The Long Easter (10)

Batman was on the rooftop of a building in the West End. He had followed the clues surrounding the Easter eggs here.

The Easter eggs the Holiday Killer sent to the mob bosses had left no concrete clues, but he should never have sent one to Bruce Wayne.

The grounds around Wayne Manor were covered with cameras Batman had installed. Two cameras at the main gate had captured a figure.

It was a paperboy who delivered newspapers back and forth between the South Side and the East End. Such paperboys frequently traveled between the affluent southern districts and the printing plants, and almost no one paid attention to them.

The cameras had not caught the paperboy’s face, but they had captured his clothing. In the end, Batman found him at a newspaper printing plant in the East End.

The paperboy did not know much. He only told Batman that someone had paid them to deliver Easter eggs.

This kind of job was common among paperboys. They usually had a regular gathering place, and people who needed errands run would go there, pay them, and hire them to deliver things.

These paperboys were intimately familiar with Gotham’s terrain and routes. And for convenience’s sake, Gothamites had an unspoken rule not to make things difficult for children running errands, so many people liked to hire them to deliver food, keys, or beer.

Batman went to the paperboys’ gathering place. The children all spoke at once as they described the Holiday Killer’s appearance, but it was useless. When they took a job, they did not care who the client was. As long as they were sure they were not delivering dangerous goods likely to get them robbed, they accepted any job. Too many people came by every day for anyone to remember a specific face.

However, one particularly sharp paperboy provided an important clue. He said he had smelled a chemical agent on the person who hired them, something a little like gunpowder.

Following that lead, Batman investigated every chemical plant in Gotham City.

There were actually many chemical plants in Gotham City, but they varied in size. After the disasters of flooding and freezing, most of the smaller plants had ceased production. Only a very few production lines could still operate.

Only four or five chemical plants were functioning normally, so the investigation did not take Batman long. In the end, he fixed his attention on a chemical plant in the West End.

This chemical plant was underground in the West End. It was small, with few production lines. Its assembly lines were not sophisticated, and it did not produce anything important. By all rights, it should have shut down along with the other small chemical plants.

Furthermore, after the disaster, nearly all of Gotham’s underground structures had been destroyed. This underground chemical plant had nearly been buried, its building severely damaged and more than half collapsed. Most of its production lines were paralyzed, yet there were still signs of activity nearby.

What goods had to be produced at a time like this?

After prying open the back door’s lock, Batman slipped through the gap. He put on his Night Vision Goggles and saw that the chemical plant was in complete disarray.

Part of the southeast corner had collapsed, leaving rubble scattered across the floor. Many crates had been crushed beneath the walls, and some Slime had leaked out. The Night Vision Goggles could not make out what the Slime was, so he moved closer.

Soon, Batman caught a foul smell. Looking closer, he saw that the crates were full of smashed goose eggs. Yolks and whites had spilled all over the ground, left unattended until they were nearly fermenting and giving off waves of stench.

Farther away, some crates had escaped the damage. Batman walked over and saw that they contained processed goose eggshells.

Easter eggs were not painted directly onto raw goose eggs. Goose eggs selected as Easter egg materials had to be processed. If they were not hollowed out, they needed to be soaked in chemical agents to make their surfaces suitable for painting. If they were hollowed out, other methods had to be used to preserve the shells’ hardness.

It seemed that both kinds of Easter egg materials had been stored here, except some of the eggs that had not been hollowed out were crushed beneath the fallen wall.

Batman stepped forward and picked up an eggshell for inspection. It had already been processed but had not yet been painted. Batman took several such eggshells back to Wayne Manor for comparison.

Several different Easter eggs sat on the laboratory table. First was the egg the Holiday Killer had mailed to Bruce. Batman had not touched it, so it had not exploded and remained intact.

Another was the smiling Easter egg Schiller had given him, the one Schiller had painted by hand. The last was the unpainted Easter eggshell Batman had brought back from the warehouse.

It was obvious that the first and third Easter eggs were nearly identical. The goose eggs’ size, shape, and processing method were all exactly the same.

By comparison, Schiller had clearly just grabbed a random goose egg. It did not even look like one from a farm, more like a swan egg taken from a nest.

Its size was wrong, obviously too small. It had not been processed at all and had been painted directly. Its shell was too smooth to hold paint, which was why the smiley face was somewhat distorted.

In other words, the Easter eggs sent to mob bosses and prominent figures had come from that chemical plant in the West End.

"West End chemical plant…" Batman muttered. He suddenly froze, then quickly left Wayne Manor and drove the Batmobile to the Gotham Police Department.

Gordon had just finished a busy day and was about to go home when he heard a rustling sound from the corner of the wall behind him. He did not even need to look. "What is it this time, Batman?"

"That tape from last time…"

"The tape? Oh, you mean the tape with Schiller’s phone records? It’s in the evidence room, but the staff there have already gone home…"

Before Gordon had finished speaking, Batman had already vanished. Gordon shook his head. He thought it was not a bad thing to let that weirdo keep such dangerous evidence. It would keep someone from giving in to curiosity and listening to it one day.

Batman entered the pitch-black evidence room, found the tape, and placed it in a recorder. After a burst of static, Schiller’s voice sounded again. "The goods from Plantation Number Nine go through Old Wilkin’s route, the one that passes through three streets in the East End…"

Batman twisted a knob on the recorder and fast-forwarded. "You’re worried about that? There’s no need. As far as I know, that underground chemical plant in the West End also belongs to the Falcone…"

"…family. After the Godfather put Evans in charge of it, it also began moving goods through Elizabeth Street. But later, due to poor management, it was shut down for a long time. You needn’t worry that the Godfather cares about such a tiny profit…"

"Chemical plant? Evans? Evans Falcone…" Batman’s voice echoed through the dark room.

At that moment, Batman’s phone rang with a shrill tone. When he answered, Cobblepot’s voice came through. "…Evans!! It’s Evans!!!! He has a knife… He wants to kill me… No, he isn’t… cough… Hurry, go to Gotham Cathedral and stop him…"

Batman looked up through the window. A full moon hung high in the sky.

When Batman arrived at Gotham Cathedral, Evans seemed to have been waiting for him.

Evans stood at the fissure in the center of the cathedral, watching the shifting glow inside it. Batman smelled something that made him dizzy, like high-proof liquor evaporating into the air.

He dropped down from the window and stood before Evans. Evans ignored him, instead kneeling on one knee and staring fixedly into the fissure.

"Who are you?" Batman asked.

"Who am I? Don’t you recognize me? I’m your classmate…"

"You aren’t Evans."

The person opposite him gave a cold laugh. "Don’t mention that name to me. He’s just an impostor. I am the real Falcone."

"You’re his second personality?"

"No. He’s my second personality."

The man rose to his feet. Under the moonlight, his blond hair had taken on an eerie hue. He wore an icy expression Evans had never shown before. "I told you, I am Falcone. Alberto Falcone."

"Then you’re his second personality."

Alberto seemed somewhat enraged. He furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes, fury burning in those green pupils. His voice was very low, sounding completely different from Evans’s.

"I have always been Alberto!"

"Wasn’t Alberto already dead?"

"Heh… That farce back then really fooled quite a few people." Alberto sneered. "I died? No, of course not. A fool merely took my place."

"Seems like a long story, but that is fine…" Batman pulled a Batarang from his belt. "Tonight is Easter night. It should be a long night. You can take your time thinking."

"The Holiday Killer was you, wasn’t it?"

"That’s right, I…"

Before he could finish, Batman threw something at Alberto. Alberto warily dodged to the side, then turned to look. It was a shattered Easter egg.

"Damn it, are you mocking me?"

"No. This was someone’s Easter gift to you. It is broken now, but that is because you failed to catch it. It has nothing to do with me."

"Don’t try to distract me with such cheap tricks. My goal has already been achieved. No one can stop me."

"Is that so? You call yourself the Holiday Killer, yet you did not kill anyone on Easter. The only person you killed was Principal Sheldon, and your method was crude, full of flaws."

When Batman said things like that in his calm, utterly flat tone, it was always infuriating.

"You think you’re so clever? Wearing that skintight suit and pretending to be some kind of superhero?"

"But I found you. Oh, no… I was not even the one who found you. It was that insignificant Cobblepot."

At the mention of Cobblepot, Alberto seemed genuinely furious. "That damned kid nearly ruined my plan…"

"So you failed? Against a short, skinny poor kid—the first person you wanted to kill on Easter—even after making every possible preparation, you still could not kill him."

"I never intended to kill him. If he hadn’t given Evans those stupid ideas, I would never have touched him. He is completely unimportant!"

"That is why I said your methods were crude and full of flaws. Anyone could see that Cobblepot is dangerous."

"Yes…" Alberto gave a cold laugh. "A pathetic little thing who lost his father. He still does not know that his father’s death was no accident."

Then, as though venting something, he said, "A funeral? Yes, I died, and quite a few people attended my funeral."

He looked up at the window above the cathedral. Moonlight fell like a curtain drawn from the heavens, gently draping itself over the Jesus statue. This suffering Son had bled dry for betrayers, and in this bitterly cold night filled with misery, only the moonlight was willing to clothe him.

"But tonight, I will be resurrected, and I will live forever."