Nightwing

"Promoted?" Surely she was kidding.

Amy Rohrbach maintained her smug grin as she handed the papers to Dick Grayson. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?" she smirked.

Dick slowly studied the form Amy had handed him. Never a dull moment in the Bludhaven Police Department, but this was even more…unusual than usual. What Amy was saying seemed surreal, but the paperwork appeared to be in order.

"But I haven't been on the force very long. A promotion to detective…isn't there some sort of test I'm supposed to pass? Or at least take?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. By the way," Amy grinned, "I'm promoted, too. And yes, there is normally a detective's exam. And they usually require folks to be on the force at least a few years before becoming detectives."

"But…"

"Well here's the scuttlebutt, Grayson. You may have heard that the state is consolidating BPD with the Finger County boys. What you may not know is that the consolidation is going into effect in less than a month. Redhorn and Shay are scrambling to promote as many people as possible, so we'll have lots of high-ranking officers when the promotion takes effect, and he can slide them into the new BFPD."

Dick looked hesitantly at his paperwork. "That's not quite the same as a merit promotion, Amy. Don't you feel a little…dirty?"

Amy shrugged. "Grayson, I feel a little dirty every time I walk into this building." She gestured at their BPD precinct house. "As I recall, there is an old cliché about looking a gift horse in the mouth."

"Sure, sure. But is this even legal?"

"Do I look like a lawyer? Who knows?"

Dick studied his partner. "So," he said, placing his paperwork on his desk. "Does this mean I have to wear a trench coat and smoke a pipe?"

Amy laughed just as her phone started to ring. "Heh, maybe you can start a new look for…hangonasec, I need to get this."

Amy was grinning as she answered her phone. Her expression quickly turned dour. Then she went pale. "What's wrong?" asked Dick as she replaced the headset. "Amy, what's the matter?"

"Turn on the TV," she said, then leaned against her desk for support.

In the days that followed the tragedy, countless hours were spent reconstructing every detail, every quirk and nuance of the events that disrupted Crosswhite Memorial Hospital and claimed so many innocent lives. Dozens of people would work around the clock, trying to learn exactly how the event happened. Maybe the purpose of the exercise was to prevent similar events from occurring in the future. Maybe it was just a desire to give closure to the families of the people who lost their lives. Maybe the police were just spinning their wheels because, having failed to prevent the tragedy, all they could do was investigate what had already taken place.

During the tireless investigation the authorities would learn this: Three weeks prior to the incident, Crosswhite Memorial Hospital hired a nurse by the name of Janet Connor. Janet came highly recommended by her prior employer, a hospital in Chicago. She was a thirty-six year old divorcee with no children, who had recently relocated to Bludhaven, ostensibly to be closer to her parents. As was its standard procedure, the hospital ran a criminal records check on Janet. Despite repeated recommendations, the hospital had never subscribed to an online service for criminal records checks. Accordingly, it had to pay the appropriate fee and request the information from the State.

The records check revealed no criminal record for Janet, except for a few minor traffic violations. The final hurdle completed, the hospital hired Janet to serve on its nursing staff. The hospital was unaware, however, a man named Lonny Asland intercepted that the records request it sent at the State Records Bureau. Asland, on instructions from an acquaintance, doctored Janet's records, eliminating her recent conviction for assault and battery. Another friend of Janet's, who worked at the hospital in Chicago, served as her reference, and concealed the above information from Crosswhite when it called to check Janet's references. Janet had been placed on probation following her conviction. Her sudden departure from Chicago was a violation of her probation, but by the time anyone discovered her flight it was too late.

Once she began her employment at Crosswhite, Janet outwardly appeared to be a model employee. No one noticed the covert activities she was performing. No one noticed her taking photographs of the hospital's interior. No one noticed when she photocopied duty rosters and employee schedules, departing with the copies at the end of her shifts. No one noticed when she timed all the security cameras, especially those located on one particular wing of the hospital. No one noticed when she pilfered certain drugs from the hospital's supply.

The incident occurred on a Wednesday night/morning, after 2:00 am. Janet worked a shift earlier that evening, beginning at 6 pm on Tuesday. She arrived with a large duffel bag, which she placed in her locker. No one noticed that her locker was left unopened.

At 11:15 pm, a new patient was admitted to the Emergency Room, complaining of pain from an abscessed toenail. He was admitted and told to wait. At his request, the patient was directed to a nearby bathroom. Malcolm Wertz walked right past the bathroom and proceeded into the hospital. Wertz proceeded into a quiet wing of the hospital, where he waited for a physician to pass by. As soon as he saw Dr. Naco, Wertz doubled over in pain, claiming he was having an attack of appendicitis. Dr. Naco stopped to assist Wertz, who calmly injected Dr. Naco with a syringe. Dr. Naco was instantly paralyzed, and was dead within fifteen seconds. Wertz carried Dr. Naco into the nearest empty room he could find, and changed clothes with him. He then placed Dr. Naco's body in the bathroom, where no one would find him for several hours.

Wertz then proceeded to the nurses' station, where he retrieved the duffel bag brought into the hospital by Janet. He spirited the contents of the bag away, meeting Janet at her workstation at an agreed-upon time. The bag contained a cellular telephone, two guns and silencers, and a large quantity of Symtex explosive. Without speaking, Wertz and Janet proceeded into the secured wing of the hospital, toward the room occupied by the catatonic patient known as Roland Desmond, also known as the mob boss Blockbuster.

Two officers stood guard outside Desmond's room. When Wertz approached the room, with Janet, he was stopped and asked for identification. What followed next was unclear, but it appears the officers asked to search Wertz's bag. While they were searching the bag, Wertz withdrew one of the guns from his pocket and promptly shot the two officers. Wertz handed the other gun to Janet, and the pair pulled the two officers into Desmond's room. The exchange took place sometime around 2 am, although the exact time would never be known.

At 2:18 am, the east wing of Crosswhite Memorial Hospital exploded. Twenty-five pounds of Symtex created a massive explosion that literally blew the doors off the east wing. More than two hundred people were instantly incinerated by the blast. The force of the impact shook three city blocks, badly damaging not only the hospital's infrastructure, but that of surrounding areas as well. Power was disrupted to the entire hospital, and even the emergency generators were knocked offline. The hospital and all its equipment were disabled, including life-support machines. Eight more people died once their life-saving equipment lost power. Fire shook the remainder of the hospital, claiming seven more lives.

By the time the BPD, among their number newly-promoted Detectives Rohrbach and Grayson, arrived at the scene, the terror was wrought. Firefighters arrived along with the police, trying madly to put out the fire. Dick, Amy and the others tried to remove as many people from the hospital as possible, while experts tried to assess the structural integrity of the remaining structure. Emergency generators were flown in from Gotham, along with hospital beds, equipment, supplies…and body bags.

Sixty-four of the bodies would be unidentified for days. Many were nearly atomized by the blast, and many were body parts rather than bodies. The badly charred body of Janet Connor was identified from dental records. The bodies of Malcolm Wertz and Roland Desmond were not recovered or, if they were, were among the unidentified.

In the years to come, Dick would remember the night of the explosion as one of the worst nights of his life.

"This is Olivia Ortega and we're back with Viewpoint. Our guest tonight is Dr. Yaeger Oakley, noted criminologist and forensic psychologist. We are, of course, discussing the brutal assault on Crosswhite Memorial three days ago that left hundreds dead. Dr. Oakley, what can you tell us about the police investigation of this tragedy?"

"Well Olivia, I have not been able to conduct my own investigation. However, based upon sources close to the Bludhaven Police Department, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this was no accident - it was an act of.."

"Terror? Was this terrorism?"

"Yes, in the sense that it was a very violent attack that cost a lot of people their lives. However, we've come to associate terrorism with some sort of political statement. A terrorist usually has something to say, and believes people will listen to the message if it's punctuated with violence.

"Not so here. Misguided though it may seem, it appears the attack on Crosswhite was calculated, not as an attack on all the people who died, but on one man - Roland Desmond."

"Blockbuster."

"If you must call him that, sure. Desmond's room was the epicenter of the blast."

"For any readers who may not know, Roland Desmond - Blockbuster - had been catatonic for some time. He was awaiting prosecution on a variety of state and federal charges when he awakened."

"Right. Well whoever bombed the hospital started by bombing his room. His room was guarded; the police have not identified the bodies of the guards, but it seems likely the…terrorists…disposed of the guards prior to setting off the blast. Which raises the question of why, of all the rooms in the hospital, one would attempt to penetrate the most heavily guarded prior to the explosion - unless, of course, that patient was the ultimate target."

"Do we believe the terrorists succeeded? Is Blockbuster dead?"

"His body has not been identified."

"Wasn't he a very large man, and if so wouldn't he be easy to identify - at least relatively speaking? I mean, who really knows whether an explosion would even hurt him?"

"Point taken. But this was a tremendous blast, absolutely tremendous. The body could be atomized or significantly reduced in mass. Keep in mind we haven't identified either of the guards' bodies either, and we know they were there."

"Unless they were complicit in some way."

"Now that's a very dangerous accusation to go throwing around. These men have--had families who are saddened by their loss. The police investigation has uncovered no evidence to suggest that the guards were involved."

"Don't the police have an incentive to protect their own?"

Dick hadn't slept in more than thirty-six hours. Every muscle ached, and he was so sleepy the nearby concrete blocks looked comfortable. But he knew he couldn't stop. Dick, along with his fellow officers and anyone else who wanted to help, had been pilfering through the rubble that was once the East Wing of Crosswhite Memorial, in a grisly search for bodies. There was no way to know how many people had been in the hospital at the time of the attack; there was no central sign-in sheet, no metal detector and limited surveillance. After all, who would attack a hospital?

There were surveillance cameras in the secured wing, of course, and they were nearly as indestructible as the black box on an airplane. Those had been recovered and Dick's comrades were deciphering the information contained thereon back at HQ. In the meantime, though, the search for survivors continued. There was value even in finding the dead, so some measure of comfort could be afforded their families. Dick knew, though, that some of the bodies had probably been atomized by the explosion, obliterating all trace of their existence. Some people would never know whether their husband or wife or son or daughter was in the hospital. Some people would simply never be heard from again.

"You OK, Grayson?" asked Amy. Like Dick, Amy hadn't left the scene since arriving shortly after the explosion. She was covered in grime, her uniform torn, her hair a disaster.

"Yeah, yeah, I’m fine," Dick replied. He slowly trudged back toward the rubble, lamenting man's inhumanity to man.

Nearby Inspector Shay finished her latest press conference. Redhorn had appeared a few times early on, but he'd generally preferred to have Shay front and center for the cameras. After all, the public was watching the BPD closely, and it couldn't help but respond well to a leggy brunette who, quite frankly, was much more telegenic than the robust Chief of Police. Shay was dressed in a business suit and heels (!), and hadn't gotten anywhere near the actual work. But she held a shovel as if she had been leading the digging.

"Inspector Shay" called a reporter racing toward her. "Do you have a moment?"

No, you stupid bitch, Shay thought, but outwardly she grinned and nodded. "Delilah Cassidy from the Courier. Is there any word from the state on having this area declared a disaster area?"

"Well," Shay pursed her lips. "I think Mayor Marlowe addressed that in her conference this afternoon. The state legislature has extended its sympathy, but does not believe that an attack on one building justifies declaring the entire city a disaster area. So we will not be getting much outside aid beyond the supplies we've gotten from Gotham. I disagree with the decision, of course, but once again it appears to be Bludhaven versus the world." Shay congratulated herself on sounding like a grizzled insider, when she'd actually lived in Bludhaven less than a month.

Lady Vic, clad in civilian garb and hovering near the site, watched Shay's moves with keen interest.

Romeo Scarpatti regarded his two surviving sons, the ‘brain trust’ of his organization. His daughter-in-law Deidre, the widow of his third son, was noticeably absent from the impromptu meeting he'd called.

"You realize," said Giovanni, Romeo's youngest, "That we are going to be blamed for what happened. Given our recent…overtures, we are viewed with disdain by the other families. They will believe this was an extension of our recent activities."

Romeo nodded. He had not ordered the attack on Crosswhite Memorial, but he harbored suspicions that someone in his family had. Was Giovanni genuinely innocent, or simply attempting to deflect blame from himself?

"Nothing we can do about that," added Charles, the oldest son. Charles had a much harder edge than his brother. "What's done is done. Question now is, who's in charge? Redhorn was leading because he spoke for Desmond. With Desmond out of the picture…"

"You're assuming," interjected Giovanni, "that Blockbuster is out of the picture."

"Seems a reasonable assumption, does it not?" asked Romeo.

"Maybe," said Giovanni. "But who knows? Blockbuster was a freak, a meta whatchacallit - a metahuman. Maybe he could've survived something like that. And if so, maybe he's still out there."

"I doubt it," said Charles, leaning forward in his chair. "Look. Odds are he's a crispy critter. But if he's not, so what? He's still gone. He was in a coma before the explosion, for crissakes. Bad enough he was running things, in absentia, through Redhorn from a friggin hospital bed. Now we don't know where he is, or whether he's still alive. He's off the board."

Romeo considered his son, wondering what role Charles might have played in the bombing. "I tend to agree," he finally replied. "We can't be beholden to a corpse, especially a missing one. And I don't believe Redhorn can lead effectively without Blockbuster's authority."

"So we move," said Charles, more as a statement than a question.

"What if," pondered Giovanni, "we move, and then Desmond returns? Don't forget, he gained power for a reason."

"That's a pretty big drop for the other shoe," agreed Romeo. "But it's a chance we've got to take. OK, let's figure out where we go from here."

Barbara Gordon worked feverishly to access the BPD's records. She always had difficult hacking information from Bludhaven, largely because the city was, in general, a very low-tech environment. Lots of significant information was kept on paper rather than computer. "Haven't these yo-yo's ever heard of a paperless office?" she muttered as she hacked their database.

Finally getting through, Babs discovered the results of the investigation to date on the origins of the explosion. Dick could get the information himself eventually, but he was busy, and she wanted it now.

The identity of Janet Connor had not yet been released to the public, but Babs obtained the information quickly. In moments she had performed a more detailed background check than was possible for the BPD or FCPD. Interesting, she thought, that Janet hailed from Chicago. Seemed likely that created some connection to out-of-town talent. But Blockbuster was the out-of-town talent in Bludhaven.

Babs considered the primitive way in which mobsters functioned, particularly the costumed ones. They seemed to believe that, if they could beat up whoever was running the show, they would suddenly be in charge. Count Vertigo had tried to muscle into Bludhaven recently on such a theory. Such attacks very rarely worked, however. Mobsters traded on information and influence much more than brute strength. For all his physical prowess, Blockbuster understood this fact much more than most.

So there seemed to be little incentive for an outside force to topple Blockbuster. A mysterious outside force would be unable to seize power in Bludhaven merely by eliminating Blockbuster, especially of no one knew of its presence. So who in Bludhaven had something to gain?

Babs sighed as she realized that everyone had something to gain. Well, check that. Everyone except Chief Redhorn.

Lead Detective Addad had finally forced Dick, Amy and a number of other exhausted officers to go home. Dick had considered heading by the station to check on the investigation, but realized the time had come to go home. At least, to the hotel that passed for home while his apartment building was being remodeled. Almost idly, Dick thought of Babs and wondered how they would bridge the gap between their homes when they got married.

Dick cut on the TV as he flopped onto his bed. He felt too tired to don his Nightwing attire. As much of a sense of duty as he felt to the continuing chaos around the hospital, Dick knew he would be no good if he didn't get some rest.

He was almost nodding off as the TV droned on… "-speaking briefly with Chief Redhorn, who is visiting the disaster site tonight. Chief, how are the cleanup efforts proceeding?"

Redhorn's voice boomed through the TV. "Good, Olivia, good. It's slow, but we're making progress. I'd like to take a moment to thank the fireman, police officers, rescue workers, and others who have tirelessly devoted themselves to the cleanup following this tragedy."

"Chief, can you confirm that Roland Desmond - Blockbuster - was the target of this attack and, if so, is he still alive?"

"We believe the explosion originated near Desmond's room. I cannot comment further. In any case, we would want to speak with next of kin before the media. No offense."

"Can you comment at all on the investigation into the origins of the explosion, or the identity or identities of the person or persons responsible?"

"I cannot really comment on an ongoing investigation, except to say that the BPD…"

Redhorn was cut off as a shot rang out, then another. Olivia Ortega screamed and dropped her mike. The camera spun away from Redhorn, a moment after a look of sheer panic crossed his face.

Dick sprang up in bed, his eyes fixed on the TV. Bludhaven's underworld was at war and the opening shots had just been fired.

To Be Continued...

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