Sad Clown

Chapter Two--The News and Revelation


About a week after he had been let out, she sashayed around her apartment humming the odd little waltz he often sang. Beaming, she picked up the paper. There, on the front page, was a story about a robbery at the First Bank of Gotham. The gang behind it was led by Jack Napier.

She gasped, all flights of fancy gone from her, and dropped the paper. But he assured me he was never going back to that life! He told me the underworld was...well, under him!

He evaded police for so long, it seemed they would never catch him. Then, the ultimate tragedy struck.

Three a.m. She would never forget that phone call. "Harleen!" This was her superior, Joan Leland, calling.

"Mmm?"

"Harleen, I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Here, she sat upright, fully awake. "What is it, Joan?"

A long pause, then "There was a blown heist at Axis Chemicals. The gang leader...fell into a vat of acid..."

"Huh?" She didn't quite know what this had to do with her. Not at first. But as soon as she said it, she knew.

"...It was Jack Napier. I'm...sorry kiddo. I know he was your most important case..."

She couldn't answer. Jack Napier, dead? It was too much. She hung up without a sound, and tried to sleep. Maybe it was a bad dream, maybe it wasn't real. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, for hours, until the *thwack!* of a newspaper hitting the door startled her.

It was the top headline. "MOB BOSS NAPIER PRESUMED DEAD," it read. The article went on to give a description of what had happened, a bit of his history, the usual things. One line stuck out. She didn't know who had said it; it was attributed to only 'a friend of Napier's', but what he said hit hard and deep.

"Napier was insane. He was out of control. Whoever let him out is an imbecile and should have their doctorate revoked."

She fell back limply onto the couch, the paper falling from her hands. Was it really her fault that her favorite patient was dead? The headline said 'presumed', but there was no way anyone could survive that.

Despite the grief, she went into work that day. No one was hostile or bitter towards her, like the man in the paper had been. Maybe it was because he didn't know her, couldn't put a face to a name he didn't know.

The next day was similar. Uneventful, with the girl paying rapt attention to every news broadcast to see if they had found his body yet. Maybe it had dissolved in the acid. She didn't know, and seperated herself from trying to think of it.

The third say she didn't care any more. Dr. Leland had told her it wasn't her fault, that if he had faked sanity, he had been such a skilled actor that no one could tell his lies from facts. Leland assured her that the other doctors had been taken in as well, that Harleen wasn't alone. Maybe she could have done something, but it was too late, and there were patients now who needed her care.

That third day, she chanced walk into the doctors' lounge on her lunch break, eager to catch back up with her favorite soap, "Days in the Lives." A small group of other doctors were gathered around the tube watching it already, so she sat down with some fellow first-years. Just as Strawberry was about to announce what she would do with her lottery winnings, the screen was dominated by the face of a local anchor. Groans came from the room as the man began to speak.

"A mob kingpin is found dead in his Gotham home, and police suspect an inside job."

She listened to the report, chewing passively on her ham sandwich. There was security camera footage, and the viewers were going to see it, the usual things. The tape showed a grotesquely painted man--no doubt to disguise himself--entering the kingpin's study. Shouting and shots were heard. The tape cut to the man's emergence from the room.

He looks familiar, she thought, so why can't I place him?

As he walked down the hall, he saw the camera. Rather than try to conceal himself, for he was unrecogniziable, he turned his hideously white face to the lens and grinned, doing a bit of soft shoe. He whistled an odd little tune--a waltz.

She spat out her soda. That tune! There was only one other person who knew it! The perverse dance in three-quarters' time was undoubtedly Jack Napier's!