The police officer intended to refuse at first, but another one glanced at his watch and told his colleague, "They've been in there for over two hours now, they might be thirsty. I'll watch here, you go and bring the water in."
The officer didn't say anything. He nodded and then knocked on the door. A voice from inside said, "Come in."
As the officer walked in carrying the tray, two people were inside. One was Gordon and the other was Batman. But the young officer found nothing unusual about this and simply put the tray on the table, saying, "Boss, if you're thirsty, here's some water."
Gordon nodded slightly, waved to dismiss him. The officer left as soon as he had put the water down, apparently not keen on lingering in the room. Aside from the two living people, there was a dead man in the room, and the terrible state of the body filled the room with the stench of blood.
The man had been sawn in half, vertically.
Batman turned to Gordon and said, "I have reviewed all the information on The Twelve Disciples of Jesus in the last few days. If I remember correctly, this method of death corresponds to the execution of Simon the Zealot, one of the disciples. He was sawn in half... along the length of his legs."
Batman circled to the other side of the body. Gordon stood behind the table, at some distance from the corpse. Even for him, such a gruesome crime scene was rare. Almost half of the victim's head was attached to the left part of the body and a small part to the right. There was quite a distance between the two parts. Blood stains were all over the room. "What have you found?" Gordon asked, holding his nose.
Batman furrowed his brow, looking puzzled as he said, "Actually, I'm a little confused. The methods are completely different..."
"What do you mean?"
"The killer's method of killing Richie, and his method of killing Lawrence and Hawk...they're completely different."
"What do you mean? Can you explain in more detail?"
Ignoring the strong, choking smell of blood, Batman crouched down and stared at Richie's grotesquely contorted body. "If we consider the deaths of the first two victims as executions, as in the 'ritualistic' sense often celebrated by twisted murderers, then Richie's death was too crude. Obviously, he did not die peacefully…"
Gordon interjected quietly, "That much is obvious to anyone."
Batman pointed to a trace on the body and said, "Look at his neck. There's a footprint there…"
He stood up again and pointed at the end of the corpse. "One of the feet is shoed, the other one is not. One shoe was thrown to the side, over there..."
Following Batman's gaze, Gordon looked at the shoe lying next to the corpse. Batman moved to stand behind the feet of the corpse and pointed to the shoeless foot, saying, "The ankle of this shoeless foot has a minor fracture and is severely swollen."
"We can infer from this how the killer murdered the victim."
"The whole process is straightforward. The killer knocked Richie to the ground, pinned his neck with one foot, then bent down to grab his ankle, raised one of his legs, and started to saw... with the saw held between his legs."
"Obviously, Richie was still alive at this time and had the capacity to struggle. Due to the intense pain, he began to writhes in agony, but the man did not stop at all. To hold on to the struggling Richie, he had to increase the strength in his hands, which caused Richie's ankle to fracture and his shoe to come off..."
"What does that tell us?" Gordon stood with his hands on his hips.
"It tells us that we are dealing with an incredibly brutal serial killer. The man sawed another man in half, alive. During the process, he ignored Richie's struggles and screams and just sawed him from head to foot."
"At the same time, he must possess considerable strength. Richie was 1.86 meters tall, weighed 80 kilograms, and must've been hard to subdue, let alone sawn in half while still able to resist."
"What puzzles me is that the method used this time is completely different from the previous cases. I even question whether my findings were wrong and whether these killings are related."
"Logically, the first victim, Lawrence, was nailed to a cross. The killer drove wedges into his limbs, heart, and head..."
"The second victim, Hawk, was decapitated. The third victim was sawn in half. These are the methods of death of The Twelve Disciples of Jesus. Especially the method of sawing a person in half, no one would kill in such a time and effort-consuming way, unless they wanted to replicate the execution method of Simon the Zealot..."
"But this case is totally dissimilar to the previous cases. Anesthetics were detected in Lawrence's body in the first case, meaning that he was anesthetized first, then killed. He had no capacity to resist during the process."
"Same with Hawk, he was tied up first and then beheaded."
"But logically, if someone had the strength to kill Richie in such a brutal way, there would be no need to anesthetize Lawrence or tie up Hawk."
"Lawrence was relatively muscular for an old man, Hawk was tall but thin. Neither of them would be stronger than Richie. It's strange that the killer who had the strength to subdue and saw Richie in half felt the need to subdue the two others first before killing them..."
"Perhaps Richie's killer had an accomplice?"
Batman shook his head slightly, "In my study of criminal psychology, in most cases of serial killings, the killer is usually a loner, they don't have anyone helping them."
"Aside from the fact that the chances of two mentally ill individuals with perfect criminal compatibility meeting are low, most individuals who commit serial murders have a particular obsession with the act of murder. They have their own unique understanding of homicide."
"They care about both the result and the process of committing the crime, and even enjoy misleading the police into making wrong judgments and seeing experts baffled."
"Furthermore, they are unwilling to share this 'joy' with anyone else. They don't think anyone can truly understand them. They may use innocent bystanders to achieve their murderous objectives, but they will never truly collaborate with anyone."
"They enjoy the thrill of fooling the world all by themselves and won't let a second person know their full plans, let alone assist them, especially not in such a clumsy manner..."
Gordon stared at Batman, lips pressed tightly. "That doesn't sound like something you'd learn from a psychology textbook," he said.
"Indeed, it's not something you learn from a textbook."
"Your tone reminds me of someone." Gordon sighed.
"And why didn't you ask him to come here?"
"Because I can't be sure if he's analyzing the situation based on the crime scene, or… revealing his method of committing the crime."