The car pulled over by the roadside. The moment he got out, Victor covered his nose. A thick stench of blood permeated the air, and he frowned deeply. Gotham's streets had not carried such a heavy scent of blood in a long time. It probably dated back to the gang-war era. At least three or four people would have had to die for there to be such a smell.
"Are you sure only Pelota died?" Victor could not help asking into his phone. "No one else was seriously injured?"
Brainiac did not answer, because Schiller and Victor soon arrived beside the prison transport van. The vehicle had overturned, and the bloody smell was coming from within it. Before Victor could see the scene inside, he heard Schiller, standing before the van, mutter, "...'The Hound of the Baskervilles.'"
"What?" Victor looked at him.
Schiller looked back at him. "Here's the classic case you wanted."
He moved aside slightly to let Victor pass. The instant Victor stepped closer, his pupils contracted. There was no intact corpse visible inside the transport van. Pelota's remains had been scattered throughout the vehicle, as though something had torn her apart.
Looking closely, the most obvious wounds were the claw marks across her chest. Those could not possibly have been made by a human—unless a person could grow claws over fifteen inches long, it was impossible to leave scratches like those.
The wounds were deep enough to expose bone. More precisely, a single swipe had nearly pierced her lungs. If her ribs had not been strong and intact enough, her torso could have been split cleanly in two. The rest was much the same. Besides claw marks, there were bite marks. They looked as though they had been left by a saber-toothed tiger. More importantly, beside the