PFC Chapter 4496 The Darkest Night (24)
Chapter 4496 The Darkest Night (24)
Chapter 4496 The Darkest Night (Twenty-Four)
Amanda, expressionless, handed Jenna a file and said, "This is the background of the new victim. Unsurprisingly, she's also a night shift worker."
"What do you do?" Jenna picked up the file and started looking at it. After a while, she said, somewhat speechless, "Breaking into a house is considered night shift work?"
“They can’t break in during the day,” Amanda said. “This guy specifically targets those shared villas at night when no one is around, sneaking into blind spots of the security cameras…”
“Wait a minute,” Jenna said, “shared villas, are they the ones in the South Side?”
"Of course, only there. The rest of the place is all apartments. If you ask me, Brainiac should have just razed that place to the ground. Now look all this mess..."
Amanda was complaining, but Jenna was already deep in thought. She said, "This serial killer is very sophisticated and skillful, able to convey multiple layers of information through his cases. This means that he must have had a purpose in choosing each victim."
“I see,” Tim said, suddenly realizing, “He’s trying to tell you that there’s something wrong with the victim in the first case.”
"What do you mean?" Jenna looked at him.
"You suspect there's something wrong in the South District, right?"
"Yes. Because both Perotta and Cheek had their incidents in the South District. It's not hard to deduce that."
"So he found a victim connected to the shared villa in the South District, in order to remind you that his victims were not chosen randomly. He would use the victim's identity to tell us some information. If the information he conveyed matched what you knew, it would lead us to think that there might be something suspicious about the victim in the first case."
“That’s right,” Jenna nodded and said, “The second case just happened to choose a clue that I had previously deduced, probably to make us go back and suspect the first case.”
Jenna then turned to Amanda and said, "Could you please go and look up information about that Jeretta again? It must be very important."
Amanda rolled her eyes and said, "I sent you to the scene to find out what wasn't recorded in the background information. And now you want those things from me? Where am I supposed to get them?"
Jenna was about to say something when Tim tugged at her and said, "Ms. Waller makes a good point. If it were in the official information, he wouldn't need to remind us this way; he could just go directly to Brainiac. It all proves that the secrets hidden on Jeretta are probably deeper than we thought, and it will take some effort to find out."
Jenna frowned. She tried to recall what she had seen, but there were no useful clues. Tim thought for a moment and said, "That guy is a dockworker. That means he probably works for one of the gangs near the docks."
"There are gangs near the docks?" Jenna asked, somewhat surprised. "I often eat there, how come I've never heard of them?"
“That was so many years ago,” Tim said with a nostalgic expression. “Ever since Gotham started its tourism boom, gangs haven’t been allowed at the docks. After all, that’s a favorite spot for tourists, and they’ve built lots of souvenir shops there. If you’re threatened by gangs while shopping, who would want to come back?”
"No gangs allowed? Then who eradicated the gangs there?"
"They weren't eradicated, but most of them went straight to the shore after laundering their money. Some invested in specialty shops and dockside markets, and now live off their own shops and rent. Others went into yachting and sea tourism projects, relying on tour group revenue."
“That would be very difficult to find,” Jenna said. “Even if we did find them, they probably wouldn’t want to talk about their gangster days anymore. It might affect their business.”
“It’s okay,” Tim said, pulling out his phone. “We can’t find the lower-ranking henchmen, so let’s go find the biggest one.”
"The biggest one?"
"Falcone".
In the Golden Cup Bar in the North District, Tim led Jenna inside under the watchful eyes of two burly bodyguards. Contrary to expectations, there was no deafening music or flashing disco. The bar was quiet, with only a few scattered people seated; the bar counter was deserted.
"Business doesn't look too good," Jenna said.
“The North District has long since declined,” Tim said, shaking his head. “After the gangster era ended, they didn’t want to live here anymore, to avoid being reminded of the past. Black Island was also shut down by Brainiac, so the gray industry couldn’t develop, and naturally there are hardly any people here. But there is one celebrity who lives here.”
"The Falcone you mentioned?"
"No, it's James Gordon. The mob boss gave him a big estate back then, and obviously his salary wasn't enough for him to buy a new house, so he had to live there even if he didn't want to."
Jenna laughed. The Gotham Police Commissioner, known as the conscience of Gotham, had become the last defender of the North District. It felt like a hero living in the second ring of the Demon King's castle.
They sat down at the bar, and a cat jumped up from behind it. Jenna's superpower was to transform into animals, so small animals were always closer to her. Jenna petted the kitten.
"Is this Fana's child?" Tim also patted the kitten's head.
The bartender next to him shook his head and said, "This is Fana's granddaughter, the daughter of the little orange kitten she gave birth to."
"Who is Fana? Is she another cat?" Jenna asked while petting the cat.
"Yes, Fana is very famous; she almost became mayor."
"what?"
Tim smiled and said, "I heard it from someone else. Back when they were running for mayor, someone submitted the name of the Golden Cup Bar's pet cat, Fana. Since none of her other competitors were mayoral material, she almost succeeded."
"May I have the honor of meeting this mayoral candidate cat?"
“Fana passed away five years ago.” The bartender brought over the drinks and said, “Her daughter Papa ran off with a shorthair cat, leaving behind three kittens. This is her third daughter.”
"Shorthaired cat?"
"Yes. It seems to be the pet cat of the third young lady of the Spencer family. When they moved from the North District, the shorthaired cat couldn't bear to part with his wife, so Miss Farlow took them both with her."
Jenna listened intently to the story of the cat family. What might be a decade or so for humans, had already spanned three generations for the cats. From the story of these three generations of the cat family, one could glimpse the history of the North District's changes and the rise and fall of a gangster family.
Suddenly, a tall figure appeared in the doorway. He walked in. Tim stood up, went over and shook his hand: "Long time no see, Alberto. Please give my regards to Madame Falcone."
Alberto nodded to him, then said, "And this is..."
“Just call me Jenna,” Jenna shook his hand and said, “I’m a student at Gotham University and currently interning at Federal Shields.”
Alberto frowned slightly, and Tim said, "She's a rare empath, which is why Amanda has her eye on her."
Alberto sat down and asked, "I heard you wanted to see me?"
"Are you busy?" Tim asked impatiently.
Alberto sighed deeply, almost gritting his teeth as he said, "Don't let me find out who's keeping it dark. My two little devils have completely messed up their schedules. One says they can't sleep now according to the schedule. The other says they've already slept all night and there's no need for them to sleep anymore..."
Tim laughed and said, "It's hard to coax a child, isn't it? What a sweet trouble."
“Alright, I won’t take up any more of your time.” Tim took a sip of his drink and then said, “Have you heard of Jeretta?”
"Who?"
"It's not surprising that you haven't heard of him. This guy used to be a corpse collector at the docks."
Which pier?
"I don't know. He should be active in the dock area."
“The Falcone family has professional body collectors,” Alberto said. “The kind of body collectors you’re talking about who just wander around an area are usually not professional enough.”
“Jerita is exceptionally unprofessional,” Jenna said. “Have you ever heard of a necrophiliac being involved in a necrophilia scandal?”
Alberto paused for a moment, then, as if remembering something, said, "I think I have indeed heard of this before."
"It's caused such a big fuss?" Tim was a little surprised.
"I don't know if it's related to this Jeretta. Anyway, someone is said to have desecrated the corpse. But judging from your tone, it's not right that this guy is still alive today."
"What do you mean?"
"After all this trouble, someone will definitely try to silence them. If we don't teach this kind of guy a lesson, who will be willing to risk their lives for the family?"
Now it was Tim's turn to be stunned. After all, he wasn't from a gang, or even from a lower social class, and didn't know much about this kind of thing. He and Jenna both thought that gangs didn't really care about things like what Jereta did. After all, the person was dead, so what was there to care about?
Alberto shook his head and said, "Mafia families are held together by loyalty and kinship. Not to mention that the higher-ups are mostly blood relatives, even the henchmen have to act like brothers on the surface. Otherwise, they can't unite against outsiders. Would you allow someone to desecrate your relative's corpse?"
Tim shook his head, and then Alberto said, "If the person who desecrated the corpse doesn't die, there's no way to appease the spirits of the dead. The living will also feel that the family is cold-blooded, that even the dead are insulted, and no one will be willing to risk their lives for them anymore. This is a fatal blow to the reputation of the mafia family. They will definitely kill him."
“But Jeretta didn’t die, she’s even alive now.” Tim pondered, “There must be a reason.”
“That means someone protected him,” Alberto said. “If he were just an insignificant corpse collector, no mafia family would have been willing to risk such a serious offense to protect him. At that time, the political world was basically controlled by mafia families, as were the military and police.”
“If that’s the case, then there’s no one else,” Jenna said. “Only these powerful and influential people can protect him, right?”
“That might be the case in other cities, but not necessarily in Gotham,” Alberto said. “Back then, although gangs still controlled the city, some criminals were already beginning to show their true colors.”
"You mean the person who saved him might be some kind of madman?"
"Yes. These lunatics are masters of deception and deception; getting someone out of the mob isn't difficult for them. The question is, why would he do it?"
"It can't be that we're in the same boat, can it?" Jenna replied instinctively.
“You know what,” Tim said, holding up a finger, “there’s always a connection among madmen. Even if it’s not because they share the same fetishes, it must be because Jeretta has this niche, perverse fetish. These madmen love studying people like that.”
Suddenly, Jenna had another flash of inspiration. She jumped up, looked at the two people beside her, and said, "The director of Arkham Asylum!"
"what?"
"Hugo Strange. He used to be the director of Arkham Asylum, right?"
Tim remembered too, and said, "You mean, it was Hugo who saved Jeretta?"
"That's for sure. Hugo Strange and Professor Rodriguez are colleagues; he's a psychologist and also the director of an asylum. It's not surprising that he would want to study people with such unusual fetishes. And he's capable of doing so. After all, these kinds of people are very skilled at mind manipulation."
“So it seems the killer used the first case to remind us that all of this is related to Hugo,” Tim said thoughtfully. “But Hugo has been dead for so many years…”
"Is he really dead?" Jenna asked slowly.
Alberto and Tim both looked at her.
"Or is he still dead?"
Kill the Spire 2 multiplayer is really fun; five minutes of gameplay can take half an hour to catch the mole.