Chapter 2975

Aisha is indeed worthy of being Bruce's daughter; she managed to find the financial reports from several years ago in just a few short hours and identified the problematic ones among them.

In fact, the financial reports of such construction engineering groups will more or less have some issues. Tax avoidance is legal here in the United States, and most companies will entrust professional financial teams to reduce their tax burden. Apart from legal tax avoidance, they can also play the edge, making some less easily detectable moves in the financial reports to reduce taxes by some amount.

Therefore, many companies' financial reports have various issues; if you don't look closely, you won't discover them. Aisha also found some such minor issues in the Ward-Laid Engineering Group's financial statements, but they were clearly for tax evasion. Only the one sent to Dick made Aisha feel that the problem was significant.

This payment had no clear source, but the amount was not small. More importantly, this money was personally signed for by the company's general manager, Bob, and his signature remained on the financial report.

Just as the group of people who were caught spent the night in the detention room, Aisha and Helen went overnight to investigate the source of this payment.

They went out and returned; after the group that invaded the Williams Real Estate Company was caught, they entered the company once again. Aisha used her powerful hacking skills to find the real estate company's internal accounts.

Like the Ward-Laid Engineering Group, this company's accounts were also very messy, clearly having done plenty of tax avoidance. However, four years ago, at almost the same time, there was an expenditure of the exact same amount, and the person who approved it was Williams himself.

That is to say, on a certain day four years ago, Williams's real estate company approved a sum of money, and the Ward-Laid Engineering team received a sum of money; the time and amount were not much different.

However, the recipient, the Ward-Laid Engineering team, did not add any projects during this time, and this money was not an old debt either; it could be described as having neither head nor tail.

Having locked onto the time of this strange payment, Aisha began to follow the vine to find the melon, and then she discovered that at almost the same time, the Ward-Laid Engineering team had an expenditure for renting excavators.

In fact, account details can reveal a lot of things. For example, you can tell how many vehicles a company has through fuel expenses, and Aisha had already seen through the equipment maintenance and care expense column that the Ward-Laid Engineering team had about four excavators at the time, two large and two small.

But just at the same time as that mysterious payment four years ago, the Ward-Laid Engineering Group rented three more excavators, and they were all large excavators. But at the same time, this engineering group didn't have any major projects underway, so what were they renting excavators for?

This made Aisha realize that the Ward-Laid Engineering Group might have hidden a certain project from four years ago, and this project was done precisely for Williams's real estate company, which is why the two of them had capital exchanges, and why the Ward-Laid Engineering Group would go to rent large excavators.

Aisha went to find the company they rented the excavators from; it was an obscure equipment lessor. Through their logs, it could be estimated that the Ward-Laid Engineering Group should have rented them for about three days.

Three days is really too short; let alone building a residential complex, even building a small building wouldn't be enough time.

Following this clue, Aisha guessed that the Ward-Laid Engineering Group shouldn't have been building anything, but rather tearing some things down.

Because it is obvious that if they were building houses, it is impossible that only excavators would be mobilized.

Moreover, the things being torn down shouldn't be very large, because although they are called large excavators, they aren't those behemoths that are dozens of meters high. If they were tearing down buildings in Cat Getan City, these little guys wouldn't stand a chance.

But if they were tearing down residential houses, how much space would be needed to fit four large and two small, six excavators? If they were tearing down rows of residential houses, they wouldn't have only rented them for three days.

Various unreasonable points made Aisha have some guesses, and she began to look for surveillance footage from four years ago on Bruce's computer.

When Batman first started out, he actually installed many surveillance cameras in Cat Getan. Although the damage rate was particularly high, there were still some very hidden ones that recorded precious historical data.

Before this, Aisha sent a message to Dick, telling them to delay Williams as long as possible to prevent them from noticing anything. Dick immediately understood that the next day's negotiation would be the key.

Schiller arrived early in the morning, first coming to the detention room to see them, but he didn't appear very angry and even had the police officers buy them breakfast.

After all, Gordon and Schiller were old acquaintances. Before Williams arrived, he first took Schiller into an office to the side and said: "This guy is coming with ill intent. Are you prepared?"

"In fact, no, and I don't intend to prepare," Schiller said. "But I have a perfect plan, and you will know soon."

Hearing him say this, Gordon felt his heart skip a beat again. He hoped the perfect plan he mentioned had nothing to do with artistic creation.

Williams arrived almost right on time. As soon as he saw Schiller, he came over with a full face of smiles to shake his hand and said: "I'm really sorry, Professor. My attitude that day wasn't very good. It might be because the weather was too hot. High temperatures always make people irritable. Please don't mind it."

"It's okay," Schiller shook his head. He really didn't mind now, because he did some minor work last night, and he would soon be able to extricate himself from the quagmire.

"As you can see, this group of reckless little guys made a fatal mistake. Although I wanted to teach them a lesson, for your sake, I won't really do anything to them, but I hope you can guarantee that such things won't happen again..."

"What do you want me to do?" Schiller asked the key question.

This guy was clearly coming for him, first appearing near his territory to provoke him, and then seizing the mistakes of reckless young people to negotiate terms with him.

If nothing unexpected happened, even if this group of people hadn't run to Williams's real estate company in the middle of the night to investigate, he would definitely have tried every means to stimulate them, making them break the law, so as to accumulate capital for his own negotiations.

But most importantly, what was he doing these things for? Schiller didn't feel that he had anything that such a real estate boss would covet. The role that psychology can play in doing business is really very limited. Him going for Gordon would be more useful than going for Schiller.

"It's like this, I have a friend whose son committed some things, but he doesn't want him to be shot, and going to jail won't work either. He was originally from the streets, you know, if his son went to prison, he might not be able to come out alive."

Williams's fingers pointed together, the flesh on his face rising and falling as he spoke, and then his palms clasped together again, continuing: "We hope to be able to secure favorable conditions for him during the trial, preferably being able to determine that his mental state was abnormal when he committed the act."

"So that's how it is," Schiller said.

He appeared very calm, so calm that it seemed to surprise Williams a little. Williams tentatively asked: "He killed someone, don't you think it's a bit..."

"In the past, when Cat Getan gangs were rampant, such things often happened," Schiller shook his head and said: "Many people came to find me."

"Then you..."

"Mr. Williams, you may not understand the profession of psychology, and most people don't understand it either, which leads me to have to popularize my research direction—psychoanalysis—to everyone."

"Out of a responsible attitude, I must explain to you that the psychoanalysis direction is not the mainstream direction of psychology at present. Now the public recognizes behavioral analysis more, and psychoanalysis is usually seen as outdated, superstitious, and unreliable."

"And the most important reason leading to this situation is that psychoanalysis is current and immediate; it is an analysis generated through contact with people now, rather than making judgments about them through their various past behaviors. It is closer to inspiration than logic."

"In layman's terms, I need to contact the person now to analyze his current mental state, and I cannot contact him at the time of the murder; that is the past him."

"Even without mentioning these professional knowledge, jury members will not accept the testimony of a psychoanalyst about whether the murderer's performance at the time of the crime was normal, because this is determined to be a kind of pseudoscience."

"If you have a way to make the jury members take my research direction seriously, then I am very happy to provide you with help, but in fact, my several court appearances have ended in failure or inaction."

"If you want to try again, I can provide you with help, but I can't give you any guarantees. The court doesn't accept it, and I can't reverse their views."

Williams revealed a disappointed look, but soon he said again: "Then take a step back, can you find a way to diagnose him as a mental patient? That is, let him not go to jail, but go to a mental hospital."

"This is possible," Schiller paused for a moment, then looked into Williams's eyes and said: "I don't know if you listened carefully to what I just said."

"If you don't mind, you can explain it a little bit more," Williams flipped his palms and said; he clearly hadn't listened just now.

"Psychoanalysis is closer to inspiration than logic. Let me be more blunt, it's more like mind reading. You'd better make sure that your friend's son isn't keeping any very important secrets."

The atmosphere in the room cooled down. Anyone could understand Schiller's meaning. If psychoanalysis is a method that can figure out or roughly guess the cause of the other party's mental state just by contact, then this so-called friend's son had better have only killed one person.

Williams was silent for half a beat before saying: "Why are you telling me this?"

His question was also very reasonable. If Schiller didn't say it and just issued a diagnosis result, then perhaps no one would know, and he would have perfectly completed the task.

"Because there were once some idiots who wanted to kill the donkey after it finished grinding the grain, but unfortunately I learned their secrets. I can't be sure if you also want to do this, so it's better to make things clear to avoid more trouble."

Williams revealed a hesitant expression. Clearly, this meant he needed to gamble on whether the so-called psychoanalysis was really that magical.

But in fact, he knew he had no other choice. Schiller had already emphasized that psychoanalysis was not the mainstream of the academic world, but Schiller had still become a world-renowned psychologist, which meant he must have his unique points. Perhaps he really could achieve an effect similar to mind reading?