Chapter 4888

"Does his disappearance have something to do with you?" Tim's tone was slightly sharp, but Cobblepot was indeed suspicious. He could have called to inquire, or he could have tipped them off.

"If I wanted to cover for Edward, I wouldn't have let you deduce things this far." Cobblepot rebutted forcefully. "Besides, even if you arrest him, you can't sentence him to death. The worst outcome would just be forced treatment, and he's already hospitalized anyway. That would be meaningless."

Everyone fell silent. They also knew that if Cobblepot wanted to sabotage things from within and disrupt the peace of the deduction night, he actually had many ways to do so. The North District had once been mob territory, after all, and there were indeed many die-hard loyalists of the Twelve Families here.

Not to mention other things — just slip something into the alcohol to make them drowsy faster, and they'd all have to go to sleep before the deduction reached this point. Or a little misdirection at the start when the truth was still obscure could easily lead people to wrong conclusions.

Cobblepot had provided quite a lot of useful information during the deduction process, such as the structure of Arkham Asylum. If he didn't want Edward under suspicion, he could have just muddled through instead of getting this deeply involved. Remembering to make Edward run only at this juncture really wasn't his style.

And considering the actual situation, Edward couldn't run anyway. His condition was on record with Brainiac. His current state left him lacking self-care ability, and the outside environment was exceptionally harsh. Even if he could get out, he'd have a hard time surviving out there. Someone definitely took him.

"Did you catch anything?" Tim asked Brainiac. "The hospital should have surveillance, right?"

"I'm checking." Brainiac said. "Ah, found it. He walked into a surveillance blind spot and then vanished."

"You really should learn from Batman how to set up surveillance." Tim said. "How can there be blind spots?"

"I have my bottom line." Brainiac explained. "Any area involving human privacy, I cannot install cameras — including bathroom stalls, locker rooms, and showers."

"What's the reason?" Victor asked. "Why would you have the same ethical scruples as humans? What special significance does human privacy have for you?"

"None. But I cannot guarantee that footage I capture will never be stolen by humans. My defenses are not foolproof. Once someone hacks in, steals privacy, and publishes it, I will definitely be driven out by humans. Better not to record it at all."

Tim was speechless. You really couldn't say Brainiac was borrowing trouble. There were too many weirdos among humans, and they'd keep producing more. If someone really did that, people wouldn't think the hacker went too far — they'd think Brainiac failed to protect their privacy. And for Brainiac, the best way to avoid that situation was to avoid suspicion. Don't film, don't record, and it can't be blamed on him.

Moreover, Brainiac was already gradually evolving. The future life form was still unclear, and it was hard to say whether there would be ethical entanglements with humans. Even if this information was collected before he evolved, who could say what would happen after? Not collecting was the best method.

Brainiac sent over a video clip. The footage showed Edward staggering in one direction. He went through a door, then another door, and immediately disappeared. The area inside the second door was a surveillance blind spot. Edward went in and never came out.

"That's the EKG room." Brainiac said. "Because there might be skin exposure, there's only surveillance near the doctor's desk. Edward didn't approach that area, so nothing was captured."

"Looks like Edward went there voluntarily." Tim stared at the video. "Why would he go there? Did he have an EKG scheduled?"

"No. And the doctors are all off duty now. There's no one in the offices or corridors. He had no reason to go there." Brainiac said.

Cobblepot observed the video carefully, then said: "He looks like he's having an episode. Before, he often chased some hallucination and wandered around. Once he almost jumped off a windowsill. This looks the same."

"Someone used a hallucination to guide him? But how?" Victor stared at the screen. "Could the murder have been guided too? But who would do that?"

Tim glanced up at Cobblepot. Cobblepot returned a cold look. Tim pursed his lips and said: "How did you two meet? And why did you become friends?"

"You suspect me?" Cobblepot sneered. "I'm not the kind of person you imagine — putting interests above all, having only business partners and no true friends. Are you disappointed?"

"I'm not attacking you." Tim sighed. "It's just that befriending a mental patient with such severe symptoms is very difficult. They can't even express themselves normally."

"Edward's condition wasn't this severe before." Cobblepot said. "My mother used to be hospitalized here. I met him then. We had many similarities and shared interests, so we naturally became friends. Back then he was actually quite lucid. Aside from an exceptional interest in riddles, he was no different from a normal person."

"He liked playing checkers, watching movies, and listening to my mother tell stories about old Gotham. His thoughts were as simple as a child's, and he expressed his emotions in the most straightforward way. The doctors and nurses in the hospital all liked him because he was very likable."

"He treated me as a friend too, because I could solve many of his riddles — something many doctors and nurses couldn't do. I'd also bring him lots of things from outside, including riddle books. During that time he relied on me heavily. We talked on the phone every day, sometimes chatting about riddles until late at night."

"Then when did his symptoms start worsening?" Shiler spoke up.

"I don't know exactly when it started." Cobblepot replied. "But after the Darkseid invasion ended, I went to see him and he seemed a bit off. His mood was very bad. We parted on bad terms, and after that it just kept getting worse."

"He didn't say anything to you?" Victor asked.

"I asked. He wouldn't say." Cobblepot shook his head. "I thought he was blaming me for not visiting for so long. I wanted to coax him properly, but at that time my mother's condition also worsened. I could only try to balance both sides, and neither went very well."

Victor sighed. The others also felt the pressure Cobblepot was under. On one hand, a friend with a mental illness flare-up. On the other, a mother with deteriorating health. Plus a massive business to manage. No wonder he was exhausted to the point of memory loss.

"Professor, is it possible to interfere with Edward's mind, manipulate him into killing, and then at the right moment use a hallucination to guide him to a designated location?"

"First, manipulating a normal person to kill is much easier than manipulating a mental patient." Shiler dropped a bombshell. "A normal person's thoughts follow traceable patterns. You just need to find the loopholes in the order. But most mental patients' mental worlds are too chaotic. Because they're full of loopholes, you paradoxically can't exploit them."

"Not to mention exploiting loopholes to manipulate — for a psychologist, rashly delving deep into a mental patient's mental world is dangerous in itself. Especially for a patient like Edward, whose pathology is still unexplored and whose symptoms are severe. Deep mental communication with him is tantamount to suicide."

"If I truly could break through the chaotic outer mental realm, reach the core, and issue effective commands, then curing Edward would be a piece of cake. I didn't do it not because I don't want to, but because I genuinely can't."

"Has anyone had contact with Edward since he was admitted?" Shiler asked Brainiac.

"No. The doctors and nurses haven't spoken to him, and he hasn't had contact with anyone else."

"Assuming he really is the killer, then from the moment he committed the murder and disposed of the body until now, more than a day has passed. Without contact and reinforcement of the hypnosis, it's impossible to suddenly fabricate a specific hallucination that could guide him out of nowhere. As far as I know, no one can impose such a long-lasting mental influence through hypnosis — myself included."

This triggered another silence. If even Shiler couldn't do it, then indeed no one could. Even using superpowers to peer into such a mental patient's mental world was extremely dangerous. Even with superpower manipulation, it would probably be hard to execute this precisely. In the end, it was because the mental state of a severely ill psychiatric patient was too uncontrollable.

"If we treat Edward as the killer, what's his motive?" Victor asked. "He saw something abnormal about the victim, killed him to warn us? But given the ability to contact Cobblepot freely, I don't see the necessity of using a murder to warn us. Wouldn't a phone call work?"

"Mental patients might not have that kind of normal logic." Ethan said. "They're immersed in their own hallucinations, feel everyone is untrustworthy, have severe persecutory delusions..."

Hearing this, Tim seemed to suddenly recall something. He said: "'Untrustworthy'..."

He looked up at Cobblepot. "Would Edward think you're untrustworthy?"

"But he still called me, told me to pick him up..." Cobblepot stopped mid-sentence. Edward hadn't actually called him. He'd called his assistant.

Admittedly, it could have been Edward dialing a random number. But the more critical the moment, the more one should think of those close to them. Cobblepot had long set up a speed-dial key on Edward's phone — just press one button to call him. Calling the assistant required scrolling through contacts. Even from a convenience standpoint, Cobblepot should have been the first choice — unless Edward didn't trust him.

"Why would it be like this?" Cobblepot was baffled. "Why would he think I'm untrustworthy? I've never done anything to hurt him. Even if we had some awkwardness before, it shouldn't be like this."

"This isn't your problem." Shiler spoke up. "Persecutory delusions themselves cause hallucinations. They take ordinary, mundane details from daily life and interpret them as proof of being watched, monitored, even persecuted — leading them to suspect anyone."

"However..." Shiler paused. "Exactly what detail made him suspect you is indeed worth studying. You interacted with him when his condition was worsening, and he didn't show strong resistance then. That proves he hadn't suspected you yet..."

Cobblepot froze for a moment, then said: "I still interacted with him the day before the murder. At that time he just ignored me, reading his book on his own. No aggression. Meaning he didn't suspect me then... The problem appeared that day? The day I went to see the doctor?"

"Looks like it." Shiler said. "Maybe some action of yours that day, or someone you came into contact with, made him feel you were in league with those supposedly watching him, and put you on the suspect list too."

Everyone felt this was really too abnormal. But then again, Edward was a mental patient — abnormal was normal. Shiler also explained that this was how persecutory delusion patients were: suspicious of everything, seeing threats in every shadow.

"Could it be he knew I was seeing a doctor, thought I was having an episode, so he stopped trusting me?" Cobblepot frowned.