After Bruce and Lex arrived in Metropolis, they still had to rely on the connections of the Luthor Family. Nevertheless, Lionel left behind more than just the family business.
Wealth and power are inseparable. The chief of Metropolitan Police Department has a good relationship with the Luthor Family. When he heard that Lex was interested in the murder case, he handed over all the files and materials to Lex.
However, the police officers didn't find any particular clues. Thus, Lex proposed to the chief that he wanted to visit the crime scene, but the chief of Metropolitan Police Department felt very uneasy. He said on the phone:
"I'm sorry, Mr. Luthor, we have to consider your safety when examining the scene, I'm afraid this matter might be..."
"I think the police department is in need of some new protective equipment, isn't it? With such a brutal murder case happening, the quality of the officers' armor also needs to be upgraded. The Luthor Family has always been concerned about the safety of Metropolis..."
Lex didn't finish his sentence, but who wouldn't understand what he was implying?
Contrary to Lex's expectation, the chief still didn't agree. After he hung up the phone, Bruce standing behind him said, "There's a problem. In a situation where money opens the way, it's impossible that he won't even let you see the body."
"It's okay, we can go directly to the morgue. There's nothing the Luthor Family can't do here." Lex responded.
The bodies from these two murder cases were stored in a hospital morgue close to the police station. The coroner hadn't had time to perform the autopsy yet, so if they went there now, they should be able to see the intact bodies. Conveniently, this hospital was also sponsored by the Luthor Family.
However, when they arrived at the morgue, they found that there were no bodies from the murder cases there at all. After pulling up the morgue's surveillance footage, it showed that there wasn't even any footage of the bodies being stored.
That is to say, after investigating the crime scene, the officers didn't store the bodies in the morgue at all, which was very abnormal.
After leaving the morgue, Bruce, while thinking, said to Lex: "Generally, the officers will choose the most convenient way to store the bodies. If there is no morgue, the bodies will be stored in the nearest hospital before an autopsy is conducted."
"If they didn't put the bodies here, it might be because they were sent directly to the morgue. Gather the surveillance footage from the crime scene back at Luthor Manor, and I'll go check out the morgue tonight."
Lex had no objections to this arrangement. The reason he allowed Bruce to come here to investigate was that he felt he could use his help.
Lex himself wasn't a fighting type. If he encountered a too ruthless killer, he would be safe if he stayed inside Luthor Manor, but if he actively participated in the investigation, his safety couldn't be guaranteed.
Therefore, it was a good choice to use Batman for this field investigation. After all, they both had the same goal of getting rid of the Owl. They had a common enemy in this regard, so they could cooperate.
Just as Bruce had arranged, Lex began to use technical means to obtain the surveillance footage from the crime scene, while Bruce went to the morgue to search for the bodies.
Emerging in the night, Bruce once again put on Batman's suit. He stood on the roof of the tallest Luthor Building in the city, looking down at a city that was even more prosperous than Gotham.
The night sky here wasn't as dark as Gotham's. There were lights everywhere, the brightness made Batman's view somewhat blurry. He felt that he wasn't used to staying in such a city. Bats should belong to the darkness.
However, the warmth of the city lights, carried to him by the wind, reflected his cloak as orange by the warm light. Batman took a deep breath, then glided down, jumping between buildings, and finally arrived at his destination.
The new morgue in the city was rather remote and only manned by two guards. So, Batman easily sneaked in. However, there were still no bodies here.
Batman sensed the strangeness of the entire situation, so he visited all the hospitals in Metropolis, but still didn't find the bodies. Finally, he arrived at the home of the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department.
When the chief of police was awakened from his sleep, he was terrified at the sight of the mysterious figure standing on his balcony. Batman stood in the shadow beside the window. He asked in a low voice, "Where are the bodies from the murder case?"
"I…I don't know…who are you? Don't come any closer! I'll shoot!" The chief screamed.
Batman realized that this chief wasn't stronger than Gordon. The good public order in Metropolis had nothing to do with him. The chief was a typical small-minded man, submissive to the strong and aggressive towards the weak. Both violence and money could open his mouth.
In the end, Batman got the answer he wanted from the chief. According to him, the bodies had disappeared.
There are only a few steps to investigate a crime scene, and because the locations where the bodies were found were both relatively busy intersections, the officers had to quickly remove the bodies and restore traffic.
When the first body was found, since the condition of the body was extremely horrific, it wasn't appropriate to let more people see it. So after an initial investigation, the body was dismantled, covered with a white cloth, and then loaded onto a hospital's vehicle.
However, this vehicle didn't drive to the hospital as planned. According to the chief, they later found this missing vehicle and the unconscious officers in the suburbs. The driver and the bodies had vanished.
Later, the officers found the genuine driver, who had been knocked unconscious, in the underground parking lot of the hospital.
This suggests that the body-thief first knocked out the real driver, then disguised as the driver, hijacked the vehicle transporting the body, and finally stole the body.
After this incident, when the second corpse was being transported, all the police officers were on high alert. A detective personally drove the corpse to the morgue. However, when Lex and Bruce just arrived in Metropolis and headed to the hospital, the body disappeared again.
The morgue was not well-staffed, and its security insufficient. Someone had sneaked in and stole the body again.
Returning empty-handed, Batman went back to Luthor Manor, and Lex had no good news either. Standing in the lab in the basement of the Luthor Manor, he fiddled with a computer as he said:
"Metropolis is usually very safe. The people here lack a sense of crisis, and there are very few surveillance cameras. Apart from a few main intersections, most interior cameras in buildings have too many blind spots. Some floors only have one camera."
"I've accessed the surveillance footage from the crime scene, but clearly, that wasn't the first crime scene. The killer just placed the body there, not where he killed him."
"So the question is, how did he get the body there?" Bruce asked.
"According to the surveillance, the body appears to have descended from the roof. The chair binding the body was equipped with a parachute. The body fell like that from the roof of the bank building into the crowd, causing a panic."
"Unfortunately, the bank building is the tallest around. Cameras from other buildings could not capture the roof. Only one camera caught a figure."
Lex showed the footage to Bruce. It was a man in a blue janitor uniform entering the rooftop. But the figure was so blurred, it was hard to make out anything other than presumable gender by the figure, due to the camera angle not even his height or build could be determined.
"What about the surveillance footage inside the bank?" Bruce asked.
"The Metropolitan Center Bank has the most glass curtain walls nearby. They hire a cleaning company to clean their windows on the 3rd of every month, which is today. Because every floor's windows need to be cleaned, janitors appear throughout the building."
"Through bank's internal surveillance, a total of 43 people were identified. All male wearing uniforms, hats, body type and height can't be determined either. Meaning they all are potential suspects."
Bruce pressed a hand against the table and said, "It appears the killer was well prepared. First, let's review all the actions of these 43 people …"
"Before you came back, I'd already analyzed everything once. Nothing suspicious was found. At least within the areas covered by surveillance, their actions were all normal," Lex replied.
"If the murderer wanted to throw the body from the top of the bank building, he must first bring the body into the building. How did he bring the body into the building?"
Lex chose a surveillance clip, played for a while, then paused it. Pointing at an area on the screen, he said to Bruce: "..Look at this box, cleaning the glass curtain walls of high buildings is inconvenient, it requires special high-altitude equipment."
"The tools are often bulky, and there's a lot of ropes, so they use these big boxes, delivered a day in advance to the building and stored in the basement. In other words, on the 2nd of each month, these boxes will appear in the bank's underground warehouse."
"As long as the body can fit into these boxes, they can be shipped to the basement warehouse in advance. Then, you can simply wheel these boxes to any floor you want. He can use the pretext of cleaning the windows in a monitor blind spot to throw the body."
Accompanied by Lex's description, Bruce and Lex jointly constructed a scene in their minds.
The calendar flipped to April 2nd, at around 6 pm. One after another, cleaning company's trucks drove into the underground garage of the central bank.
Janitors in blue uniforms lifted one large box after another from the truck, then moved them onto hand trucks, pushing them into the underground warehouse connected to the garage.
One janitor's box was noticeably heavier, the edge of the box had soaked up blood, but another janitor failed to notice this detail. They moved the box onto a hand truck and wheeled it into the warehouse.
At around 7 am on April 3rd, the central bank officially opened for business. The staff bustled in through the front door while the janitors arrived at the underground warehouse, pushing out all the prepared equipment methodically.
The murderer, dressed as a janitor, pushed a toolbox to a certain floor of the building. Then, he moved the body and equipment from the toolbox, opened the window, and threw the body down.
The image stopped here, Lex and Bruce looked at each other. Bruce is the first to break the silence, saying: "There's one issue here."
"Exactly, the smell." Lex immediately agreed: "If you want to hide a body in such a tool box and move it with janitors into the warehouse, there's no way someone wouldn't notice the horrifying smell of blood."
Bruce immediately picked up the notebook next to him. He drew the shape of the body and pointed at it, "This wound here and here, both have substantial blood loss. Even if all the blood had dried by the time he moved the body, there's no way there would have been no smell."
"There are two ways to make a body smell-less." Lex immediately responded, he seemed well-prepared, "First is to treat the body with special chemicals, the second is to hide the smell with a stronger odor."
"At present, we can't investigate the first possibility because the body is gone. But from the standpoint of the second possibility, What could cover up the strong smell of blood?"
They simultaneously answered:
"Glass curtain wall cleaner."