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Gives you a good pull, and it’s untraceable.”
    “Fascinating,” Alfred said dryly. “Perhaps you could trade notes over coffee.”
    Bruce finally looked away from the screen.
    “Now you’re trying to set me up with a jewel thief?”
    “At this point, sir, I would set you up with a chimpanzee if I thought it would bring you back to the world.”
    Bruce’s expression darkened. Any trace of levity vanished from his voice.
    “There’s nothing out there for me.”
    “And that’s the problem,” Alfred said, hoping he could get through for once. “You hung up the cape and the cowl, but you never moved on. You won’t get out there and find a life. Find someone—”
    “I did find someone, Alfred.” The memory of Rachel Dawes hung over him like a shroud. She had been the only woman Bruce had ever truly cared for— until the Joker cruelly ended her life. Her death in that explosion had haunted him ever since.
    “I know,” Alfred said gently. “And then you lost her. That’s part of living, sir. But you’re not living,you’re waiting. Hoping for things to go bad again.”
    For a chance to let the Dark Knight loose once more.
    Bruce didn’t deny it. He just sat silently at the computer. Bats rustled overhead.
    “Remember when you left Gotham?” Alfred persisted. “Before all this. Before Batman. Seven years you were gone. Seven years I waited, hoping that you wouldn’t come back.”
    Bruce looked up in surprise. Confusion showed upon his face.
    “Every year I took my holiday,” Alfred said, trying to explain. “I’d go to Florence. There’s a cafe by the Arno. Any fine evening I would sit there and order a Fernet-Branca. I had a fantasy I indulged in often. I liked to imagine that one day I’d look across the tables and see you. Sitting there with your wife, perhaps some children. You wouldn’t say anything to me, but we’d both know—that you’d made it. That you were happy.”
    A poignant memory surfaced briefly. There had been a time, Alfred recalled, when he had spotted a happy couple a few tables away and—just for a moment or two—he had truly thought that the man might be Bruce, at large and at peace. But then the man had turned toward him, revealing the face of a stranger.
    He vividly recalled the bitter disappointment he had felt at that moment.
    “I never wanted you to come back to Gotham,” he confessed. “I knew there was nothing here for you but pain and tragedy. And I wanted more for you than that.” He paused to let his heartfelt word sink in. “I still do.”
    There was nothing more to say. He turned and quietly left the cave, leaving Bruce alone with his obsessions—and the ceaseless rustling of the bats.

CHAPTER FIVE

    The sewage treatment plant was on the outskirts of Gotham, near the river. Officer John Blake had expected it to smell, but the odor was more chemical than putrid. Thick pipes and other conduits linked various tanks, pumps, and basins. Squat, ugly buildings were painted a dull industrial green. The whole complex was intended to purify the fetid output of Gotham’s sewers before discharging the excess effluent into the river.
    Or at least that was the theory. Blake didn’t want to think about how effective the process was, or wasn’t.
    He and his partner, Tyler Ross, got out of their patrol car. Ross was a twenty-something Asian-American, only a few years older than Blake. They had been partners for nearly a year now, with Ross showing him the ropes. Blake knew he could count on his partner to watch his back.
    It was early in the morning and they had a long shift ahead of them. Although fall had only just arrived, a nip in the air warned that winter was coming. The plant’s supervisor, a middle-aged guy named Jenkins, led them to a long concrete trough filled with foul-looking water. A greasy film coated the surface—and the lifeless body stretched out on a rusty metal grate above the basin. The body looked young.
    “They wash up a couple times a