Ratcatcher (Gotham OC)

1: Ha Ha Ha

In the short time he'd been working at the GCPD, Detective Jim Gordon had caught on that every time somebody died in this city, he should expect the unexpected. Gotham was far beyond standard homicides in its recent years. You'd wake up to expect slit throats or stab wounds and go home with a mind still reeling from images of sick traps impossible to escape or sacrificial rituals praising beings unheard of.

In the years before the mysterious Batman rose to the light of his signal, maybe this was all a warning sign. Oswald Cobblepot would only get more deranged as the years bled through him; Ed Nygma would become the spitting image of all those baffling puzzles he used to bestow on his coworkers; Jonathan Crane would ache to render others to tortured minds like his own; the Valeska twins would become legends of the city in all the wrong ways with their blood-curdling laughs. Even the seemingly harmless Harvey Dent would eventually run into his darker side.

But today, in the first year of the many that he'd stumble through without a day of rest, Jim crossed one of the strangest and most disturbing murder scenes he'd see for quite some time.

He first saw it from a distance after slamming the door of his car. His partner, Detective Harvey Bullock, was crouching next to it, a sleeve over his mouth and a squint of something between confusion and disgust. Ed, the forensics examiner, stood behind it. He wrote on a clipboard, occasionally looking down at the thing with a face of wonder. Other officers milled around, most not having the courage to look directly at it.

It took Jim over half-way from his car to the other end of the alley to figure out what it was, and when he did he stopped dead in his tracks.

What might have once been a man lay in a mangled heap on the mossy ground. Half of his skin, eyes and even clothes had somehow been worn down to almost nothing. Whatever got him must have either taken mercy or gotten bored (most likely the latter), as most of his bottom half was still intact, albeit with an uncanny amount of confusingly small scratches and other markings. Blood had been spilled from everywhere imaginable, staining both the body and the ground around it.

From the waist up, it was essentially a bleeding skeleton with some wiry clumps of hair.

For a moment, all Jim could do was stare at it, copying his partner in both movement and expression. The stench of death was thicker than he could recall. Underneath it lay a different smell entirely, something feral and almost intoxicating. Just standing near the thing gave you something of a phantom hangover, and Jim wondered why he kept walking forwards until he reached the others.

A minute passed, and nobody said a word.

"Ed, what am I looking at?" Jim asked finally. He then contradicted himself by averting his gaze to a nearby wall.

The forensic examiner's face lit up, having clearly waited a while for the chance to say whatever he was about to say. He took a deep breath, but Harvey raised a hand.

"Listen, string bean," he said. "I don't wanna hear it. Cut to the chase, alright?"

Ed didn't reply. His eager expression settled into something darker. It was only there for a split second, like a flickering light, and when it was gone it was replaced by an almost theatrical disappointment. You might feel bad for him, but Harvey was never one for sympathy, especially when the person he should be showing it for was so annoying.

"Judging by the marks on what's left of the skin, the bites aren't human," Ed explained, pointing down to the body with a gloved hand. "Because of the size and shape I wanna guess... mice? Rats? Usually this would be a natural thing for them to do if the body's been out in the open for long enough, but the bites appear to be the only external cause of death."

Jim shrugged, considering. "It's hard to tell with this guy. He could have had his eyes gouged out and we'd have no idea. Any ID on him?"

"Could have," Harvey said. "Nobody's wanted to check. We decided you should do the honours."

Jim grimaced. "How kind."

Why is it always me?, he wondered as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves. He'd just been thinking it about having to search the dead, but really, that could apply to anything. He didn't think of himself as a particularly important person, but everybody seemed to want a piece of him.

What had he done to offend this many people? If he left Gotham, would half the people terrorizing it simply give up? It would be an interesting thing to experiment, for sure.

The corpse's shirt and blazer predictably turned up nothing, seeing as they were basically torn to shreds and it would be a miracle to be able to hide something in them. However, Jim felt something in the left pocket of the trousers.

He took it out and prepared to wipe it down, expecting it to be covered in blood like the surrounding area of the pocket. But somehow it was clean; not a drop on it. Jim wondered if it had been removed then put back while the man was being murdered.

He was probably right. It was the dead man's wallet, and it was completely empty. There wasn't a single dollar inside, but the man's Social Security card, driver's license and even credit card were still safely tucked inside. He doubted the victim's biggest concern while being attacked by whatever the hell it was would be making sure he still had his license on him.

"His name's Arnold Mendez," Jim said, showing everyone nearby the Social Security card. "He was only twenty-two. Not a dime on him."

"So the killer took the money but left his ID?" Harvey asked, brows furrowed. "Must be inexperienced."

"That, or he's looking to get caught."

"Somehow, I doubt that." He whistled lowly, glancing back at the body. "Another goddamn highwayman. Maybe the Wayne killer got scared he was becoming irrelevant, thought he'd spice things up a bit."

"This is certainly..." Jim squinted again. "... spicy."

He had one more leaf through the wallet, wondering what Mr Mendez could've done to deserve such a fate, then passed it to Ed. "Try and get some prints," he said. "It's a bit of a long shot, but still."

Ed nodded, then tried for a jokingly stiff salute. "Yes, sir."

Satisfied with what he'd done so far but not with what he'd seen, Jim stood back up and started retreating back across the alley. Harvey got to his feet too, struggling to keep up with his partner as he strode away.

"Easy, Gordon, it's not gonna chase you," he laughed.

Jim's mouth didn't twitch. "Ha ha ha."

"Man, you've really gotta hate a guy to do that to him. What if Nygma's right? Imagine getting death by rat."

When Jim reached his car, he didn't bother saying a word of goodbye. It was nothing personal, he just wasn't in the mood. Especially after what he'd just seen, he didn't want a second of social interaction until his second coffee of the morning. And that was if he could stomach it.

He closed the door, but Harvey knocked on the window. He sighed and opened it.

"What?"

"I've been meaning to ask, actually, how's it going with Thompkins? I mean, I can't say I didn't see it coming, but sheesh."

Jim knew this was coming. The conversation. The conversation. On today of all days, as well. It had only been a week since him and Doctor Lee Thompkins kissed in front of half the GCPD, but Jim was honestly surprised it took Harvey that long to bring it up. He had a tendency of getting chummy whenever the subject revolved around love, mostly because he truly – as much as he'd refuse to admit it – wasn't getting enough of it himself.

Jim pulled up a smile that dropped within a milisecond. "It's going swell."

"Aw, come on," Harvey sighed. "Can't discuss your love life with your best friend?"

"Aw, come on. Can't get over the fact that you're not my best friend?"

Harvey dropped his voice a couple of octaves for a laughable impression of the other detective. "Ha ha ha."

Jim closed the window.