Harleen had thought Dr. Leland might actually faint when she dropped the swimming-pool bomb on her. Dr. Leland must have pictured an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of bodies floating face down; Harleen had had the same mental image herself.

She hadn’t been a bit serious about the idea. She simply hadn’t been able to help herself. A swimming pool was such an outlandish suggestion, a perfect way to distract her from any misgivings or second thoughts she might have.

But now that Harleen had given it a little more thought, a swimming pool didn’t seem that far-fetched. Swimming was the ideal exercise for people who didn’t move around much—it was low impact and high intensity, good for people of all ages and levels of fitness. Swimming laps would let patients blow off steam in a non-destructive way. Maybe they could even hire someone to give water aerobics classes. There was plenty of room for a pool on the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement level.

Harleen wrote a note to herself to explore the possibilities further, at some future time, then headed down to the Joker’s cell. Normally they’d have had lunch together, except Dr. Leland had pre-empted the time with her need to be the boss.

To make up for the time lost, Harleen had given the Joker a sort of homework assignment—he was to come up with three to six activities he’d enjoyed early in his life and think about when he had stopped doing them and why. Harleen had been very careful to avoid the word “childhood,” as the Joker shied away from discussions having anything to do with the word. But no therapy was complete unless it covered a person’s childhood. Rather than acting like an interrogator and bullying him into talking about it, Harleen decided to try sneaking up on the subject in a roundabout way. She had to get him there soon—the longer the Joker put the discussion off, the harder it would be on him. So much of his life had been hard on him already—enough was enough.

The Joker looked as if he hadn’t moved since she’d left; he was still sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows digging into his knees and his chin in his hands. The sheet of paper and felt-tip pen sat apparently untouched beside him. She slipped the pen into her blazer pocket immediately; he was forbidden to have anything with a sharp point, but making him write with a crayon seemed so insulting that Harleen couldn’t bring herself to do it. The Joker hadn’t betrayed that little bit of trust; he hadn’t stolen a pencil or pen to use as a weapon. In fact he’d always reminded her to take all her writing instruments when she left. If Harleen were caught treating him with that much respect and dignity, she might lose her job.

Fortunately, whoever had brought his lunch tray hadn’t noticed this blatant violation. It was Taco Tuesday, Harleen remembered; the Joker loved Taco Tuesday. He’d eaten well, leaving the pudding cup for later. All the inmates loved pudding, the Joker included.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for lunch,” Harleen said gently. “But, as I told you, the boss summoned me and the boss must be obeyed. You know how that is.”

Or maybe he didn’t, Harleen thought. The Joker was used to being in charge. If there had been a time when he’d been a henchman or sidekick, she couldn’t picture it, any more than she could picture what he had looked like before the incident that had given him his distinctive appearance.

As she sat down in her chair, the Joker scooted back from the edge of the bed and put a pillow between his back and the wall.

“So if you weren’t able to come up with things you enjoyed doing in the past,” she went on as she picked up her notebook and took out her pen, “perhaps you’d like to tell me what you did think about.”

Instead of giving her his usual equivocations, he said, “You know, my father used to beat me up pretty bad.”

The words hit Harleen with a force that was almost physical. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to tilt sideways. Harleen sat up straighter in her chair. Her own emotional reaction had to wait for later; right now, her patient needed her. He was staring past her at something only he could see.

“Go on,” she said calmly.

“Every time I got outta line—” the Joker took a swing at the air. “Bam!”

Outta line, bam! Harleen wrote, her hand shaking a little.

“Or sometimes I’d just be sitting there doing nothing and—” the Joker took another swing. “Pow!”

Nothing—pow! Harleen wrote.

“Pops tended to favor the grape, ya see,” he continued. “And people who tend to favor the grape don’t tend to be upbeat.”

Grape people, not upbeat, Harleen scribbled, nodding at him. “I see.”

The Joker fell silent. Harleen waited, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts or break the spell that had put him in the mood to disclose. But as the silence stretched, she worried that he might suddenly scurry away from the subject and hide. Was there anything she could say to encourage him without being too overbearing?

“There was only one time I ever saw Dad really happy,” he said finally. “He took me to the circus when I was seven.”

Dad happy, circus, seven, Harleen wrote, keeping her gaze on the Joker so he would know she was paying close attention.

“And there was this one clown—crazy-looking geek with checkered pants.” He laughed a little as he stared into the distance. Harleen could see him seeing the crazy-looking geek all over again as she wrote crazy-looking checkered geek. “He was running around the ring with this tiny dog snapping at his heels.”

Ring dog snapping heels, Harleen scribbled, still looking at the Joker and not the paper.

Abruptly, the Joker jumped to his feet. “And every time the clown stopped to kick the pup—zwoop!—he dropped his pants and fell on his butt!”

ZWOOP! Pants, butt, Harleen scribbled, nodding.

The Joker doubled over with laughter for a moment, then straightened up, wiping his streaming eyes.

Tears—of laughter? Harleen wrote.

“Jeez, I thought my old man would bust a gut laughing,” the Joker said, a little breathless himself. “I saw how happy he was, so I decided I’d make him laugh, too!”

Old man happy laugh too. Harleen underlined the words.

“So the next night, when Dad staggered home from the bar,” said the Joker, still laughing a little, “there I stood at the front door wearing his best Sunday slacks around my ankles!”

Harleen tried to write bar, staggered, door, slacks ankles but she was laughing too hard now. The Joker had dropped his own trousers, revealing boxer shorts covered with a pattern of hearts, flowers, and Cupids. She couldn’t decide what was funnier—the boxer shorts or the way the Joker was acting out the story. His laughter was so contagious, she couldn’t have stopped laughing if Dr. Leland had marched in wanting to know what was so funny.

“‘Hi, Dad!’ I squeaked. ‘Look at me!’” the Joker said in a high, squeaky kid’s voice.

Squeaked! Harleen wrote, laughing even harder.

“And zwoop!” said the Joker, making a swooping motion with one hand. “I took a big pratfall and tore the crotch right out of his pants!”

Harleen gave up trying to write anything and laughed along with her patient. Her stomach muscles were starting to ache now. How much longer would this go on, she wondered? She was also weeping with laughter, so much so that her whole face was wet. She was dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue when the Joker suddenly stopped laughing and looked directly at her, his face cold and expressionless.

“And then he broke my nose,” he said.

Harleen’s laughter cut off sharply, as if he had slapped her. No, she thought, trying to catch her breath. Please, no—

“I still like to think he was aiming for my behind and missed,” the Joker added, his voice calm and matter-of-fact, as if he hadn’t just been laughing his head off with her for minutes on end. He’d pulled his pants up and he was back on the bed with the pillow between himself and the wall. “At least that’s what I told myself when I woke up in the hospital three days later.”

“Three days later?” Harleen managed, her voice faint and horrified.

“But hey, that’s the downside of comedy!” The Joker jumped to his feet again and spread his hands, grinning broadly. “You’re always taking shots from folks who don’t get the joke—like my old man.” His grin disappeared, replaced by an expression of pure loathing. “Or Batman.”

The way he said Batman made it sound like a profanity, Harleen thought as he plumped down on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. “Wow,” he said, shaking his head a little. “That was—” he thought for a few seconds. “Exhausting. I guess I’ve been holding that in for so long, I didn’t realize it would be so draining to let it go.” He turned to her with the expression of a man who had been struggling with something for years only to have it vanish, leaving him discombobulated and uncertain. “I know it’s time for our afternoon discussion but suddenly I’m just so tired. Would it be okay if I took a nap?”

“Of course,” Harleen said. She was tempted to ask if she could stay with him in case he had a bad dream and then thought better of it. He was in a vulnerable state; she could give him a bad dream via the power of suggestion. Besides, he really needed to be alone for a while. She could go back to her office and write this up while it was still fresh in her mind.

She needed some time to digest this herself. It wasn’t just that he had opened up to her for the first time—he had told her something he had never told anyone else. She knew it because after reading his file over and over and over, she had never come across an account of a trip to the circus or any mention of his father being either abusive or an alcoholic.

This wasn’t just big—this was colossal. This was a game-changer.

* * *

Harleen went back through his files anyway, just to make sure. Then she asked Dr. Leland—the boss—if she had ever gotten wind of any abuse in the Joker’s background.

“Not even a hint, although it’s likely it’s a no-brainer, as the kids used to say.” Dr. Leland had several file folders spread out on her desk; all of them seemed to be financial records. She made a pained face. “Dr. Quinzel—Harleen—I’m sorry, you’ve caught me at the worst possible time. Ordinarily, I’d drop everything to sit down with you and we could hash this out until we were both satisfied. There’s a problem with Arkham’s financials—I’m sorry but it would take too long to explain—”

“It’s okay, boss, you don’t have to,” Harleen said. She had a vague memory of something in the news about a possible corruption scandal; a couple of the names mentioned were on the Arkham board. Had Dr. Leland been caught up in it? She couldn’t imagine such a thing, but this was Arkham; anything was possible.

“Is there something in particular you need?” Dr. Leland asked her, sounding harried.

“Just information on the Joker’s first eighteen years,” she said.

“We’ve already talked about that,” Dr. Leland replied, sounding even more harried. “Everything we’ve ever found connected to his childhood or adolescence has been falsified in some way, a forgery or whatever. We don’t even know exactly how old he is—we only have estimates based on medical and dental examinations. Close enough for government work but not much else.”

“But we’re doing government work,” Harleen said.

Dr. Leland was too busy looking for something among all the papers on her desk to comment.

Abruptly, Harleen had another idea. “What if it’s something like witness protection?”

The other woman straightened up, looking at her with an incredulous expression. “Now that’s one I’ve never heard.”

“Not the real witness protection program,” Harleen added quickly. “But something like that. Maybe there was something the Joker was so afraid of that it wasn’t enough for him to assume a new identity—he had to completely obliterate his old one and become the Joker.”

“There’s only one problem with your theory: anyone that scared would stay in hiding. The Joker has never hidden from anything or anyone.”

“Because he knows whoever he’s afraid of isn’t interested in the Joker—they’re after the person he used to be. It’s possible. Highly unlikely, but not impossible.”

“Too improbable,” Dr. Leland said. “I doubt anything scares that man. I doubt anything could.”

“Isn’t that rather dehumanizing?” Harleen said.

“Many sociopaths are thrill-seekers because they don’t feel fear, at least not in the sensible way the rest of us do,” Dr. Leland said. “They’re also talented liars. The Joker has lied so much, he may not even know the truth about himself anymore. It’s a bit hard to keep track when you keep losing touch with reality.”

“But don’t you think that after so many years—a lifetime really—even the most accomplished liar would want to tell the truth to someone?”

“Sure,” said Dr. Leland. “Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that liar is the Joker and that someone is you. I’m sorry, I’ve really got my hands full, so if there’s nothing else…?” Her expression said she hoped not.

Harleen shook her head. “Just that I don’t think I’d want your job if they paid me a million dollars.”

“Right now, I don’t want it, either,” said Dr. Leland, looking unhappy. “And if I can’t prove they don’t pay me even half that much, the Joker’s pathology will be the least of my problems.”

* * *

All the staff psychiatrists had treated the Joker at one time or another, some more than once. It had been standard practice to rotate his doctors simply because he was so difficult and stressful. A chat with Dr. Davis confirmed that he had, in fact, removed some of his notes from the Joker’s files.

“Can I see them?” Harleen asked.

“No,” Dr. Davis said flatly. “They’re gone. Destroyed.”

Harleen was shocked. “Altering files—”

“I didn’t alter anything,” Dr. Davis said, almost snapping. “I unaltered them. The Joker fed me a pack of lies. I removed the lies and repaired the record, to prevent problems in the future. You’d have done the same if it had been you.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Harleen said, offended.

“Easy for you to say, because it wasn’t you,” he said grumpily. “This is Arkham Asylum. You don’t know how different it is because you’ve never worked anywhere else—you have no basis for comparison. We have to do things differently here. Otherwise the gargoyles would already have had us for lunch, in hideous and terrible ways. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet with a patient. A former patient of yours, as it happens. Dr. Leland has decided the best way for you to do your job is to make more work for me. I guess that’s why you have so much time to pore over old records and wonder what’s missing.”

There goes a man with no sense of humor, Harleen thought, staring after him as he stumped away.