Harley Quinn Romance 2

Chapter 07: Trespassing

She knew it was a risk using the acid flower of the Joker she'd found in his old hideout, but with multiple hideouts around the city no longer in use, she didn't think it could be traced to her, unless she got caught. It brought up a twinge of sadness when she thought about the Joker never using his bag of tricks again.

Pushing aside the uncomfortable feelings, she set to work. Clicking on a small flashlight, she looked over the office. A wide desk was positioned near a pair of windows. A computer terminal and phone sat atop the desk to the side of a vertical file stacked high with papers and police reports.

Harley started with the papers on the desk, hoping the information about the men who'd tried to kill her would be recent enough to still be out in the open where she could easily gain access to it. It was a misguided hope as there was so much crime in Gotham, none of the files pertained to her.

Moving to the filing cabinet in the corner of the office, Harley applied a minor amount of the acid to the lock to bypass the security on the file drawers. Pulling out the drawers, she scanned their identifying tags to get a sense of the organizational system used by the police. Once she understood the way everything was arranged, it was a simple matter to find the files about her and the two men who'd been arrested after trying to run her off the road.

The criminals had multiple associates in several different gangs, so it was nearly impossible to tell who they were working for at the current time. One item came up in both files and caught her attention. Both men had recently been suspects in a crime involving the Riddler but neither had been arrested due to lack of evidence.

Harley paged through her own file, but didn't find anything particularly helpful. She saw a brief mention of the demise of the Joker and quickly turned the page. She didn't want to know any more about the loss of her Puddin'.

She put her own file back first, then the two belonging to the criminals. She had the information she was after and didn't want to leave clues for the police to follow. The melted lock on the cabinet would certainly tell them they'd had an intruder, but they wouldn't know what it was about if none of the files were out of order or missing.

Pulling out the next to bottom drawer, Harley retrieved the file on the Riddler. The thick folder had a host of information, but Harley skipped over all of it, going straight for the final entry. The last piece of information written in the file stated Riddler had been apprehended by the Batman and returned to Arkham Asylum after a previous breakout. Harley closed the file and returned it to its place.

She was about to leave the office when her flashlight caused a glint under the Commissioner's desk. She looked closer and found a small filing cabinet underneath the desk where no one would be able to see it unless they came around to the back side. Using the Joker's acid flower, she easily broke into the cabinet. When she opened it, an alarm went off, blaring loudly in tandem with flashes or red from the emergency lights in the room.

Harley didn't bother looking at the sizable file in the drawer, she grabbed it and took it with her. Leaving the office, she used the roller chair once more to speed across the room to the opposing side. When she reached the main doors into the room, she dropped the file on a nearby desk before picking up the chair and tossing it out through a window. A rusty fire escape was mounted outside the window, and she hoped any cop who was responding to the alarm would hear the noise and think she was escaping that way.

She grabbed the file from the desk.  Running away from the window, Harley opened a hatch in the wall and climbed into an old trash chute. Bracing a foot against either side of the metal shaft, she slowed her descent as she slid all the way down to a dumpster in the basement. Her landing atop a pile of old donut boxes and cups of stale coffee wasn't the most pleasant, but it was better than an all-expenses paid trip back to Arkham. Rolling out of the bin, she dashed for the rear door and exited the police station, sprinting away at full speed with her plundered file clutched to her chest.

***

Harley plopped down on the old sofa. The brown leather was quite worn in several places, and the arms had been repeatedly chewed by her hyenas. Setting the thick file she'd taken from the police station on the seat beside her, Harley folded one leg underneath her while getting comfortable.

Opening the tan colored folder, Harley discovered she'd taken Gordon's personal records on Batman. Sightings, police reports, eye witness testimony, and patterns of behavior. She even found a folded map with red X's marking every location where Batman had been seen and black X's where he'd been reported.

"Looks like the Comish might be trying to find the Bat," Harley mused with a smile. She started looking through the collected evidence with an eye to seeing if she could spot anything Gordon might have missed. She had formerly been a psychologist, so her expertise in getting into the mind of a subject might give her a different perspective than a cop. Page by page, she analyzed every shred of information.

Gordon had made time notations on a note attached to the map by a paperclip. The note designated how long it took Batman to arrive after the call went out over the police scanner. Gordon had been trying to see if he could estimate where Batman was headquartered based on how long it took him to reach each crime scene. Additional data had been incorporated into the figures based on what mode of transportation was utilized. Batman had access to a plane, a rocket boosted car, and a boat. Transit time would be affected by which vehicle he chose to employ.

Harley shook her head. Most of the math was over her head, but it didn't matter as the final line on the note revealed Gordon had given up on this avenue of investigation. Batman could've gotten his information from a source other than the police scanner, so it was impossible to know when the Bat was made aware of the crime in progress. Additionally, Batman might've been on patrol somewhere else in Gotham, and not in his main base of operations, so the response time from that location would skew the measurements. Too much data remained unknown for Gordon to locate Batman simply by arrival times at crime scenes, so the policeman had changed the direction of his efforts.

Gordon had started looking into the possible sources for Batman's equipment. The high end gadgets and vehicles used by Batman wouldn't be easy to design and build without significant amounts of money and manufacturing facilities. A scanning device once used by Batman had been recovered and studied by the police labs, but all the components had been of general manufacture and easily obtainable anywhere. Gordon had concluded Batman was building the equipment himself to leave no trace should any of it fall into the wrong hands.

As for the money needed, Batman could easily be picking up undocumented cash from the criminals he brought down. The criminals would never report to the police about illegal money being stolen, so Batman could help himself at any time. Gordon had closed this line of investigation also as it wasn't getting him anywhere.

Despite Gordon running into a dead end with all his efforts to find Batman, Harley had a few ideas. Batman's actions in protecting himself from possible detection spoke about the mind of the man himself. She thought it no surprise he knew the police methods that would be employed against him since he had been labeled the World's Greatest Detective. She suspected he might have some training in that regard, either formal or self-taught. Furthermore, Batman assembling all his equipment himself to avoid leaving a manufacturing trail for anyone to follow showed he was both mechanically and electronically inclined. Batman's fighting and stealth skills frequently let him take down the scum of Gotham with hardly any resistance. Only the worst of the worst had ever managed to present a challenge, but none of them had ever managed to eliminate him.

Harley closed the file and leaned back on the sofa, thinking about everything she knew about Batman. She suspected he would be rich; even though Gordon had provided a possible reason for Batman's access to his extensive funding, Harley had a different idea. Because Batman was able to build mechanical and electronic inventions equal to or better than what was available on the open market, his skills in those areas would make it easy for him to generate large sums of cash. Batman was also a skilled aircraft pilot and was very good racing at high speeds along the streets, both of which would require training. Since Batman had access to this expensive instruction before becoming Batman, it was reasonable to assume he had the money prior to putting on the cape and cowl.

Technologically and mechanically skilled, pilot, possible racecar training, fighting abilities, detective skills, mastery of stealth, and rich; Batman had quite a resume. Since Batman's equipment was better than most and the best tech available was at Wayne Enterprises, Harley considered it a good place to start looking for the true identity of Batman.