The day after their bizarre date, a bouquet of tall, pallid lilies arrived for Rachel at her office, with only the words "From Crane", written on the card in his peculiar handwriting. She could not decide what she thought of him, whether his odd affect and precise gestures were clumsily charming, or vaguely sinister. Or both. She sniffed at the flowers, but they had no scent, except perhaps the same vague chemical scent that lingered around Arkham Asylum. She was still deciding whether to ask around the office and see if anyone had a vase, or just put them in an empty juice bottle when Finch came storming in. He did not essay anger very convincingly, usually falling short somewhere closer to petty irritation, but he was as close as Rachel had ever seen.
"That bought and paid for, sniveling little piss-ant, pretty boy wind-up toy psychiatrist, fucking ruined my case against Grinnell," he said his voice rising in volume on each word. He slammed a folder down on Rachel's desk then looked at her sheepishly for a moment.
"What is it?" she asked, shortly. She did not want to waste time on one of Finch's little temper tantrums.
"Dr. Crane," he spat. "that lily-livered, little . . ."
"'Lily-livered'? Have you been watching Errol Flynn movies or something?" she asked, acting amused to cover her worry. "Tell me what happened without the eighteenth century insults, please."
"Well, you know the Grinnell case—open and shut, mob muscle job, killing a key witness against Perotta in that extortion case earlier this year—we were still hoping he'd turn state's evidence, but Falcone's got them all locked up tight—probably Grinnell made the mistake of having family he didn't want killed. Anyway, everything is going swimmingly, when they call that . . . well, they called Dr. Crane up on the stand and he has this song and dance about Grinnell being unhinged, and some shit about how the dead witness reminded Grinnell of his mother who abused him and it was only a matter of time before he had some kind of episode. In other words, total crap," said Finch. He was out of breath when he finished talking.
Rachel frowned and rubbed her forehead. "It does seem awfully co-incidental, that a mob killer would also be insane. Did our people examine him? Didn't we know an insanity plea was coming?"
"He tried to hang himself in his cell, because of his remorse, says Dr. Crane," explained Finch. "I think he was coached, but our psychiatrist thinks it's possible Crane is right, although not likely."
"Well, there you have it," said Rachel. "Sometimes we have to accept a reasonable doubt like that. It's how the system is designed." Somehow this thought brought Bruce's face springing to her mind: his hangdog look when she slapped him—the last time they ever spoke. Bruce would be angry about this, maybe even angry enough to kill, but all Rachel could muster was resignation. She shook her head and looked back at Finch.
"Who are the flowers from?" he asked from the doorway. "Look's like a funeral arrangement," he said with a short bark of a laugh, then looked worried. "It's not, is it?"
"Nah," she said, grateful the card was still in her hand, "just a belated good-luck-at-work bouquet." She shrugged and Finch seemed convinced.
After he left Rachel took out the card again and turned it over in her hands. The image on the facing side was so under-saturated it could have been anything, ribbons, white doves, bleached bones. Rachel shuddered at the morbid direction her thoughts were taking. Gotta take a vacation, she thought bleakly. Yeah, two months after starting work, not likely.
She thought of calling Dr. Crane to ask him about the Grinnell case, but something in the image of him sitting in that ancient office, talking to her on a battered phone, his too-lovely lips shaping every word so carefully brought her up short. She wrote a note instead, and sent it by messenger, thanking him for the flowers, and inquiring obliquely about his new patient.
Dr. Crane surprised her by calling the next day, while she was eating a sandwich at her desk. She swallowed hastily and heard him say, "Am I interrupting anything, Miss Dawes."
"Rachel is fine," she said abruptly, in her work voice, harder and more authoritatively than she usually spoke in social situations.
"Ah. Well," he said, and she thought she heard a faint amusement in his voice. "Your note sounded so . . . official. Would you care to come up here and see Mr. Grinnell?"
"Sure," she agreed, with a little shudder at having to darken those doors again. "In the day, this time."
"Certainly. At your convenience," he said, and he hung up the phone without a goodbye, leaving her staring at the receiver for a moment before she replaced it on the cradle.
Dr. Crane met her at the door of Arkham later that afternoon. Although certain parts of the inside of the building had been modernized, the façade was still that of a Victorian mansion, paint gone and its little decorative follies falling to ruin. The light of day did not flatter it, and Rachel could see now the places where cinderblock outbuildings had been inexpertly grafted onto the main structure. Crane himself looked like something out of Poe, thought Rachel involuntarily—the House of Usher has a new master. But she was hardly the consumptive heroine of those stories; perhaps that would keep her safe.
Grinnell was in a bare cell on a hall close to Dr. Crane's office. "He is wracked with guilt," said Dr. Crane into her ear as she looked in through the small, meshed-in window. He had a way of getting closer to her she wanted him. "We've kept sharp objects, and possible strangulation threats away from him in this cell. I think after some pharmacological therapy, we may be able to offer him some more comfortable accommodations."
"What does the director think?" she asked harshly. Rachel wondered, a little, if this would be the end of his charming little attentions to her, but went doggedly ahead. Her work, she told herself, was more important. "I mean, I'm sure you called in a consult for such a high profile evaluation." Dr. Crane smiled obsequiously and clasped his hands together.
"You can ask him yourself," he said, with what sounded like well-contained glee. "Follow me, but don't spend too long. The air is not very good in there." With this cryptic remark he turned on his heel and she nearly stumbled trying to keep up with him. He stopped walking as abruptly as he started and opened an unlocked door down a corridor that looked just like many of the others.
The smell that greeted her was a sickly sweet, alcoholic smell and Rachel nearly gagged on it as she backed away. She could see a grey-haired man in a lab coat lying insensible on a folding cot within, a washcloth covering his face. "But I'm afraid he's too far gone on ether to answer you," continued Dr. Crane as if he had never ceased talking.
"How can you keep him like that?" asked Rachel, backing away from him.
"What would you have me do? Kill him?" asked Dr. Crane with a delicate emphasis on the last two words. "He is an addict, Miss Dawes, with no family, no friends. All I can do is keep him comfortable." He paused a moment and licked his lips. Nervousness? Rachel wondered. "I'm sorry I had to show it you like that," he said with a concern that seemed genuine, and odd change from the chill of his earlier words. "We're falling apart at the seams here, Rachel. Just like the rest of Gotham." She frowned, distressed. Yes, she could see his desperation, trying to hold the asylum together with both hands, beset within by incompetence and without by criminals. I shouldn't have been so quick to criticize, she thought.
"I'm sorry I misjudged you . . . ," she said, trailing off. Seeing him dressed in a lab coat, wearing the expression of a solicitous undertaker, she couldn't quite bring herself to call him by his first name.
"What I do here is . . . odd, I know," he said. "Still, I'd like to show you something that might ease your mind." He took her by the elbow and walked her around the grounds. Later she remembered the smooth cadences of his voice, soothing, telling her about the lawn where the inmates could exercise, the occupational therapy, so helpful for rehabilitation, although she could not remember what the grounds had looked like. That night she slept for ten dreamless hours, and awoke feeling groggy an hour past her alarm.
Still, the first thought on her mind was how nice and claming her time at Arkham had been, and how delightful the company.
When Rachel got to work someone had thrown away her flowers—she asked around the office and one of the secretaries said they had been stinking up the whole floor. She frowned, hearing that, for she remembered no smell. Oh well, perhaps they had decayed quickly. Gotham's air was notoriously bad for growing things. She would put some plant food in the water next time. If there was a next time.
"Well, what did you think," said Finch as Rachel was drinking her coffee. "Do you think Grinnell is crazy?"
"I'm not a doctor, but I'm going to trust the opinions of those that are," she said sharply.
"I don't understand you, Rachel," said Finch as he massaged his forehead. "You were so idealistic. Did they buy you off this easily? Or are you just naïve?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I know it seems suspicious, but maybe this is the truth this time. I see no reason to doubt the word of Dr. Crane. He runs Arkham very well under the circumstances, and you can't ask more than that." She glared at him. "We're all trying our best here. Maybe some things slip through the cracks, but if you saw how hard he was working . . ."
"So now he's one of your heroes, Rachel? Did you see the same Arkham I have? Antiquated cells, frequent shock treatments, dirt everywhere? It's disgusting."
"Everyone's low on funds right now. The depression really never ended, not for the public sector, anyway," she said dully, trying to end the conversation.
"What about the next time he does this? Are you just going to turn a blind eye?" Finch asked.
"Next time, I'll look at the facts and tell you what I think, as I did this time. If there is a next time." She started shuffling her paperwork, and Finch took the hint.
Later that week, when Dr. Crane sent a note by messenger inviting her up to the asylum, she felt no compunction against taking the car he sent, or going up there at night. Yes, he is doing good here, as best he can, she thought, as they sped through the streets, weaving in and out of the slums of the Narrows. The yellow of the gaslights that illuminated the ancient and decaying district seemed less sinister to her this time.
The driver dropped her around a side entrance and Dr. Crane let her in. This time he dressed in what she supposed passed for casual with him, a light shirt in a medium blue, unbuttoned a little at the neck, and a well pressed pair of black pants. "Come in," he said beckoning, with that comma of a smile that never touched his eyes.
"You live here, at the asylum?" she asked as he showed her into a small, neat apartment. The walls were decorated with Audubon prints, including one of a whooping crane, standing on one leg and bending down with its scarlet head and long beak to snatch a fish.
He saw her looking and made a moue. "That's my favorite," he said dryly, "and the only original."
"It's beautiful," she breathed. He nodded in acknowledgement of her compliment.
"You look tired," he said, and she made a face. He looked her blankly. "Would you like something refreshing?" The drink he brought her tasted of mint and anise, flavors that she ordinarily did not like, but seemed to clear her head, and energize her.
Rachel found herself speaking volumes about growing up with her mother, a housekeeper who had ambitions for her daughter well beyond the drudgery of service, and more about Bruce, things she had never spoken to anyone about. She finally stopped herself when she realized that her throat was getting dry again.
"How long have I been talking?" she asked. "I've never told anyone those things. Why would I tell you?" she asked quietly, mostly to herself.
"I'm very good at what I do," said Dr. Crane, regarding her intently. His vowels were very round, Rachel noticed. "Let me get you a glass of water, and then why don't you lie down on the couch for a while. You can sleep here." The word 'sleep' seemed to cast some spell over her, and before he returned with the water she had stretched out on the couch, eyes closed and mouth slightly open, her brown hair flung out around her.
Dr. Crane went into his study and turned off the tape recorder. Most of it was girlish drivel, but her relationship with the Wayne boy could yield some worthwhile secrets, if he ever resurfaced, and Dr. Crane kept the records of all his sessions. More interesting than the content of her soliloquy was the fact that it came so easily.
He turned on his pocket recorder that he used for taking notes, then thought better of it and got out a notebook, just in case she woke up and heard. The drug was a difficult balance, especially for one taken orally; the stimulant acted quickly, the sedative slowly, and in between, his magic ingredient lowered her inhibitions enough to speak her secrets. Of course, she trusted him to some degree in the first place, and women especially were notorious for allowing a man to believe he had received some special confidence, when in reality they told everyone.
Subject RD's inhibitions lowered by sample 189, he wrote, but still no indication whether the effect is anymore reliable than that of ethanol. Less expected, and thus less guarded against, at least.
His professors had always insisted that no drug could alter a person's fundamental values. They could lower inhibitions, alter personalities, but in an individual with strong morals, those would remain. Idealistic fools, he thought. Morals are easy to hang onto when food is plentiful and life is easy, but without that, well, Gotham was a case in point of how quickly ideals can slip, when the need and opportunity are great enough. He had high hopes for this particular concoction.
Will attempt to administer a regular schedule of the dosage, see if repeated exposure increases the effect.
The inmates at the asylum made good subjects for some of his drug tests, especially those drugs that fogged the memory, but in order to test the ones that could alter personalities, he needed subjects who were relatively stable to begin with.
Rachel awoke feeling refreshed the next day, although embarrassed to be still on Dr. Crane's couch. He had put a blanket over her sometime during the night. She heard him stirring as the sun filtered down through the drawn curtains and debated trying to leave before he emerged.
She had thrown her wrap around her and was opening the door when Dr. Crane said from behind her: "The Narrows is not much better at dawn than in the middle of the night, and you live a long way from here." He sounded almost threatening to her skewed early morning perception.
"I'll be fine," she said grumpily.
"Stay, have some coffee, and I'll have someone take you home a little later," he said. He wore a dark blue robe of some soft and heavy fabric. She wondered how he came by such a rich wardrobe on what must not be a large income, but perhaps what he saved on rent he could spend on clothes.
"You never did tell me why you live up here," she said, relenting. She put down her purse and wrap again.
"It's easier, when I'm called to the asylum at all hours of the night, just to be right here," he said. He looked at her intently, and Rachel had the odd impression that he was observing her as he might one of his inmates. She shook her head to clear it a little.
"I'd love some of that coffee," she said. "I'm useless in the morning without it."
Rachel was glad to leave his company later that morning, but in the evening, found herself longing for the languor she had felt lying on his couch, and the sense of ease. They had talked for a long time, she remembered, but about what she was unsure.
And so every few days Arkham and its mysterious master drew her there. Some times he took her out to dinner or a ballet, but more often she fell asleep on his couch. Their relationship remained trapped, she felt, on some odd level between friendship and something more. He greeted her and bid her goodbye with a chaste kiss on the lips, and sometimes placed a proprietary hand on the small of her back, but nothing beyond that.
After a few weeks she could barely sleep in her own apartment, and visited him even more often. "I feel like one of your patients," she said one day. "Maybe you should get a couch with one raised end, like in the movies."
"I have a treatment room with one of those," he said with a raised eyebrow.
From the Notebooks of Dr. Jonathan Crane . . .
Subject RD has shown increasing dependence on sample 192. Difficulty sleeping and performing at work without its effects. Also, noticed decreased levels of inquisitiveness in subject and greater acceptance of some morally questionable practices observed at asylum. May be effect of Dose F rather than sample 192 as subject cannot question what she does not remember.
Memo: decrease percentage of Dose F over next few weeks to observe effects.