Title: "Pandora and Her Merry Prankster"
Rating: T for general profanity and (hopefully) scary moments
Time-Frame: Pre-Batman Begins
Disclaimer: I adore Christopher Nolan and his revamp of the Batman franchise. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That said, I don't own Batman et al.
A/N: Could be read as a one-shot (it was actually intended as such), I've been tossing around further development ideas in my head ever since I managed to type this out. Also, I don't like pandering to possible reviewers, because it makes me feel pathetic but... In the words of the Joker: "You complete me."
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"The first rule to self defense is to keep yourself out of danger in the first place. Can a Pandora like you manage that at least?" –Jim Gordon
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"Dr. Crane?" Intrepid student and hopeful photojournalist Vicki Vale rapped her knuckles on the door frame to the office of Arkham Asylum's top psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist (read: ringleader). When he looked up and spotted her, annoyance flitted across his protuberant blue eyes. He quashed it with a quick upturn of his mouth into a strained, but affable smile.
"Miss Vale, I presume?" They shook hands and he gestured for her to sit in one of the skeletal chairs in front of his desk. "The college student Dr. Rudge wrote to me about…"
Vicki sat down and winced at the creaks the chair emitted as she settled in and fiddled with the over-sized camera slung around her neck. Screwing her courage to the sticking place, as her mother often encouraged, she made eye contact with Dr. Crane for about three seconds before she had to switch her gaze to his necktie. His gaze was so penetrating that she began to shiver, despite the sweaty humidity of premature summer in Gotham City.
"And you're here to photograph my inmates for your thesis, is that it?"
"Yes sir," Vicki managed to wheeze out, her throat suddenly dry. She gulped and began a speech designed to entice the good doctor into letting her into the inner depths of an asylum that housed 46 of the 100 most dangerous criminals in the country. "S-sir, I would like to begin my request with the assurance that this is not a project that will exploit your patients in any, uh, way, shape or form. Any photos I take, you are allowed to veto and I assure you, these photos will not be seen by anybody except Professor Rudge."
She paused to take another dry breath.
"I am double-majoring in photojournalism and psychology, with a minor in criminal justice, so your establishment has been at the forefront of my thoughts for my entire college career. I wrote a paper about Arkham last year, and we spoke in brief on the phone about how you and Professor Rudge converted Arkham from a simple prison into a treatment facility for criminals with crippling mental defects, if you'll remember?"
Dr. Crane nodded, raising a quizzical eyebrow. In truth, he could not recall the event. Perhaps if he had set eyes on her then, her doll-like features, bee-stung lips and surge of blonde curls might have been striking enough to warrant interest. Now, her physical qualities were overshadowed by the pervading sense of nervousness Miss Vale betrayed every time she fidgeted with her damn camera. She was merely an intimidated school girl; no mystery in her fear.
"I decided that the ultimate overlapping subject for my thesis," Vicki continued, unaware that Dr. Crane had already written her off, "would be a study on the inmates of Arkham. I've finished most of my paper through research and the complicity of Professor Rudge in detailing some of the cases he treated first-hand during the initial years of Arkham's operation as an asylum. However, I've discovered that three of the subjects I interviewed Dr. Rudge about are still being treated here at present." Vicki took another deep breath. This time, she tried to cut through the mental bullshit and got to point. "Sir, I'd like to interview and photograph these three for my thesis. The interviews will be short and concise," Vicki assured him, her voice stronger now, "conducted in any manner you see fitting, and the final product of my thesis will include only updates about your inmate's conditions; how well they've been doing since Professor Rudge defected from Arkham to teach."
"Of course."
Before Vicki could even sigh in relief, Dr. Crane gave her an answer that she'd never dared to hope for when she imagined the 19 different scenarios of her exchange with him. When she chanced further eye contact, she found his visage had mellowed. His milky voice sounded amicable enough.
"My only criticism is that you've contacted me rather late. Four years for your thesis, and Dr. Rudge mentioned that finals are due to start in two weeks."
Vicki cringed, about to lose her fleeting courage at the not-even-a-scold. She bit her lip.
"It hadn't even, uh, occurred to me that you'd allow me to interview inmates, such high profile ones in particular," she admitted. "Prof-Dr. Rudge only suggested it yesterday."
"I can see why you'd be skeptical," Dr. Crane chuckled, "I haven't even allowed the Gotham Times in here for two years for so much as an obituary. I've found their reporters are often very inconsiderate of the inmates' health, more interested in sensationalism than anything else, but Dr. Rudge vouched for you as one of his most promising and empathetic students."
Vicki blushed at the praise, reveling in the glow of her professor's compliments.
"I would be surprised if he didn't try to get your work published," Crane added, fishing around in his pockets and pulling out a thin scrap of blue fabric. He polished his glasses, the harsh squeal of his fingers against the lenses deafening. "He told me he's to offer you a position in his graduate program, the one co-sponsored by Hale College of Law. I'm helping him set it up with a few inmates I think have been condemned by a prejudiced justice system."
He replaced the glasses back on his face; they magnified his already large eyes to bug-like proportions. Vicki couldn't even manage to find the effect funny; she was too aflutter with anxiety and exhilaration at the possibility of interviewing Arkham inmates. She lost some of her attention to detail in her perverse delight. Almost fanatical interest in detail was the quality she prized and boasted of most about her photography; yet she could not see Dr. Crane's bug-like eyes darting to all the exits, shrewdly calculating running times, how fast he could lock the door, and the possibility of being seen.
"One thing at a time," Vicki replied, endeavoring to sound as demure as possible. She fidgeted with the settings of her camera as she attempted to keep still.
Crane estimated a one-in-three probability that someone would come after Miss Vale—someone with enough power to endanger his work—and decided against experimenting with her.
"I'll be starting my job at The Gotham Times very soon, right after graduation, but I've seen the preliminary research you've done and it seems like you'll be doing more groundbreaking work," she gushed. "I would love to be a part of that."
"Then maybe you should skip the gossip rag and accept Dr. Rudge's offer," Dr. Crane hissed. His countenance stayed the same; the affable smile, the mild inattention as he pulled up his briefcase and started to rummage through it, but the vitriol in his voice made Vicki's heart skip a beat. Just as suddenly, his ire vanished and he pulled a sleek file folder out of his briefcase. He flipped through a couple of pages, ticking off names.
"Now, Dr. Rudge said you've been researching Caine Garrett, the Gulf War veteran with the dubious title of being my first Arkham patient." He chuckled at this as though it were funny; Vicki managed a guffaw ten seconds too late. "I can also get you Christopher Bale; he should be excited for a visit."
"What about Joshua Murphy," Vicki interjected, "the serial pedophile?"
"I'll check in on Mr. Murphy," Crane assured her, "but a student of your status should know that he has been diagnosed with nepiophilia, from the Greek 'nepon,' which means…" He let his chastisement trail off.
"Infant," Vicki finished. He nodded and snapped his briefcase shut, the echo sounding off in Vicki's ears like a marching band's drum roll.
"I'll go get those interviews set up for you Miss Vale, if you'll just wait here." He moved lithely up from his desk and whisked out of the office, leaving Vicki to stew in the isolation of white-washed walls and musty paper stacks that reeked of bleach and other chemicals Vicki could not place.
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Three hours later she was massaging bloody snot out of her hair in the sink of the bathroom of that same office.
The interview with Caine Krentz had been up first. He was a decorated Gulf War vet, a family man, a hero who came home and went on a killing spree, murdering twelve Arab-Americans and three Persians before he was apprehended. The key to getting his conviction overturned and transference to Arkham was that unlike most serial killers, he had no pattern. His insanity was triggered by a severe case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and condition changed radically according to his situation: seven of the killings took place in broad daylight, nine victims were gunned down, three were stabbed, two were hung and one was blown up by a crude pipe bomb that had been taped to his head.
Krentz was mild-mannered, his light brown hair interspersed with patches of gray on his head and in his beard. He was tired and jumpy, his entire body tensing at the smallest noise.
Slow and quiet, that's the key, Dr. Crane warned her.
The interview went off without a hitch. She used her most soothing voice to start off with questions about his children, which made him very responsive. When she felt a cough coming on, Vicki doused it with a yawn. She could only use the first shot of him she got because every time she clicked her camera, he startled, and she sensed that ambushing him too many times might set him off. The shot she managed was of Krentz holding his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, wiping tears from his eyes as he spoke of his oldest child, Abraham, leaving for college half way around the world just to get away from his father's horrifying memory.
Joshua Murphy had been next; he had been perhaps the most evasive of her subjects. She started out with "Shall we get started?" and he responded with a comment about how much she resembled a doll. It was a valid observation, one that was made often. Her doe-brown eyes, golden curls, and ashen porcelain-like features made the comparison a go-to icebreaker. Ironic, since it always made her clam up. She followed with a question about his current level of satisfaction with Arkham, to which he answered with an expression of sadness that they hadn't met seventeen years ago, because then he might have been satisfied.
"Well, by then I was five, and none of your victims were above three," she shot back coolly. Instead of making a face or turning away to hide her disgust from him, she rolled her eyes and took his picture. He wasn't grinning like a sadist or foaming at the mouth like normal Arkham inmates; it was a close-up of his face, pensive after her reply. Perhaps goading him like that was a little unethical—revealing personal information to prisoners was a big no-no. It was a spur of the moment thing, and the way his face was streaked with shadow made the photograph a shoe-in for the cover page of her thesis.
Christopher Bale was her last, a paranoid schizophrenic who'd beaten two younger siblings to death and put one into a coma when he was 16. Vicki almost felt sorry for him when she saw his emaciated state; years of constantly wearing the metal handcuffs had worn down to stick-thin proportions. He seemed to drift in and out of full consciousness. Dr. Crane encouraged her to play along with his fantasies, to acquiesce to his seemingly harmless requests. Misleading advice on Dr. Crane's part.
Bale had asked to see her hair; Vicki pulled it out of the ponytail. She responded to his random complaints as though the 'Scarecrow'he spoke of was a real entity, but maintained it wasn't coming for him. Vicki found that mentioning the 'Scarecrow' only served to agitate him and when she pulled out her camera, he spat at the lens. To protect it, she whirled around and hunched over, catching the blow of saliva in her net of hair.
Fuck my angelic curls, Vicki thought to herself as she held the assaulted locks under a jet of icy water and combed through them with her fingers. At least she'd gotten her shot, of—Bale surrounded by the guards, looking up at them petrified with fear and wretchedness, just before he started to yell and writhe into a tantrum.
"Miss Vale?" Dr. Crane called in to the bathroom, smothered amusement laced in his tone. Vicki growled inaudibly and shut off the faucet, walking back into the office with what was left of her dignity. "I'm very sorry about Mr. Bale's behavior; it seems I underestimated his excitability. He doesn't get many visitors."
"That's all right," Vicki assured him, grabbing her jacket from the chair and slipping it on. She dabbed at her forehead with her sleeve as she gathered her recorder, purse and camera from Dr. Crane's desk. Waiting for her back at her dorm room was a functional AC system, one of the many things Arkham did not possess. She vaguely wondered how the resident doctors could perform their duties in the ever-present humidity of the asylum.
Having lived in Gotham her entire life, Vicki Vale had been raised to embrace one of the three prevailing attitudes about crime. A Gothamite could accept that crime happened and try to stay out of its trajectory; they could immerse themselves in it, or they could walk the fine line and stay alive as long as they were able to. Vicki had never even so much as shoplifted. Not because she was goody-goody, but because her funky West Coast aunt had imbued her with a belief in karma. However, after spending three hours in Arkham during a heat wave, she began to feel a measure of sympathy for the criminals who managed to get caught.
Dr. Crane blocked the exit, filling it up with his considerable shoulder width.
"I can't communicate how much I'm encouraging you to accept Dr. Rudge's offer," he murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder, meaning it to be comforting. It unnerved Vicki and she shrugged backwards out of his hold. He didn't acknowledge her hostility. "Helping these men recover and turn their lives around is very enriching," he continued slowly, leaning against the door frame, barring his teeth as he continued his warning. "I doubt that becoming a vapid, bottom-feeding journalist will satisfy you as much as working on your doctorate. At least in Arkham, the danger is behind bars for certain. Out on the streets, hunting a story, a girl like you would be very vulnerable." His voice had shrunken down all the way into a husky whisper.
"I'm not scared of the streets," Vicki mumbled, meeting his gaze. "I know my way around."
"Then what are you afraid of?" Crane implored, leaning down until his face was a mere inch away from her own.
He was rapidly rethinking his plan to leave her alone, to let her out of his grasp. Despite the insensibility of taking her, the thought of seeing her doe-brown eyes widen in fear made him lustful, feral, even. Vicki backed away, biting her lip; he moved forward. She repeated the move; so did he. Vicki closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"… Missing a deadline," she ground out, shoving past him and out the door, practically running the moment she escaped from the labyrinthine office system. Passing the unsuspecting asylum secretary and two burnt-out orderlies, she managed to collide full-on with three police officers and a prisoner. There was no domino effect; the officers were so strong, Vicki felt as though she'd bounced off of a brick wall.
One of the officers helped her up off of the floor as she tried to regain her wind.
"Wha's the rush, girl?" he asked with a heavy 'Little Italy' accent. Vicki clutched at her camera to make sure that it was safe and slowed her breathing, shooting the officer her most earnest look.
"Well, this is a pretty creepy place, isn't it?" Vicki forced herself to laugh. The officer smiled and patted her on the back before turning back to his group. Vicki leaned over to study the other officers and realized that the man in handcuffs was wearing street clothes—a plaid shirt and torn jeans. He studied her in return, his smooth young features contorted with anger, coal black hair hanging limply in his face.
"I see you've met Miss Vale, Arthur." Crane appeared on the scene out of nowhere, looking unruffled, polishing his glasses once more. "Miss Vale, this is Officer Paoletti. Arthur, this is Vicki Vale, one of Dr. Rudge's students at Gotham University."
"I was wonderin' what a pretty thing like you was doin' round this place?" Paoletti remarked, patting her on the back again, his touch lingering like a father's.
"You must be escorting Gotham's newest guest," Crane remarked, ignoring Vicki in order to scrutinize the handcuffed man. Vicki shivered; the guy looked to be her age, like a pretentious bohemian she could have known from her Political Science 235 lecture. "Thomas Schiff, paranoid schizophrenic, arrested for…" His memory faltered.
"Manslaughter!" Schiff barked, leaning around Paoletti and lunging at Crane. Schiff released a stream of garbled words as two of the officers seized him before maneuvering him around a corner and out of sight. Vicki squinted into the darkness after them, the dim luminosity of the lights beginning to get to her. Crane chuckled; the sound of his gratification ground on Vicki's nerves more than the echoes of Schiff's screams bouncing off the moldy concrete. Vicki was suddenly aware that someone was speaking to her.
"… But that's what we pinned on him," Paoletti was saying. He turned to Crane. "Was that Sebastian Armstrong I saw on the release sheet, the klepto? I think I arrested him twice for grand larceny. He can't be out, can he?"
The chorus of moaning and shrieking, banging and rattling was getting to be too much for Vicki, and she flew out of the asylum as soon as she sensed she was out of the men's frame of mind.
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In her panic, she missed a turn and was soon unable to find her way out. Turning back was out of the question. Although Dr. Crane had not directly threatened her, nor tried to stop her from leaving, she was determined that that he was, at best case, eccentric and at worst, as crazy-dangerous as the nut jobs he tended to.
Bordering on hysteria, Vicki managed to wander into a gruff, sour-faced guard who led her to a back exit and escorted her past the wire fence surrounding the interior grounds of the asylum. Now barely visible above the Gotham skyline, the sun was beginning to set, flaring orange and yellow in the west while blue and gray began to meld together in the East. Vicki jogged toward the back gate, stumbling a few times, but managing to generate the caress of air that rushed past her and cooled sweat soaked body.
The asylum's gate was only present for posterity's sake; it couldn't prevent the break-out of anyone who was sane enough to attempt it, or prevent a break-in by anyone insane enough to try it.
Fuck a puck… she thought to herself, skittering to a halt. Vicki realized that she'd left her cab waiting back on the opposite side of Arkham and that her cell phone did not get reception in the Narrows, the area where cell phone reception came in most handy, and, of course, the area in which she now found herself. She made a mental note to cancel her cell phone contract. She glanced back at the looming structure of Arkham Asylum and then forward into the darkness of the Narrows. The gate is just up ahead, Vicki thought to herself, trying to stabilize her dread. It can't be any more than half a mile until the next monorail entrance, and all I have to do is… stay alive.
Vicki had only been in the Narrows twice in her life, once with her father and once on a dare during her freshman year of college. It was a slum of the worst kind—where you only traveled in groups; where sleeping homeless could have just as easily been dead; and where she'd witnessed her first gang beating. It was the first area to be consumed by the criminal underworld after the depression and back again after the demise of Thomas Wayne and his campaign to clean up the city.
Her hike began anew. Every time one of her shoes hit the pavement, her body began to tense just like Krentz's had at the slightest noise. The sound of her patent ballet flats scuffing against the asphalt road seemed exponentially louder than it had before she'd entered the Narrows. It was ridiculous.
This isn't getting you very far, Vale, she laughed to herself, trying to suppress her fright.
The outline of a lean man formed out of the darkness in front of her under the glow of the lamps over the Arkham gate. Hunched forward, ambling at the pace of a lethargic old man, the man turned his head toward her just as a hysterical giggle escaped Vicki's lips. She froze. The man's amble slowed to a stop and he twisted to face her.
Distinct facial features… Vicki could hear Crane musing in her head about the released patient, Sebastian… something or other, Armstrong? she thought. This guy's face had been sliced so that his mouth was locked in a perpetual smile. The wounds were recent; even from a distance she could make out how bulbous the scar tissue still was.
Fight or flight. Every Psych 101 student knew that those were the two impulses animals experienced when confronted with danger. Since Vicki was a girl, her emotions and thought processes were therefore complicated, causing her to possess some measure of overconfident stupidity. As she figured that she'd already used all the flight tokens she had for the night, she decided it was time for the fight impulse to take over for a while. She started moving again, keeping her stare just past who she could only assume was Sebastian and on the wrought iron bars of the gate. Then her stupidity took over.
His gaze stayed bolted on her, his countenance glowering and his motives unreadable. When Vicki reached him, she held out her hand.
"Mr. Armstrong?" Her voice came out like a squeak, and she flushed red as she cleared her throat. "Ahem, I'm Vicki…" Not obtuse enough to give him her real name, she knew she had half a second to come up with a fake surname. Three names flashed through her mind: Gordon, her Russian Lit professor; Knox, her editor at the campus paper, The Daily Gotham; or Schiff, the newest schizophrenic in Arkham. "… Vicki Knox, of the Gotham Times," she finished lamely.
Sebastian didn't shake her hand; his arms were jammed in the pockets of his ratty brown jacket. He stared at her outstretched hand until she withdrew it and went for her recorder.
"I'm doing an article on Arkham's reliability as a reform establishment, and I was hoping I could ask you some questions about your experiences there, as opposed to in a regular prison." That wasn't a total lie.
Sebastian just stared at her chest, at the camera nestled against her chest, half-hidden her cascade of hair. He remained silent, every moment that passed mushrooming the level of awkwardness Vicki felt to new heights as she fumbled with her recorder. Just as she opened her mouth to repeat the question, he finally spoke.
"You wanna take my picture, too?" His voice was gravel-like, uneven, nasal, but at the same time tranquil… it made her skin crawl with revulsion, giving her goose bumps and causing her hair to stand on end. Vicki took an unconscious step away, trying to recover her wits and biting her lip again.
"I-I… If-that's-all-right-with-you," she stammered. He smiled, utilizing his mutilated flesh to full effect, his mouth curling into a devilish, close-lipped grin. Vicki's knuckles turned white as she gripped her camera hard, trying to remember how it worked. She snapped a shot; it wasn't right. Not unsettling enough to match his demeanor face-to-face. Another shot; the same problem. Taking a step to the side, she snapped another shot. This time the lighting shadowed his entire face, highlighting his decrepit clothing and the hunch of his shoulders. Her fear was overtaken by frustration long enough for her to grumble and curse under her breath.
He laughed at her, a jerky, high-pitched shriek of a laugh that startled Vicki so much that she let out a tiny yelp and dropped her recorder. As she squatted down to retrieve it, she kept her widened eyes on him. His head was thrown back, body shaking with the force of his laughter.
"Having trouble?" he chortled, displaying his teeth in all their yellowing glory. Vicki trembled so hard she could feel her camera colliding with her chest as she jerked back to her feet. "Don't be so serious," he soothed, his voice rising drastically in pitch and making him sound like a demented school child.
"Got it," she said, her voice breaking a bit. She tapped her camera to emphasize the point. Breathing in a gulp of air for courage, she held forth her recorder again. "M-Mr. Armstrong, why were you admitted to Arkham?"
"I don't know," he drawled, the high pitch of his voice even more pronounced as his muffled giggles continued. "I was just having some fun with my friends, and then some gloomy cop hits me with a baton and says he's gonna mess me up good." He shook his head, tone dripping with manufactured sincerity. "Not a happy camper, not… at… all."
Sebastian's most unnerving quality, aside from his disheveled physical state, interminable stare, and shrieking laughter, was that he kept the same diabolic grin plastered on his face throughout their exchange. In her head, Vicki immediately diagnosed him with sociopathic tendencies; not a full-blown sociopath, though—they tended to be narcissistic, and this creep didn't seem to care for his appearance in the least.
"What makes you laugh, Ms. Knox?" he asked, licking his lips over again and drawing out the syllables in her alias. "You're acting tense, but I bet you're a fun girl."
"I don't know…" Vicki answered, not sure what else to do. "Comedy Central, irony, Mel Gibson in Braveheart…"
Sebastian let out another inhuman shriek of laughter, and she took another step back, biting her lip again. She flinched and when she put her fingers to her mouth, she discovered she'd gnawed through the tender red flesh.
"Oh, I like you," he growled, taking a step toward her. Vicki instinctually moved back, pursing her lips to hide her wound. I need a new move, she thought to herself, noticing that the red light on her recorder was still blinking, clutched tight in her fist. She decided that her biggest problem was her tendency to stay stationery in the face of peril, which might have seemed like a valiant move under different circumstance, but she knew this was a ludicrous one. Flight was looking like a better and better option with each breath Sebastian wheezed in and out. "I bet Sebastian would have too, whoever he is…"
"You mean, you're not…?" Vicki trailed off, heart dropping into her stomach as she realized that this man was not Sebastian Armstrong, and she had no idea what he was capable of.
His hand snatched out, gripping the fist holding her recorder and jerking her towards him. Vicki gasped, knocking into the man's chest and taking in a full breath of his foul scent. He took his thumb and put it to her lips, spreading the blood from her wound around her mouth as if it were lipstick. She was struck by the sensation of his jagged nail against her skin and desperately tried to yank away from him. She turned her head away from his eyes, which were shadowed coal-black in the dark.
"Ya wanna know how I got these scars?" Without looking up, Vicki knew he was laughing. She felt the vibrations of his chest, heaving with each cackle.
A gunshot whizzed by them, hitting the asphalt somewhere far off in the darkness. Vicki felt the sensation of being jerked by the arm again and her vision blurred as she was dragged and flung into the shotgun seat of a car. The last she saw of the merry prankster was through the back window of the care, the man rolling on the ground and clutching at his stomach as he screeched gaily into the dark. Of all the things to contemplate—the grave danger, the chaos of the night, who the hell had grabbed her now—Vicki could think only one thing as the car sped off.
That's my shot! Vicki tried to finagle her camera to capture the lunatic in all his mirth, but the car made a sharp left and she was jostled off balance.
She turned to the driver; Sergeant James Gordon disregarded her in favor of navigating out of the Narrows with haste. A tiny vein in his temple was pulsing from stress.
"I suppose you're thinking about how convenient it is that I showed up to save you," he stated, as they neared the edge of midtown, "when I should be at home eating mashed potatoes and some combination of bratwurst and barbeque sauce."
"I suppose I mentioned to Professor Gordon I would be visiting Arkham-"
"Which means you're not as bright as Barbara seems to think you are," he cut in. "And for God's sake, put your goddamn seatbelt on!" Vicki meekly obeyed and surreptitiously wiped the blood from her mouth onto the back of her hand. They sat in silence for the next ten minutes until she recognized Rossi's Delicatessen at the intersection of 56th and Collins. "Barb said your parents lived somewhere around here…?"
"Two streets over, the Carlisle building on Dumott," Vicki replied, sucking at her wound so he wouldn't notice it. Gordon parked the car in front of the building where Vicki had grown up—Carlisle Heights, 568 Dumott, Apartment 6A. He cut the engine and the lights, unfastened his seatbelt and sighed. It was a great heaving sigh, the kind you imagined Atlas making whenever he shifted the world around on his shoulders, or the sound God makde when someone started another war over a biblical footnote. The pair lingered in their seats until Vicki reached for her door handle.
"Did you exchange names?" Vicki shook her head. "Did he take anything from you?" She shook her head. "Then just forget it," Gordon concluded, temper stretched to the point of exhaustion. "Whatever you saw there, whatever he said to you, just forget it, and don't go back there."
"Mr. Gordon-"
"It's Sergeant Gordon, and don't forget that," he barked. "Arkham is a can of worms a little girl like you shouldn't open. And if you try, you will get hurt, I guarantee it. You're lucky you're not already dead... What on earth were you thinking?" Astonishment took over for his rebuking. "Did you just strike up a conversation with an Arkham inmate for fun?"
"He was released today," Vicki corrected, regretting the excuse as she said it. Even if prison made a difference in a town like Gotham, she wasn't even sure he'd been from Arkham. Hanging around might have just been his recreational activity. "I got lost and missed the exit, okay? Everything was fine before that," she lied. Vicki chanced a look at him; his benevolent eyes saw right through her subterfuge, but he elected not to press the issue.
"Look, they hold classes at the gym on Thursdays for girls like you to learn to… to fight or fend off a mugger or something, but the first rule to self defense is to keep yourself out of danger in the first place. Can a Pandora like you manage that, at least?"
"Detective Gordon, you've seen the conditions they live in, the weird shit that goes on there. The fact that they're letting a guy like that back on the street…" Vicki pleaded with him. "Someone has to-"
"No!"
"You have to let me-"
"I told you, forget it!" he insisted, waving his hand at her. "Use selective memory. Curl up with a Valium, concentrate on your Dostoyevsky and the next morning you won't remember a thing." Vicki raised an eyebrow at him. "Barb does it whenever my mother visits," Gordon explained, "numbs the brain. Now she loves my mother."
"Anterograde amnesia is a symptom of diazepam, which is marketed as Valium," Vicki muttered, reciting it off the top of her head. It was Gordon's turn to raise an eyebrow. "I'm taking Schleicher's psychopharmacology course," she explained.
"That reminds me…" And just like that, the dead serious air of warning drained out of the car, replaced by familiarity and warmth. "Barbara said she'll suspend your final paper and give you an 'A' if you watch Jimmy and Babs for us onFriday around 6."
"Done." As much as Vicki adored her Russian Literature professor, Vicki much preferred the gonzo stylings of Hunter S. Thompson to novels written before 1900 by pretentious Russians. Sensing the exchange was over, she slid out of the car and fumbled for her keys. "Guess my parents are getting a surprise sleep over," she called over her shoulder.
"Parents love that kind of thing," Gordon replied as he revved the engine.
()()()()()()()()()()
Once she was inside, Vicki developed her photos in a make-shift dark room as her mother reheated beef stroganoff, whistling a jaunty tune in delight at having her daughter home for the night. She tucked the photo of Sebastian, or whoever he was, into a file of random or rejected photos, and then stole a dose of her mother's Valium left over from Vicki's grandmother's death last April. Nestling into bed to breach her copy of Crime and Punishment, Vicki slept soundly and awoke the next morning with only a blurry recollection of the events at Arkham.
Somewhere in the Narrows that night, a body was found in a warehouse. The real Sebastian Armstrong's eyes were open and he had a smile sliced onto his face.