How Did He Do It

How Did He Do It

Boom! The office door was smashed open.

A burly security guard crashed through it, slamming heavily into the floor before Harvey Dent's desk.

The blood pouring from him instantly soaked his clothes red and spattered half of Harvey Dent's face, leaving one side of his face twisted and the other terrified.

Harvey Dent reacted quickly. He pulled open a drawer and grabbed a pistol, aiming it at the doorway.

The green suit, dotted with scattered drops of blood, was impossible to miss.

"Toyman!" He recognized this previously obscure low-level criminal.

He had heard that Toyman could turn latches, pistols, and banknotes into toys. Such little tricks were clearly not enough to support a charge all the way here—a rampage straight into City Hall!

Either the rumors were wrong, or this man had become far more terrifying.

"Hello, Mr. Harvey Dent~" Li Zu tossed away his pistol and cooperatively raised both hands. "I came to bring you some news. Your two children were kidnapped on their way to school this morning~"

Harvey Dent was startled, but then he realized something was off. "Impossible. I haven't received a call from the school."

"If she made a move, maybe the school bus driver was killed too, or perhaps the whole school was kidnapped~" Li Zu spoke as though it were nothing. "You need help. It'd be best if you contacted Batman~"

He had already guessed the relationship between Joker and Batman, and he did not mind playing matchmaker for his "superiors."

Before this, Li Zu had been torn between destroying Joker and destroying the world alongside Joker.

Considering his limited strength, after obtaining enough information about this world, he gave these people a chance to choose their own fates.

Of course, regardless of what fate chose, Mr. Harvey Dent before him had only one possible ending.

Harvey Dent glared at Li Zu, his pistol still trained on his head.

There were very few criminals in Gotham who could still run rampant, and only one person capable of making Toyman confidently work for him.

Joker!

Dent grabbed the telephone on his desk and roared, "Bring Thomas Wayne and Cobblepot here!"

He violently slammed down the receiver and glared furiously at Li Zu. "Madman! Bastard! Do you think you and Joker can escape my judgment? I can shoot you dead right now!"

"Of course you can." Li Zu still had his hands raised. "But you won't get the chance~"

Bang!

A massive box appeared out of thin air and smashed down onto Harvey Dent's gun hand.

The gun went off. Its muzzle dipped, firing into the poor security guard lying on the ground and snuffing out the guard's remaining life after all that blood loss.

Harvey Dent was knocked to the ground by the suddenly appearing box.

When he struggled to get up, those magic-filled hands had already seized his head.

City Hall.

Two limousines arrived one after the other and stopped at the entrance.

Their doors opened, and a figure stepped out of each.

One was a burly middle-aged man in a suit, radiating an imposing aura.

The other was an ugly, fat man in a white tailcoat, like a penguin. Even his monocle could not conceal the bastardly air about him.

One tall and one short, the two exchanged a glance before walking side by side toward the elevator.

Ding. The elevator doors opened.

The people who had been waiting in line for the elevator automatically moved aside, respectfully watching the two men enter.

"The Gambling Commission is going to revoke your business license, isn't it, Thomas?" the short, penguin-like fat man asked.

"Mm-hm." Thomas's answer was concise.

The short Penguin seemed long accustomed to the other's conversational style. He flipped through the documents in his hand. "Oh, right, there's this~"

"There's surveillance footage here. A few Romani slipped in. They didn't do anything strange, just bragged, drank, and shoved each other around—nothing but childish nonsense." He looked up at Thomas in the elevator. The man with graying temples stood as still as a statue.

Clearly, he had no interest in such matters.

"Now that Sal is dead, they can't make much trouble. But... I think we may have loaned them too much money~"

Thomas finally spoke. "Don't cut off their way out yet, Oswald. I opened nightclubs precisely to draw in criminals and strengthen our control over them."

"And how has that worked out?" Penguin asked in return.

"Mm-hm." Thomas's response remained simple.

"Very good, very good~"

As Penguin nodded, the elevator stopped on the seventeenth floor.

Someone had already taken control of the place, but it was not the police.

Ever since Harvey Dent decided to sign that contract and privatize Gotham's police force, the police had stopped handling this place long ago. They should have been called security guards instead.

The two stepped out of the elevator together, where a man in a trench coat was already waiting at the door.

"Jim." Thomas nodded to him.

This subordinate with justice in his heart was as rare in this collapsing world as a red wolf on the verge of extinction.

"I received word that a man in a green suit casually walked into the building." Jim Gordon nodded and followed beside Thomas, quietly reporting the information he knew. "The cameras show that he shot and killed two security guards. At the time, the assistant received a call from Mr. Dent asking for you and Mr. Cobblepot to come here."

As he said this, Jim nodded to the short Penguin.

"Perhaps Mr. Harvey Dent had already brought the situation under control at that point..."

They spoke as they continued forward.

There was a corpse outside the door.

There was another corpse inside the room.

"This was the gun that man used, along with the bullet type, but..." He began to hesitate.

"What is it?" Thomas looked at Jim in confusion, at the partner and subordinate he trusted most.

"That gun, and those bullets, belong to you... or rather, to Batman!"

Jim Gordon turned and brought over a pistol.

Penguin shrugged beside them. Clearly, he was also one of those aware of this "secret."

Thomas inspected the pistol.

He casually tore open the evidence bag and gripped the cold weapon.

A sense of familiarity flooded over him.

"This is my gun... I should only have one!" As he spoke, Thomas pulled aside his suit jacket, lifted his black vest and white shirt, revealing the pistol holstered at his waist.

The pistols were identical, even down to the feel and wear from friction. How had that man done it?

"We haven't found Mr. Harvey Dent's body. We suspect he was kidnapped!" Jim knew they would not figure this out anytime soon, so he stated his theory. "Also, we found a bullet fired from Mr. Harvey Dent's gun in the security guard's body. Examination confirmed that this bullet caused the fatal injury!"

"You mean a criminal shot his way into Harvey Dent's office, killed one of his security guards, and instead of shooting the criminal, Mr. Dent killed his own other security guard?" Penguin asked with a smile.

He understood Harvey Dent very well. That apparent law enforcer was also one of the craziest people in this city.

His madness lay in building a civilized city.

It was precisely to accomplish that goal that Harvey Dent had become a madman who appeared rational.

Therefore, he would never have fired at his own security guard.

"This is only a guess," Jim said.

"No!" Thomas cut off their conversation and walked step by step toward the desk.

On the desk stood a toy figure no larger than a pinky finger, looking very much like the missing Harvey Dent.

The toy figure held up a gun, terror written across its face.

Half its face was smeared red with blood, like a madman with a cobbled-together half-face.

"This is...?"

"Toyman did this. No... Joker did!"

Thanks to "Entering the Night l Like a Dream" for the 2,000 Qidian Coins tip.

(End of Chapter)