#no draft

Don’t play on patch day

Don’t play on patch day

Gordon looked at me weakly. He seemed to fall into himself. "He was." Gordon shook his head. "He is my son." There was silence. "Was he?" Gordon sat back looking to the ceiling through thick glasses. "Most likely. I had a fling, with his mother, back in Chicago." He shrugged and looked down again. "We broke up, I married Barbara, We moved here, Barb went back to Chicago..." 

"And you ran into her." "Valerie Seuss. She'd become an accountant at the Stryker Chemical plant. We reunited during the investigation of...HIm." I nodded. Gordon always seemed to get tense when he remembered the Anarchist Terrorist known as Joker. "So how did you end up separated?" 

"Barbara came back. James was already two. I was, am ashamed."  After another moment he continued. "I didn't know about him, about Linden. I found out when Alfred Stryker started throwing people in vats. She was one of the first bodies we found. Her...Our son was waiting alone when we came looking for evidence." 

"So you've been sending him money?" Gordon looked up in surprise. "Yes, once he got into the university, I couldn't adopt him but I followed him while he was in foster care best I could. But I lost him when he turned eighteen." A heavy sigh steadied the older memories as he came closer to the present. "Caught him in an alley, Heroin and Molly. He'd apparently been dealing drugs for a while. We got him here, Cleaned him up and I made the offer. up to $800 a month so long as he was in school. I knew he wasn't fully rehabilitated. I used this place to kind of...keep an eye on him. Then he stopped coming." "When?" "Six months ago. He started going to a clinic nearer to the campus. It's actually in Falcone territory so it's under pretty close watch, usually." Finally, Gordon looked at me with clear eyes. "We've had trouble keeping people near that place as of late, I know that's where he was before...I am certain of it." The Sale Clinic was located two blocks from the campus. It was bright and was built into an old office building, the upper floors were dark and apparently unused. Why would the Falcones invest in a free clinic? Why would Linden change clinics, surely it wasn’t just to save walking time? I would come back. 

Gotham General, southernmost building in midtown, the large hospital was built on the Taylor River, with a grand view of Gotham Harbor and Bay. All the smog and pollution seemed almost artistic from the high windows. The doctors and police knew about nearly every entrance, and Gotham had its own sub-precinct established two years ago after the Dr. Fries incident. They had learned a lot from the attack. I had learned a lot too, like the forgotten stairway to the unused third basement floor. 

Originally built as a safety escape now forgotten as the building had been updated time and time again. Once in the sub-basement, It was a matter of just finding the right room. 00274. The Morgue. Six rooms. Two for incoming, one for processing, three for storage. Suess would be in the middle room. I could hear someone in the first, silently I slid into the room and began to check the names. It was unsettling, looking for a corpse as some would look for a file or book. I found him, pulling out the long bed I gathered some of his blood. I’d need to check for toxins and maybe trace the drugs in his system. 

OMG JEALOUS