trailing in the fluid on the floor. He frowned slightly, but looked up to see the skylight to the room, which happened to be directly above the table, was now open.
Jim smiled to himself in a humourless way. It wasn't often he worked out how Batman arrived and departed without a trace. "Batman. Interesting murder scene, don't you agree?"
Batman swallowed and scanned the room. When he saw the strange fleshy lumps, he froze, simply staring at them.
"What is it?" Jim followed his friend's gaze. "You know what they are?"
Slowly, Batman nodded. "They are larynxes. They've been cut from someone's throat."
"Well, they're not our vic's. She's unharmed, except for the decapitation. I hate these staged crime scenes," Jim said. But Batman's body language, normally so difficult to read, almost screamed differently. "What? What is it?"
"The scene. It wasn't staged."
Jim blinked. "What? There's too much blood here to have come from one person. And if those things are voiceboxes, then we have four other victims to look for. You couldn't get the amount of blood in the room from ten people, let alone one, so at least part of the scene is staged."
Batman shook his head. "Do your tests. If I'm right, all the blood will be hers. And you won't find any anticoagulant mixed in with the blood, which will show it wasn't extracted earlier and used to stage the scene. DNA tests will link all of those voiceboxes to her."
Jim looked around again. "Don't be ridiculous. How can that be possible? You only have one voicebox! And anyway, there isn't a scratch on her. What is going on?"
Batman stared straight into his friend's eyes. "Something terrible, Jim. Something that will get worse unless I can stop it."
Batman crouched silently on the roof of the late McGinty couple and stared down at the gathering crowd, thinking hard.
The husband, Malcolm McGinty, had been discovered in the driver's seat of the family car first, the trunk full, the fuel tank empty. He'd obviously been waiting in the car for his wife, the engine running, ready to leave. His neck had been broken; his head had been twisted around almost a full one hundred and eighty degrees. The initial police report suggested that he knew his attacker, since there was no sign of a struggle.
Batman knew differently. The person he was hunting was a dangerous, silent and resourceful hunter, not to mention evil. He easily had the skill to surprise someone like Malcolm McGinty, whose employment records showed that he was an accountant. The entire scene in the house below indicated the murderer was also a meticulous planner. Though he tortured Elle McGinty over the course of a couple of days, by allowing his victim to heal completely before finally killing her, he created a scene full of contradictions. Contradictions that would completely derail any conventional investigation.
The torture he inflicted upon the victim would have been horrific. The fact that he cut out her voicebox meant that he had no wish to have her screams disturb the neighbours. Batman shook his head. Professional torturers in the past walked a fine line between inflicting pain upon the focus of their efforts, while keeping their poor unfortunate victims alive. This man had no such difficulty, and had obviously tortured her mercilessly for at least two days.
Throughout history, mankind has sought to delay death. If someone had discovered a method of ensuring immortality, it would have been hailed as a blessing. At the hands of someone skilled in inflicting pain however, such immortality would then be a curse.
Batman took a deep breath, stood and stretched. Such an evil man would need to be stopped. Whatever the cost.
Batman climbed into the Batmobile and gunned the engine. With a roar, the powerful car sped down the previously quiet neighbourhood roads, away from the McGinty residence. With a free hand, Batman pressed an autodial button on the dashboard, causing Oracle's features to appear on a small plasma screen a few seconds later.
"Yes, boss?"
"Oracle, I need you to do some of your magic."
She gave him a wry grin. "Yes, I know. You never call just to ask about my health."
Batman ignored her. He extracted his digital camera's memory card and slotted it into the receptacle on the car's dashboard. "Download the contents of the card. I took pictures of the pages of the victim's planner and address book. I need you to check each of the people listed to see if they have the sort of false identities you found on the other victim."
Oracle nodded, and busied herself off screen for a few seconds. "I'm on it. You're looking for more of these fast healing meta-humans?"
Batman nodded. "And we need to find them fast. Our murderer either has another method of identifying them quickly, or already knows who they are. We need to play catch up."
"It will take time, but I'll give you an update in an hour. Download complete. Oracle out."
The screen went blank as she cut the connection. Batman withdrew the memory card and replaced it in his utility belt.
The car swept down the quiet roads, faster than many would consider safe.
Damien smiled to himself as he finished listening to the conversation between the Batman and this 'Jim', the police chief. The radio transmitter he had hidden under the body of the late Lady Chantelle would not be discovered until the coroner moved the corpse, giving Damien a great deal of information on how the investigation was progressing. His efforts at misdirection had succeeded in both alienating the police from the Batman, making them believe he was fallible, and proved that the masked vigilante knew about the existence of immortals. He even told the Police Chief what the results of the tests would be, but didn't give an explanation to his reasoning. It was clear that even if he wasn't an immortal himself, the Batman knew enough about them to recognise them.
So either he was a watcher, or an immortal.
From his vantage point at an open window on the eighteenth floor of a building three miles away, Damien again looked through the powerful telescope trained on the McGinty house. The hunched figure of the Batman stared out over the ever-larger crowd; from the legends Damien had heard of the Dark Knight, he was probably committing each face to memory.
The evil immortal's hands tingled at the thought of subsuming all those skills. But he needed to be prepared. Having seen the Batman in action, and having fought one of his protégés, Damien knew he needed more power. There were seven more immortals living in Gotham on the list Marcus left him. Usually, after killing two the others would either seek him out or flee once they heard the news. By ensuring the police would not release details of the Lady Chantelle's murder, he gained a little more time to hunt down the others. If he was lucky, he would be able to take at least four more heads before the rest fled the city.
Damien again extracted the piece of paper from a pocket and ran his eye down the list of names, now with two crossed off. Of the remainder, one of them may have been Lady Chantelle's teacher or friend. Such a pathetic immortal as her would have needed significant protection to have survived this long.
He smiled at the memory of the last fifty hours. The Lady Chantelle had suffered under his hand for what must have seemed to her as an eternity. Time and time again he had ripped out her throat to keep her from screaming as he performed his bloody craft. He had raped her eight times himself, not counting the numerous invasions of her body he performed with his tools. It had been a delightful experience, destroying the body of such a deserving victim, only to have it heal itself in time to begin again.
Damien began disassembling the telescope and started to clean both himself and the room of any sign of his involvment in the murder. It was time to move.
Oracle contacted Batman fifty-seven minutes later, just as Batman finished his patrol and was making his way back to the Batcave.
"There were ninety-four names in the couple's records. Eighteen were emergency or medical contacts, which I set to low priority. Thirteen were dead of natural causes. Twenty-two duplicates, either a work address or that person moved. Which left me forty-one to search on.
"Twenty-eight were simple to identify, they were either from out of town or had records which survived NML. Another nine took some searching, but there were some records. I haven't ruled any of them out yet. One more was the original victim you examined."
Oracle took a deep breath. "Oddly, only three were from out of town, one is in Manhattan, the other two are outside the country."
Batman nodded. "What intel do you have on them so far?"
"Just names and addresses on the OS records. I'm still waiting on the international databases to cooperate. One is in Paris, the other in a place called Watford, England."
"What of the contact in New York?"
Oracle turned her attention away from the camera and glanced at one of her many screens. "Russell Nash, an antiques dealer on Hudson Street. And no, it isn't a false ID, all his records are legit. Re-issued passport, driver's licence, bank accounts, all of them are genuine. The birth certificates for his generation are not stored electronically, so I got a friend to check it out at the archives. It's there."
"Keep me posted."
"Will do, boss. Oh, one last thing."
"Yes?"
"Nash is on his way to Gotham. One way first-class ticket was purchased on his card a few minutes ago. He'll be here in three days."
Batman frowned. "There are flights between JFK and Gotham every couple of hours. Why would he wait a few days before coming. He'll miss the wake."
Oracle shook her head. "He's not coming by air. He's booked on a train."
Batman digested this piece of information. After a couple of seconds, he spoke again. "Did your contact check for death certificates?"
"No. Why would she?"
Batman ignored the question. "Are you sure about his identity?"
"Absolutely," Oracle replied, a little testily. "Why do you ask? You've never second-guessed me before."
"Because this Nash is another fast-healing meta-human."
Oracle blinked. "How did you figure that out?"
Batman cleared his throat. "Why travel by train rather than plane?"
Oracle clicked her teeth together in thought. "Cheaper?"
"With a shop on Hudson Street? Buying a first-class ticket? No."
"Scared of flying?"
"He has a passport."
"You don't need to fly to leave the country," Oracle pointed out.
Batman nodded. "True, but it has been re-issued. The old one must have been filled. Stamped in other countries."
Oracle grunted, but bit her lower lip, thinking hard. "He has something to hide?"
Batman nodded. "Something you can't take on a plane these days."
"A gun?"
"No. Something that is difficult to acquire. Well, difficult to acquire one of usable quality."
Oracle's eyes widened in realisation. "A sword."
"Bingo."
Tim put down his cup of tea and looked up as the Batmobile roared into the cave, blinking to get his dry eyes working properly again. In the days since Batgirl had been injured, he had hardly slept, and had eaten very little. Guilt still plagued him, and he had spent a great deal of time sitting next to Cassandra's bed as the teen recovered from her injury.
He had a few things to tell his mentor though. With all the bustle of Batman chasing down leads on this new maniac, Tim had temporarily hung up the Robin costume, and had done what investigation he could on the evidence they had accumulated in the Batcave.
Batman exited the massive car, rubbing his whiskered chin deep in thought. Casually, he pushed back the cowl and absently sat down at one of the terminals. Tim cleared his throat.
Bruce looked over to the teen. "What?" he almost snapped.
Tim swallowed. "I've found out why the poison was enough to be fatal to the cab driver."
That caught Bruce's attention. "Go on."
Tim turned back to his own terminal and punched a few keys, bringing up the spectral analysis of the poison on the screen. "This shows the contents of the poison sample you gave me. It pretty much matches what was in his body, but I ran a test on the swab we took of the cut on his finger anyway." Tim tapped a few more keys. A second graph appeared, overlaying the first. There were a couple of differences. "See here, and here. At first I thought it was a variant of the poison you had. But I recognised what the differences were."
Again, Tim brought up a new graph.
"Caffeine," he said simply.
"Caffeine?" Bruce frowned.
"Yep. After I noticed that, I did an experiment. I took a tiny amount of the poison and looked at it under a microscope." Tim cleared the screen and showed Bruce a Petri dish. He placed the dish under the microscope and displayed the highly magnified image on the massive plasma screen. "See these enzymes? Watch what happens when you add caffeine."
Tim poured a small glass of water. With a eyedropper, he took a drop of tea from his cup and dropped it in the water, stiring it around. Again, filling the eyedropper with a small portion of the now highly-diluted tea, he allowed a single drop to fall into the Petri dish with the poison.
The enzymes on the screen went berserk.
"There was an empty Starbucks cup on the floor of the cab when it was found. If he had drunk the coffee, traces would have been in his saliva. If he then sucked on the cut, a small amount of caffeine would have mixed with the poison that way. Changing its characteristics."
Bruce nodded. "Making it fatal." He nodded at the young man, pleased with his investigations.
Tim almost blushed with the rare acknowledgment of his work. "I have something else too."
Bruce looked intrigued. "Yes?"
Tim got up and walked over to another workstation, one with different equipment. He picked up a test tube with two tiny slivers of metal. "You got these from the first victim's sword, right?"
"That's right."
Tim nodded. "I ran a set of tests on the metal fragments. I've never seen anything like it. Titanium, crystal-lattices, Teflon; it is just incredible. If a sword was made out of this the way I think it was, it would cut through just about anything man-made. Imagine a sword made without thought to cost, using state-of-the-art materials, in the methods of the great sword-smiths of the Orient. An almost infinitely sharp sword, light, inflexible, unbreakable."
Bruce sighed. "I thought that would be the case."
Tim winced. "I spoke to Cass earlier today. She want's to get out of bed and back out there."
Bruce smiled slightly. "I can imagine. I suspect Alfred will be able to confine her."
Time nodded, a similar smile on his face. "He already did. He said he'd never feed her again if she left before he was satisfied with her progress."
"A dire threat."
Tim's grin disappeared. "Anyway, she said that the guy's sword was as sharp as anything she'd ever encountered. It could have cut her arm to the bone."
Bruce shook his head. "It could have cut her arm off completely. She was lucky to escape."
Tim swallowed and looked up to his friend. "Bruce, who is this guy?"
Bruce shook his head slowly. "I don't know." He looked over at the bed-ridden Cassandra, who was sleeping. "But I will find out," he said with certainty.