Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read online

  The fossils he’d associated with earlier in his career were too dense, too involved in “procedure,” to comprehend the benefits Crane’s work could eventually confer on the herd known as humanity. Not that anyone doubted his brilliance. He had, after all, gotten his doctorate in psychology as the absurdly early age of twenty-one, after submitting a thesis on the etiology of the fear reflex in higher mammals, including homo sapiens. His dissertation committee called the paper “brilliant,” “groundbreaking,” “as important in its way as anything Freud ever wrote.” Jonathan Crane, now Doctor Jonathan Crane, was hired by Gotham University, the same university that had given him his degree, and ensconced in the psychology department where many predicted for him a long and distinguished career. Many, but not all. He did have a habit of annoying his colleagues, mostly by showing open contempt for achievements, ambitions and, occasionally, even their physical appearances. And he generally described his students as “dumber than pond scum.” But he was a professor, and weren’t professors supposed to be eccentric? For a while, Dr. Crane’s bad manners merely enhanced his mystique—for he did have a mystique, woven from his intelligence, youth and, yes, personal beauty. He was as handsome as he was smart, and he knew it—and let everyone else know he knew it.

  Then, the rumors began. Only Dr. Crane and five of his grad students knew they were more than rumors, these hushed tales of illicit experiments. Some said it was just a retelling of what had happened to Richard Alport and Timothy Leary at Harvard in the sixties: certain favored youngsters fed illegal drugs by a charismatic teacher. They stopped being rumors and became facts when one of Dr. Crane’s students ran through the a plate-glass window of a department store on Christmas Eve and tried to dismember the Santa Claus mannequin who was ho, ho, hoing to a bunch of mannequin elves. At the emergency room, she told the admitting nurse that she was only “trying to face” her fears. Further questioning revealed her connection to Dr. Crane; she had taken a shot of what Dr. Crane called a “party potion” an hour before her collision with Santa.

  That was the beginning of the end of Dr. Crane’s academic career. His situation got worse, and quickly. One of the other professors, a man Dr. Crane had treated with particular scorn, had been quietly investigating Crane’s vaunted doctoral thesis and discovered that the research was either plagiarized or faked. Crane was called before a meeting of the university staff and asked for an explanation. He had one: he said that he knew his conclusions were valid because his insight was so much deeper than that of his inquisitors and had chosen not to waste his valuable time doing the dreary, boring chores that would constitute “proof.” Most of the faculty wanted to fire him immediately and as publicly as possible. They were overruled by the school’s president, Dr. Titus V. Blaney, and some of them guessed why. Dr. Blaney, whose own doctorate was in psychology, had been especially voluble in praising young Crane, and had personally vouched for the dissertation. “I’d stake my reputation on this young wizard’s achievement,” he had told the Gotham Times. In making this statement, he had, in fact, staked his reputation on Crane, who now appeared to be more than an egotistical braggart; he was a fraudulent egotistical braggart. Not good for the university, not good for the fundraising effort and the repute of the president. A compromise was reached: Crane was quietly dismissed at the end of the semester. The public relations office distributed a press release stating that Dr. Crane was reluctantly leaving his post to pursue other opportunities, including research in the private sector.

  Members of the academic community knew the real story, of course. All the men and women who had been mocked by Jonathan Crane fired up their computers and spread the word, gleefully. Apparently, the doctors at Arkham Asylum didn’t get the bad news about Dr. Crane. They hired him as chief of research and gave him license to experiment on the inmates. There, at Arkham, he had discovered that putting on a mask furthered those experiments, and gradually he developed an alter ego he called “the Scarecrow.” By then, some fellow psychologists might have said that Crane, himself, was insane.

  Crane was willing to admit the possibility that he was, by clinical standards, unbalanced to the point of insanity. But what he was not ready to admit was that those standards, while relevant to most humans, were not relevant to him. He vowed to leave his brain to science when he died because he knew that he was extraordinary, and his immense gifts probably originated in his brain. In the meantime . . . he was content to be Arkham Asylum’s resident genius. He was sure that in five years, maybe less, he would arrive at a grand theory, one that would prove that fear was the basis for all of humanity’s errors and that he could cure fear and thus usher mankind into a true Garden of Eden, one that would endure until the sun cooled. Crane envisioned himself as the benevolent ruler of the entire planet once the fear-induced borders and barriers had been eradicated and the Earth became, truly, a brave new world. He would begin by learning to induce fear and with the knowledge he gained would learn to inoculate against it. He just needed a little more time.

  Then everything was ruined. A foreigner who called himself Rā’s al Ghūl offered Crane a chance to test his drug on a huge cross section of the human species—the entire population of Gotham City, as a matter of fact—and Crane thought he had found his own particular paradise. By observing the effects of his experiment on millions of diverse people, he could shave years from his time line! He eagerly accepted the foreigner’s offer. And then the Batman came, the meddling, obtuse Batman, and wreaked havoc: destroyed his facility at the asylum, compromised his test subjects, ruined most of the work he was doing in the city at large—only a few thousand Gothamites were affected by his drug, not the millions he needed to confirm his hypotheses—and, worst of all, this masked vigilante drove Jonathan from his comfortable existence to poverty and degradation. He was forced to abandon his cozy apartment in Gotham Heights and the asylum that he’d spent months investing in and . . . hide. That’s what he did—hide.

  First, he had to flee from Arkham, when the damage had become undeniable, the Batman-wrought debacle a stark and leering fact. Fortunately, the streets around the asylum were dark and there was a lot of confusion, so Crane was able to leave the asylum unnoticed. He had no plan, beyond somehow getting across the river to the main part of the city and from there to . . . somewhere. Two policemen, hands on their holstered weapons, passed near him and Crane pressed himself against a wall, shrouded in darkness. He heard one of the officers say what sounded like his name and realized, with a jolt of pain, that they, the authorities, the police, the FBI for all he knew, were seeking him. Were looking for whom? For Jonathan Crane! And if he became someone else, he would, it stood to reason, be safe. He patted his clothing and found what he sought stuffed into a coat pocket. The mask, the scarecrow mask he used as a tool in psychotherapy. He pulled it on over his head and—

  Felt a shift deep inside himself. Felt Jonathan Crane shrink and diminish and almost vanish entirely. Felt another self swell within him, fill him, seize him. And who was this newcomer? Why, the Scarecrow, of course. He stood still, alone in the dark, his senses alive and tingling. Then he heard a sound, a clop clop, the sound of hooves on the ancient cobblestones, and saw a policeman riding a brown horse round a corner, barely visible in the moonlight, and stop not ten feet from him. Crane crouched . . . No, not Crane—Scarecrow crouched, hoping to make himself less likely to be seen. For a moment, he lost his balance and thrust out an arm, hoping to right himself. His hand fell on something round and hard and cold: a paving stone, somehow loosened from the street. The Scarecrow lifted it, weighed it, liking the solidity and heft.

  The policeman was leaning down, patting his horse’s flanks. Looking for something? A scratch, some sort of injury?

  The Scarecrow became the kind of being Jonathan Crane had never been, a creature of pure action. He stood and sprang and struck the policeman with the stone, and after the policeman’s cap had fallen off, struck again and yet again. The policeman slumped, but did not fall completely off his mo
unt; his boot was caught in the stirrup, leaving only half of him on the street.

  The Scarecrow leapt over the animal’s rump and into the saddle. Could a horse swim across the river? If so, the Scarecrow’s troubles were as good as gone. All he had to do was ride the horse across the water, to downtown Gotham City, and perhaps on to an airport or the big railroad station. By dawn, he could be a thousand miles away.

  But he had a new problem. There were no pedals to push, no gearshifts. He remembered seeing actors in cowboy movies halt horses by pulling on those straps—the reins? But how did one make a horse go?

  “Giddyap,” he said.

  The horse began to move, slowly, dragging the policeman’s body.

  “Faster,” the Scarecrow said.

  The horse ignored him. But at least it was moving. Then it stopped. The street was blocked by about a dozen men and women. In the dim glow of the moon, now blurred with a thick fog, the Scarecrow could see that the people in front of him were all wearing the orange jumpsuits of Arkham Asylum inmates. Some sat, some stood motionless, others walked in tight circles.

  “Out of the way,” the Scarecrow shouted.

  “Where should we go?” an inmate asked.

  The Scarecrow considered: could Jonathan Crane’s former patients possibly be of any use? Perhaps.

  “Follow me,” he said to the group, and to the horse: “Giddyap.”

  The horse remained motionless.

  “Hit ’im with your heels,” an inmate suggested.

  The Scarecrow did, and the horse began to trot, dragging the dead cop and followed by a small troupe of inmates. Ahead and to his right, the Scarecrow saw someone he recognized, even in the dim light, a woman he had dealt with at the asylum. Rachel Dawes. She was standing next to a child.

  “Dr. Crane?” she shouted.

  How dare she! How dare she call him by his old name!

  “Not Crane,” he screamed. “Scarecrow!”

  The woman, the insolent Dawes person, grabbed the child and began to run. The Scarecrow struck his heels against the horse and followed her. She stumbled but continued running. She turned into an alley and stopped. Blank wall. A dead end. She was trapped.

  The Scarecrow pulled on the reins and the horse stopped. Several of the inmates who had been trotting behind the animal also stopped and crowded around it.

  “Let me help you,” the Scarecrow said, his voice muffled by the mask.

  Rachel pulled the boy behind her and reached into her shoulder bag.

  The horse reared back, front hooves pawing the air.

  “Try shock therapy,” Rachel said, and pulled a Taser from her bag. She shot it at Crane and the barbs caught in the sacking of his mask. Electrical sparks arced across Crane’s face. He screamed and went limp. The horse whinnied and galloped back the way it had come.

  The inmates scattered.

  Scarecrow didn’t know when he fell off the horse or how long he had lain on the cobblestones. When he opened his eyes, the fog had thickened even more, and the moon was only the faintest of blurs. Leaning against the pavement, he got to his feet and wobbled for a moment. Where to go? Not the asylum. The place would be full of police and, worse, much worse, the Batman might still be there somewhere. No, the asylum was out. But where else? His original destination had been the riverfront, and that might yet be a good idea. Maybe he could find a boat, or hire someone to ferry him across.

  A new problem: where was the river? His fall had completely disoriented him and the thick fog hid landmarks, anything familiar to him. He had to do something, though, so he began walking, simply walking.

  A voice from behind: “Doc? That you, Dr. Crane?”

  No! he wanted to scream. I’m Scarecrow!

  But was he? No, not exactly. He was both the Scarecrow and Jonathan Crane right now, which was actually nice. The ruck of humanity had only a single identity; it was fitting that a superior man have more than one. He pulled off the burlap mask and became Crane again.

  “Yes, it’s Crane,” he called back to the voice.

  A silhouette appeared in the fog, a dark shape in the mist, and approached. When it was only a few feet away, Jonathan could see the orange jumpsuit and recognize the smudgy face: a patient named Hooper.

  “I come back to see if you was okay,” Hooper said. “I feel bad about leaving you. You was always nice to me.”

  Was I? I don’t remember. What did I treat him for?

  “That’s kind of you,” Crane said.

  “Can I do something for you?”

  “You wouldn’t have someplace I could stay for a few days?”

  “Sure, that’s where I was headed. My uncle’s got a garage down by the river. Won’t be fancy, but it’ll be warm.”

  “Lead on,” Crane said.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Crane was utterly lost. He had no idea where he was. All he could do was follow Hooper through the narrow, winding streets, and hope for the best. And also hope that Hooper wasn’t a homicidal maniac. Then he heard the lapping of water, and Hooper stopped in front of a two-story building with a sign that Crane couldn’t see clearly enough to read. It was hanging over a door wide enough to accommodate two cars. Hooper knocked on a smaller door, waited, and when it opened said, “Hello, Uncle Joe.”

  The door opened wider, and Crane followed Hooper inside, into a garage much larger than Crane had thought. Two cars were partially disassembled, and a third was stripped down to the chassis. There were tools scattered on the greasy floor, stacks of tires and workbenches along the walls. No windows. No amenities. A stench that made Crane want to gag.

  Hooper gestured to a thin, bald man, wearing a tank top and a torn, rolled-down grease-stained gray jumpsuit, who needed a shave and a bath and was holding a pistol against his leg. “Dr. Crane, this’s my uncle. Uncle Joe, this’s Dr. Crane.”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Joe said. He did not offer to shake hands, which was fine with Crane.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Crane said.

  “No you ain’t,” the uncle said to Crane. And to Hooper: “They let you go or you run?”

  “We ran.”

  “Him, too?”

  “I’m a fugitive, just like your nephew,” Crane said.

  “You better be. If you ain’t, I’ll kill you.”

  “We need a place to stay till things cool down,” Hooper said.

  “What I figured,” the uncle said. “Okay, you’re family. You can stay out back.”

  “Out back” was a toolshed. There was a canvas army cot, two blankets, a sleeping bag, a hot plate, an electric space heater, and hundreds of bits of scrap: wire, metal, paper, cardboard, wooden boards, irregular chunks of aluminum siding.

  “You’re the guest,” Hooper said. “You take the cot.”

  Hooper, still wearing his Arkham jumpsuit, climbed into the sleeping bag, and curled into a fetal position. Crane lay on the cot, pulled one of the tattered blankets over himself, and did not sleep—did not dare to sleep, with a possible mad man snoring loud enough to rattle windows a few feet away and a tide of god-awful stink washing over him.

  The next morning, Crane followed Hooper into the garage, where, standing at a workbench, they ate cold cereal and drank instant coffee. The chassis and one of the partially stripped cars were gone, and two men who did not acknowledge Crane’s presence were using torches and saws on an SUV. The screech of the saws was horrendous, and the stench had not abated. Hooper did not seem to mind any of it.

  There was a plastic radio on a shelf above the bench, cracked and yellowing. Crane reached to it, then hesitated and asked Hooper, “May I?”

  Hooper nodded.

  The sound quality of the radio was no better than its casing, full of static, but Crane could hear enough to know he had tuned into the local all-news station. He heard his own name and moved his ear closer to the speaker.

  “. . . among the missing, Dr. Jonathan Crane, who is believed to have perished in the chaos at the asylum . . .”

  For a moment, he was
outraged: Dead? Me? I’m not dead! But then he smiled. If he were dead, they wouldn’t be looking for him. Being dead might afford him great freedom.

  He smelled Hooper’s uncle before he turned to greet the old man. “Good morning.”

  “No it ain’t. The boy says you’re some kinda doctor.”

  “True.”

  “You know anything about drugs?”

  Crane’s suspicions were confirmed: he was in the midst of an illegal enterprise and speaking to a criminal. Better and better.

  “As a matter of fact, I know most of what there is to know about drugs.”

  “Yeah? I got some contacts be happy to hear that. If it’s true. If it ain’t, they’ll kill you. Or I will.”

  “I’d like to meet them.”

  “It can happen.”

  And it did, but not immediately. Gotham City was still trying to recover from . . . from whatever it had been that drove all those people around the bend. For the next two days, the bridges and tunnels were closed except to police and emergency vehicles, and public transportation did not exist. But by the end of the week, what might have passed for normality was restored, and the city resumed most of its routines.

  Hooper’s uncle drove Crane into Gotham City to a dimly lit restaurant near the piers. There, they met two men in suits and dark glasses and discussed illegal drugs. Crane had a sense that he was not talking to anyone significant in the underworld hierarchy, but that did not bother him. These oafs would do. The meeting ended with Crane giving the men a long shopping list—things he needed to synthesize several of the more popular narcotics. Nobody shook hands.

  The next morning, a blue van arrived at the uncle’s garage and the same men Crane had met at the restaurant unloaded a dozen cartons. They contained everything Crane needed.