Aisha truly lived up to being Bruce's daughter, as she flipped through financial reports from several years ago in just a few hours and pinpointed the problematic ones.
Generally, financial reports from construction groups like this had some issues – tax evasion is legal in America to some extent, and most companies would hire professional financial teams to reduce their taxes. Apart from legal tax evasion, they could also exploit loopholes, making some discreet adjustments to the financial reports that were not so easily noticed to slightly decrease their taxes.
Therefore, many company financial reports had various issues that were undetectable without meticulous examination. Aisha spotted some minor issues in the Wardled Engineering Group's financial statements, which clearly aimed for tax evasion, but it was only the statement sent to Dick that Aisha thought had a severe problem.
This payment had no clear source, but the amount was substantial, and more importantly, it was personally signed for by the company's general manager, Bob, whose signature remained on the financial report.
While the arrested group spent a night in the detention center, Aisha and Helen spent the night investigating the source of these funds.
They left and returned after the group that broke into the Williams Real Estate Company was caught, and Aisha again used her strong hacking skills to access the company's internal accounts.
Just like with the Wardled Engineering Group, this company's accounts were mixed up – it was clear they hadn't skimped on tax evasion. However, four years prior, almost at the same time, there was an expenditure of the exact same amount, approved by Williams himself.
This means that on a certain day four years ago, William's real estate company approved a payment, and the Wardle Engineering Team received a payment around the same time and for roughly the same amount.
However, the Wardle Engineering Team did not add any new projects during this period. This money was neither a previous debt nor had any apparent justification.
Having pinpointed the timing of this odd payment, Aisha began to trace the clues, and she discovered that around the same time, the Wardle Engineering Team had an expenditure for renting excavators.
The account details revealed a lot indeed; for instance, fuel expenses indicated how many vehicles a company had. From the equipment maintenance and service fees category, Aisha discerned that the Wardle Engineering Team had roughly four excavators at the time – two large and two small.
Yet, coinciding with the mysterious payment four years earlier, the Wardled Engineering Group rented three additional large excavators. But at the same time, the engineering group didn't have any major projects in progress. So why were they renting excavators?
This led Aisha to realize that the Wardled Engineering Group might have concealed a project from four years ago that was specifically for Williams's real estate company, which explained the financial transactions between them, and why the Wardled Engineering Group had to rent large excavators.
Aisha then went to the company from which they rented the excavators— a lesser-known equipment rental dealer. By reviewing their logs, she estimated that the Wardled Engineering Group must have rented them for about three days.
The duration of three days was exceedingly short. It wasn't enough time to build a small building, let alone a residential complex.
Following this lead, Aisha speculated that the Wardle Engineering Team probably wasn't building something but rather demolishing something.
Because obviously, if it was a construction project, it wouldn't only involve excavators.
Moreover, whatever they were demolishing couldn't have been very large, because although they used large excavators, these weren't the gigantic types that could reach tens of meters in height— inadequate for demolishing large buildings in Gotham City.
But if they were demolishing houses, how large of an area could fit six excavators—four large and two small? If they were demolishing a group of houses, they wouldn't only rent them for three days.
Various inconsistencies led Aisha to her conjectures, and she began to search Bruce's computer for surveillance footage from four years ago.
When Batman first started, he actually installed many surveillance cameras in Gotham, though they were highly susceptible to damage. Still, some well-concealed ones recorded precious historical data.
Before this, Aisha had sent a message to Dick, asking him to stall Williams as long as possible to prevent them from noticing anything. Dick immediately understood that the next day's negotiations would be crucial.
Shiller arrived early, first stopping by the detention center to see them, but he didn't seem very angry and even asked the officers to buy them breakfast.
Gordon, having an old acquaintance with Shiller, took him to an office on the side before Williams arrived, and said, "This guy is up to no good; are you prepared?"
"Not really, and I'm not planning to be," Shiller replied, "But I have a very perfect plan, and you'll know about it soon."
Hearing this, Gordon felt increasingly anxious; he hoped this 'perfect plan' had nothing to do with artistic pursuits.
Williams arrived on time, smiling as he approached Shiller and shook his hand, saying, "I'm really sorry, Professor. I was a bit harsh the other day—probably the heat, it always makes people irritable. Please don't take it to heart."
"It's okay," Shiller shook his head. Now he genuinely didn't mind, because he had done some minor work last night; soon, he would be able to free himself from the mire.
"As you can see, this reckless group made a fatal mistake. Although I wanted to teach them a lesson, out of respect for you, I won't really do anything to them, but I hope you can ensure this won't happen again..."
"What do you want me to do?" Shiller asked the crucial question.
This guy was clearly targeting him, first showing up near his territory to provoke him, then using the faults of reckless youths to negotiate terms.
If nothing went wrong, even if these people didn't run to Williams Real Estate Company in the middle of the night to investigate, he would still find ways to provoke them into committing crimes, thereby accumulating bargaining chips for himself.
But what mattered most was, why was he doing all this? Shiller didn't think he had anything that could interest such a real estate tycoon. Psychology had very limited application in business, and going after Gordon would be much more useful than targeting Shiller.
"Here's the thing, I have a friend whose son got into some trouble, but he doesn't want him to be shot or jailed. He used to be involved with the mob, you know. If his son goes to prison, he might not come out alive."
Williams' fingers tapped together, his cheeks flapping as he spoke, then his palms clasped together again as he continued, "We hope to secure favorable conditions for him during the trial, preferably proving he was not in his right mind when he acted."
"I see," Shiller said.
He remained very calm, a calmness that seemed to surprise Williams, who tentatively asked, "He killed someone, don't you think that's a bit... "
"Such things used to happen often when the Gotham Gang was rampant," Shiller shook his head, "Many people came to me."
"Then you..."
"Mr. Williams, you might not understand the field of psychology very well, and most people don't either, which is why I have to educate everyone about my research focus—psychoanalysis."
"Out of responsibility, I must explain to you that psychoanalysis is not the mainstream direction in psychology nowadays. The public is more accepting of behavioral analysis, and psychoanalysis is generally considered outdated, superstitious, and unreliable."
"The most important reason for this is that psychoanalysis is current, immediate, an analysis that originates from contact with a person now, instead of judging them based on past behaviors, it is closer to inspiration than to logic."
"Simply put, I need to be in contact with the person now to analyze their current mental state, and I can't access the person during the time of the homicide; that was the past him."
"Even without discussing this professional knowledge, a jury will not accept testimony from a psychoanalyst about whether a murderer's behavior was normal at the time of the crime because this is deemed pseudoscience."
"If you can get the jury members to recognize my research focus, then I'd be happy to help you, but in reality, my numerous court appearances have ended in failure or inaction."
"If you want to try again, I can offer my help, but I can't give you any guarantees. If the court doesn't accept it, I also can't change their views."
Williams looked disappointed, but soon he said, "Then, stepping back a bit, can you find a way to diagnose him as mentally ill? So he doesn't go to jail but to a mental hospital instead."
"That I can do," Shiller paused and then looked into Williams' eyes, "I'm not sure if you were really listening to what I just said."
"If you don't mind, could you explain a bit more?" Williams flipped his palm, clearly he hadn't been listening.
"Psychoanalysis is closer to inspiration than to logic, to put it bluntly, it's more like mind reading. You'd better be sure your friend's son hasn't kept any very important secrets."
The atmosphere in the room cooled down; anyone could understand Shiller's implication. If psychoanalysis were a method that could easily uncover or guess the cause of someone's mental state simply through contact, then this so-called friend's son had better have only killed one person.
After a long silence, Williams said, "Why are you telling me this?"
His question was also very logical. If Shiller hadn't mentioned it, just produced a diagnostic result, then perhaps nobody would have known, and he would have perfectly completed the task.
"Because there were some fools who wanted to kill the donkey after grinding the millstones, but unfortunately, I became aware of their secrets. I can't be sure you don't also intend to do that, so it's better to make things clear, to avoid more trouble."
Williams showed a hesitant expression, obviously, this meant he needed to gamble on whether so-called psychoanalysis really was as miraculous as claimed.
But in reality, he knew he had no other choice. Shiller had emphasized that psychoanalysis wasn't the academic mainstream, yet Shiller had still become a world-renowned psychologist, which meant he must have some unique capabilities—perhaps he really could achieve an effect comparable to mind reading.