Chapter 154: Party and Umbrella (I)

Victor stood before the window of the old Cobblepot mansion, tugging hard at the sash. He looked up and discovered, to his surprise, that a lock was still hanging on the window of this dilapidated old house. Shiler fished out a handgun and handed it to Victor. Victor glanced at him and said, "You actually carry a gun?"

Shiler looked back at him and said, "Why are you surprised that I carry a gun? This is Cat Getan, after all."

Victor, also surprised, said, "But if you have a gun, why give it to me? Don't you know how to shoot?"

"My aim is poor; 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, aimed at the old padlock, and fired—*Bang! * Sparks flew as the lock was shot clean off. Victor pushed the window open and climbed inside, with Shiler following behind him.

Once inside, Victor pointed at the floor and said, "Master Detective, it's time for you to shine."

Shiler shook his head and said, "Isn't it already obvious? Mrs. Cobblepot has been kidnapped."

Just as he finished speaking, his gaze fell upon a corner of the living room. There sat a very old shoe cabinet, and next to the door, on top of it, were a pair of rain boots and several other pairs of ordinary leather shoes. However, resting beside the cabinet was an umbrella.

Shiler walked over to the umbrella, picked up the handle to examine it, and his eyes gradually narrowed. Victor walked over as well, eyeing the umbrella, and asked with some confusion, "What's wrong? Is there a problem with this umbrella?"

Shiler pursed his lips. He didn't answer, instead turning the umbrella upside down to look at the tip. There was a tiny circular pattern on the tip, very inconspicuous, looking somewhat like someone's signature. Shiler gripped the tip and tapped the floor with the umbrella's handle.

Victor looked left and right and said, "What are you doing?"

"No... nothing." Shiler 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."

He then came to the left side of the coffee table. The Cobblepot family's coffee table was made of glass and looked quite exquisite, reflecting the fact that their family once had some means.

A tea set was arranged on the glass table. Shiler picked it up and sniffed it. Victor walked over, put his hands on his hips, leaned down to look at the tea set, and said, "Although I don't have much detective experience, I can guess that someone must have drugged this, right?"

"If my expectations are correct, that should be the case." Shiler found a stack of newspapers nearby, wrapped the teacups, and handed them 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 20 centimeters long on the floor. Clearly, the sofa had been dragged.

He crouched on the floor again and looked at the living room. The floor was covered in messy, scattered items; it looked as if a cabinet had been bumped, causing the things on top to fall off.

The table nearby had also been knocked aside, and a chair was overturned on the ground with one of its legs broken. It looked as if someone had fought here.

Shiler sighed and said, "I don't think we need to keep looking. Let's head back first. Whoever kidnapped Mrs. Cobblepot, we'll have to let the police find them."

On the other side, Batman, who had gone to investigate the foreign gang leaders in the Slab, also had a breakthrough. A gang member in a suit lay slumped on the ground, looking at Batman in front of him with terror, and said with a trembling voice, "Don't kill me, don't... I'll tell you everything I know!"

"About... about a few weeks ago, ah, no! A week or two ago! One of the 7 leaders here died. We all called him Black Hand Kevin. He was the boss of the North District and had the largest territory..."

"Does this Black Hand Kevin have any connection to Fish?"

The man hesitated for a moment and said, "Yes. Actually, Kevin was part of the negotiation faction. His gang had lost quite a few men in a shootout before coming to the Slab. He didn't want to lose any more men, so he was willing to sit down and talk with the boss of the Mooney Gang..."

"But before they could negotiate, he died."

"How did he die?" Batman continued to ask.

"This... I'm not sure. I just heard people say he died outside the Slab. For the specifics, you might have to ask the police..."

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

"What happened?" The small leader was stunned by his question and instinctively replied, "What else could happen? He died, and someone else took his place..."

Batman frowned and asked, "Who is the person who took his place?"

The small leader tried hard to think and said, "I can't remember his name. Anyway, that guy seems very smart. It seems he used to be a small leader in charge of the tap water. I heard people say he claimed he could lead everyone to make money, so he took Kevin's place..."

Batman's brow furrowed even deeper. Afterward, he asked a few more questions, but the small leader was not from Black Hand Johnny's gang and didn't know the specific details. Finding that he couldn't ask anything more, Batman knocked him unconscious.

Speaking of the tap water system, Batman thought of Fish's crazy actions earlier.

Fish had somehow found the core system of the Slab's water purifier. However, because Batman patrolled here quite diligently, Fish had just had this idea and sent people to investigate sneakily when Batman discovered it. Batman knocked out the investigators and installed a security system on the water purifier, stopping her.

At the time, Batman didn't think much of it, but now that he thought about it, this didn't look like a strategy a gang boss who hadn't read books could come up with. The vast majority of Slab residents didn't even know the purifier existed.

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

Batman had seen Fish's file at Gordon's place before, and he had also monitored Fish for a period of time. He was very certain that this woman was semi-illiterate, the kind who would misspell long words. He didn't think such a person had the ability to follow those complex pipes to find the most important core location of the purification equipment.

In fact, there weren't many people in the entire Slab with that ability. Batman speculated that there must have been someone giving Fish advice all along.

Black Hand Kevin's death, Fish's plan to destroy the water purifier, the small leader who took power after Kevin's death...

Several events quickly connected into a line in Batman's mind.

The most critical coincidence was that Fish came up with a plan to destroy the water purifier that couldn't possibly have been her own idea, and the small leader who took power after Kevin's death happened to be the person in charge of the North District's tap water management system. This didn't look like a simple coincidence. After all, in the entire Slab, there were really too few people who understood the water system. The possibility of these two identities overlapping was very high.

In Batman's deduction, this small leader was either Fish's person from the start, or he had betrayed his boss and defected to Fish.

He helped Fish with strategies, and Fish helped him kill his immediate superior, allowing him to have a chance to get ahead. Perhaps next, he would work from the inside out, using this small leader's knowledge to strike at the remaining gang bosses.

Were they partners? Could Fish's death be related to this person? Batman fell into thought again, but he always felt that there seemed to be other hidden details in these events, far from being this simple.

On the fourth floor of Arkham Asylum, Gordon and Victor stood outside the ward door. Gordon said with some pity, "This kid is really unlucky. He experienced a murder case, had a sudden onset of a difficult mental illness, and then his relative was kidnapped. Even in Cat Getan, there aren't many people this unlucky."

Victor also sighed and said, "Actually, he's a very smart kid and learns things quickly, but I've discovered that Cat Getan is just like this..." He shrugged and said, "A talented person always encounters all kinds of trouble and then goes down the wrong path."

"I think Professor Rodriguez can cure him. Just like he often says, he's not a quack."

Victor turned his gaze to the window on the door. Following his gaze, Shiler walked in a circle, from one side of the bed to the other. Cobblepot lay on the bed, not struggling, appearing very numb, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"How did you sleep last night? Mr. Cobblepot, do you still feel your muscles are out of control?" Shiler stood by the bed in a white coat, holding a medical record, asking while writing.

Cobblepot didn't answer at all, like a stiff and pale puppet, lying on the bed in a strange posture, showing no reaction to the sounds from the outside world.

"It seems you're not doing well." Shiler stood in place and said, "Most patients have some sluggish reactions after using excessive sedative drugs, but I don't think you're among them. Your mind should be very clear now; the onset period has passed."

"You don't want to answer me. Why is that? Is it because some of your plans aren't going smoothly?"

Cobblepot suddenly turned his head, staring at Shiler with those eyes deeply embedded in his sockets. That look was somewhat terrifying, appearing numb and cold, but Shiler remained unmoved.

"Unfortunately, I can't do what they do in movies and use some magical hypnosis to make you say everything. Whether in psychology or psychiatry treatment, if the patient is unwilling to cooperate, hypnosis cannot have any effect."

"Similarly, if you don't cooperate with the treatment, then no matter how many drugs are used, it's useless. I am a doctor, not God. If you refuse to answer any questions, even God cannot cure you."

Cobblepot's head moved again, and a hoarse voice like sawing wood spilled from his throat. He said, "Cure... can it be cured?"

Shiler put down the medical record, looked at him strangely, and said, "If it couldn't be cured, you should already be at the crematorium by now."

Cobblepot's mouth gradually opened, as if he wanted to say something, but didn't. Shiler seemed to remember something and said, "Oh, I forgot, you're not even a college student."

He covered his forehead and said with some helplessness, "I know, many people with insufficient education call mental illness 'madness,' calling it an incurable terminal illness, but that's actually not the case."

"Many people don't understand mental illness, so they talk about it with fear, especially this kind of hereditary mental disorder. When it flares up, it can be extremely manic and aggressive, often seen as a terrifying madness."

"But in fact, this is just a symptom of schizophrenia. According to previous diagnoses, you should belong to catatonic schizophrenia, often having intermittent episodes. When the episode occurs, there are catatonic symptoms, sometimes turning into a sudden manic state, behavior becoming violent, but after about a few hours, it can alleviate on its own..."

Shiler explained to Cobblepot quite patiently, "This type of schizophrenia belongs to a type with a better prognosis. Not only can it alleviate on its own, but the treatment effect is also very good. The difficulty usually lies in the alleviation of manic behavior, but as you can see, using sedative drugs has a good effect..."

Cobblepot kept staring at Shiler with his eyes. Shiler's expression didn't change; he was telling the truth.

Actually, this wasn't some difficult or miscellaneous disease. Even within the broad category of schizophrenia, it was considered relatively common, so his tone had been very flat. But this seemed to give Cobblepot some vitality. He adjusted his tilted neck, tried hard to adjust his posture lying on the bed, and then asked, "... can be cured... right?"

Shiler nodded and said, "Although I can't guarantee a full recovery, living a normal life most of the time is no problem." ===== CHAPTER 155 =====