[Zhongyingmei] The clown is actually me

Shrike Murder.One of Gotham City's unsolved old mysteries.

Twenty-four years ago, at 24:11 am on November 16, the Gotham Police Department received a report from a public phone booth in Queens Street, claiming that a body was found on the corner of the street.When the police arrived at the scene, they found that the deceased was a young woman with multiple puncture wounds on her skin.At that time, the police didn't take the murder seriously. They just thought that the unfortunate woman who was wandering late at night encountered a murderous robber. After routinely publishing the notice of the corpse search in the newspaper, they collected the bones very casually. ? Not even a professional autopsy.

A month later, the second body of a woman with the same death condition was dumped in the park. The police also did not care. It was not until the third body appeared that the Gotham Police Department had to face the reality: this is not a robbery,? It's indiscriminate serial murder.

From November to December of the following year, Mrs. Shrike took her time killing 11 victims under the police raid.All victims are young women of marriageable age, the youngest is 12 years old, and the oldest is 12 years old.They don't have any intersection with each other in life. The murderer chooses the victim at random, and the modus operandi is roughly the same. She usually attacks from behind and stabs the victim to death with a long sharp weapon. After confirming the victim's death Destroying corpses and throwing corpses.Because the corpses were all covered in cuts and bruises, it was horrible. So the police speculated that the murderer had a different kind of hatred for women. They once thought that the murderer was so cruel and powerful. It should be a man who committed the crime. Until someone witnessed Mrs. Shrike from a distance According to their testimony, the police knew that Mrs. Shrike was a tall, thin woman who looked like a widow.

——These are the contents recorded in the old case files.

Jack was speechless. Sure enough, Gotham was a shithole before Batman came. The dignified police station didn't even do an autopsy, and the file was written in a mess.

Generally speaking, the police will not disclose all the details of the case before solving the case. This is to prevent and distinguish imitation criminals. As a result, the Gotham Police Department more than 20 years ago did not have this awareness at all. What was written in the file was very different from what was published in the newspaper Not bad, except for a few extra photos of the victim without the mosaic.No wonder the Shrike murder case could not be solved for more than 20 years. Did the police station really want to solve the case?

When he was speechless with the GCPD, Jason was speechless with him.

Jack wore a heavy cashmere coat, a silk bow tie and a wide-brimmed top hat. He looked like a cold and expensive British gentleman, but Jason knew that there were several warm babies on his cotton thermal underwear before he got into the police. The bureau archives stole the file of the Shrike murder case, and when he came out to talk to Jack, he found that Jack was holding a hot water bottle, acting like he was holding a baby, making Jason think he was the widow who gave birth to someone.Originally, he planned to let Jack read the file and return it immediately, but he couldn't stand Jack's widower face, so he simply dragged him to a warm coffee shop to talk at the risk of being exposed.

Jack was more afraid of the cold than he thought, which surprised him.

"Do you see anything?" Jason asked.

"What can we tell from this bit of information? It can be seen that Mrs. Shrike may be a man disguised as a woman?" Jack snorted, "It's no use just looking at it, you should look for clues yourself."

Jason pondered for a while: "The new Mrs. Shrike is a copycat."

"Ok?"

"Serial killers seldom commit crimes again after many years. In the past 24 years, Mrs. Shrike may have been over [-] years old, and I am afraid she did not have the strength to kill and throw away the body. This time the victim was not stabbed to death, but suffered serious injuries to the back of the head. shot to death, so probably a copycat.”

"Is it meaningful to imitate a killer who was more than 20 years ago?" Jack took a sip of hot cocoa, "For serial murderers, the most important thing is not to kill, but to convey his own thoughts. They think that murder is a conversation with the world. , corpses are just a language."

"According to what you say, the world's best answer to them is the sound of shooting the death row criminals." Jason said in a sarcastic tone.

: "However, I think the possibility of imitation criminals is not very high. Some imitators imitate the criminal methods of legendary criminals, and they have a mentality of pilgrimage, tribute or challenge to a large extent. The reason why the Shrike murder is famous is because the victim Both of them were stabbed to death with a long sharp weapon, and the imitators are unlikely to change this obvious feature. Moreover, Mrs. New Shrike gives me a strange feeling, like..." Jack pondered for a while before saying : "... She is very embarrassed, very weak, stunted, and slow to move. Although she is killing people, it feels like she has no soul, but it seems to be covering something... just like, just like... yes, it's like aging It's the same. After all these years, Mrs. Shrike is getting old."

"Can you see that?"

"You could call it a telepathy between psychos."

Jack tapped the keyboard while talking, looking for a map of Gotham City from 24 years ago and printing it out.He picked up a pen and marked on the map the twelve places where the corpses were dumped 24 years ago, hoping to find clues, but he failed.The location of Mrs. Shrike's body is not very regular, there are streets, gardens, alleys, etc., although most of them are concentrated near the slums. Gotham 24 years ago was in chaos, the bottom was exploited and controlled by gangsters, the gap between the rich and the poor was huge, the poor who could not survive often built illegal buildings privately, and the scale of the slums was astonishing.Drawing this range is equal to not drawing

The more Jack watched, the more he sighed that the Wayne family had really contributed a lot to Gotham. Thanks to the tireless efforts to spread money these years, the gap between the rich and the poor in Gotham was finally not as dire as it used to be. The decline, and the main force has changed from gangsters, murderers, gangsters and robbers to Arkham's big bosses, which means that the people at the bottom can finally eat.After all, most people are still normal people, who would want to lick blood from the edge of a knife if they can barely live.

Jason looked at the map, and suddenly his eyes froze: "Wait a minute, I seem to have seen this before. You first log in to the official website of Wayne Enterprises."

Seeing his serious face, Jack immediately followed suit. Jason pointed him to click on the "Future Plan" column, and what came into view was a 3D stereoscopic image, which was the Gotham in Bruce's dream.Jason converted the 3D image into a floor plan, adjusted the size, and covered the A24 paper with the Gotham map printed 4 years ago on the laptop screen, and then under Jack's gaze, the light from the screen penetrated the paper , he clearly saw that the marks he drew with a red marker pen almost perfectly coincided with the large landmark buildings displayed on the screen.

"Here... the first place to throw the body is the church, the second is the Mercy Hospital... and this one, the university, the library, the park, the free primary school..." Jack was stunned for a while, "this is... four years ago Bruce got the city concept map?"

The place where the corpses were dumped 24 years ago miraculously coincided with the future urban construction plan of Gotham City released by Bruce Wayne three years ago.

Both of them were confused by the sense of confusion as if traveling through time and space. Did Bruce refer to the murder case 24 years ago when planning the city?

impossible.thought Jack.

It's impossible for Bruce to do this kind of thing. It's not that the Shrike murder is not memorable, but its influence is far from enough for Bruce to set the dumping ground as an important landmark.There should be some kind of connection between the two that they don't know yet.Even if Mrs. Shrike does have a secret connection to the Wayne family, it's likely a connection to Bruce's parents.

Jack frowned. He rummaged through the old files of the Shrike murder case, and quickly found the time when the last victim of the Shrike murder case appeared. On December 12, he tapped the keyboard to find the Wayne family There was some movement, and suddenly his movements stopped, because he remembered what happened before and after that day. It was indeed a major event for the Wayne family—just a few days ago, the Wayne couple was on their way home to watch a movie , Passing an alley behind the cinema, was shot dead by robbers.

"It can't be such a coincidence..." He whispered, turned his head to look at Jason's face, and found that the latter's face was as heavy as his own, and immediately understood that Jason also thought of what he thought of.Jason looked at the locations and marks that almost overlapped on the screen, and whispered, "Why would Mrs. Shrike, who has been off the hook for 24 years, commit another crime?"

"Serial killers are no longer committing crimes. Either their desires have been satisfied and they can rest, or they think they are about to be caught and cannot continue to leave clues. The police had no clue about the Shrike murder back then. Mrs. Shrike is unlikely It is to avoid disaster. If the key lies in the Wayne couple, or the Wayne family, then..." Jack took a deep breath, "This year Bruce is as old as Thomas back then."

"You mean Mrs. Shrike had something to do with Thomas Wayne?"

"That's just my guess, but," Jack said, dropping out a picture of Thomas and Bruce, side by side, so anyone could tell they were father and son.The appearance of the close blood relationship cannot be concealed. Jack sighed deeply, "They are father and son, and they look too similar. Maybe this stimulated Mrs. Shrike. She felt that Thomas was back. She To flatter him, so..."

Jason rubbed his temples with a headache: "That's enough, I understand, we have to face another psychopath who can't distinguish between the past and the present, and maybe a perverted serial killer who disguises himself as a man and hates women. The most important thing is The killer is over 50 years old, and the court will allow him to escape punishment out of consideration for the elderly, most likely he will be sent to prison for honor, not fed him bullets, right?"

"No, I think there is one detail that is much more terrifying than this incident."

"what?"

Jack lit a cigarette, showing a vicissitudes of life expression: "Thomas has been married to Martha for almost ten years at this age, and Bruce has not even married a wife, which is more scary."