บท 59: Home sweet home
We disembarked at a tall fence, darkened by time and covered with withered branches. After paying the meter, I earned a disgruntled look from the cab driver, who was clearly expecting a generous tip, given the rich neighborhood, but I didn't care, since the driver had managed to make a decent detour by missing the bridge, so I was my own evil Pinocchio.
I had expected to walk around a bit to assess the future cozy nest from the outside, but I hadn't calculated that it would be almost invisible because of the fence and the fog from the river. Okay, we were dressed warmly, and a little walk wouldn't hurt. After calling Natalie at the number I had left earlier, I asked her to meet us at the entrance.
"Good evening, Mr. Arkham, Miss Quinzel," the woman greeted us politely as we reached the gate.
The VSO manager, despite the biting October wind, was in her standard business suit and didn't seem to have a problem with it.
"Good. What can I get you?
"All the works have been completed according to the plan so far," she said not without pleasure, holding out a tablet with information. - Please follow me. I'll give you a tour and hand over the access codes.
We passed a new automatic gate with an empty guard booth and found ourselves in the grounds of the estate. As we advanced, I noticed statues and frames representing various animals. Their task, in addition to creating a beautiful landscape, was to camouflage various detection equipment that served as the first line of defense.
Soon the fog thinned, and we saw a circular driveway with a small fountain in the center, as well as the mansion itself, which did not stand out much from the background of similar buildings. It had a colonnaded portico supporting a slightly forward dark blue roof with large tiles. The building was painted white and had only three stories, the topmost being an attic. The total area was a measly fifteen hundred square feet, half the size of the Wayne estate, at least the official part of it.
And no fucking neo-Gothic! Not even a hint of it, which was a huge plus. On the right side of the entrance was a garage for five cars, and at the back there would be an unfinished greenhouse.
"Beautiful, but what about the security systems?" I asked, because I was more interested in them than in the appearance, and I was planning to make the main rooms underground anyway.
"Just a second," Natalie pulled out the familiar fortune-telling ball, the mist in which this time was swirling into a small vortex. - Let's go inside.
Once we crossed the threshold, we found ourselves in a large hallway with a central staircase dividing the mansion into two parts.
The interior was more in keeping with the somber mood of Gotham. Especially impressive were the dark marble columns holding up the perimeter gallery and the candlelit candelabra-style lighting fixtures.
You look at it and you can't escape the feeling that you've seen it somewhere before.
As soon as the door closed, the swirl in the balloon disintegrated into individual flakes.
"An attention detector. Pretty simple, but effective when used properly," the woman explained, tucking the item into her briefcase.
"Hmm, available for purchase?
"I'm sorry, but no. Only exchange for interesting technology or magical artifacts.
"Do you sell? No, just showing..."
I almost spit on the red carpet, but I held back at the last moment. It's a shame, but it makes sense. I doubted that the villain would be willing to trade for even a dozen fortune-telling balls, but he would try to get them by force. As if catching my thoughts, our escort said that in case of an attack on her I might get my hands on some useful things, but I could forget about any contacts with the organization, plus, there would be a reward for my head.
Hmm, I didn't mention that my secret lair would become known to everyone around me. That's interesting.
After a brief hiccup at the entrance, the manager led us on, telling us about the secret passages that had been discovered and the work that had been done. At the moment only a part of the north wing had been restored, namely: a bedroom, a workshop with a chemical laboratory and a garage, though the last one was not complete. The control room, located in the study, was of course already functioning, but was not yet fully decorated. It was amazing that all this had been accomplished in less than twenty-four hours!
Passing the double doors on the second floor Natalie slowed down.
"We've put your things in the hall behind this door for now, and they've been delivered safe and sound, only-" The woman looked embarrassed for the first time in my memory.
"Something's wrong.
"Sorry, but the car and apartment bombs had to be left in the garage because there was a risk of detonation.
"Wait, what bombs?" I froze, since we definitely didn't have any explosives left after the confrontation with the cultists. - Harley?
"I have no idea what it's about.
"Oh... May I?" The brunette in the business suit tapped the tablet in my hands a few times and displayed a picture of Bats's apartment.
In the middle of the room stood a green-and-red colored gift, and on the floor was a familiar inscription, done in red paint by the looks of it, "Only one left."
"There was something similar in the car - the next shot showed another festive box under the back seat of the car, naturally with a slogan.
Some asshole ruined the interior of a car by leaving a stupid inscription! You can't really see it, but still. So, if I was just planning to break the asshole's legs if I met him, now I'm going to start looking for him.
The rest of the tour was a blur, as my mind was on other things. At the end of the tour, we were given all the codes to the house's systems, and then Natalie told me that the architect would be here in the morning to discuss the construction of the secret hiding place, and then, saying good night, she headed out.
For almost an hour Harley and I had been working together on the local linux that ran the house's systems. The software was open source and had full access to its kernel, so I could have made a lot of interesting things with my own hands, but luckily, my sweet assistant had gotten pretty good at programming things over the past month, so we were soon the sole owners... At least, I hoped so. Just in case, have Babs check it out again later, according to the comics her computer skills were top notch.
When I was done with the tricky business, I sent the girl to check on the delivered items, and myself headed for the garage. The Aston was in place, and it would definitely need dry-cleaning, but that wasn't what interested me, but the two colorful boxes standing against the far wall, hiding deadly mechanisms behind bright wrappings.
Picking the right one that used to be in the car, I began the careful demolition. I don't know what kind of smart guy designed this thing, but he managed to pull off the style of the original Joker. Wires, triggers, defeaters, everything was in place. If we had gone in the morning without checking the back seat of the car, we would have blown up in two seconds! Shit, shit, shit. This is getting serious. On the plus side, though, Earth Aid is really working, otherwise I just can't explain today's nightmare that delayed our exit so we had to take public transportation.
The second "gift" was booby-trapped in a similar way, so it did not present any particular difficulty, and considering the place where the VSO workers found it, it is an ordinary warning, like a severed horse's head in the Italian Mafia.
"Mr. J, are you done?" my favorite blonde came into the garage.
"Yeah. What do you think about that?" I nodded at the defused bombs.
"Hmm..." the girl moved closer and scrutinized the two gutted gifts. - Very much like your work.
"That's right... Let's go visit Strange's house right now," I decided.
It was already late at night, so the detectives and police had to clear the crime scene. Well, there might be a couple of on-duty officers left, but they shouldn't be much trouble.
After dressing up in superhero costumes and grabbing their gadgets, our gorgeous tandem headed out to visit the dead doctor.
Hugo was an excellent professional with a very high income, so it was no surprise that his home was also in the Bristol area. Eight kilometers of easy running and we were already there. The mansion was located in a small depression, and given the marshes adjacent to the property, it looked unrealistically gloomy. The paint was missing, and the black frame of the building was visible.
It's like a maniac's lair!
Expectedly, there was a car parked nearby with two sleepy police officers, so we had to quietly sneak in through a window on the back side of the house, having carefully pried off the frame before doing so.
Hmm, this is nice. The interior was classic English, and the work of a good designer was evident. A quick look around the first floor didn't yield much in the way of clues. There was a little crumpled door of the looted refrigerator, and a pile of garbage on the table, as if someone had eaten for the last time. The second floor was more interesting, because that was where the doctor's corpse was, or rather it used to be, because the forensic team had already taken it and all the evidence, leaving in its place small plates with numbers and white silhouettes marking the position of objects.
Very, very curious, especially considering the complete lack of signs of a struggle, as if the owner of the office was familiar with his killer.
"Sailor, can you check the blood?" I nodded at the red stained floor.
"I can, the new lab from the V.S.A. Should be able to do more than that. But why? We don't have a database, and there's nothing to compare the results to.
"For impurities," I shrug.
"Okie," my faithful companion pulled out some tissues and, while I continued to survey the crime scene, scraped the bloodstains in various places in the office.
After searching every corner, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more for us to do here, because even the equipment and paper records, judging by the empty shelves and drawers, had been taken away by the guards. The couple of hiding places that had been opened before us didn't have anything interesting to offer either.
It's time to check the basement.
Downstairs we found ourselves in the usual technical room: a boiler, a warehouse of boxes of junk, and an open secret passage on the far wall, leading into the darkness. It led us to the maniac's lair, which was subtly reminiscent of what I'd seen in the hospital: white tiles with Harley's flashlight shining on them, research machines with restraining straps, even a full-fledged psychologist's office. A special couch, a comfortable chair, a soft carpet and shelves full of books, but it looked very alien and more like a set. Unfortunately, many things were almost destroyed, as if a pack of wild animals had gotten in.
"What are you doing here?" A hoarse, altered voice broke the silence.
"Fucking hell, Bats, you can't scare people like that!" I jumped up, pointing my cane at the superhero, and my companion Glock, which she immediately hid back under her skirt, making an innocent face.
Mouse continued to silently glare at our duo with a heavy gaze, waiting for a response.
"I turned my back to Gotham's protector and continued my search.
"The police have already removed all the evidence, and it's unlikely you'll find anything else of interest," said Mouse, moving closer.
"It's worth a shot, and I don't have access to police reports, unlike some people. Sailor, let's go check the casemates.
Disregarding a personality that loves tight latex suits, we moved on and literally immediately came across another interesting detail: the steel door in our path had been literally cut open by several powerful blows, and from the outside. The nature of the damage was such that if I were in the Marvel Universe, I could say with absolute certainty that Wolverine had worked here, except this was DC! Behind the destroyed barrier were cells with bars that had been opened in a similar fashion. On one of the walls there was an annoying slogan from Highlander, drawn in blood, which my assistant also took for analysis. The dark corridor, contrary to my expectations and logic, did not end in a dead end, but led somewhere further north.
"The passage leads into a natural network of caves. The steel door in the way is cut, just like this one," Bats said, looking in the direction we'd come from. - Why don't you tell me what you're interested in?
"We are heroes now!!!" I said in a spiritual tone, adopting a lofty pose. The Dark Knight tilted his head to the side. - Okay, that's only partially true.
I did not want to linger, I went on, deciding to verify the words of my interlocutor, and on the way I told about the bombs and inscriptions I had found.
"Can I see them?
"What's the point? I've already gutted them, and I can tell you it feels like I assembled them. Why don't you tell me what you found out?
I didn't have much hope for a story, but to my surprise the superhero told us that there were kidnapped people here who were former patients of psychiatric hospitals with schizoid, schizophrenic, and manic personality disorders. Officially, they had all been in remission for six months or more, and their attending physician was the deceased Strange.
So, to summarize. Someone familiar to the doctor came to him a couple days ago and then disemboweled him, leaving a snapping jaw. He then went down to the secret lab, ripped open the solid steel door, and let the seven psychopaths who'd been imprisoned for almost a month loose. As a bonus, John Doe set up a Highlander-style game, but he also brought me in for some reason. I ask you. Who's to blame and what the fuck is this?
The corridor ended abruptly with a powerful grille. Judging by the welded seams, the police had put it up to keep outsiders out. Well, it was almost useless and dangerous to go into the caves, so it was time to go back. We made our way back in the company of Mouse, where we parted and went home, though there was no certainty about our companion, probably he would go to the city to do good and bring justice to the bandits who had crawled out on the night streets.
The mansion at 2 Wayne Street greeted us with silence and desolation, showing that it definitely lacks a female hand, but Harley and Ivy should be able to help with that, and maybe Babs if she decides to live with us.
My assistant went straight to the chemistry lab to analyze the blood extracted, and I went to check the security systems.
So, judging by the logs, there was no suspicious activity, so I decided to help the girl and learn how to work with the lab equipment, but my plans failed, because the research is automatic and the researcher only needs to prepare the samples correctly, which the blonde had already done.
Given that our couple had had enough running around during the day, we went to the side, expecting to get at least some rest and try out the new bed.
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