The Further Adventures of Batman (15 page)

Crider glanced over his shoulder at me and said, “Shame he didn’t put his address there, huh?”

I pulled the tarp over the body and got a cigar out of my coat pocket, and when I lit it with my lighter I saw my hands were shaking. I got a good snootful of smoke to dilute the smell of blood and walked over to where I could look down at the tracks with Mertz. Crider joined us. He got out his pipe and lit up. We stood there smoking for a while, then I said, “Don’t guess anyone saw this happen?”

“Just like the others,” Crider said. “Wasn’t that many people around to see anything, but there was some. Seems like they’d have at least heard a scream. Guy can’t do what this guy’s doing without taking some time. You’d think someone would walk up on him.”

“Might be best they didn’t,” I said.

“Yeah, but you’d think so,” Crider said. “Hell, it isn’t even that dark over there, a little shadowy maybe, but not that dark. Wasn’t like he did this in hiding. Guy must move like a rocket and be made of smoke.”

“Any idea who the victim is?” I said.

“Bag lady probably,” Mertz said. “But who can tell looking? A scrounger found the body. We’ve run him in for vagrancy and petty theft coupla times in the past. Name’s Bud Vincent. Says he was walking along and found a shopping cart full of stuff, and he admits he was going to steal it, but he hadn’t pushed it far when he came on the body. He called it in then, and I guess a guy like this calling in just shows how bad it is. These people don’t usually want anything to do with us, not in any kind of way. In their book we’re the bad guys.”

“Until this fella showed up,” Crider said. “He sort of put bad into perspective.”

“You believe this Bud Vincent?” I said.

“Yeah, we believe him,” Mertz said.

I didn’t go home then. I had a black and white take me to my office. I went in and sat behind my desk in the dark, looked at the hot-line phone on the left of my desk. Looked at it a long time.

The files on the ripper case were locked in my desk drawer; I got my keys and unlocked it and got the files out. I spread the files in front of me and turned on my desk lamp. What I had there was on the first two victims, of course, but I assumed when the information on the third victim was put together, it would say pretty much what was said here about the first two. That the victim was a woman, a street person, that she had been cut to pieces with a sharp instrument and that the killer was very strong. Lastly, clues to the killer’s identity would be minimal to none. So far, all we had was a little clay that we had found at the site of the first murder, maybe off the killer’s shoes, and maybe not. It could have been from a passerby, and it wasn’t really that much help anyway. It was a fairly common kind of clay.

I closed up the file and turned off the light and sat looking at the hot-line, thinking that this Subway Jack stuff was stranger than usual. I could feel it in my bones like some kind of cancer, and when you got into the territory of the strange, you got into Batman’s territory.

I guess I didn’t call because of a kind of pride. There had been serial murders before, and there would be again. The department had solved most of them, and sometimes they had just stopped. Maybe the killer moved on, maybe he or she died—but women were dying and that had to stop, and if anyone could stop it, Batman could. All I had to do was reach over and pick up the phone and it would ring, and without bothering to answer, he would come.

BRUCE WAYNE (Batman)

The bullet.

It tumbled.

It shone in the street light like a silver rocket out of control.

The bullet. The first of two.

Bruce tried to freeze it with his mind and succeeded. It stopped tumbling. It froze in midair. But he couldn’t hold it. It began to push at his will and move again, and this time, no matter how hard he willed it back, it tumbled onward.

It was going to happen again.

He was just a boy and moments before he had been happy, but now the bullet would end all that. Lord have mercy, it was going to happen again.

He and his parents had come out of a revival movie theater where they had seen
The Mark of Zorro
, and around the corner of the theater, waiting in the dark with a gun and no patience, was a thug who cut short their talk and laughter and sent Zorro from their heads with a demand for money.

But before his parent’s could comply, the thug got nervous and pulled the trigger and the bullet leapt out.

The bullet.

It tumbled.

Bruce was amazed he could see the bullet. It was very clear; slow motion. He was also amazed that this time he had been able to stop it, but his will was not strong enough to maintain the situation. The bullet started to move again. Slowly forward, and now no matter how hard he willed it to stop, it kept straight on toward his mother.

His father stepped in front of her and took it and went down and didn’t move, then his mother screamed and the thug fired again and the bullet split her pearl necklace and the pearls went in all directions and his mother fell across the body of his father.

Bruce looked up, and discovered he was in a balcony seat, like the one in the theater where they had watched
The Mark of Zorro
. He was watching the murder of his parents play out in the street below. He could see them lying dead and he could see himself standing there, stunned. The would-be robber panicked, turned, and fled down the street and was swallowed up by darkness like a fish sliding down the throat of a whale.

Bruce realized there was someone in the balcony with him. Someone breathing hotly against his neck, leaning forward to put a heavy arm across his shoulders. Then a voice that seemed to come from a great distance through a pipe said, “You are
mine
, and you will become
me
. . . I
am
your true father . . . and
you
are my son.”

Cheeks wet with tears, Bruce whirled and saw the speaker had tall, leathery ears and a face full of long, sharp teeth. The arm around his shoulders moved away and it was attached to a dark serrated wing. The thing’s fingers were tipped with great claws.

It was an enormous man-bat.

It beat its wings, rose from the balcony and into the upper shadows as Bruce sat up in bed and screamed. The shadows in the balcony were pushed aside by the softer shadows of his bedroom, they in turn split by a golden wedge of light split by a long, thin shadow that said, “Are you quite all right, sir?”

“Alfred?”

“The dream, sir?”

“Same one. Only this time I could see the bullets coming out of the gun, and it looked as if I could freeze them, stop them from killing my parents. But it still happened.

Even in a dream I couldn’t make things come out the way I wanted.”

“The man-bat again, sir?”

“In a balcony this time, overlooking the street.”

“I’m quite sorry, sir.”

“I’m learning to live with it. At least the dreams vary a little.”

“Not just the dreams, sir. I was coming to wake you when you screamed.”

“The hot-line?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”

SERIES OF PANELS, RICH IN SHADOW AND MOVEMENT

(1) BATCAVE—INTERIOR

Background:
Blue-black with stalactites hanging down from the cave roof like witch fingers. There’s enough light that we can see the wink of glass trophy cases. Their interiors, except for two—one containing a sampling of the Penguin’s umbrellas and another containing Robin’s retired uniform—are too dark for us to make out their contents. But we can see the larger, free-standing trophies: a giant Lincoln head penny from the “Penny Plunder’s” case. The life-size mechanical dinosaur from the “Dinosaur Island” case, and the mammoth playing card bearing the likeness of Batman’s arch enemy, the green-haired, white-faced Joker.

Foreground:
Batmobile, long and sleek, a dark needle to sew through the night. Tinted bubble glass to hide the driver from view. Great fin attached to the rear. A large triangular bat head ornament attached to the front. The headlights bright as minature suns. Motion lines on either side of the craft to show us it’s really moving.

(2) BATCAVE—EXTERIOR—NIGHT

Background:
Full moon rising above the scene like a burnished shield. Tufts of dark cloud threaten to roll over it. Full view below of secret batcave entrance/exit as a mechanical door with its façade of rocks and brush is closing down; interior of the cave is as dark as a witch’s heart.

Foreground:
Batmobile (right angle, right side of panel) racing from the cave, looking very much like a prehistoric fish.

(3) GOTHAM CITY STREETS

Background:
Straight view of the street, bordered by tall, dark buildings. Street is uncommonly empty. Moon rising dead center at the rear of the street, looking more like a gold balloon now than a burnished shield. No clouds threatening anymore. Clear, dark sky.

Foreground:
Street split by the Batmobile racing forward, spreading wind lines before it like straw. A newspaper has blown across the street and stuck to the left headlight. Visible across the face of the headlight is part of a headline that reads: SUBWAY JACK.

JAMES W. GORDON

Batman opened the door to my office and stood framed in the light from the hallway. His costume never fails to strike me with a feeling of awe. The dark cowl with its tall ears and connected cape swirled around him like something alive. I saw the golden circle with a flying bat in the middle centered on his chest. I saw the man himself. Big, real big. Muscled. Yet lithe as a gymnast.

He closed the door. He didn’t turn on the light. He likes it dark. He came over and sat down in the chair in front of the desk and smiled. That smile of his could be a frown upside down. He said, “My guess is Subway Jack.”

“Good guess.”

“I was going to get in on it anyway.”

“I thought you might.”

“I’ve been reading about it in the papers, seeing it on the news.”

I slid the files across to him and turned on the lamp and positioned it where he could see. “There’s extras there if you want them,” I said. I leaned back and got out a cigar and lit it.

He reached out with a gloved hand and took the file and opened it and without looking up said, “Nasty habit.”

“It’s this Subway Jack stuff,” I said. “Got me puffing my pipe more than usual, smoking these cigars. I’m nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. I’ll be chewing and dipping next. I saw number three tonight, and I’ll tell you, you saw what I saw, you might be taking up some things yourself. Those photos in there don’t do these murders the bad justice they deserve.”

“Just the same, Jim, I’d prefer not to breathe your smoke.”

“You probably eat just the right amount of bran and prunes too, don’t you?”

“Just the right amount.”

I put out the cigar.

When he finished reading I said, “And number four probably won’t be much different.”

“Always the subway,” he said. “Always bag ladies.”

“Shrink might have something to say about that. We don’t have a psych file on him yet. It could just be the subway’s close and the bag ladies are easy prey . . . But I tell you, there’s something different about this one. Something odd. I feel it in my bones.”

“Could be rheumatism, Jim.”

“That’s funny.” He put the lamp back the way I had it and turned it off and stood up. He took spare copies of the file and stuck them somewhere in his cloak. “We’ll get him.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I had my doubts. They never got Jack the Ripper. They haven’t got the Green River Killer yet. There’s some doubt they got the right man for the Boston Strangler crimes.

Sometimes they got away.

“They got a sample of that clay for you down at the dispatcher’s office. You want it, they’re supposed to give it to you.”

“Thanks, Jim.” He went out then. I had a sudden urge to tell him to be careful, but he had moved too fast. I got up and went over and opened the door and looked down both ends of the hallway.

He was gone.

He always did move like a ghost.

OLD GOTHAM CITY CEMETERY (after third murder)

Jack went out there after each of the murders and tried to put it back, but it wouldn’t let him. Each time he went into the tomb and put the box down, the razor would cut through the metal and cut his hand. It would sing to him, high and pretty, and he knew he couldn’t put it back. It owned him, and in the fleeting moments when his mind was his own and he could think clearly, he thought of the damnable book and how it had led him here.

He had gone to Gotham City Library to do research on his criminology paper, “The Psychopath and Modern Society,” and while searching through the reference section for
Psychopathia Sexualis
by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing . . .

FLASHBACK: SERIES OF PANELS, DARK AND FOREBODING, ANGLES SHARP AS BLADES

(1) GOTHAM CITY LIBRARY—INTERIOR—DEEP IN THE STACKS

Background:
Not much. Rows and rows of books disappearing into darkness.

Foreground:
Prominent is Jack (tall and lean with a blond brush-cut, dressed in stylish white, high-top, tennis shoes, slacks, and a red-and-white-striped, long-sleeved shirt) standing on tiptoes reaching for a book. His hand is on the spine of one, but the book next to the one he wants has dislodged and is starting to fall.

(2) LIBRARY FLOOR

Closeup:
Jack’s hand reaching for the fallen book, which has landed spread open, spine up. The book is old and gray in color and on the spine in dark letters is
Followers of the Razor
by David Webb.

(3) LIBRARY

Closeup:
Jack standing, holding the book open. We have a thought balloon that reads: “My God, a book on ripper murders that goes back to the 1800s. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

(4) LIBRARY

Overhead (Bird’s-Eye) View:
Jack seated at a long, wooden table, stacks of books at his right elbow, his head bent over the one he picked up from the floor. Long view of him at the table is the central focus of the panel, but as we move to the edges of the panel, it darkens. The shelves of books that surround him can be made out, but they are shadowy and appear to lean toward him, as if they are living things sneaking a peek over his shoulder. There is a large yellow caption box at the top of the panel that reads: BY THE TIME THE DAY SLID INTO NIGHT, JACK HAD MADE A REMARKABLE DISCOVERY. Within the panel itself is a thought balloon coming from Jack. “Man, what a research paper this will make.”