Chapter 3 - "Follow me" - a blog series

 FOLLOW ME
       Chapter 3 - Gloom 






It was a gloomy morning in Gotham; Barbara knew a storm was coming. Another suicide report was about to come in to her office. Before she even took the call, or switched on the TV, she knew who had died. She had figured it out the previous night. As she took the phone call from Richard Downing, the scenes of the previous night flashed through her :
 

“Donald Gosling” the bat -phone had screamed. By that time, Barbara had processed the clue enough to know that Riddler’s next target was one among three people. And if she had to pick one of them she would have picked Donald Gosling too. She was impressed with herself at that very moment and she hurried to her car, making sure she took the bat-phone with her.

“I’m getting there” she had replied.

 “There?” Batman had asked.

“Von Gruenwald Tower.”. And there had been silence from Batman and after a while, he had replied with just a “good!”

As she drove from her office to Winston and 5^th, Barbara had read and re-read the letter in her mind, trying to pick up more clues if there were any. “Commander of and organisation that took people around the world” she had thought, “obviously referred to...”

“Ma’am!” said Richard Downing; interrupting Barbara’s thought process, “Donald Gosling, chairman of Victoria Global was found dead on the corner Winston Avenue and 5^th Street! And by the looks of it he was a drunk and disturbed man! There’s this tape he left behind which you might be interested in, ma’am!”

Commissioner Barbara Gordon

“It’s ok, Dick. Please proceed with the investigation by yourself and update me once you get somewhere.” She said in a low tone.

Gosling was the chairman of Victoria Global, a package tour dealership firm that organised and conducted package tours to Europe, South America and the Caribbean Isles. Gosling had been trafficking women from these places, brought them into Gotham and would sell them off to brothel houses in Old Gotham Town or the nearby Robinsville.

There was big money in trafficking women from third world countries in Eastern Europe and South America. And Victoria Global had just the perfect alibi for their criminal activities. There had been complaints about such activities in Gotham in the past but there were no clear leads.

And when Barbara had reached the top of Von Gruenwald Tower, the tallest building in Gotham, she saw the man himself, Donald Gosling, hanging from a crane's hook and two full bottles of vodka on the floor, both empty. Gosling had been very much conscious, and he had confessed to his crimes; one by one, he had told her everything. And finally, when he was finished, he shouted, “you promised you’d let me go, just unhook me and let me fall!” the crane dropped him and the arm of the crane moved back into the building.

“Barbara?” the bat-phone had uttered in a much lower volume than usual.

“He is dead.” She had said, “Over and out!” she was in no mood to talk to anyone right then.

And her mood hadn’t changed much over 8 hours; it was as dark and gloomy as the Gotham sky that day. She hadn’t slept at all. She was so close, yet so... “Damn it!” she felt, “I was actually there, took the clue, read into it, solved it. Riddler generally rewards those who solve his riddles, or so I’ve heard. Maybe it isn’t him after-all, maybe he has changed. On the upside, the trafficking racquet will get exposed now.”

She felt down; low and guilty. She should have done something. But she actually couldn’t do anything after hearing him confess to her. He deserved whatever he had gotten. But she weighted her responsibility against her opinions and her responsibilities outweighed her personal convictions right then. But it had been so much different the previous night.

She had some work to be done. The letters were coming to her place and she wanted to find out who was the one delivering them to her. Obviously the first one had been an actor of some sort, he did well enough to make her believe he was a real butler. She never saw the second one coming. But she knew another one was coming now. Riddler wouldn’t stop, not after he’d gotten his toes wet. He’d finish what he started out on. So, she set monitoring devices outside her house, on all directions and reinforced her office’s security.

She had a long day of paperwork ahead of her. But paperwork was just duty. She had to go beyond the call of her duty now. She felt responsible for two deaths. These people had committed crimes indeed, but it was up to the law to punish them. Not the Riddler. She had to stop him. She finished her work quickly and went back home as soon as she could. By three in the afternoon, she was home and could see that technicians were just getting done with the setting up of cameras and microphones.

Once they were done with it and had left, she was all by herself again, left to think and ponder over riddles, guilt and the letter she had gotten seven days ago. “Come to think of it...” she told herself, “he gave me six and not seven days this time.” And she felt a jolt in her heart as she figured that out.” This could mean so many things” she thought.

Now, all she had to do was to wait for the next letter. It was coming and she knew it. She waited, watched TV, drank coffee, ordered a pizza and ate it. She waited and waited but she hadn’t slept for too long and eventually dozed off watching “Bugs Bunny”.

When she woke up, it was four in the morning and a letter was waiting for her under her door. Before she went and picked up the letter, she checked her computer to find out who delivered the letter. It surprised her; it was the same butler, driving the same car. Now, was the Riddler one among the four families she thought Batman was from? Or was Riddler simply using their services? Or was he simply using the same actor over and over again? She had time to figure all this out. But, on the other hand, there was a life at stake and she needed to open the letter.

“

Dear Commissioner,

Monitoring the messenger is pointless. He isn’t going to tell you anything, you will have to figure it out yourself. I think I will change my medium of communication from now on. You know, paper does seem a bit too old fashioned, why don’t we go electronic? And I know just the man who does it.

With respects for showing promise, and with hope that you do not break it,

Ed

“

She was bewildered. Was there even a clue in this? Is he even targeting someone? And he mentioned about the messenger. She had to see the video again. Who was this man?! She needed a face-search. She took a screen-shot and sent an e-mail with it to herself. She could run a search at the office. Now, she drifted her attention to the letter again, “I have five days!” she thought.

“We have five days,” she told Batman once she picked up the bat-phone. And she explained to him all that she’d figured out the previous day and also about the letter and the butler. She was actually sort of excited about this whole thing and her voice seemed to reveal it.

“He also signed! What do you think that means?” she asked, sounding like a teenage girl trying to read into signs from a pretty boy who had just talked to her.

“He knows that you know it is him.” said the Batman.

“Yeah! I thought the same too! And it fits!” she said “Ok, Batman, I will get back to you once the search results are out! Over and out!”

She had another busy week ahead of her. She went to the office in the morning and quickly ran a search on the photo she had mailed to herself. It took about thirty minutes for the computer to analyse and compare the photo with the entire database. At the end of the search, it actually found two matches; twins. Her first major clues to finding out who Riddler was and stopping the crimes as a whole, rather than try and stop them one by one.

One was that of Mr. Andrew Gough, a play actor with the Kail’s Theatre. He had visited Gotham a couple of times over the past month for performances, but he himself lived in Langford. He was 46 years old and had a wife and 2 kids. The other one was Dr. Steven Gough, a professor of computer science and computer applications at The Gotham University. He had joined the university about 7 years back and had an absolutely blank personal life, and at 46, he was a single man and had no history of marriages. But he had the most amazing career profile over the last 7 years, with more papers published to his name over that period than any other man in Gotham.

Barbara felt it was obvious as to which lead she should take. It was almost certain that Andrew Gough was the actor used by the Riddler to deliver the letters. But intuitively, somewhere remotely, Barbara couldn’t just neglect Steven Gough.