A neutral card

First, thanks for the reviews. It just makes you work with so much more enthusiasm to get some kind of feedback… :)

I know, I know guys, you want to read about the Joker and I try your patience very hard. I love that guy too and can’t wait to write him, but I also need to develop my OC’s connection to Gordon. It’s very important for the later story. And I also want to throw in some information of how Gotham looks like after the Joker. I loved how in the movie he was some kind of linchpin for so many people’s lifes and it’s going to be the same here.

Let’s just say, I’m trying not to make my stories fast food.
It’s going to be worth the wait, and besides, in this chapter you get MTV Cribs for the Jokers room! That said, enjoy!

*****************************


„I therefore order that the accused shall be transferred to Arkham Asylum into the necessary psychological custody. The court is dismissed.“

Lisa breathed out audibly. She had strongly feared that judge Illsley wouldn’t be so mild after a trial that had felt like a bad court movie adaption about how Murphy’s Law properly worked. New proofs, files she had had no clue about, witnesses that obviously had changed their minds seconds before the trial, you name it, it had been there. After all of that, she had been more than lucky to get through with her appraisal. Maybe Gordon had been right yesterday. Maybe the judges really trusted her.

She raised from her chair as the court room was getting empty and realized that the trousers of her costume tottered noticably around her legs. She had lost weight through the last months, about 10 pounds judging from her clothes. Well, there was just one thing she could do about it. Time for lunch.

Before she could put her files away into the bag, someone adressed her by her name and she looked up. Next to her stood McKanleys attorney whose name had slipped her mind. It happened automatically once a trial was through. She could only store a certain amount of information in her brain.

„Mrs. Gedden?“

„Yes?“ she responded, hoping that this conversation would not require her to mention his name. It was embarassing. She had spent hours talking to this guy.

„My client would like to have a quick word with you, if you don’t mind.“

Lisa turned around and saw Stephen McKanley waiting in the entrance of the huge court room, surrounded by the necessary policemen.

„Sure.“ she smiled. „I was headed for the door anyway.“

She lifted her bag up, threw it over her shoulder and hurried to get to McKanley. From her experience, cops were not really patient when it came to escort a convicted criminal back to prison.

„You wanted to speak to me?“ she said when she had reached the door with a couple of quick steps and forced the policemen to step aside a bit to give her the room to breathe.

Stephen McKanley looked at her. He was a huge latino with broad shoulders, just the kind of guy one would suspect in a murder case. But after a long time of talking to him, she knew that this exterior was misleading. This man was sick, suffering from a schizoid personality disorder paired with schizophrenia. Lisa was convinced that he could have been a decent guy if he had ever gotten the necessary treatment, so she had thrown herself into that case. And she was usually not the type to immediately believe in the good of people. Side effects of a job in which one constantly had to deal with murderers.

McKanleys voice was high-pitched, a sharp contrast to his body that had amazed her from the beginning.

„I just wanted to thank you, Doctor.“

She blinked surprised and couldn’t really place his words for a moment.

„For what?“

McKanley came a step closer, his movement immediately followed from a reprehensive snarl of the cop in charge.

„For giving me the chance to go to Arkham.“

Lisa looked at him unbelievingly for a few seconds. She felt touched, genuinely touched without her usual sarcastic nuance to it, a rare feeling these days. She had evaluated hundreds of criminals through the last four years and never had anyone bothered to thank her for keeping him from state prison.

„Thank you very much, Mr. McKanley. I wish I’d have more people like you to work with.“

Lisa put forth her hand to shake his and he returned that gesture despite of the handcuffs. She looked up to meet his intense gaze.

„Just make sure you take that chance. There are very good psychiatrists in Arkham and they will give you the medicine you need to feel better. If you try your best, there’s a good chance you’ll come out of it one day to lead a normal life.“

„Couldn’t you treat me, Doctor?“

Lisa shook her head, even though for one moment she seriously regretted that she had to do so.

„I’m not taking care of therapies, Mr. McKanley. And I’m not qualified to work in Arkham. I’m sorry.“

She could feel that the cops were getting really impatient now, but she didn’t give a damn. It was their job to be impatient and her job was to make sure that this man would try his best to contribute to his treatment.

„Is it too much if I ask you to visit me sometime? I know you’re very busy, doctor, but it would mean a lot to me.“

Sure it would. As most of Arkhams patients, he didn’t have a family.

„I will, Mr. McKanley. I’m having a huge trial coming up, but in three weeks I’m going to come over to see how you’re doing, I promise.“

She knew that it was important to set a date. She didn’t want him to wait for her.

McKanley nodded at her again, then one of the cops pulled him away.

Lisa stayed in the doorway for a few more minutes. His request for a visit was the best sign he could have given that her evaluation had been right. He wanted to lead a normal life and he wanted to be sane again. There were people like him out there. When she had started there had been only a small number of these cases, but they had increased rapidly over the last weeks. The Joker had been very successful in turning people like McKanley into his followers, deracinated, mentally sick human beings for whom he had been the only bright spot within years. Sure, there had been a lot of real criminals working for him too, but the most loyal men were the ones bound to the belief that he would help them.

The Joker was one intelligent bastard, she had to hand him that. Sometimes it seemed as if he had driven the whole city mad.

Her cellphone started to ring and she took it out of her pocket to look at it. The number on the display, her personal assisstant, caused her to answer immediately.

„Anything important?“

She hated that John sounded always hectic and overloaded, but he was very skilful when it came to divert between primary and secondary matters. If he called, it had to be urgent.

„A lovely good morning to you too, Lisa. You’ve got a new file delivered this morning and a call from Jim Gordon’s office two hours ago. His assisstant says he wants you to be at Arlington Street 213 at twelve o’clock. I’ve send your car over to the court already because I couldn’t reach you while you were in the trial.“

She smiled whimsically.

„What would I do without you, John? Do something terrible like taking a cab?“

„Lisa, I know I shouldn’t have done it but I through a quick glance into the file that came this morning…“

She sighed. Better an overenthusiastic assisstant than a lazy one.

„Yes, I’m going to take the Joker case. No, I’m not going to answer questions about that now. Just make sure you say goodbye to your family for the next three weeks. Bye.“

She interrupted the call to prevent further questions, threw a quick glance at her watch and sighed. Eleven thirty. So much for lunch.

Gordon sure had a strange definition of afternoon.

****************************


The comissioner hadn’t lied about the warehouse. It was a huge, desolated concrete building with twelve floors and no windows. There were hundreds of these old houses at the city limits, abandoned after Gotham had stopped most of its regular production. Nobody seemed to own them and nobody cared to keep them in a usable state, so they had been rotting away over the years until they were nothing but empty grey facades and frequent shelters for the homeless.

When Lisa got out of her car, the fresh wind hit her face and dishevelled her hair. It was a bleak surrounding, projecting hopelessness and the part of Gotham officials tended to ignore. It figured that the Joker had chosen this area as his base. It represented the negative consequences of civilization. In some kind of way this was completely logical. Lisa shuddered involuntarily at this thought.

It was the right adress, she could see the red barrier tape prohibiting entrance into the house. She hurried to climb up the stairs to not extend her delay. Even with a navigation system, this place had been hard to find.

When she opened the door to enter, a voice stopped her.

„Don’t you see that this is a restricted area, Miss?“

Lisa turned around and looked at the policeman approaching. She couldn’t blame him for his suspicion. To be honest, it was not really the smartest idea to walk into a crime scene without looking for someone to register at, so she hurried to hand him her ID-card.

„Lisa Gedden, psychological appraiser. Commissioner Gordon is waiting for me. Is he inside?“

The guy didn’t bother to answer. Instead he activated his walkie-talkie and lifted it up to his mouth.

„Commissioner? I have a young lady down here who says she has an appointment with you. A Miss Lisa Gedden from the psychological department.“

Gordons voice responded, blurred by statics.

„I’m on my way.“

Two minutes later, the door opened again and the commissioner stepped outside, throwing a quick glance at his subordinate and nodded. Then he turned to Lisa.

„You’re late, Doctor.“

Judging from the very serious and tense expression on his face, this was not the time for joking, so Lisa just nodded back.

„I’m sorry, Sir. I got out of court just an hour ago.“

Gordon took off his glasses and cleaned them with a couple of quick movements.

„How did it go?“

„Very well. The judge sent him to Arkham for psychological treatment.“

Lisa watched Gordon put on his glasses again and cleared her throat.

„Sir, I have to get back to my office as soon as possible. I have to look through the files thoroughly before I enter a room in which the Joker sits and according to how I know you, this is going to be sometime around 6 o’clock today. Am I right?“

Gordon looked at her and managed a smile.

„Five o’clock. You’re right, Doctor. Please follow me.“

He opened the door for her and she stepped into the entrance hall. It was huge, a place in which one would probably be able to hear an echo. The walls were high and some buttresses seemed to reinforce the building, but apart from a steel spiral stair to her left side that led into the upper floors, the basement was completely empty.

Gordon went past her, headed towards the stairs and started climbing up. A quick look upwards made Lisa sigh.

„I don’t suppose that thing has an elevator?“

******************************


It must have been about a thousand stairs and the most pleasant part about this whole climbing was that everytime Lisa’s view went to her feet she could see the floor getting farther away, nothing but a thin steel trestle keeping her from falling onto pure concrete. She hated heights.

Fortunately, they seemed to have arrived at their destination. Gordon opened the door to his left and ordered her with a hand sign to follow him into another huge room, but this time the walls were lower and in contrast to the basement, the floor was covered with objects as far as her eye could reach. She noticed a few shabby matresses in the left corner at the opposite side, a couple of barrels standing in the other and lots of mechanical devices, conductors and weapons lying scattered all over the concrete. It was a complete mess. Obviously, none of the people living here had ever heard of safety measurements at working places. Lisa wasn’t sure if she wanted to take a further step into the room. She was fearing that the first thing she tripped over would explode right into her face.

„Is this where he lived?“

Gordon turned around to her.

„This was his base, if you can call it like that. There were hundreds of barrels filled with gunpowder and oil in the underground cellars when we entered the building. As well as a huge supply of illegal weapons which we already got rid of.“

Lisa couldn’t take her eyes of the mess in front of her. She had visited terrorist hideouts before, even the bases of whole organisations, but this was another league. It looked like a factory of destruction. The thought disturbed her and she forced herself to concentrate on Gordon again.

„No, I meant if this is the place he stayed in for the night. Where he slept.“

Now Gordon understood and shook his head.

„No. According to the testimonies of some of his men, this was just the place they worked in. The Joker’s own room is further down the hallway.“

He approached a door in the wall at the left side.

It led into a long, dark corridor, which they walked in silence for about one minute until they reached another room barried with red tape. Gordon took it off with one move of is hand and opened the door. He walked inside and the stepped aside to give her free sight.

The view was surprising, to say the least. There was nothing really unusual about it compared to other rooms she had seen, it was just that considering the chaos outside it was so… tidy. It was not bigger than her office and to say that it was barely furnished would have been an understatement. There was almost nothing inside of it. A table and a chair in one corner and an open closet in the other one, some boxes neatly stapled on a blank, ragged wall.

Lisa took a step forward. So this was were he had lived. This was were he had planned Rachel’s and Harvey’s abduction and the explosion of the Gotham general. For a moment she wished nothing more than to have the chance to look at him when he thought himself alone in here. What did he do? Walking around talking to himself, sitting motionlessly on the chair, standing at the open window watching the city that nearly belonged to him? It would have told her a lot about who he was.

Well, she would have to work with what she had, so she turned to Gordon. The expression on his face told her that he must have had the same thoughts when he first had entered this room.

„Can I touch things in here, Sir?“

Gordon nodded.

„If it is necessary, Mrs. Gedden. By now, I’m sure that we have taken every single fingerprint and stain of DNA. But make sure that if you take something you put it back again.“

Lisa smiled.

„I’m sure they’ve mentioned something like that in practice classes.“

Then she turned his back on him and soaked in the impression the room gave her. She would have expected his surroundings to match his outlooks, untidy and carelessly treated. Had he just not had enough time yet to spend attention to the fact that he didn’t even have a bed in his room, or was it because he hated unclean surroundings?

Lisa kneeled down to stroke her fingers over the ground and lifted them up again. A thick cover of dust. The two weeks since the Joker had been caught could not have been enough time for all of this dirt to build up in here. Therefore, he was not unusually clean. What a pity. That would have at least been a clue.

She raised to her feet again and walked to the closet. No clothing in there. So he had to indeed wear the same stuff all the time, which was quite unfortunate. Lisa knew that he had never appeared without his purple cloak, but she had secretly speculated that maybe he possessed a few of them. It would have been the best hint that his appeareance was not the outside reflection of his sick mind, but a product of calculation. Speaking of appeareances, the mirror inside of one of the closet doors was shattered to pieces, a few of them missing.

At least this explained his lousy make-up skills.

Lisa heard Gordon clearing his throat behind her back and turned around to him.

„Commissioner, did you find any blood or DNA of him on that mirror?“

Gordon shook his head. „No. We were checking it thoroughly because I was asking myself too if he shattered it himself, but we didn’t find anything.“

No clue here too, then.

„Did he sleep on the ground?“

„Obviously. We found lint from his clothes and hair next to this wall.“
Gordon pointed towards the window.

She had to see if anyone in the prison had studied his nightly habits. She burnt to know how long and which position he slept. Probably sitting and able to wake from each little sound around him.

Lisa walked over to the table. Their was nothing on it, absolutely nothing. Didn’t he make notes? Did he always carry all his knifes around with him? What about his face paint?

She looked around the room. No books. Well, what had she expected the Joker to read? „Bomb construction for dummies“?

She had to be honest, the room was telling her nothing. It was the room of a man without a personality, without a life. A man who had no attachment to the world, no need for motivation or distraction. For her, this was scarier than the couple of corpses she had expected to find.

She turned around to meet Gordons gaze.

„Sir, I think I’m done here.“

************************************

They walked back down again in complete silence, mostly because Lisa was shivering at the sight of the ground far underneath the stairs she was trying to walk down.

When she left the warehouse, the first thing she did was sitting down on the stairs, searching in her bag to find her cigarettes. The moment she had fumbled one out of the packet and lit it, someone sat down next to her. She looked up and met Gordons eyes. He looked incredibly tired, so without a second thought she offered him the packet.

„Do you want one, too?“

Another head-meets-desk decision. That’s the way girl. Just offer your boss slowly killing, addictive drugs. For a psychologist, her EQ could be surprisingly low at times.

As expected, Gordon shook his head.

„You didn’t get much out of this, did you, Doctor?“

Lisa sighed.

„At least not much that could help your case. I believe I’ve never seen a room screaming „psychopath“ louder.“

„I thought so.“

She looked at him, surprised by his words.

„Then why didn’t you tell me yesterday?“

Gordon managed out a slight smile.

„Because arguing with you can be kind of exhausting, Doctor.“

Lisa could barely look at him. She liked this man, really and genuinely liked him and to see how defeated he looked now hurt her physically. She knew that his appeareance could be fooling and that there was probably still a lot of stength inside behind that exhausted face, but something rankled with him. She needed to go through with this. She needed to get the Joker behind bars. Not just for Rachel, for all the people whose lifes he had ruined.

She took a last deep drag and then stubbed out her cigarette on the ground. Noone would care here. This place had seen worse.

„I have to go back to my office and go through the file. When did you say was my first date?“

„Five o’clock this evening.“

She and Jim Gordon raised almost simultaneously and started to walk down the stairs.

„You know what, Commissioner? I can’t wait to finally meet this guy.“

That was such a lie.

**********************************


„Would you please take off your jacket, Doctor?“

Lisa did what the cop asked from her and used the time to throw a quick glance into the mirror. She looked like a professional now, after taking the time to shower, wash her hair and put on some make-up, which she hadn’t done for the last three days. It hadn’t really bothered her, to be honest.

But she knew that it would have been inappropriate walking into the high security department looking like one of the criminals she came to interrogate, so she had put some effort to make herself presentable again. Her shoulder long black hair was neatly pinned up, she was wearing a suit that was fitting her even with a few pounds less and her face looked as fresh as it was possible after two hours of sleep. She would never be outrageously good-looking, but when she gave it a little try she could be quite attractive.

„So“, she asked the psychiatrist who was waiting at the door while the cop was scanning her, „How does the interrogation room look like?“

„It’s a closed room with a table and two chairs. No see-through walls. It makes the procedure more difficult when the defendants see that someone else is watching.“

The cop finshed his examination and gave her back her jacket.

„You’re having cameras installed in that room, right?“

„Yes. A couple of supervisor will see and hear everything that’s going on inside. A necessary safety precaution, you’ll understand.“

„Sure. But there will be no other people in the room?“

„No, not if you don’t request it.“

She put on her jacket again, asking herself were in the world they were expecting her to hide something so quickly after the first two checks. They had scanned every fucking part of her body for metal and glass. It was a wonder she was allowed to keep -

„Could you please give me your earrings, Ma’am?“

Never get your hopes up too soon.

When she finally was allowed to head in direction of the interrogation chamber with the responsible psychiatrist, she still had a hundred of unanswered questions.

„He’s in handcuffs when I get in there?“

Dr. Rashett nodded.

„If you’d prefer it, we can also put up a glass wall between you and him. It would be understandable if you don’t want to get in there without further safety measurements. I myself don’t.“

Lisa shook her head. She had spent half of the afternoon going through the Joker’s file and the other half telling herself that she was not afraid. A glass wall, something she had never felt the urge to use in interrogations before, would have done nothing than make her nervousness even worse. There would be people watching every of the Joker’s movements and be able to interfere within seconds if it was needed.

They reached a door in front of which Dr. Rashett stopped.

„Anything you would still like to ask?“

Lisa breathed in deeply and received an understanding smile in return. She wished she had had more time to prepare for this and talk to Dr. Rashett about his experiences, but now she just wanted to go through with it.

„There is a favour I would like to ask you“ she added out of a sudden idea.

„What?“

„I know it is necessary that you’re watching the interrogation, but is it possible that you cut off the audio connection? I like to be able to assure my cases that nobody is listening to the conversation. And from what I read of the Joker, it might be useful in his case too.“

Dr. Rashett watched her sharply, obviously not really pleased with her request.

„Commissioner Gordon sets a lot of trust into you, Mrs. Gedden and I will not doubt his judgement. I will cut off the audio connection, but whenever I see something unusual happening, I will turn it up again. Is that alright with you?“

She smiled.

„Very much so.“

Then she turned to the door, put her hand on the knob to open it and breathed out.

It was time to take a look at the clown.