Valentine's gift was also quite special, a tiny pig doll; certainly, it wasn't as terrifying as the pig head mask he often wore, but rather somewhat cute.
Shiller touched the surface of the pig doll and asked, "Is this human skin?"
"Yes, some blind fool..."
When Valentine got to this point, Shiller noticed a familiar color on the back hoof of the pig. He leaned in for a closer look and realized it must be a part of someone's back muscle skin.
"Let me guess, a Mexican guy."
"How did you know?" Valentine asked with some surprise, though he wasn't puzzled, as those people always liked to stir up trouble.
Jonathan didn't say anything; obviously, even though this city was on the East Coast, the chaos brought by Mexican immigrants to public security was not insignificant. Although the proportion of people of color in Gotham wasn't high, it impacted the public security of the lower strata of society, just like other cities.
Looking at Shiller's expression, Valentine slightly squinted and said, "It seems this guy is indeed no simpleton."
"Was he loitering near your house?"
"Not exactly near, he was from the community next door. He robbed a supermarket earlier, which prevented me from buying breakfast ingredients, and then he stole some cables causing a power outage in my place, so I slaughtered him."
"Did you know him?" Jonathan asked, looking at Shiller's expression.
"Two people died in our community." Shiller said, "They had the same tattoo as him. I've seen these tattoos before; they're from a Mexican-American drug trafficking organization called the Penitent Cartel."
The atmosphere in the room immediately grew tense, as Valentine's fingers traced the back of the Batman puppet.
"Don't you think this is a bit too coincidental?" Shiller remarked. "Someone wants to frame us with murders, and it just so happens that all the victims are from that drug trafficking organization - that's one of their usual tricks."
"What do you mean?"
"Framing and slander, causing your social death is just the first step. At that point, under the pressure to survive, you have no choice but to cooperate with them, but once the murder scandal blows over and your pressure isn't as great, you naturally won't listen to them forever."
"Even then, you might want them to pay a price, a bloody price for their reckless and stupid actions."
Jonathan and Valentine exchanged glances, with Jonathan resting his head on one hand and remarking, "And you said you didn't have a mind-reading technique."
"We both indeed plan to do so, which is one of the reasons why we accepted their invitation," Valentine said with a smile. "If they want to possess our wisdom, they better be prepared to endure our madness. They ought to be ready for it."
"They're not fools either," Shiller commented. "Since a murder case won't bring lasting pressure, they'll switch to another method."
"Like what?"
"A powerful organization that you've made enemies with harassing and hunting you non-stop every day, completely destroying your lives in ordinary society, exiling you from society entirely, so you can only serve them."
"I don't see them as that powerful," Valentine said as he finished the final stitch and continued, "He screamed quite miserably before he died, does that count as being powerful?"
"But you missed out on breakfast and lost power."
Both men fell silent, aware that they weren't afraid of these drug dealers coming after them; it was merely a matter of whether there was enough space in the fridge.
But if they were harassed repeatedly with such despicable tactics, no one could stand it. It wasn't as if they could stop going to work, stop earning money, and just watch and kill them all day, right?
These killers with a cause hated this kind of slaughter. Even those who came to them voluntarily were not favored, let alone those who followed behind.
They could also imagine that right now the Penitent Cartel hadn't figured it out yet, but once they did, their retaliation would surely be more than just robberies or power outages. Life on that side was cheap, and they could send a bunch of killers here without hesitation, leaving no chance for peace.
As for abandoning everything and striking at their home base, well, that brings us back to the Penitent Cartel – they are criminals, but the ones recruiting them now are from the legitimate side.
When the Penitent Cartel kills, they turn a blind eye, but if you kill, then it's a full-on assault. As long as they maintain their double standards to the extreme, they are invincible.
These lunatics weren't fearless either; otherwise, they wouldn't play games with Batman and would have directly targeted Bruce Wayne. There's a limit to what humans can do; after all, an arm can't twist a thigh.
When Gotham's order was not restored, they had some home-field advantage. Now that Gotham City was almost civilized, they had to be sneaky even to kill someone, let alone openly clash with law enforcement.
In the end, no matter how smart or how insane they were, they were still marginal figures in society. Without an organization, they couldn't make a significant impact, just scattered individuals easily defeated one by one.
"So that's how it is," Jonathan said, narrowing his eyes. "Do you think we should still go? To be honest, there are ways to deal with them, but..."
"But you're also reluctant to give up your current life," Shiller said with a smile. "It feels good to wear human skin, doesn't it?"
Jonathan rolled his eyes but ultimately remained silent.
Shiller sat back down on the sofa, tilted his head, picked up the water glass, and took a sip before saying, "I guess some of your colleagues, or rather, most of them, are furious about you being framed and kicked out. Even without your asking, they all want to help you get revenge."
"It's not the majority, just some," Jonathan replied stubbornly, clearly aiming for the championship.
"Mainly Zatanna," Jonathan admitted with a bit of a headache. "You remember I taught that girl for a few days, right?"
"You could even be considered her mentor, though she eventually saw through your scheming."
"That's the most troublesome part. To gain her trust, I did teach her a thing or two, so even though she suspects my motives, she still acknowledges me as her teacher."
"She found out you were framed?"
"I told you, the case they made was so clumsy it's unbelievable. They just threw an arm into my fridge — what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Shiller couldn't hold back a laugh and glanced at his own refrigerator.
Jonathan froze, saying, "They didn't do the same to you, did they?"
Shiller covered his mouth with the cup but still nodded.
Jonathan burst into uncontrollable laughter and said, "I thought you, you damned serial killer, would receive special treatment. It seems in their eyes, you're no different from us, ha ha ha ha ha!"
"Let's talk business."
Jonathan coughed twice and said, "I did indeed place something in the fridge of the new house that shouldn't have been there, but I hid it well. They just put the arm in the freezer on top of my frozen vegetables and chicken. Anyone with a brain would know that's not right."
"I didn't expect you to think so highly of Zatanna."
"That's now. Before, I wouldn't have admitted what's in her head was a brain, but she's really grown a lot." Jonathan recalled the incident and said, "It was a new neighborhood, and people were moving in and out all the time. That foolish girl, I don't know what she was thinking, using her own magic to do moving work..."
"Then you don't know how much money that job makes."
Jonathan snorted dismissively, saying, "I just happened to be going out to shop, and I bumped into her. Zatanna seemed pretty happy, and despite knowing I didn't want to talk, she insisted on stopping me."
"Just because of that delay, the police cornered me, insisting someone saw me commit murder and wanted to search my house. I almost knew what was going to happen."
"But I didn't expect that because of the police's misconduct, Zatanna insisted they were using excessive force and wanted to take that crocodile and join us."
"Neither the police nor I could stop her, so we all went to my house together. Sure enough, they found that arm, and with witness testimony, they wanted to take me away."
"But somehow that girl smartened up and said I was a chemist. If I were to kill and dismember, I'd just dissolve the body with chemicals, not go to all the trouble of physically dismembering it and stuffing an arm in the fridge?"
"Moreover, the 'Soul Status' left on the body didn't match the time of the murder they claimed, which I don't quite understand."
"She argued with the police, and since they couldn't out-argue her, they took us all to the station to see Clay."
"The result was that the girl caused a big fuss at the police station. In the end, that damned guy threatened them, saying he'd shut down their moving company. I couldn't stand their arguing, so I sent them away."
Jonathan shrugged and said, "Zatanna was almost furious to death. Before she left, she said she would definitely find evidence."
"That's not easy." Shiller said, "She actually realized the key to the case."
"Isn't that the truth? It seems that if you stay in Gotham long enough, everyone becomes a serial killer," Jonathan sighed.
"So you were a bit touched, weren't you?"
Jonathan visibly suppressed the corners of his mouth from turning up, cleared his throat, and said, "Not to hide it from you, the one Clay sent to tamper with my project was indeed dissolved by me with chemicals. Every time I think about that silly girl defending me righteously, as if I were really a victim, I just want to burst out laughing."
"The interviewers also wanted to stop the police," Valentine said. "There were quite a few respected medical professors inside, and they said they would go with the police to check out the dismembering site."
"Then they found that the state of the body did not match the process and time of the murder described by the police, yet at that time, I clearly had a solid alibi."
"I told the police if it were me, the dismembering wouldn't be so crude. So I showed them just how finely I would have divided up the body, and the professors actually applauded me."
"The oldest among them, Professor Hollis, said he would call the State Council. He couldn't stand by and watch a gang of officers abusing their power and pinning a murder on such a talent with full of holes."
"But actually, if they had checked my fridge at home, they would have found more than just an arm."
Jonathan looked Shiller up and down and said, "Your human skin is the most perfect among us; I can't believe you wouldn't have shown them some color."
Shiller leaned back, revealing a restrained smile, but Jonathan and Valentine unsurprisingly saw through the only tiny gap in that perfect human skin to the cruelty and indifference beneath.