Clues

"Hurry, boss! Help me get someone transferred over!"

"Ah..."

Bob slumped in his executive chair like a sack of potatoes someone had carelessly tossed aside, his face practically begging to curse someone out. "What do you want now? Why do I feel like my workload has kept growing ever since I agreed to your plan?"

"You're not even fifty yet. You're in the prime of your working life. How can you just give up already?" Li Jie tapped the desk. "Think about that bright future. Do you want money or not?"

"...You're right! You can never have too much of that!" Bob immediately hauled himself up, brimming with motivation. "But have you solved that psycho's case yet? Reporters have already come asking several times."

"That's exactly what I wanted to talk about." Li Jie leaned closer. "Edward Nygma, a forensic examiner at Central Headquarters. The guy's incredibly smart. He drew up a profile of the suspect without breaking a sweat. And he can handle both forensics and autopsies, so we could set up two departments at once."

"More departments aren't necessarily a good thing. The more you do, the more mistakes you make, kid. Even the smartest people make mistakes." Bob glanced at him. "Trouble will come along with them."

"There'll be trouble, sure. But think about that million Wayne Enterprises donated. You still haven't dared spend it, have you? Afraid the oversight people will find something to use against you?" Li Jie swept his arm around. "Look at this dump of a police station. Where would we even put two more departments?"

"So...we expand?" Bob seemed to have suddenly come around. "That bankrupt office building next door?"

"Exactly. Ever since those scammers were shot to death inside by their victims, nobody's been willing to rent or buy it. We volunteer to help the government put a distressed asset back to use, expand the station, add departments, and still leave a few floors to build dormitories and classrooms for our future child placement program."

"And spend Wayne Enterprises' donation..." Bob sighed with a touch of regret. "That's not bad, either. Too bad we can't shake off the oversight and auditors."

"Put the finance and logistics people in charge. They're bound to embezzle. Keep an eye on them, then catch them yourself and go public before the auditors find out."

Li Jie smiled. "Then you'll be an incorruptible hero who puts justice above loyalty to his own people. After that, take personal control of the whole project. Who would suspect you? Even if someone uncovers something, it'll just mean the chief was deceived by some unscrupulous, profit-hungry businessman. You're a victim, too."

"A million dollars...taking three hundred thousand in kickbacks over the course of it shouldn't be a problem." Bob was starting to feel satisfied. "All right. It'll be busy, but worth the work. What was the name of the guy you wanted transferred? Edward Nygma? Has he agreed?"

"I've already worked it out with him. We can leave forensics, autopsies, even the Technical Division to him. He's definitely got the brains for it."

"Okay. I rarely see you praise anyone this much." Bob pulled out two sheets of official stationery and signed his name at the bottom. "Write a...never mind. Have Alan write a transfer request for you and another for that Nygma. I'll talk to Loeb. Let's hope your friend doesn't disappoint us."

"He won't disappoint us, but there's something I should warn you about first. Heh." Li Jie laughed awkwardly. "The guy's a bit eccentric. Sometimes he might not seem all that...respectful..."

"Hmm." Bob rolled his eyes. "What else?"

"Huh?" Li Jie hadn't expected the chief to be so unconcerned. "What else? That's it."

"That's all?" Bob curled his lip. "As long as you're still at the East End Police Department, anyone else's disrespect toward me comes second to yours."

The phone rang again and again: the government, the media, ordinary citizens, some strange civic groups, and salespeople. Everything except the news Li Jie wanted. He sat in the police van, itching to floor the accelerator, but had no idea where to go.

It wasn't until five in the afternoon that Nygma called with a little good news.

"Jay, I performed another autopsy on the three most recently discovered bodies. Both officers and the shopkeeper had an extremely tiny burn inside their right ears, near the skull, in the temporal lobe region of the brain. Disease or a coincidental injury couldn't have caused that." There was a fair amount of noise on Nygma's end. "But none of the previous fifteen bodies had it. Surely his technique hasn't gotten worse."

"Didn't you say earlier that he might have increased the power to silence them?" Li Jie recalled Nygma's earlier theory. "Maybe like putting a can of Coke in a microwave?"

"Yes, that's what I was thinking, too. In other words, we may be dealing with more than a psychopath now. He could also be a mad scientist." Nygma paused for a moment. "I'd really like to see how he built his equipment."

"No problem. Once we catch him, everything else is ours." Li Jie drummed his fingers on the center console. "But do you have a way to resist hypnosis? Otherwise, no matter how many people we send, we'll just be delivering batches of cannon fodder to him."

"I'm trying to make a simple shielding chip that generates counter-interference based on the frequencies and bands he might be using. Actually, I've already made the first rough prototype." Nygma answered cautiously. "In theory, sticking it to the back of your head might help, but I can't say how effective it'll be without testing it against an actual sample. It might provide complete immunity, it might only lessen the effects, or it might...do nothing at all..."

"That's fine. It's better than nothing. I believe in you."

Li Jie exchanged a few more words with Nygma about the transfer. Only minutes after he hung up, another call came in.

"Cobblepot, give me some good news. Don't tell me things are a complete mess on your end, too."

"Actually, at the moment, I don't know whether it counts as good news, but things certainly are a complete mess." Cobblepot sounded somewhat aggrieved. "There are over a dozen dwarfs crammed into the bar's basement, making as much racket as frogs in a pond during the rainy season. But I don't think they're any use. If they really had those abilities, my men wouldn't have caught them. Still, while dealing with those little fellows...I thought of another approach."

He sounded a little smug now. "That guy kidnapped over a dozen people. They've got to eat and drink, don't they? I had my men ask around the nearby bakeries, pizza places, convenience stores selling drinks and sandwiches, places like that. Sure enough, some blank-faced people had bought large quantities of food. I marked those shops on a map, and they overlap heavily with the area you suspected."

"That sounds promising..." Li Jie thought it over. "Send me the locations. I'll take a look."

"Let me finish. I've already sent people to make a big show of searching the designated area for information about dwarfs and dresses." Cobblepot grew more animated as he spoke. "I don't believe in that hypnosis nonsense, but just in case, I still required all my men to report their destinations before moving out. Now we've lost contact with several men who went to the north bank of the Sprang River."

"Good thing you've got plenty of expendables." Li Jie smacked his lips. "The north bank of the Sprang River...what secluded places are there...the Grimm Toy Factory!"

He and Cobblepot shouted it simultaneously over the phone.

"Exactly. That poor old man the environmental groups forced into bankruptcy. The place has been closed for three or four years. Nobody wants to take it over."

Cobblepot's laughter was full of enthusiasm. "Great minds really do think alike. I'll leave the rest to you, officer. I hope you bring that lunatic to justice soon. But my men aren't expendables. I even pay for their insurance."

Then they really ought to thank you.

Li Jie tossed the phone aside and checked his weapons. He finally understood what the Higher-Dimensional Creation skill in his system was for.

"Immunity to memory alteration should mean immunity to hypnosis, too."

He thought it over, but decided not to notify Gordon. After all, this was only a guess. If it was wrong and a huge police force mobilized for nothing, catching the guy afterward would be even harder.

He's just one dwarf, after all. How could I fail to catch him?

Li Jie turned the key. The engine gave a low growl, and the police van shot toward Gotham City's Industrial District like an arrow loosed from a bow. The scenery outside the windows blurred past. The bustling city center soon fell behind him, replaced by increasingly dilapidated streets.

As he approached the north bank of the Sprang River, abandoned factories and warehouses stood like rows of gravestones. The air reeked of rust, chemicals, and the rot of river sludge. He turned onto the last little road marked on the map, its pavement cracked, weeds stubbornly pushing through the gaps. At the end of the road, the outline of a vast, misshapen shadow gradually came into focus.

The factory's Gothic spires looked rather menacing beneath the darkening sky, its enormous chimneys towering in silence. The wire fence around the grounds had long since fallen into disrepair, and the gates hung crookedly open. Graffitied slogans remained faintly visible on the walls.

"No dumping wastewater!"

"Protecting the environment comes before everything!"

"Get out of Gotham! Give us back our blue skies!"

"Tsk, tsk...poor bastard." Li Jie spent a few seconds lamenting his fate. He remembered that the factory's business had actually been quite good once. But as the environmental movement gained momentum, protesters kept blocking its gates. It had held on for only a few years before quietly closing down and going bankrupt.

He slowly brought the van to a stop at the factory gates, then shut off the engine and all the lights. He jumped out, his boots crunching softly on the gravel. Deathly silence immediately closed around him.

You son of a bitch. Daddy's here!

Get ready to die!!!