Party and Umbrella (I)

Victor stood before the window of the old Cobblepot house and tugged hard at it. Looking up, he discovered that the window of this decrepit old house actually still had a lock on it. Schiller pulled out a pistol and handed it to Victor. Victor glanced at him and said, "You actually brought a gun?"

Schiller looked at him as well. "Why are you surprised that I brought a gun? This is Gotham."

Victor was equally surprised. "But if you brought a gun, why are you giving it to me? Can’t you shoot?"

"My aim is bad. You’ll have to do it."

Victor took the gun and muttered, "We’re both outsiders, so why do you act like you were born and raised here?"

He raised the gun and aimed at the old lock. With a bang, sparks flew from it, and it was shot straight off. Victor pushed open the window and climbed inside, with Schiller following behind him.

Once inside, Victor pointed at the floor and said, "Master detective, time for you to shine."

Schiller shook his head. "Isn’t it already obvious? Mrs. Cobblepot was kidnapped."

As soon as he said that, his gaze fell upon a corner of the living room. There was a very old shoe cabinet beside the door, with a pair of rain boots and several ordinary leather shoes on it. Beside the cabinet stood an umbrella.

Schiller walked over to the umbrella and examined its handle. His eyes gradually narrowed. Victor walked over too, looked the umbrella over, and asked in confusion, "What is it? What’s wrong with the umbrella?"

Schiller pressed his lips together without answering. He merely turned the umbrella upside down and examined its tip. There was a tiny round pattern there, inconspicuous and somewhat like someone’s signature. Schiller gripped the tip and tapped the floor with the umbrella’s handle.

Victor looked around. "What are you doing?"

"No… nothing." Schiller picked up the umbrella and returned to the center of the living room. He first walked over to the sofa and said, "It looks like Mrs. Cobblepot was dragged away from here."

Then he moved to the left side of the coffee table. The Cobblepots’ coffee table was made of glass, refined-looking enough to show that the family had once possessed some wealth.

A tea set sat on the glass coffee table. Schiller lifted it and sniffed it, while Victor came over, planted his hands on his hips, and bent down to inspect the set. "I don’t have much detective experience, but I can guess there was probably something drugged in this, right?"

"If nothing unexpected happened, then yes." Schiller found a stack of newspapers nearby, wrapped the teacup in them, and handed it to Victor to take back for testing. Then he crouched down and looked under the sofa.

The wooden leg on the left side of the sofa had left a scratch about twenty centimeters long across the floor. Clearly, someone had dragged the sofa.

He crouched on the floor again and looked across the living room. Objects were scattered everywhere over the floor, as though a cabinet had been struck and the things on top had fallen off.

A nearby table had also been shoved aside. One chair lay overturned on the floor, one of its legs broken. It looked as though people had fought here.

Schiller sighed. "I don’t think we need to keep looking. Let’s go back first. Whoever kidnapped Mrs. Cobblepot, the police will have to find them."

Meanwhile, Batman, who had gone to investigate the outside gang bosses in Living Hell, had also found something. A suited gang member was sprawled on the ground, staring at Batman before him in terror. His voice trembled as he said, "Don’t kill me, don’t… I’ll tell you everything I know!"

"Around… around a few weeks ago—ah, no! About one to two weeks ago! One of the seven bosses here died. We all called him Black Hand Kevin. He was also the boss over in the North District, with the biggest territory…"

"Was this Black Hand Kevin connected to Fish?"

The man hesitated before saying, "Yes. Actually, Kevin was part of the negotiation faction. Before his gang came to Living Hell, they lost quite a few people in a gang war. He didn’t want to lose any more men, so he was willing to sit down and talk with the leader of the Muni Gang…"

"But he died before they could negotiate."

"How did he die?" Batman asked.

"I… I don’t know that. I only heard that he died outside Living Hell. As for exactly what happened, you might have to ask the police…"

Then Batman asked, "What happened after that man named Kevin died?"

"What happened?" The minor boss was stunned by the question and instinctively answered, "What else could happen? He died, and someone else took his place…"

Batman frowned. "Who took his place?"

The minor boss thought hard. "I can’t remember his name. Anyway, that guy seemed pretty smart. It seemed like he used to be a minor boss managing the water supply. I heard people say that he claimed he could make everyone money, so he took Kevin’s position…"

Batman’s brow furrowed even deeper. He asked several more questions, but the minor boss was not from Black Hand Johnny’s gang and did not know the specific details. Seeing that he could get nothing more out of him, Batman knocked him unconscious.

The mention of the water supply system reminded Batman of Fish’s earlier mad scheme.

Somehow, Fish had found the core system of Living Hell’s water purifier. However, because Batman patrolled this place frequently, he discovered her as soon as she got the idea and sent people to investigate it sneakily. Batman knocked out the investigator and installed a security system on the water purifier, stopping her.

At the time, Batman had not thought much of it. But looking back now, this did not seem like a scheme that an uneducated gang boss could have devised. Most Living Hell residents did not even know the purifier existed.

Even if she could have thought of it, how had Fish put it into action? How did she know where the core of the water purifier was?

Batman had previously read Fish’s file at Gordon’s office, and he had also monitored Fish for some time. He was certain that this woman was semi-literate, the sort of person who misspelled even long words. He did not think someone like that had the ability to follow those complicated pipes and find the core of the most important purification equipment.

In fact, not many people in all of Living Hell possessed that ability. Batman deduced that someone had been advising Fish all along.

Black Hand Kevin’s death, Fish’s plan to sabotage the water purifier, the minor boss who rose to power after Kevin died…

Several events swiftly connected into a single line in Batman’s mind.

The most crucial coincidence was that Fish had come up with a plan to sabotage the water purifier that could not possibly have been her own idea, while the minor boss who rose after Kevin’s death just happened to have once been in charge of the North District’s water management system. That did not seem like a simple coincidence. After all, there were truly very few people in Living Hell who understood the water system. The odds that these two identities overlapped were very high.

In Batman’s deduction, this minor boss had either always been Fish’s man, or he had betrayed his own boss and defected to Fish.

He had helped Fish devise plans, while Fish had helped him get rid of his superior and given him a chance to rise. Perhaps next, they would work from within and without, using this minor boss’s knowledge to strike at the other gang leaders.

Had they once been partners? Could Fish’s death have been connected to this person? Batman sank into thought again, yet he always felt there were other hidden details among these events. It was far from that simple.

On the fourth floor of Arkham Asylum, Gordon and Victor stood outside a hospital room. Gordon said with some sympathy, "That kid really has terrible luck. He witnessed a murder, suddenly developed a difficult mental illness, and then one of his relatives got kidnapped. Even in Gotham, not many people are this unlucky."

Victor sighed as well. "He’s actually a very smart kid. He learns things quickly. But I’ve realized that Gotham is just like this…" He shrugged. "A talented person always runs into all kinds of trouble, then goes down the wrong path."

"I think Professor Rodriguez can cure him. Just like he always says, he’s no quack."

Victor turned his gaze toward the window in the door. Following his line of sight, Schiller circled from one side of the bed to the other. Cobblepot lay in bed without struggling, looking numb, his vacant eyes fixed upon the ceiling.

"How did you sleep last night, Mr. Cobblepot? Do your muscles still feel uncontrollable?" Schiller stood beside the bed in a white coat, writing in a medical chart as he spoke.

Cobblepot did not answer at all. Like a stiff, pale puppet, he lay in bed in an eerie position, showing no reaction to any sound from the outside world.

"Looks like you’re not doing very well." Schiller stood where he was. "Most patients have somewhat slowed reactions after taking excessive sedatives, but I don’t think you’re one of them. Your mind should be very clear right now. Your episode has already passed."

"Why are you unwilling to answer me? Is it because some of your plans have not been going smoothly?"

Cobblepot suddenly turned his head and stared at Schiller with eyes deeply sunken into their sockets. That gaze was rather frightening, numb and cold, but Schiller remained unmoved.

"Unfortunately, I can’t do what they do in movies and use some magical hypnosis to make you tell me everything. In either psychology or psychiatric treatment, if the patient is unwilling to cooperate, hypnosis cannot have any effect."

"Likewise, if you refuse to cooperate with treatment, then no amount of medication will help. I’m a Doctor, not God. If you refuse to answer every question, not even God can cure you."

Cobblepot’s head moved again. A hoarse, sawlike sound spilled from his throat. "Cure… can it be cured?"

Schiller put down the medical chart and gave him a somewhat strange look. "If it couldn’t be cured, you’d already be at the crematorium by now."

Cobblepot’s mouth gradually opened as though he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. As if remembering something, Schiller said, "Oh, I forgot. You’re not even a college student."

He covered his forehead and said helplessly, "I know many people with insufficient education call mental illness madness, an incurable terminal disease that can never be healed, but that isn’t actually the case."

"Many people do not understand mental illness, so they speak of it with dread and fear it like a tiger. This is especially true of hereditary mental disorders. During an episode, they can cause extreme excitement and aggression, so they are often seen as terrifying madness."

"But in truth, this is merely one symptom of schizophrenia. According to the earlier diagnosis, you should have catatonic schizophrenia. You suffer intermittent episodes, with catatonic symptoms during them, sometimes shifting into sudden states of excitement where your behavior becomes violent. But after several hours or so, it can ease on its own…"

Schiller explained patiently to Cobblepot, "This type of schizophrenia has a relatively good prognosis. Not only can it ease on its own, treatment is also quite effective. The difficult part usually lies in managing the excited behavior, but as you can see, sedatives have had a good effect…"

Cobblepot kept staring fixedly at Schiller. Schiller’s expression did not change. He was telling the truth.

This was not some particularly difficult or rare illness. Even within the broad category of schizophrenia, it was fairly common. That was why his tone remained calm. Yet this seemed to give Cobblepot some vitality. He straightened his tilted neck, laboriously adjusted his posture on the bed, and asked, "…It can be cured… right?"

Schiller nodded. "While I can’t guarantee a complete recovery, living normally most of the time won’t be a problem."