Getting the hospital's surveillance video wasn't difficult for Batman.
The doctors wouldn't cooperate voluntarily. But the bat-cracker Lucius Fox had designed solved that problem elegantly.
A small device, no larger than a USB drive, inserted into any networked computer. It wormed through security protocols, bypassed passwords, granted access to systems that should have been locked down tight.
Fortunately, Gotham General Hospital hadn't deleted the surveillance data from last November—specifically, the footage related to Harvey Dent's wife Gilda being hospitalized after the house bombing.
Gotham City, being a special kind of nightmare, had implemented a policy requiring hospitals to back up all video data related to major incidents for at least ninety days. The footage needed to be preserved for potential legal proceedings, insurance claims, investigations that might arise months after the fact.
And controversies counted as "major incidents" by default.
A local District Attorney's house being bombed definitely qualified. The Holiday Killer committing murders definitely qualified. Harvey Dent making a scene and demanding to review surveillance footage definitely qualified.
The combination of all three factors had ensured the data was preserved meticulously.
As for who had promoted and funded this particular policy initiative?
Bruce Wayne, naturally.
One of dozens of public safety measures he'd championed through Wayne Foundation grants and city council lobbying. Most people saw it as philanthropic concern for transparency. Batman saw it as building infrastructure for future investigations.
The investment was paying off now.
Batman sat in the Batcave, the surveillance footage playing on his central monitor at triple speed.
The hospital room. A bed with curtains partially drawn for privacy. The angle was from above, looking down—standard security camera positioning that captured most of the room but left blind spots near the walls.
Harvey Dent's figure was visible through the gap in the curtains. A sliver of the bed, a portion of his body, enough to track his presence continuously.
He stayed there all night.
Even when he lay down to sleep, part of his back remained visible—the distinctive shape of his shoulders, the way he positioned himself protectively near Gilda's bed.
Batman watched the footage twice at normal speed, checking timestamps against the timeline of the Irish Gang murders.
Harvey had been there. Physically present in that hospital room during the window when the Irish Gang were executed in the Astoria Tower Hotel.
Relief flooded through Batman's chest.
Harvey wasn't the Holiday Killer.
At least, not for this case.
But.
There was always a "but" in Gotham.
The video wasn't perfect. Two blank spots interrupted the otherwise continuous footage.
First Blank: Eleven seconds of snow screen. Static interference, white noise across the monitor, then resumption of normal footage. No obvious cause. The timestamp showed it happening around 9:47 PM—early in Harvey's vigil, well before the murders.
Could be equipment malfunction. Old cameras, aging wiring, electromagnetic interference from medical equipment.
Could be.
Second Blank: Total power outage. The screen went black at 11:32 PM. Stayed black for forty-three seconds before backup power kicked in and the cameras resumed recording.
This one had an explanation: a thunderstorm that night had caused power fluctuations across the district. Gotham General's backup generator had activated automatically, following protocol for emergency power restoration.
Lightning strikes causing hospital power problems weren't uncommon. Gotham's weather was perpetually miserable—rain, thunder, electrical storms that made the city's infrastructure groan under the strain.
The backup emergency power supply existed precisely for this scenario.
But Batman didn't believe in coincidences.
If someone wanted to cause a short circuit at Gotham General, they just needed to research the hospital's electrical systems. Understand the wiring. Know which breakers to trip, which connections to disrupt.
Most people wouldn't bother with such a thankless task. Too much effort for uncertain payoff. Easier to bribe a nurse to delete footage, or hire killers to eliminate witnesses, or any number of simpler solutions Gotham's criminal ecosystem offered.
Which meant the hospital hadn't invested heavily in protecting against sophisticated electrical sabotage. Why would they? The threat model didn't justify the expense.
But someone had done it anyway.
"The two blanks seem to be different methods," Batman murmured to the empty cave. "The first is camera interference. The second is power disruption."
His mind raced through possibilities.
Two different people? One interfering with surveillance, one cutting power?
Or one person using multiple techniques to create confusion?
Or—
His heart skipped.
Or the first interference wasn't related to the murders at all. Was someone else entirely, for different reasons.
And the second blank—the power outage—was when something happened that needed to be hidden.
Batman replayed the footage again, this time paying attention to the timing.
The first blank: 9:47 PM. Too early for the murders, which happened around midnight.
The second blank: 11:32 PM. Closer to the timeline. Still slightly early, but within the margin for someone to leave the hospital, travel to the Astoria Tower Hotel, commit the murders, and disappear.
Except Harvey had been there the whole time.
Unless—
Batman froze the frame at 11:31 PM, one second before the power cut.
Harvey's shoulder was visible. His position on the bed clearly marked.
Then forty-three seconds of darkness.
When the cameras resumed at 11:33 PM, Harvey was in almost exactly the same position. The angle matched. The posture matched.
Almost.
Almost.
Batman enhanced the image, comparing the pre-outage frame to the post-outage frame pixel by pixel.
The shoulder position was identical. The angle of his back was identical.
Too identical.
As if someone had very carefully resumed the exact same posture after moving.
"No," Batman breathed. "Not Harvey."
But someone had left during that outage. Someone who knew how to position themselves to look like they'd never moved. Someone with access to that hospital room, that bed, Harvey's location.
Someone who'd practiced deception.
His thoughts from earlier crystallized into terrible clarity:
Two people were worth investigating.
A few days later, Jude was making coffee in his apartment when his window opened.
He didn't even turn around.
"I told you to use the door," he said, pouring water over grounds with deliberate calm. "Don't you ever listen to people?"
"You were involved in the bombing investigation," Batman's voice came from behind him, flat and certain. "You blocked Harvey's wiretap signals. You understand the technology."
Jude kept his back turned, finishing his coffee preparation with steady hands despite his suddenly racing pulse.
"You deleted the hospital's surveillance footage," Batman continued.
Jude raised his eyebrows, picked up his mug, finally turned around.
Batman stood in his living room, cape settling around him like smoke, cowl casting his face in shadow.
"I'm going to confess," Jude said calmly. "I deleted footage to protect someone I thought was innocent. I was wrong to interfere with evidence, but I believed I was helping a good person. I'll accept consequences for that."
He took a sip of coffee.
"Now get to your point."
"You didn't cause the power outage."
Jude blinked. "What power outage?"
"After you left the hospital," Batman said, voice carrying a weight that made Jude's skin prickle, "did anyone follow you?"
The question hung in the air.
Jude's mind raced backward.
Had anyone followed him?
He'd been focused on not being caught. On getting home safely. On—
A creepy feeling surged from the bottom of his spine, racing up his back like ice water. Goosebumps erupted across his arms.
For a normal person, the implication was terrifying.
"You mean," Jude said slowly, "after I left the hospital, someone took advantage of the surveillance being down and came out with me?"
"A killer followed you out." Batman's voice remained perfectly calm, clinical. "From that ward. Right behind you."
Jude's coffee mug trembled slightly in his hand.
"He went to get her coat and her gun," Batman continued, speaking facts like they were items on a grocery list
The pieces clicked together in Jude's mind with horrible clarity.
He'd deleted the surveillance footage. Created a blind spot.
Someone else had used that blind spot—had cut the power to create an additional window of opportunity.
Had followed him out of the hospital.
Had gone to that hotel.
"Oh god," Jude whispered.
"You deleted the camera interference," Batman said. "He caused the power outage. Two different people, two different methods, same result."
Jude set down his coffee before he dropped it.
"Are you sure it was him?" His voice came out steady despite the churning in his gut. "Did he commit the subsequent cases?"
"It's not him, it's her. Just this one case."
The pronoun shift registered.
"Gilda?" Jude's voice rose slightly. "Gilda Dent killed the Irish Gang?"
"Yes."
Jude's thoughts suddenly became crystal clear, the moral calculation snapping into focus.
"She's a copycat," he said. "What about the first case? Halloween?"
Batman pulled out a small tablet, displayed a photograph. A woman—petite, dark-haired, sad-eyed. The caption read: Heidi Thompson, girlfriend of Richard Daniel
"Gilda's approach can also be applied to the first case," Batman said. "Richard had a girlfriend named Heidi. She was also one of Johnny Vitti's ex-girlfriends."
"So she knew where Johnny lived," Jude said, following the logic. "His habits. The structure of his house. How to sneak into his bathroom without being detected."
"She was avenging Richard's death." Batman's voice carried no judgment, just statement of fact. "The question is: how did Gilda get back to the hospital?"
"She used to be a nurse at Gotham General."
The words came from Jude's mouth before Batman could say them.
"She knew the hospital's security vulnerabilities," Jude continued, speaking faster now, the full picture assembling. "She read the case files Harvey brought home—studied the Holiday Killer's method, learned how to copy it. She might not have even been looking for the Irish Gang specifically. But she heard them celebrating. Laughing. Loud and drunk and alive while her house was rubble."
He looked at Batman directly.
"And she's a very good shot. Good enough to take out five trained criminals by surprise before any of them could draw their weapons."
"Anyone is 'good' compared to your marksmanship," Batman said flatly.
Jude clenched his fists. The urge to punch Batman surged through him,
"If it weren't for me," Jude said instead, forcing his hands to relax, "she would have just deleted the surveillance footage from that night instead of cutting the power, right? My interference created complications. Made her improvise."
The question went unanswered.
Batman's figure was already gone—cape swirling, window closing, presence vanishing like he'd never existed.
Jude ran to the window anyway, threw it open, raised his voice to shout at the dark Gotham sky where Batman was probably already three rooftops away.
"There are some crimes that the law cannot touch!" His words echoed off buildings. "So to some extent, private revenge is justified!"
The city swallowed his voice without acknowledgment.
Jude stood there for a moment longer, breathing hard, then closed the window and returned to his now-cold coffee.
He'd tried. Had offered the perspective of another great detective—Sherlock Holmes, who'd let guilty people walk when the law was inadequate, who'd understood that justice and legality weren't always synonyms.
Whether Batman would accept that perspective...
Jude had no idea.
For the next several days, Batman was busy running between various shooting ranges across Gotham.
Public ranges. Private clubs. Illegal basement operations. Anywhere people practiced marksmanship, Batman investigated.
He had plenty of ways to get membership lists—hacking, bribery, intimidation, simple breaking and entering. Money helped. Fear helped more. The combination was nearly unstoppable.
What took time was the sheer volume of data.
Hundreds of names. Thousands of shooting records. Competition results, training logs, instructor notes on students who showed exceptional talent.
Batman cross-referenced everything against his existing suspect criteria:
Local to Gotham
High intelligence
Professional training
Access to law enforcement or prosecution
Personal connection to victims
Motive against both Falcone and Maroni families
The list should have narrowed dramatically.
It didn't.
"Master, you should take a rest."
Alfred's voice cut through Batman's concentration. The butler placed a steaming cup of black tea and a bat-shaped sandwich beside the computer—comfort food disguised as practicality.
"You've been staring at these dozens of lists and records for hours without pause."
"I understand, Alfred." Batman took the tea without looking up. His eyes continued scanning names, cross-referencing data points, looking for the pattern that would unlock everything.
He flipped through the list of high score records from the shooting range run by the Falcone family. Then the Maroni family's private range. Then the GCPD training facility. Then the competitive shooting circuit.
Name after name after name.
None of them were the one he was looking for.
"Alfred." Batman's voice was quiet, certain. "I have to take a trip."
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