Chapter 2584

The cool morning mist was blown into fine ripples by the cold wind in the forest, first brushing over the Joker's terrified expression, then being blown into Victor's eyes, and finally sweeping past his fingertips; at the tip of his little finger's nail, a speck of dried, black-red scab looked like a black hole beneath a sand dune.

"Damn it, go press down on that corner quickly, or the blood is going to flow into the floor cracks." Anna's roar echoed in the office.

Victor stood by the door with his hands covered in blood, while Nora brought over a toolbox, opened it, and handed a saw to Anna; Anna cursed, then lowered her head to look at the corpse at her feet.

At this moment, the clock in the office pointed to 6:00 AM.

"We have at most half an hour left," Victor said. "I don't want to be late for the banquet Schiller is hosting, and no one else does either."

"Then cut faster!" Anna said. "This damn, blind guy just had to come at a time like this; we need at least two large crates to pack him up!"

"Why do you think he was coming for you?" Nora looked up; although her voice was very gentle, her expression was somewhat cold, and the bloody stench filling the room couldn't make her flinch.

"I..." Victor opened his mouth and said, "I'm very sorry, but they must know that my only weakness is you. If they want me to work for them, they will only come for you."

"It's a good thing you're alright," Victor said, half-kneeling on the ground. "It's not that I must view you as a little girl with no strength to truss a chicken, but today was truly too dangerous. If you hadn't discovered him following you and had just walked into the market like that, perhaps in some alleyway on the way out..."

"You're worrying too much again, Victor," Nora sighed and said. "His tailing skills were unbelievably clumsy. I don't know what kind of person would choose to attack with their bare hands, but at least I have a gun."

"Thank you for choosing to bring him here so we could deal with it together," Victor said very sincerely. "Thank you for trusting us instead of choosing to face it alone."

"Things have already turned out this way, so don't dwell on the past anymore," Anna said. "We must pack him up as quickly as possible. The cleaners will be here to sweep the office later, and I don't want to be late for Schiller's housewarming banquet either, because we don't even know who is hosting it."

Victor sighed and said, "We can't freeze him whole; the car doesn't have that much space. Cut him up first, then freeze him into small pieces; at least there won't be any smell."

"But where do you plan to dump them?" Anna asked, frowning. "You'd better not say anything stupid like the sewers; you know Gotham's sewers are never peaceful."

Victor pondered for a long while, then suddenly said, "Have you read the fishing reports?"

"That newspaper that keeps reporting who caught how big a fish? I teach mathematics, and the idiots under me are several times more numerous than those under Schiller; where would I have the time to look at that?"

"There is a lake near Schiller's house, a very large lake," Victor said, looking at Anna.

"Are you crazy?! You want to dump a body in front of Schiller?!"

"He won't find out, and even if he did, he wouldn't care," Victor said. "I don't believe there aren't any of his artistic masterpieces sunk at the bottom of that lake. I know very well what kind of people become his friends."

"You are the same kind of person as him, the same kind of lunatic," Anna said, hitting the nail on the head. "A good husband is just the most perfect human skin you wear."

"I don't wish to become his standard for measuring madness. We must hurry; don't forget we still have to go pick up the other colleagues," Nora said, settling the matter.

The thick morning mist swallowed Anna and Victor. They held fishing rods and watched Schiller's back as he walked toward the grassy slope. Anna asked, "Do you think he noticed?"

"I don't know, but he usually wouldn't appear behind me in that way," Victor shook his head and said. "It's also possible that I'm just feeling guilty because I've done something wrong."

Anna glanced at her watch and said, "We arrived early enough; the others probably still have half an hour. Let's finish this quickly."

When Schiller's figure completely disappeared above the lawn, Anna and Victor lifted the two crates that had been pressed to the very bottom. When the crates were opened, countless human limbs frozen in dense ice appeared before Victor's eyes.

"Have you seen his brain?" Anna asked.

"Of course not, I don't have any special hobbies."

"Sometimes I really suspect that a lizard lives inside someone's brain," Anna said while dumping crate after crate of ice into the lake. "Have you seen Ratatouille?"

"You mean that rat who never followed kitchen hygiene regulations? Do you mean that a lizard is manipulating humans just like that?"

"Otherwise, I can't figure out how someone could achieve a score of 0 on my exam."

The two chatted while throwing the ice into the lake. The smaller parts were all placed on top, and soon they were finished. Anna struggled a bit to pull a piece of the corpse from the bottom of the large crate.

"Hmm?"

She made a sound of confusion. Victor immediately turned his head to look. Anna flipped the piece of the corpse over and pointed at the object on it, saying, "Look, what is this? Why does it look like some kind of metal product?"

Victor immediately saw the bone and said, "I'm not very proficient in anatomy, but I know this is definitely not a human lumbar vertebra."

"Don't you think this stalking incident is a bit strange?" Anna asked.

"Of course, but I must maintain Nora's self-esteem instead of acting as if the whole world revolves around me. Besides, Nora is picky and insisted on going to a supermarket two neighborhoods away. The public security there isn't very good, and someone like her, who is clearly an intellectual and a wealthy lady, is easily targeted."

"I don't know if the world revolves around you, but there must be too many people revolving around you lunatics," Anna said, looking at the bone. "Remove it, and dump the rest into the lake."

Victor looked left and right, took out his freeze gun, and thawed the ice. However, digging out the bone was very difficult. It took him a great deal of effort to pull it off. After refreezing the corpse piece, he said to Anna, "You throw it; I need to go over there and wash my hands. I can't be discovered."

His fingers brushed over the cocked freeze gun. Victor stared intently at the Joker's face; if he dared to say anything more about corpses, he would immediately shoot him and call Arkham Asylum to send a vehicle.

No one would believe this lunatic, Victor thought. He was Schiller's good friend and a famous university professor, currently a leader in the field of low-temperature physics and a nominee for the Nobel Prize. Who would choose a lunatic over him?

Victor turned his head slightly and saw Nora's reassuring gaze. He thought, yes, he was still a good husband. His and Nora's story was widely spread; the story of working hard to study science for a terminally ill wife and finally achieving immortal success had always been popular with the public.

Victor's hand holding the freeze gun tightened.

At the same time, Gordon's gaze was also fixed on the Joker, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. However, the holster hanging at his waist was not fastened as tightly as before, and the safety of the gun inside was also off.

With a click, Gordon placed a box on his desk. He glanced down at his watch and shouted toward the outside.

The female officer entered. Gordon organized the items in the box and said, "The car is ready, right? Help me take this box of records down first and put it on the left side of the trunk. I'll carry the record player myself."

The female officer nodded, stepped forward to take the box, and turned to leave. Gordon then pulled another larger box from under the desk, which contained an antique record player.

Gordon looked at this old-fashioned record player with great satisfaction. This time he would really show off at Schiller's housewarming banquet and let people know that he had found such a great treasure after just one trip to the second-hand market.

Of course, there were also those records he had bought on an emergency order; those were all classic old-fashioned music, much better than whatever pop music is now... wait, why didn't Winnie complain about his music taste just now?

Gordon looked toward the door with some confusion.

When he asked Winnie to help drive these things yesterday, she complained the whole way and insisted on playing that rap music that sounded like chanting on the car radio. She didn't say a word when she saw these records today; this didn't sound like her.

Winnie was an officer who only arrived this year and was also Gordon's alumna. She had achieved top-three grades in her grade for three consecutive years at the Chicago Police Academy. He had spent a lot of effort to get her over. The two were like friends and also like father and daughter, often teasing each other during work hours. Was she in a bad mood today?

Gordon was a bit confused, so he immediately carried the record player downstairs and found that Winnie had placed the box on the right side of the trunk.

The right side already had some insulated boxes, which contained the vegetable skewers Gordon had prepared in advance. He knew that Schiller and his friends were mostly carnivores.

But perhaps there would be vegetarians or some ladies who preferred vegetables and fruits among them. It would be too rude if he hadn't prepared vegetables, so he specifically went to buy vegetables the night before and threaded them into skewers to prevent Schiller and the others from forgetting.

With that box of records placed on top of the insulated boxes, the car trunk couldn't close at all. Why didn't she put it in the empty space on the left?

Winnie was very efficient at work, especially when packing things, and possessed a woman's unique meticulousness and caution. Although she had gone to lead cases independently now, when she was Gordon's assistant, she had always kept his office very tidy and would never work like this.

Gordon thought she was in a bad mood, so he walked over and patted her on the shoulder, saying, "You go start the car; I'll handle this."

Gordon put the box away and walked to the driver's side door, intending to say a few words to Winnie, only to find that she was actually turning the car key to the left.

The vast majority of cars are turned to the right to start the ignition. Although some can be turned to the left to open the car door, the one Gordon owned couldn't; it wouldn't turn if turned to the left.

Gordon narrowed his eyes.

He touched his gun calmly. The moment Winnie turned her head to look at him, Gordon broke out in a cold sweat.

Winnie's two eyeballs were rolling wildly in their sockets, one to the left and one to the right.

Bang!

Looking at Winnie lying in a pool of blood, the expression on Gordon's face didn't fluctuate at all. After a few seconds of stillness, anger appeared on his face.

The subordinates who heard the gunshot ran out. The leader didn't show a terrified expression when he saw Winnie lying down, but instead looked at Gordon seriously and said, "Is it them again?"

"Go find out where the real Winnie is."

"What about the corpse? Boss, we can't let the residents see it, or it will cause panic. Sending it to the forensic hospital will reveal the bullet model..."

"What's the need to send it to the forensic hospital?" Gordon said somewhat coldly. "I'll call Lawrence in a while; just stuff it into the hospital morgue."

He was just about to continue speaking, but paused and said, "Forget it, go find Bullock. We need to find a way to deal with this thing."