Deadly Games

[Edward Nigma]

He was very careful not to tie himself to the missive. He created an email address, logged into it once, sent the note, and never logged back in again. He gave no alternate email, no name, and he logged in from a free cyber cafe without security cameras. He borrowed another patron's laptop. He was clever and cautious and didn't believe for a moment he would ever be caught.

He would send one to each of the homicide specialists in turn. Maybe one of them would present a challenge... but he doubted it. Sooner or later they would recognize the trend, and it would leak to the press, and then he would get involved, and with his wiley ways, he would infiltrate the Gotham Police Department somehow.

It was only a shame innocent people had to die. He wasn't built for violence, and detested manual labor. But Batman only responded to one kind of stimulus, and he didn't have an address for him handy.


To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject: (No subject)

If a patrolman leaves Gotham Police Department heading east at 3 miles per hour, and his killer leaves from Gotham General Hospital traveling west at 8 miles per hour, at what point will they meet?

[Mary-Lou White]

(*SWOON*)

With a non-fat white chocolate mochacino resting sedately on the table to her left and her pink laptop booting up in front of her, Mary-Lou White was enjoying the serenity that only a sunny Sunday morning can bring. Her usual coffee house buzzed around her with people coming and going and she was feeling more upbeat than usual on account to the cheery music passing through her iPod as she logged into her work email account. Spam had an annoying way of building up over the weekend and while it would only take 15 minutes to troll through it tomorrow morning, it was still 15 minutes on the clock where Mary-Lou could be doing something... well. Useful. After deleting two unread ads for penis enlargers and blushing furiously as she emptied her deleted folder in case someone happened across them, Mary-Lou saw an unfamiliar address.

Normally she was extra careful when opening emails from people who she didn’t know. Often it was a ruse, offering some internet special, but on the odd occasion it was from someone she definitely didn’t want to hear from; maybe her old boyfriend or someone else she had cut out of her picture-perfect life for very good reason. She hadn’t counted on it being from someone like this. As her eyes took in the content of the message Mary-Lou paled and moved her hand to cover her open mouth, knocking over her coffee accidentally. “Oh dear,” she muttered hastily, using the napkins on the small table to mop up the mess, keeping the liquid away from her computer and thanking the waitress who took over. She looked back to the confusing message on her screen. This person was completely sick if they were serious, and if it was a joke ten it was even worse.

After the initial shock wore off, Mary-Lou broke out of her daze. Her hand shot out for her baby-blue tote bag and she dug around in there, pulling out a ball point pen and a Gotham PD standard issue note book. A few seconds later and she had brought up a map of Gotham on her laptop; to scale. Scribbling on her notebook, Mary-Lou squinted. That coffee would have come in rather handy right about now. From her gym training, Mary-Lou remembered her 15 minute miles. Based on that, she sketched on her notepad to cover several basic blocks from Gotham PD. The person (she staunchly refused to think of the words ‘his killer’) leaving from Gotham General was moving too fast to be on foot. Sketching in the remaining buildings between Gotham PD and Gotham General, Mary-Lou now had her field. But where would they meet? Using her finger on one end and her pen at the other, Mary-Lou moved both – one slower than the other to attempt scale – and brought them together at Robinson Park.

Within a minute she was out the door, her laptop and other encumbrances left at the apartment after she had dashed upstairs to buckle her piece into a shoulder holster and grab a jacket from the hall to cover it. She enjoyed running on a good day and her trainers thwapped against the city pavement as she trotted for the Park, breathing as she had been taught at the Academy to preserve her energy. With her keen eyes scanning the street she slowed down as she neared the leafy green reserve and by the time she had made it to the winding gravel path that would take her into the heart of the Park itself, she was walking. Pausing atop the bridge that overlooked a small lake complete with a water fountain on one side and relishing the shade of a large Elm, Mar-Lou looked around her helplessly. Of course there is no one here, she chided herself. It was probably just a stupid joke.

[Edward Nigma]

It was a beautiful day in Gotham. The sun was shining brightly and a soft breeze played in Edward Nigma's hair as he coasted on his beach cruiser style bicycle through the perfectly manicured urban nature. He stood on the pedals, stretching upwards and letting his eyes hover to a close, the sunlight beating through his eyelids in a bright and happy yellow and the fresh air filling his nostrils. It was a beautiful day, and he was glad to be out in it.

Thoughts of his darker motives for being at the Park didn't molest his enjoyment of the day in the least. It was like work, an today was the weekend - it really needn't weigh on his mind until it absolutely had to. It was only when he started to near the point where his riddle directed that he even bothered to pay much attention to his surroundings. The woman who had received his email was not hard to spot, even from a long way off: She was the only one moving beyond a snail's pace who wasn't dressed in proper jogging attire. He tilted his boyish face slightly as he coasted to a serene stop at the edge of a nearby lake, lowering his eyes to the basket that held old bread ends in a plastic bag to feed to the birds. After taking out a slice or two, he looked back up, green eyes peering between thick and heavy laden branches of a weeping willow just along the shoreline.

He didn't want to be caught, no. But the urge to probe this mind who had figured out his riddle - and dared to come alone - bubbled up in his chest so big that it blocked out all other thoughts. He must know more, and in some small way, some anonymous way, take ownership for his bit of devilment. Some day down the road, before she died perhaps, she would remember him and think how foolish she was to let him get away.

He approached her, glancing up every so often with an air of open curiosity, light eyebrows furrowed slightly in a look that might have been concern. He approached her, a long walk from his first point of dismount but through his easy ambling he'd come much closer. A gaggle of ducks followed his progress along the bank in hopes of more bread, but their benevolent benefactor had another bird to feed.

"Excuse me miss?" he asked, head tilting again with a look of concern as he shoved his emptied bread bag into his pocket. "Is there anything the matter? You seem... troubled." He eyed her worriedly, soft hands cradling the last two pieces of bread he'd brought. For the ducks. He smiled softly, a gentle expression from a seemingly harmless man.

[Mary-Lou White]

The sun was less ferocious now that she had stopped bustling and the breeze on the lake was welcome. Her eyes were narrowed against the insides of her sunglasses and she peeled them back from her face to better survey her surroundings. Aside from a couple of kids floating a small remote-control boat on the lake and a man feeding some ducks, the immediate vicinity was almost empty. Regardless, Mary-Lou was unable to shake the feeling that she was being watched and weighed; an invisible test that she had no hope of passing any time soon. About to give up her pursuit as a fool’s errand and remove herself from the uncomfortable feeling of being lead into some kind of trap, Mary-Lou turned on the bridge and came face to face with duck-man, who seemed very polite at least.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, feeling even more idiotic because now total strangers were noticing that she was acting out of the norm. She offered him an apologetic smile, his innocent appearance shaming her and enticing a flush from her milky cheeks. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said, tucking a few errant wisps of her golden blonde hair behind her ears. “I was...” Looking for a killer? “... just looking for someone.” She paused, unable to help herself from looking around again before her attention was brought back to the nondescript man by her side. “I don’t think they’re coming, though.” She furrowed her eyebrows and pursed her lips for a moment. She couldn’t help but be troubled by the situation.

As crazy as it sounded, she was disappointed. Her cousin Susanna was being approached by millionaire play-boys for personal events and being helped by Batman to capture the city’s mob bosses and here she was running around after some kid’s crank email. Mary-Lou was desperate to be taken seriously as a cop, but unfortunately... well. She just wasn’t the sort of broad that people tended to take seriously. She turned to the man and, unable to keep the taint of irritation from her voice, she sighed. “Do you ever get the feeling that people don’t take you seriously?”

[Edward Nigma]

It was hard to contain his smirk. A hint of it might have colored his cold green eyes, but to an outsider it might have appeared to only be amusement at a bewildered young lady's behavior. He watched the nuances of the girl's expressions with rapt attention, as her apparently quick mind flitted from one emotion to the next. He stood back, careful not to appear too eager, and in the end not heartily interested in the one cop in Gotham P.D. who had apparently passed sixth grade algebra. That was, until her thoughts got the best of her and she blurted them aloud.

His own expression changed as he inspected her for a moment in silence, a smile covering the awkwardness of finding an unexpected likeness between himself and this young woman. "What makes you think that people don't take you seriously?" he asked with a polite hint of disbelief, as if the idea that anyone could not take her serious seemed doubtful to him. In honest, though, he hadn't really bothered to look at the woman beyond trying to ascertain whether she was impressed by her anonymous riddler, or in the very least curious.

Now, though, he was forced to step back and really look at her, and he admitted that he could see why people might jump to the conclusion that she was weak or even ditzy. In fact, in appearance she was not very much unlike himself, rather meek seeming and not particularly impressive (though he found her quite pretty). Others, like her own cousin if he knew her, outwardly exuded a power of some kind, whether it be money or strength or some other feature, but people like her and him, they didn't. Their inherent power was more modest, and hidden inwardly, and he understood her need to prove herself. Furrowing his eyebrows, he listened attentively, eager to know more.

[Mary-Lou White]

“Well, I mean,” began the blonde, grateful that the man didn’t seem weirded out by her directly left-field query as she leaned her back against the bridge railing, “Like, people only look at me and see my blonde hair and my smile and they think I’m an over-sized Barbie doll. Or something,” she shook her head, suddenly annoyed because she knew that it was her fault, really, that people saw her this way. She had been brought up with good old fashioned American values; she didn’t curse or take the Lord’s name in vain and she still believed in freedom of speech and the right to be yourself. But when people didn’t pay much attention to you unless it was to leer at your backside or roll their eyes, where was the fun in that? She looked at the stranger, her forget-me-not eyes meeting his curious jade gaze and she stopped talking. Was he teasing her? The hint of amusement in his eyes was teasing and she wondered – for a split second – whether or not he was just taking the mickey out of her as well.

But then it was gone, a look of concerned interest washed over his face and Mary-Lou thought that in her state of mind she must have imagined the idea of him poking fun at her. “I’m not,” she assured him, suddenly desperate to prove that she was worth more than people thought. “Really. I am goof at my job, and I made pretty good grades at school.” No sooner had the words left her mouth, Mary-Lou realised just how lame she really sounded. She was a nice person! She smiled at the bus driver, and when she asked the waitress at her coffee house how she was she really listened instead of just giving her order. It struck her as odd that she felt so comfortable spilling her guts to a complete stranger until she realised the reason it felt commonplace. Here he was, listening. He was like her. She smiled, an embarrassed laugh escaping her mouth as she turned her face away from him for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I guess that I’ve been having a tough time of it with work and everything lately. Sometimes I think I made a mistake, moving here.” Truth was, she had a hard time fitting in here. The guys in the bull pen with their constant wise-cracks wore her down even though she tried not to show it, and though she had thought to seek solace in Susanna’s company Mary-Lou was smart enough to realise her cousin wasn’t particularly impressed with having her around. She had seen the email this morning as an opportunity to show them all that she wasn’t just a ditz with a badge and cute heels but the real deal – a cop worth her salt. She rolled her lips together, her cherry lip-gloss giving perfect coverage before she remembered her manners and held out her hand. “I’m Mary-Lou.”

[Edward Nigma]

"Edward," he replied, not uneasy at all about giving her his name. He reached for her hand and shook it lightly, motioning then to a nearby iron wrought bench. "Would you like to sit down?" Without waiting for an answer, he turned in that direction and took a short step, ambling very slowly in that direction while he gathered his thoughts to speak again - the way a stroll through the park should be.

He had listened to her and recognized the symptoms, but he now knew much more about her than one would have thought possible to learn in those few lines. She had moved to the big city to prove herself, but found it more difficult than she had imagined. He was surprised again to find another parallel to his own life. He had done the same many years ago, but at his job his brilliance was largely unappreciated, his inventions mocked as idle daydreams. He glanced at her before speaking, as they neared the bench he'd picked out for them.

"You know, I used to live in a small town, too. And it seems there, people are wowed by brilliance. They're glad to see it. It's something different from the mundane, and they congratulate you for it, and tell you to go to the Big City so it doesn't go to waste." He took a seat on the bench, looking out over the lake for a second before handing Mary-Lou a piece of bread to feed the ducks. "But in Gotham it's the opposite. Here, everyone's just trying to be the same. Fit in. Here people compete for things, and they're threatened by brilliance. So if they see it in you, they try to shoot you down."

He turned his gaze back to her, examining her features a moment now that the lake breeze was blowing back the wisps of her blonde hair that weren't contained by her ponytail. "Don't try to fit in, Mary-Lou. If you shine a little brighter than the rest, blending in will only make you duller."

[Mary-Lou White]

She smiled in acknowledgement of the introduction, and followed along behind him as he moved to the bench. Sitting next to him, the lake played out like a movie scene in front of them. The children played with their boat, the ducks pottered here and there and the breeze rustled the dark glossy leaves of the trees in the vicinity. It really was a beautiful day, and Mary-Lou had never been the type to stay down in the dumps for long. It was yet another of her traits that her parents had praised her for. She watched him as he talked, accepting the piece of bread he handed to her and turning it around in her hands until he commanded her gaze with his own. She was unsure of how to respond to his last advice, and she tore off a piece of bread and threw it to the ducks who squabbled over it noisily.

“Normally I don’t.” Her voice was quavering and unsure, before she forced it into a more upbeat tone. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s a lot easier now than it used to be.” She thought back to those nights she spent alone in her small but cheerful apartment eating dinner alone and watching tv and the long, heartbreaking calls to her mother back home who urged her to ‘give it a real chance’. She thought of the first murder she had seen – not worked on but seen happen with her very own eyes. She thought of the hookers that her cousin knew on a first name basis but who she couldn’t even look in the eye. Slowly, piece by piece, Gotham was chipping away at the stone foundation of Mary-Lou’s innocence and it was this fact in itself that was the real cause of her concern.

“At least there is Mr. Wayne’s party,” she smiled, her old confidence coming back in droves as she resolved not to burden Edward with any more of her dreary problems. She threw another piece of bread to the ducks and shifted slightly from the heat she could feel at her side from the man sitting next to her. Back home, as innocent as this meeting was, it would have been seen in a very different light by the town gossips and Mary-Lou was very conscious of not giving cause for idle tongues to wag. “My cousin, Susanna, and I have been invited this Saturday night. It’s so exciting! Do you know Mr. Wayne, Edward?”

[Edward Nigma]

He felt a slight pang of disappointment that the moment of openness had passed in her, that he would no longer be privy to the frankness of her frustration, but it perhaps showed her good judgment to regain control of herself so he, too, tried to mask the unhappy look into something more acceptable.

The conversation turned upwards when she mentioned a party for Wayne, and he didn't have to ask which. In fact, he heard the name Wayne day in and day out, and was surprised to find she was linked to him somehow as well. So he was having a party? When she mentioned she would be going with her cousin, he nearly asked if she meant the one who worked at Gotham Police Department with her, before remembering early that he wasn't supposed to know that she had a cousin in the department. He looked down at his hands, pretending to clean an imagined stain from one of them, before directing his gaze back at her as she asked him about Mr. Wayne.

A brief chuckle escaped his lips, but he quickly tried to subdue it and lifted his eyebrows, trying to show he wasn't laughing at her but merely at the idea of his 'knowing' anyone as powerful as Bruce Wayne. "Uh no, not exactly," he explained. "But I work for him, in a way. The company I work for is a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises. Surprisingly enough I've never seen him at a meeting." He smiled at his admittedly lame joke, brushing his hands off at last. He decided to return the favor of her curiosity, and asked,

"How do you know Mr. Wayne?"

[Mary-Lou White]

“I don’t,” Mary-Lou admitted with a light laugh. “I mean, I only really know what I have read about him, and none of that information is very flattering. But my cousin Susanna has met him a couple of times and she wants me to go with her.” Mary-Lou, although a trusting soul, was not completely unaware of what had brought her to the Park in the first place and she had already decided that there was no reason to either tell Edward that she was a Detective, nor explain that she was going to Mr. Wayne’s fabulous birthday party because of business rather than pleasure. She was surprised to hear that he worked for Wayne, though she was hard pressed these days to find someone in Gotham who wasn’t linked to the billionaire in some way.

She turned her body towards Edward more, interested in him and the ease of his conversation. She didn’t have too many friends in the city and, reasoning that she needed all the friends she could get, Mary-Lou smiled. She enjoyed a run through the park, although the times she usually took her exercise fluctuated wildly depending on the times of her shifts. Maybe if he was in the habit of feeding the ducks on a regular basis she could meet him again. “Do you come to the park often? I haven’t seen you here before.” Her blue eyes were light and enquiring, a genuine question seeking a genuine answer. If she only knew that she was talking to someone who was taking stock of her every word, she might have been more guarded.

[Edward Nigma]

Edward pondered the question quickly. Unlike Mary-Lou, who was charmingly open and wonderfully unsuspecting, he was incredibly guarded with himself. Though he was quickly realizing he liked her astute perceptiveness, her bold intelligence, and yet the innocent spark of her naiveté, she was still a Detective, and should she ever find out what he was he wouldn't like to give too much away. "When I can," he responded, "But I'm not a very outdoorsy type, as you can probably tell from my fantastic tan." He held out his arms to show his mid-tone skin unkissed by the glow of the sun, and grinned.

"I tend to find myself curling up with a good book more often than striking out in the park. But you seem very athletic," he offered, glancing down at her and then quickly glancing away in a carefully contrived attempt to appear as if he didn't want to wound her girlish modesty. "I mean, I saw you run in, and you were going at a pretty good clip," he added, to cover his 'faux pas.' "You must come to the Park fairly often," he surmised curiously, his green eyes returning at last to her pretty face.

The smile that seemed to hesitate around his eyes and the corners of his lips even when he wasn't smiling indicated his growing enjoyment of the conversation and the other participant. Though in this case he was struggling to keep the conversation one step ahead of her, he imagined that in another time, and another place, she might be able to keep up with him quite well. And when that should happen, he imagined he would like it very much.

[Mary-Lou White]

Mary-Lou’s oceanic gaze sparkled at his compliment about her athleticism, too optimistic to think he meant it in any other way and trying not to let her cheeks flush overmuch at the directness of his glance before it moved away. She leaned her back on the stone railing of the bridge, Edward standing in front of her as she lifted her sunglasses onto the top of her head and squinted through the sun at him instead. True, he wasn’t the kind of guy that she usually found attractive, instead he was very pale and kind of weedy. But there was something so very appealing about the easiness of his countenance that had Mary-Lou enthralled.

“I go for a run most days,” she confessed, obviously flattered by his seemingly innocent comments and more than a little embarrassed at talking about herself. She was much more interested in finding out more about him. It wasn’t every day, after all, that you met a total stranger in a park that you seemed to gel so well with and if she listened to Susie then Gotham was full to the brim of self-involved arrogant poopoo-holes and not a lot else. No, Edward was a rare find indeed, Mary-Lou was sure of it! “But I’m pretty boring. I love to read,” she conceded with a smile, noticing the hint of mirth that hovered on Edward’s face and taking it for something it more than likely wasn’t. “What kind of books do you like? Maybe you could recommend something.”

[Edward Nigma]

"Ummm," he immediately started, thinking quickly to his recent reads, which were many. "I like non-fiction mostly, theorists you know. I love books about, uh, political debate, social theory, scientific discoveries," he chuckled as he spoke, the words coming out on each laugh, "really boring stuff to most people, actually," he admitted. His eyes sparkled a little now that they were on a subject he truly loved (books... and himself.) He inspected her a moment as he tried to pick something from the many titles stored in his brain that she might like, and he was so intent to find one she might like that he forgot one little detail about their encounter: he was not supposed to know that she was a police officer.

"Well," he offered, as if he'd stumbled upon a recommendation she might approve of, "one I read recently that you might enjoy is called Bad Boys, by Gretchen Littleton, a fifty year criminal psychology veteran of Arkham Asylum who just worked with, what do they call him, The Joker? It's really fascinating. She... she does a study of criminally insane minds and compares them to sufferers of the same mental illnesses who have never committed a crime. The results are pretty interesting."

He shrugged his shoulders, feigning humility. "But you might not want to bring work home with you, I guess."

[Mary-Lou White]

If Mary-Lou thought Edward was ‘kinda’ cute when they were just two strangers talking in the park on a sunny day, when he began to talk about books and his love for reading shone directly through whatever reservations he had still held she thought him absolutely charming. The undeniably intelligent spark in his eyes and the enthusiasm with which he spoke about the book he was suggesting to her had Mary-Lou looking at him in a very different light and she found herself nodding with interest. Maybe this book would be good! She was no-where near being in Susie’s league and if she wanted to get that promotion then she would probably need all the background material she could get. As he shrugged in what Mary-Lou considered an attempt at modesty after having sounded so brilliant, she rather thought that if she hadn’t been so dead set against tattoos of any sort so might have inadvertently found herself sporting ‘Edward’ scrawled sinfully across her tiny Christian toosh.

She continued to smile and opened her mouth to respond when the weirdest feeling – like a cracked egg on her head that had begun to trickle down her spine – came over her. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled despite the warmth of the day and goosebumps raised themselves on her arms. Her eyes opened wider despite the influx of sunlight and she looked at this rather plain, nice-seeming young man in horror for a split-second before forcing herself to recover. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would prey on young girls or cops or anyone, and she felt a clump of disappointment curdle in her stomach as she wondered whether her pessimistic cousin was right. Maybe most men really were jerks.

“Yeah, maybe not,” she agreed quietly, trying and failing to look casual. The reassuring weight of her holster and gun was her only saving grace as she squinted at him, looking him right in the eye. “But... Edward? I don’t remember telling you I was a cop.”

[Edward Nigma]

A real blush tinted the villain's cheeks pink as she called him on his mistake. In all his cleverness, he had allowed his desire to please the young woman to overlook the huge, glaring detail. And yet, rather than panic his well-organized mind quickly assessed the damage, and for reasons even he didn't know a strange smile twisted his lips. He ran with it, and an awkward laugh escaped him. This part of his reaction was genuine.

"Wow, this is really embarrassing," he admitted, he said as he glanced out across the lake and then back to the ground, avoiding her gaze. "Okay, truthfully..." he started, and then glanced up at her, "not that I was looking, but..." He stopped again, looking up over the lake and then blowing a breath of air out of his puckered lips. "Okay, so I was looking," he admitted, brushing a hand through his short hair in a sign of nervousness. "You're probably way too young for me, and I shouldn't have been checking you out, but, I did, and, I noticed you're carrying a holster... and a gun... and you're, er." He cleared his throat. "You're quite fit, and, well... I just guessed you were a cop or FBI or something."

He shoved both hands in his pockets. "And I feel really awkward now. Most people don't notice details like that and it's a little creepy. And yet, I'm still talking to you, even though you're clearly freaked out. I'm sorry, it's the adrenaline, flight or fight response, it..." He pulled a hand back out of his pocket and mimed a mouth opening and closing. "Yeah..." He nodded. "Sorry," he added. "I'll.." He pointed in the direction of the park exit with his thumbs. "Go." He gave another nod, and turned, taking a few steps, and glancing once over his shoulder to see if the young Detective bought the story about the holster. After all, he had been checking her out.