Batwoman was fuming by the time the batmobile screeched to a halt inside the cave. She tore the cowl and wig off after climbing from the car.

"I saw the news report on the arrest of Batman," Alfred explained from where he stood next to the batcomputer.

"Those vultures sure move quick," Harley muttered, but she suddenly halted. "How did they know? Even for reporters, that's fast work. I barely had time to drive back, and it's already on the airwaves?"

Harley's next words game through clenched teeth.

"They knew."

"It would seem," Alfred speculated, "either one of the reporters is the criminal in question, or..."

"Or, someone tipped them off," Harley finished. "They would've had to know Batman was being framed to know he was going to be arrested and were waiting for it to happen."

"It's possible someone at the police station let the news get out," Alfred suggested.

"Which news station broke the story first?" Harley inquired.

"I don't rightly know," Alfred lamented. "It was running on all the networks, but I don't know who was first."

"Alright," Harley said, closing her eyes and trying to highlight a single line of thought before it was lost amid the others crowding together in her head. "If one news source had the story, the others would've needed confirmation before running it themselves. If they all had the story at the same time, they had to have been tipped at the same time. So, it's unlikely it's just one cop trying to spread the news."

"Whoever is trying to frame the Batman would seem to want everyone to know about it," Alfred reasoned.

"A check of the phone records will show who called the news networks," Harley suggested.

"They aren't exactly public records," Alfred cautioned.

"I wasn't exactly going to ask," Harley dismissed. "Someone murdered three people to frame my husband. I'm going to find out who, and maybe they'll tell me why before I kill 'em."

Harley turned in a swirl of her cape toward the batmobile. Alfred stepped in her path.

"This isn't what Master Bruce would want," he cautioned her.

Harley paused and locked eyes with the butler. Alfred swallowed hard and quickly stepped back and to the side, clearing her path. Putting back on her cowl and attached red wig, Batwoman marched to the car without another word, climbing in, firing up the motor, and slamming a boot down on the accelerator to roar out of the cave at full speed.

                                                                                                ***

Batwoman arrived at the phone company call transfer station. Using one of the nearby stone gargoyles to reach the roof, she looked over the array of communication dishes and antenna towers composing a small forest of metal.

She tried the roof access door and found it unlocked. The door to the control room two floors down, however, was secured. Batwoman knew Batman would've picked the lock and stealthily slipped in unnoticed. Her boot heel smashed into the door with enough force to splinter the wooden jam and allow her entry. The computer she accessed wasn't protected by anything she couldn't bypass, but she wished she had a virtual sledgehammer to speed up the process.

The phone calls to all the media outlets were easy to find as they were all from the same number and came in at the exact same time. She thought about a conference call where multiple people could be looped into a single conversation, but it only told her the how and not who or why.

The main thing of potential use was the call originated from a cell tower in the industrial district. She knew there were factories and warehouses filling the place, but many were boarded up and abandoned.  It was a haven for criminals who needed someplace to operate unseen. Joker had even used a few of them, back in the days when she was his sidekick.

Batwoman pushed away the painful memory and focused on getting the address of the tower. It wasn't guaranteed to help her find the caller, but it was enough to point her in a direction. She knew she had to work fast before any more evidence was fabricated against her Puddin'.

                                                                                                ***

The industrial district was a maze of twisting streets and dead end alleys. Gotham's numerous redesigns over the years meant architects didn't always build where it was practical, just where enough space existed. Support structures of steel held aloft upper floors, allowing for underpasses of walkways or streets. Sometimes the uplifted buildings stood on reinforced stilts directly on top of shorter buildings.

A number of trucks were coming and going from one of the warehouses. Batwoman watched while perched on a nearby rooftop. The warehouse where the activity was currently underway was not owned by anyone recent according to the information Alfred found on the batcomputer and transmitted to her. The data appeared on the lenses of her cowl, the text floating in front of her vision in an augmented reality display.

She didn't know what the criminals were smuggling. It could've been guns, drugs, or rubber chickens for all she cared. Batwoman was after something else, and they were going to tell her what she wanted to know.

When Batwoman came crashing through the skylight, she hurled a pair of batarangs toward the chains holding open the large loading bay doors. The chains broke, and the doors came down in a concussion of rattling metal, cutting off the primary means of escape.

Her cape billowed around her like a parachute, slowing her descent to the floor. Landing in a crouch, she used bolas, entangling anyone running for the other exits. A few thugs tried to fight, but she was ready for them.

Using her grappling hook, she fired it to snare one criminal by the arm as he aimed a pistol in her direction. Stepping back to avoid, and simultaneously trip, another thug, she entangled the line of her grappler on the off balance man as he stumbled past, so his fall pulled the gunner down to the ground as well.

A smoke pellet to the face left another criminal gasping for breath between coughs. Batarangs sang through the air, striking vulnerable joints, faces, and throats, leaving them susceptible for her follow up attacks. One by one, she put them down.

Restraining them securely, she hung the criminals upside down from the ceiling for questioning. Walking down the line, she slapped each of them in the face.

"Everybody awake?" Batwoman asked. "Good. I need to know some information. You wouldn't be running an operation without keeping an eye on the surroundings for either the competition or the law, so I need to know who else has been around here lately. First one to talk wins the prize."

"What prize?" one of the thugs asked.

Batwoman stalked down to the end of the row of suspended criminals to stand in front of the one who'd asked the question.

"The prize is I stop hitting you," Batwoman told him before her gloved fist broke the man's nose.