Draccon nodded for him to take a look inside the folder. “Just got her file back from our clerks. It contains her whole background. Youngest inmate in the history of Arkham, not that it makes her any less dangerous. She’s got crime in her family—her mother, to be specific. Madeleine’s accused of committing three murders, all in the same way, and was on our wanted list for months before we finally arrested her back in February at the Grant estate.” She fixed Bruce with a grave stare. “There are some graphic photos in there. Don’t look if you think you can’t stomach it.”
Bruce opened the folder. Staring back at him was the mug shot of Madeleine Wallace, alabaster white and unsmiling, her dark hair straight as a sheet on both sides of her face. If it weren’t for her prison jumpsuit and the number she was holding up, she would look like an average high school student. He scanned the rest of her profile, but there was precious little there, aside from the fact that she had a particular talent with technology. How someone like this could have committed three murders gruesome enough to put her away in Arkham Asylum made Bruce shiver, made him wonder what kinds of thoughts went through her head. He turned the page.
He flinched. It was a fullpage crime scene photo from one of the murders.
Draccon nodded grimly at Bruce. “Think it’s fun to interfere with police business? Welcome to my world.”
There were pages and pages of photos. All Bruce could let himself linger on were a few obvious facts—an older man, a pool of blood, a ghastly look on his frozen face, the last expression he made before he died. Bruce felt his stomach twist as the photos went on, unable to tear his eyes away and yet afraid to see more. The edges of his vision blurred, and his breathing turned shallow.
The theater. Blood on the pavement. Someone was screaming, always screaming.
“Bruce?”
Through the fog, he felt Draccon’s hands on his shoulders, giving him a rough shake. His eyes snapped up to the detective, who stared down at him with a worried look. “Are you okay?” She shook her head. “Shouldn’t have brought you into this. We can head back—”
Bruce scowled and shrugged off the detective’s grip. “I’m fine.” He took a deep breath, then willed himself to stare back down at the photographic evidence. Focus. “I recognize this man,” he said.
Draccon sat down and leaned one arm across the back of her chair, still eyeing Bruce warily. “You’ve probably seen him before at a Wayne function. Sir Robert Bartholomew Grant, hedge fund manager turned city council member. He was well known in philanthropy circles and must’ve thrown a charity ball every month.” At that, her lip curled ever so slightly, as if the thought of such a wealthy man left a bad taste in her mouth. Draccon shook her head, and the expression disappeared, replaced with something resembling guilt at thinking ill of the dead. “He was found like this in his own home. Madeleine’s last victim.” She hesitated as they both stared at the photo. “Throat slashed, multiple knife wounds. His bank accounts were completely drained of their millions. In the weeks following his death, the Nightwalkers bombed a building that bore his name on Gotham City University’s campus, then the charities he sponsored.”
Bruce nodded slowly. It took nearly all of his effort to keep the memory at bay. He had a vague recollection of the man, knew that his parents must have been acquaintances with him.
He flipped the page and found himself staring at photos of the next victim.
“Annabelle White,” Draccon went on. “Former president of Airo Technologies, also a heavy philanthropist who nevertheless shied away from public appearances. She was found in her home, in a similar state to Grant. Her accounts were also drained of cash, and her lab headquarters were bombed shortly thereafter.”
“I heard about this murder,” Bruce murmured as he went quickly through the photos so that he didn’t have to focus on each one. “She lived nearby. I remember seeing the flashing lights of police cars on her hill all the way from my home.” He’d heard the panic from the officers, in fact, on his police scanner, had followed some of the chaos live.
Draccon nodded. As Bruce flipped to the last page, she continued. “Edward Bellingham III, heir to the Bellingham oil fortune. Same type of murder, also committed in his own home. This was the one where we finally found a print that led us to Madeleine, although there were clearly multiple assailants involved in each crime—two different sets of tire tracks on the path leading to both the front and back entrances, locks on doors picked at opposite ends of the estate.”
Bellingham. Bellingham Industries & Co., the name on the side of the building where Bruce had chased the Nightwalker’s getaway car. “He owned the place the Nightwalkers bombed, didn’t he?” Bruce asked.
Draccon nodded. “Same story. Fortunes drained, still untraceable. His legacies and landmarks destroyed. The Nightwalkers are waging a war against the upper rungs, Bruce—they want to punish the elite who they think have corrupted the system, and they do it by stealing those individuals’ money and using it to fund the destruction of all those people ever cared about.”
These victims could have been his parents. Who did they leave behind? Did each of these people have young sons, daughters, siblings, people who now had to figure out how to live life without a loved one? The thought lodged in Bruce’s throat, bringing with it a sense of rage. Was there ever a reason to kill? Did Madeleine sleep well at night, with the blood that stained her hands?
Blood on the pavement. Blood on the ground.
He closed the folder and felt an immediate sense of relief. He looked across the table at Draccon, who was using her coffee mug to warm her hands. “All wealthy philanthropists,” he said.
“And all murdered in their homes,” Draccon added. “In each case, the home’s security system had not only been compromised, but had been completely reprogrammed to work against the owner, trapping them inside their own home instead of protecting them. Grant’s system should have dialed the police, for instance, but instead, it unlocked the door in his garage, letting the assailants inside. The security cameras throughout his home were rewired to aid the intruders in figuring out exactly where Grant was in the house. And so on.”
Turning his security against himself, and then turning his money against him, too. Bruce shivered, imagining his own mansion sealing him in like a tomb. “And Madeleine’s connected to the Nightwalkers?”
“At the time of her arrest, she was found escaping the estate grounds with a canister of spray paint in her backpack that matched the paint used to draw the Nightwalkers’ symbol inside the house. It gives us reason to believe that she and at least one of her accomplices are Nightwalkers. She might even be a highly ranked member herself. We’ve been trying to get information out of her for months—with plea deals, then with threats—but she hasn’t so much as uttered a peep. That is, until you came waltzing along.”
“I don’t waltz.”
Draccon’s eyebrows lifted at his retort, and a hint of amusement flashed across her face. “Skipping, then,” she said dryly. “You seem like a skipper.”