The system had confirmed these were counterfeit bills. Jude felt no particular guilt about burning them.
But producing this volume of fake currency in Gotham, hiding it this well—that required serious organization. Professionals. Which meant if they caught whoever burned their mountain of money, they'd respond with extreme prejudice.
Being hunted by organized criminals was exponentially more dangerous than random bus shootouts or restaurant gunfights. Those had been chaotic, opportunistic violence. This would be focused. Methodical. They wouldn't stop until he was dead.
"System, can you confirm nobody saw me enter?"
Silence. He pulled up his infiltration route on the interface and submitted it to the Q&A board. Cost: $1.
"Infiltration process evaluated. Status: Covert. No witnesses detected."
Worth every asset point.
"In that case..." Jude stared at the green mountain of hundred-dollar bills, unconsciously licking the corner of his mouth.
"Since I'm already here, might as well get to work."
Glug glug glug glug
Gasoline poured from the barrel, splashing across bundled banknotes. The pungent chemical smell immediately saturated the warehouse air. Jude couldn't exactly run to a gas station and haul fuel back here, and obviously the warehouse didn't conveniently stock accelerants for its own destruction.
So he'd bought it from the system mall. Another chunk of asset points, but necessary.
He emptied the entire barrel across the money mountain. Watching the colorful bills darken with gasoline, he felt an irrational pang of distress. These pretty little rectangles would be ash in moments.
Not a rational response. Pure lizard-brain reaction from someone who lived frugally, counted pennies, and had just doused more cash than he'd earn in years.
Still. Had to be done. Counterfeit currency was useless, and the system's asset point rewards were invaluable. Twenty thousand points for this job. He could buy intermediate skills, quality equipment, maybe save enough for something expensive.
Jude struck a long match—also purchased from the mall—and placed it carefully on the gasoline-soaked floor. It would burn slowly, giving him time to escape before ignition. A makeshift timer. When the match burned to its root, it would light the accelerant.
No reason to stick around and watch.
He turned and ran.
According to his calculations, the gasoline and money combined would create a substantial fire. The farther away he was when it started, the less likely anyone would suspect him. Distance equaled safety.
Following the system's evacuation route, Jude deployed his newly purchased climbing skills and scrambled back up and out of the warehouse. Fortunately, the exit route didn't require advanced techniques. No need to spend more points upgrading.
A dark, slender figure crawled from the warehouse like a spider, all wrong angles and desperate urgency. Then it dropped to the street, slipped into the Halloween crowds, and vanished.
The white ghost mask went back on. Just another costume. Nothing special.
Moments after the ghost disappeared, fire erupted from the warehouse.
Flames crackled and roared. Thick smoke mixed with gasoline fumes and burning paper billowed into the street, carrying the distinctive smell of incinerated money.
"Someone call 911! That building's on fire!"
"Call the GCPD! Now!"
Amid the chaos and gathering crowd, nobody noticed the figure in the black robe slipping away through clusters of costumed revelers.
"He was shot twice in the head. I can tell you that a less evil person wouldn't have met this end."
"District Attorney Dent!" A steady, authoritative voice cut through the bathroom from somewhere in the shadows. "I don't want to hear you say that again—publicly or privately. Let's focus on the evidence."
Both Gordon and Harvey Dent immediately fell silent. The voice belonged to someone who commanded natural authority. His thinking was always calm, analytical, capable of seeing patterns others missed and finding solutions to impossible problems.
Batman stepped forward into the dim light.
"A .22 caliber pistol was left at the scene. Grip wrapped, serial number filed off. The killer knew how to thwart our investigation. This suggests either professional experience or significant knowledge of firearms and criminal forensics."
"Baby pacifier used as a makeshift suppressor," Gordon added. "Cheap but effective."
Batman paused before addressing the third piece of evidence. Not because it was inconspicuous—quite the opposite. At this murder scene, it stood out like a spotlight in darkness.
All three of them turned their attention to the final clue.
"I don't want to be misled by this thing," Gordon said carefully, searching for the right words, "but it's..."
The pumpkin lantern sat on the bathroom floor, its carved face twisted in apparent agony. The expression seemed to evoke strange artistic qualities—shadows of Millet's classicism, hints of Monet's impressionism, Matisse's Fauvism, Munch's expressionism, Balla's futurism, Picasso's cubism, Dali's surrealism. All compressed into one small, hideous gourd.
"It's unbearably ugly," Harvey finished bluntly. "I've never seen a worse jack-o'-lantern in my life. If you carried this thing around, even on Halloween, everyone who passed you would stop and stare."
"It doesn't fit the killer's cautious profile," Batman concluded. "I understand the ritual aspect of leaving a jack-o'-lantern on Halloween. I don't understand this inconsistency in execution."
"Maybe he carved it himself?" Gordon suggested. "If he didn't buy it from a store, there's no paper trail to follow."
"Even if he did buy it somewhere, we'd never track it down." Harvey shook his head. "Thousands of people buy pumpkins for Halloween. Who carves something this aggressively terrible? Can we at least check it for fingerprints?"
"Unlikely. The lantern was wrapped in a plastic bag." Gordon frowned at the evidence. "But it wouldn't hurt to try."
"Johnny Vitti." Batman's voice carried weight. "Who in Gotham is bold enough to kill him? Maroni?"
Before anyone could answer, Gordon's phone rang.
He answered immediately. "Gordon."
His expression shifted from professional calm to genuine alarm in seconds.
"Commissioner Gordon!" The voice on the other end was panicked, loud enough for Harvey and Batman to hear fragments. "We have a situation! Warehouse fire in the Diamond District—smoke everywhere—"
Gordon's knuckles went white around the phone.
"—hundred-dollar bills flying out of the smoke! Everything burning in there is money!"