20058/Mystery of the Mary Solstice

Mystery of the Mary Solstice
Date of Scene:	13 February 2025
Location:	Crime Alley, Gotham City
Synopsis:	The alleyways of Gotham are full of corpses. Be glad you're not in the pile.
Cast of Characters:	Detective Chimp, Barbara Gordon

---

Detective Chimp has posed:
Crime Alley. What a dump. But when one is interested in dumping a body, and one wants to ensure the crime scene is investigated by Gotham's laziest detectives, it's among the top alleys in the country to ensure both publicity and an ultimately unsolved crime.

The other one is in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Strangely enough.

The Gotham Police Department is out, with the uniformed officers forming a barricade and canvassing the area. The police tape is up, and pictures have already been taken by the crime scene investigators. Even the detectives have already arrived, including an especially large slovenly one who is taking large bites of a bear claw in between sipping from a stainless steel flask.

"Can't believe the Commish is lettin' these freaks look at MY crime scene before I do. It's a disgrace... thirty five years on the force and this is the kind of respect I get around this place..." Swig. "... I tell you what... when my forty years comes around, I might seriously think about putting in my retirement."

As the detective shoves the rest of the bear claw in his face, his partner gives him a look. She's substantially younger, and neither drunk nor covered in donut crumbs.

"Now now Harvey. You and I both know you can't afford to retire. How are you gonna make your alimony payments?"

Harvey looks as if he's about to have an aneurism at the mention of the dreaded 'A' word...

Out near the edge of the police tape, arguably the greatest detective in all of Gotham City is polishing his magnifying glass on the sleeve of his tweed suit. With a cigarette dangling from his lip, he looks up at the darkened sky, and the storm clouds that are rolling in to obscure the moonlight. They'll have to work fast before this crime scene gets washed away. As he scratches the back of his hairy neck and adjusts his deerstalker cap, the Detective Chimp looks a bit reluctant to cross the police line. Not for any squeamishness surrounding death, most likely, for the victims appear to be human. But the smell the pile of corpses gives off is a bit much, even for someone as seasoned as himself.

So many bodies in the pile. Got to be at least a dozen.

And it doesn't look like any of them have their heads or hands.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
As it so happened, on this cold February night, there was another Detective on-scene, though she was taking her time on the perimeter, waiting for the police to finish up with their own work before she would move in.

When the Detective Chimp just so happened to look up? He just so happened to see her too, or at least the silhouette of her, along with the zipping-by of two of her drones that were high in the sky tonight. One of the Bats, just barely visible up there in the dark, with a cape gently swaying in the cold wind.

On the roof's edge, Babs was staring at the crime scene through her wrist-mounted computer display, which very dimly illuminated her face in the dark. A blue glow touching her half-masked visage, her red locks waving behind her shoulder, dancing with her cape against her back, as she surveyed wher her drones were scanning, and what information they were picking up down below. Being that Babs was who she was, she was keyed in on the Police comm channels, and was listening to every radio message they sent out, as well as their conversations person to person via the drone technology of wonderful mics.

She was in a state of stationary stand-by, waiting for the Cops to finish.

One of her drone cameras did spot the chimp, and the vision of it drew a smirk across her lips. "Interesting..." Batgirl quietly said to herself.

Detective Chimp has posed:
As a flash of lightning illuminates the skyline, Detective Chimp isn't the only one who notices the familiar outline of Batgirl up above them. But he is the one who seems more impressed than annoyed. At least among the other detectives.

"Great... she's here. I used'ta complain when there was only one bat, if you can believe it..."

The large detective puts away his flask, almost as if he feels guilty to be seen drinking on the job by one of the Bat Family, or maybe just by Batgirl specifically. She has that effect on people.

Harvey's partner looks less annoyed by the presence of the 'freaks' than she is by being Harvey Bullock's partner. But though he's a bit much in more ways than one, she still seems to regard him with a certain amount of affection. The way that one regards a dog that doesn't know how to fetch and shits on the carpet, but still barks when strangers come by.

Flicking his cigarette butt off to the side, Detective Chimp barely stoops to go under the crime scene tape, walking somewhat upright in a slightly ungainly fashion. No, he's not drunk, but it's not his favorite way to walk, after all. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out an old handheld mini-cassette recorder, and presses the 'record' button.

"Twelfth of February... 10:13 PM according to my knockoff Timex... weather: shitty, and about to get shittier..."

He presses pause, and takes a sniff of the air. As expected, it mostly smells like a pile of corpses in a dirty alley.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
In truth, Babs didn't go down to interact with the Police, when she knew the faces of the ones on scene, and in the case of Harvey and his partner... she knew them both well. Harvey was damn near an uncle to her, and had a very high chance of easily identifying her if they ever were face to masked face. Thus far, in her tenure as a Bat, she had stayed away from most GCPD that knew the Barbara Gordon side of her life, but Harvey Bulloch? He'd known her since she was a little kid.

Batgirl caught sight of a few of them looking her way, though, and as a result, she raised her right gloved hand up to offer a simple gesture, since of those in the bat-family- she was one of the most friendly, right?

"Must be quite a scene down there, if you guys brought in the Detective chimp..." Babs muttered to herself from her spot up on the roof, as she started to move again, her cape flaring out to her right side, with her red hair riding atop her cape like it was trying to hold on for dear life.

She stalked down the ledge, gracefully moving one armored boot in front of the other, with a practiced ease of a tight rope walker, and a caped crusader who had spent an unhealthy amount of time on Gotham City dalapidated rooftops.

Her droens swept by over head, still taking in reports on what they could spy with their technology based eyes, but they were so fast, and so quiet, that they were almost invisible above the GCPD officerse down below.

Batgirl did leave one to hover high over the chimp, as she was eager to listen in on his assessment of what was gruesomely evident down there...

Detective Chimp has posed:
Pressing record again, the aptly-named Detective Chimp continues his voice notes on the ancient contraption. It's far past time that he start committing his voice notes to something digital, but he's far too old and set in his ways to change his system. At least for as long as his tape recorder still works so well.

"Initial impressions: The bodies were dumped, not arranged. There are too many for a pickup... must be... aha!"

He takes out his magnifying glass, and looks at the barely-perceptible impressions of tire marks on the cracked pavement.

"Dump truck. Well-worn tires. It backed up down the alley, dumped the bodies... didn't hang around. Probably in and out in less than a minute."

Looking around, he estimates the width of the alley that the bodies were dumped in. An alley in Crime Alley, how on the nose.

"Would have been a tight fit, especially with these dumpsters, which look undisturbed. Suggests a professional driver. Not necessarily a professional criminal... Make a note to obtain a list of drivers with active and recently inactive CDLs. Check for stolen commercial dump trucks, likely from smaller companies, due to the poor maintenance."

As he gets closer to the bodies, the Detective Chimp snaps a few pictures on an old Nikon, primarily of the vehicle treads. It'll be hard to make out in the official photos the CSI guys took, but maybe he'll get lucky.

"Oh boy. These bodies are... very ripe. Must have been dead for a few days before dumping. No heads. No hands. Aww geez... no feet either. That'll make it tougher. Revenge killing? But why dump the bodies so publicly if they didn't want them ID'd?"

Outside the police tape, Bullock sips coffee from a thermos provided by one of the unis. There are perks to having a detective's shield. He watches with disgust as the ape makes its way through the crime scene before he's allowed access, and continues grumbling with his partner.

"Don't know why they're making such a big deal about this. I betcha twenty bucks I know what happened."

His partner looks at him quizzically, but doesn't seem to believe he could have cracked the case so quickly. "You think it's gang-related, huh?"

"Course it's gang-related!"

Back in the alleyway, Detective Chimp strokes his chin, taking the pile of bodies in before focusing on any individual corpses.

"I highly doubt it's gang-related."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Batgirl advanced closer to the alley, and reached the edge of the building that overlooked it. She kept her surveilence drone overhead too, which allowed her to hear the Chimp talking to his antique voice recorder. She could see the device on the displayed video coming over her wrist computer, and though she was three stories up, even Barbara's heart had to helt a little at the sight of a chimp talking to himself, even if he was doing it beside a truck load of dead bodies, headless dead bodies no less.

"God, Harvey..." Babs muttered to herself, as she watched, and listened. "Don't let yourself get shown up by a Chimp..." She stated, as she glanced toward Harvey and his partner.

Since the Cops were staying back out of the alley now, and allowing the unusual new Detective to have free reign, Batgirl made a decision. She raised her cape, and a whoosh of wind followed...

Down below, from a heavy shadow, Batgirl emerged, standing ten or fifteen feet away from the chimp. Her armor was mostly black, but the dark gold logo upon her chest stood out, as did the dark gold boots upon her legs, that rose up to her thighs, with bat-symbols adorning their peaks.

"You've got a good start on this..." Batgirl quietly said, no modulator on her voice, leaving the pitch and tone to be soft and noteably feminine.

"What else do you see?" She quietly inquired.

Detective Chimp has posed:
Rats have already started to tear into the bodies. To say nothing of the cockroaches. In this part of Gotham, they should just be lucky the cannibals haven't gotten to them yet and dragged them into the sewer. Though come to think of it, a couple bodies could probably be missing and nobody would notice...

"Lack of heads, hands, and feet could be used to prevent identification... or could simply mean..."

The soft stirring of wind beneath the cape is nearly silent. Nearly. If Batgirl truly wanted to remain unnoticed she surely would have, but even a subtle cue is enough for the World's Greatest Detective to pick up on. The Detective Chimp doesn't seem surprised when she appears behind him, or when the feminine voice calls softly from the shadows. One does not live in Gotham if one is scared of bats. And he saw her on the rooftop like two minutes ago.

Pressing 'record' again, the hairy detective continues to muse, albeit aware that he now has an audience. Without turning around, he notes:

"Certain satanic rituals call for the use of all the body parts that are currently missing. Cross reference ritualistic killings that require only the ingredients missing from these bodies. If memory serves, at least one love potion also requires the use of heads, hands and feet. Give Constantine a call. He still owes me two grand anyway..."

Having finished his train of though, he presses the pause button, and turns to greet the Caped Computer Geek.

With his hand on the ground in front of him, he has to look way up from his crouched position. And though it might be a simple quirk, it certainly looks as if the Detective Chimp takes his time drawing his eyes all the way up from her feet to her face.

"Aren't you a little pretty to be Batman?"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
If Batgirl was used to anything, when she got near enough to people for them to look at her, she was used to them leering. She didn't care, she knew her suit looked great.

She stepped out of the shadow, her dark gold boots moving at a slow pace as she walked closer to the Chimp, no noise coming from the boot soles, as she walked up to the bodies. She had to grimace at it, as it was a horrid sight, the kind of thing that would make almost anyone require therapy. But, Babs has been through a lot already, therapy and otherwise.

"At least it is below freezing tonight..." She quietly said, her pink lips pale and steam passing out from between them. She glanced over at the Chimp, and heard his comment about her appearance, and she openly smirked at him.

"Batman is prettier." She said back, in a dry tone of voice.

From the sky, one of Babs' drones came flying down, hovering just twenty feet above their heads now, the drones controlled via the neural implant inside Babs' brain, a steady march toward the redhead being integrated ever so much more with her machines.

"John Constantine?" She asked. "Love potions?" She frowned, and gave a single shake of her head, as she paced around the perimeter of the bodies, glancing up when she heard 'Hey, it's Batgirl.' from one of the officers watching from the mouth of the alley. They were staying back though, apparently not wanting to disturb the Chimp as he worked.

"You've got some seirous pull around here," Batgirl stated, as she glanced away from the gruesome pile, and back to the furry one in the hat.

"You sure this is not just some sick serial killer, dumping bodies from his basement after decades of them piling up?"

Detective Chimp has posed:
It might be a leer, but it's a leer with a smirk. Jury's out whether that makes it better or worse. It's also coming from a chimp, the jury's less out on that one. The simian investigator stands up again as the woman walks past. With the drones flying overhead, there's every reason to believe that the imaging from this crime scene is going to be top notch. She's certainly better equipped than him. The Detective Chimp looks from her drone to the magnifying glass he was about to stare through, and promptly puts it back in his pocket.

Joining her near the bodies, DC looks up at her. This time his admiration seems a bit more genuine. Or at least he's admiring something different this time.

"Interesting theory. I'd have to wait on the autopsy reports to speculate. But if there's a pattern to the victim selection... at the moment I don't quite see it. From a quick glance, the victims appear random... most serial killers have a type."

Stroking his chin again, the ape starts walking the opposite direction, to see the other side of the pile. It's not any less gruesome than the side that he was on.

"Hang on a sec..."

The ape utters a series of squeaks, and one of the rats that's currently burrowing into the neck hole of a middle-aged man's body stops its digging, and turns to look at the chimp in the deerstalker cap. A few squeaks later, and it runs off back to the dumpsters.

"The rats say they didn't see anything. But the meat doesn't taste freezer burned so much as just... kind of rotten. Geez... I need a beer..."

Still circling, he finally crosses paths with Batgirl again, looking with interest at her drone.

"I'm stumped so far. But it looks like you've got a lot more information on the crime scene than I do. Any chance you'd like to share the imagery your gizmos come up with?"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
"Well, you're doing a great job, either way." Batgirl replied, her voice not loud, but not quite a whisper either, more of a sultry syrup in volume and tone. "I'm afraid I have no beer either..."

She wasn't looking at him, she was transfering her green eyed gaze from the bodies, to her wrist computer, and the drone was circling slowly above their heads, almost countering the Chimp's path around the bodies in a counter-clockwise direction.

By the time he rejoined her, Babs was crouching, her cape pooling around her boots. This put her on more of an eye level with the Chimp, but her green eyes were still on her computer, and looking toward the bodies.

"I think this is the crew of the Mary Solstice..." She admit, her voice NOW was a whisper, when the Chimp rejoined her, but it was still loud enough for his ears to hear. She let that linger for a moment, to the point where he might ask her why she feels that way, or what that even means.

She glanced at him, her head looking to the left, at him, her fiery red hair brushing around behind her back, over her caped shoulders.

"It was a ship. It went missing during a bad ice storm about three years ago, just off of the coast. They found it, several days after the ice melted down, though the crew was gone.. No sign of them onboard it, and all life boats were still where they were supposed to be on the deck."

She drew in a breath, and motioned toward the bodies with a nod of her head, her bat-ears tilting forward and backward.

"The demographics of these bodies racial profiles all match up, as do the genders, and the rough guess on the ages of everyone involved. The visible number of bodies here is within the exact same range of the number of crew that went missing... But, it doesn't explain who did it, or why..."

Detective Chimp has posed:
There's a low whistling noise from the Detective as he tilts his cap back a bit on his head. For those readers who didn't think that chimpanzees can whistle, you're right, but Detective Chimp can do several things that most chimpanzees can't. Like solve crimes. Usually. Having a caped assistant speeds the process up.

The ape seems skeptical. It's a healthy default position to take. But he also seems genuinely impressed. It's unlikely that he didn't think that someone wearing a bat logo on her chest wouldn't be an intellectual match, but seeing it in person is always both a treat and a bit of a shock the first time.

"I heard about that. But if your theory is right, that means someone abducted a ship's entire crew without any signs of violence, moved them to another location, and then... waited almost three years to kill them? And then, having gotten away with it, they transported the bodies again, to leave them miles away from the scene of the initial crime, in an alley in Gotham's worst neighborhood. That's... that's a doozy there Batgirl."

Looking up at her over his shoulder, the chimp presses 'pause' on his recorder once again. It looks like he's got enough to give a report to Gotham PD, and maybe start a real investigation of his own.

"Tell you the truth, I'd prefer it was Satan-related. Satan-related, I know a guy for. But this..."

Up above, lighting splits the sky once again, as the thunder begins rolling in. The wind is picking up, and it's beginning to smell strongly of rain. But given the temperatures, any minute now the alley is going to start getting blanketed by either wintry mix, hail, or outright snow.

Replacing the tape recorder in the pocket of his tweed coat, Detective Chimp fishes around for something, eventually finding one of his infrequently-used business cards. It's a bit aged-looking, and appears to have been a fixture of his pocket for quite some time judging by the amount of lint adhering to it. But he hands it to Batgirl anyway.

The card simply reads 'Detective Chimp.' No address, phone number, or contact info of any kind.

"Let's let Donut Patrol have a crack at it before the crime scene gets washed away, eh? Then we can compare notes tomorrow. Maybe over a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon?"

He waggles his eyebrows suggestively before pulling his cap back down tightly on his forehead. As flakes begin to fall around him, he buttons his coat and turns up his lapels. Storm's coming in, and tweed is a poor defense against the winter weather in Gotham City.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
"Might not have been one person who did this." Batgirl quietly adds, as she moves to stand back up to her full height, on the right side of the Detective beside her. "means the Mary Solstice needs to be dug up too, and gone over with a bit more of a thorough brush. I believe I know what scrap yard it was taken to... but I'll have to..." She trailed off there, as she realized she was talking a bit too much, considering she was 'on duty'. Batman had trained her to be as succinct as possible with what she said, while in the guise of one of the Gotham Bats, and for the most part she did that well, with strangers. This fellow? It was odd, he was easy to talk to.

When the card came up, she glanced over at it, and its state of condition. She reached out with one dark gold gloved hand to accept it, and with it turned over in her fingers, the card made a quiet slipping noise across the material of her glove, as she eyed it over, her verdent hued eyes taking in the simplicity of it, followed by the words that the Chimp spoke to her.

Was he being suav? Her green eyes went down to him, and a half-smirk just slid across her visible lips. "You're a card yourself..." She quietly said, before she slipped his moniker adorned offering in to a pouch on her left hip beneath her cape.

"I am sure we'll speak again, I'll send you a bit of info, should I come up with anything."

At the sound of the sswirling weather high above, Batgirl looked up too, only when the Chimp looked back down, and turned to view her...

She was gone.

Batman trained her very well.

In the sky, the diamond formation of bat-drones came together, and moved out over the alleyway, leaving the good Detective to deal with the waiting- and surly -Harvey Bulloch.