Chapter 56 Chapter 56 You and your father’s reactions back then were really…
The diner was the first to exit Paulie's, not forgetting to place a bill under his mug. Shards of glass crunched under his shoes as he glanced around, then chose a bar across the street that was closing and sauntered over.
"They're about to close." Smith, who was following behind him, reminded.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," the diner said. "I can handle it."
He walked over and snapped his fingers at the bouncer who was closing the door. Then, ducking down, he slipped into the darkened bar, oblivious to the crowd. Smith stood outside the door, peering inside suspiciously, then glancing at the murky-eyed bouncer, but didn't immediately follow.
The diners inside shouted, "What, are you scared?"
"This sure looks like a trap," Smith said. But he went in anyway. The customer didn't bother turning on the lights, instead going behind the bar and rattling through the bar's inventory. As Smith sat down on a high stool outside the bar, the customer asked, without even turning around, "What would you like to drink?"
"Is this why we left the kids behind and went to the bar?" Smith urged cryptically, "Because minors can't drink?"
"I'll just assume you want some whiskey."
As Smith watched, the diner calmly poured each of them a glass of Ardbeg whiskey and sprinkled some ice on it. He took a sip himself, extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray, and then looked at Smith, who sat there motionless, and sighed deeply.
"Why don't you take off your mask?" he said. "Is it because you're afraid people will find out you're Elio from ten years later?"
His tone was the same as before, with a slightly lazy London accent. But as he said this, as soon as Smith understood what he was saying, the assassin jumped up from the stool.
"How did you—"
"Relax, relax." The diner waved his hand calmly. "I won't tell anyone. The surveillance cameras won't capture us, and no one will know we're here at this time."
Now it was the assassin's turn to glare at him. Elio braced himself on the bar, nearly knocking over his untouched glass as he jumped. But he didn't move, and perhaps because of this, the diner even had the time to steady his whiskey before raising his eyes, scanning the black mask so close to him, and finally landing on Elio's green eyes.
"How did you know?" Elio calmed down. "Generally speaking, even if they discovered that I looked like Elio from this time and space, they would just think we were brothers."
"Let me introduce myself," the diner put down his glass. "I'm a private investigator who knows a little bit of magic. You can call me John."
"John? Seriously?" Elio smiled. "You're the second uninvited John I've met in the past three days."
"I'm a friend of your parents," John said.
Elio fell silent. He scanned John's face and eyes carefully, but even he couldn't tell if he was searching for evidence of a lie or something else. In stark contrast to the "John" of New York, this blond, blue-eyed private investigator, unshaven and unkempt, wasn't the type to win someone's trust at first sight.
But when he puts on a serious expression, he seems a little believable.
"You probably don't want to know this," the private investigator said seriously, "but I'm bisexual. So if you don't want to kiss me, don't get so close to me."
John reached out, pretending to push Elio's mask down to push him back. But before he could touch him, Elio slumped back down with a thud, eagerly sitting back down. His eyes widened silently, and John couldn't help but chuckle at the sight.
"Your reaction is exactly the same as your father's back then," he joked.
Elio wanted to ask, "How dare you tease my father?" But after thinking it over, he didn't really want to know what happened back then. So in the end, he asked stiffly, trying to bring the conversation back to the original topic, "What exactly is going on?"
Only then did John's expression become truly serious.
"Are you asking about the car accident your parents had that year?" He picked up the wine glass, "or why you are here?"
"All of this," Elio said. He took off his mask and played with the wine glass, which was dripping with water. His palms became clammy, as if this could hide his nervousness.
"...This all started ten years ago." John raised his head and drank the whiskey. "During an investigation, I met your parents. Back then, they hadn't started working for Two-Face yet."
Elio clenched his glass. "They work for Two-Face?"
"On the surface, yes," John said. "I could tell they had other identities, but since they didn't tell me, I didn't ask about their secrets. Why? Our friendship was like that. If they were still around, they'd probably just tell you to stay away from me."
"Is it like this?" Elio gestured to the bar between them. John smiled. "Not in that physical sense. Never mind."
"For some reason unknown to me," he continued, "a secret unknown to me, they started working for Two-Face. Two-Face, you know, so on his orders that day, they went and robbed the bank."
Elio took a sip of his drink. The cold whiskey rolled down his esophagus.
"They asked me to wait there that day and pick them up," John said. "Two-Face had already started to suspect them, so they had no choice but to find me, a guy Two-Face rarely saw. I was waiting there early, at Paulie's, and I even bought something to eat."
He paused, a little reluctant. Elio, sitting across from him, looked at him quietly. John looked away, casually picked up the whiskey next to him, and refilled his drink.
"Then there's what I just told the kid," John said, not meeting Elio's eyes. "I heard the police car and saw your parents driving over and digging into the fast food restaurant. Everyone was picking up money. When I got in to pull them out, I smelled leaking oil, but they were in... bad shape."
Elio asked hoarsely, "What do you mean?"
"They broke bones." John lowered his head, staring at his fingers gripping his wine glass. "They were trapped in the seatbelts and airbags. And, like you said, it only takes a dozen seconds for the vehicle to explode after the oil leak."
John knew this, as did Elio's parents in the driver's seat. And just then, the baby strapped in the back seat started crying.
He cried so loudly, so resonantly, as if he knew danger was imminent, as if he knew he would be separated from his parents forever. John used his elbow to push open the car window, carried him out amid the shattered glass, and scrambled out of the car. The people in the fast food restaurant were still busy chasing flying bills, pushing and arguing with each other. John, holding the crying baby in his arms, shouted at them, "The car is going to explode!" "Run!" The couple, left in the car, left for death, watched their child escape danger, groping for each other's hands, their heads covered in blood, smiling at each other...
Then, flames shot up into the sky.
The explosion knocked over everyone who was running, including John. For a moment, he could not hear any sound, only the buzzing echo; he struggled to open his eyes and found that his arms were still tightly holding the rescued baby.
The orphan named Elio no longer cried loudly, only tears flowed quietly as always from the pair of green eyes that resembled his father.
·
Elsewhere, ten-year-old Elio was wiping away tears in disbelief. After Tim explained to him one by one why the diner was cheating, Elio gradually regained his composure.
"So he came after the explosion," Elio concluded. "He wanted me to believe my parents were criminals and to discourage me from continuing my investigation."
He was so mean! Elio hammered the wall angrily, then immediately bared his teeth. Where Tim didn't notice (or rather, where he pretended not to notice), Elio quietly blew on his red fist.
"Yes, so we have two options now," Tim held up two fingers. "One is to go back and ask him why he lied to you—if he did that, he must know something about what happened back then—the other is to shake him off and investigate this matter on our own."
"...Now you know this isn't some mystery club activity, Tim," Elio asked hesitantly, "Are you still willing to help me investigate?"
Tim was silent for a moment, thoughtful. But then he pointedly raised the camera to his chest and gave Elio a sly wink.
"You don't ask about my 'after-school activities,'" he said, "and I don't ask about yours. So do you want my help or not, Elio?"
Tim stood there, his elbow still bandaged, his beautiful red hoodie and gray sneakers thoroughly soiled from last night's activities, covered in a mess of dust. But his blue eyes sparkled, and he waited confidently for Elio's answer.
Elio looked at Tim like this and quickly smiled.
"I really can't say 'no' to you," he said, "but I want to emphasize, Tim, that our 'extracurricular activities' could be dangerous."
"That's great," Tim said sincerely, "That just makes me more excited."
"Really?" Elio said half-jokingly. "You're giving me the creeps."
"Oh my God!" Tim pinched Elio in mock anger. "Who do you think I did this for?"
Elio actually laughed this time. He leaned to the side, half-heartedly trying to avoid Tim's strangling hand, but was still caught in a mock chokehold—Tim wasn't trying very hard—but Elio played along, sticking out his tongue and making an "uh-huh" sound like someone he imagined being strangled.
"You brutally murdered me," Elio said in a pretentious tone, clearing his throat as Tim laughed. "Now I'm a ghost... I'll always be watching you..."
"Wow, creepy!"
They scrambled for a bit before finally remembering to continue their investigation. Tim suggested they could just look into the police report, using the name of the mystery club. "I'm really from the mystery club," he said, trying not to sound too loud, but still clearing his throat dramatically. "The first one."
"Okay, little detective," Elio shrugged, "but we're probably just clueless kids in the eyes of those adults. Does the name of the mystery club really allow us to sneak in and rummage through their files?"
Tim fell silent, and he and Elio stared at each other for a moment. There was no need to ask; the answer was a resounding no.
But "Drake" can.
Tim called his housekeeper, and soon the team was able to find a reliable adult. With the housekeeper's help, they successfully entered the police station under the name of the reasoning club—no matter why—and found the report from that year.
Compared to the "Vehicle Incident Report" published on the official website, this report, dusted off in the archives, is much more detailed. It clearly describes the entire incident, from the bank calling the police, to the police chase, and finally the vehicle overturning and exploding. The only doubtful point is that the criminals in the car were charred on the spot, making it impossible to conduct DNA testing or verify their identity. However, the police had no evidence that they were not the real people, so they hastily closed the case.
The baby rescued from the car was sent to an orphanage, and it was Elio himself who was reading the file. This is undeniable.
As for the stolen money, the police certainly didn't recover a single cent amid the enthusiastic "rescue" efforts of the Gotham residents and the subsequent explosion. As for whether there was any water in this, even if there was, it's no longer important.
"The bodies in the car can't prove they are my parents," Elio said, stroking his chin and accidentally wiping dust on his face without noticing. "So is it possible that they escaped at some point and then used the bodies to switch with them?"
Tim looked thoughtfully at the file.
"The most fatal error in a detective's case is not to reason from the clues. The result is often that the facts are twisted to fit the reasoning, rather than the reasoning fitting the facts." Conan Doyle said this, and Tim agreed. So if there was no evidence to prove that Elio's parents were swapped, then they couldn't "reason" in this way.
But then again, Tim knew why Elio made such a guess, so he wouldn't deny Elio outright.
"Or maybe they were captured by an evil villain organization," Elio guessed, "and they didn't want the police to notice this, so they replaced them with prepared bodies and faked their deaths."
This sounded even more outrageous, like something out of a super action movie. But as I said before, Tim wouldn't deny Elio's guess. Moreover, Tim did have reason to suspect there was something else behind this.
"Let's not talk about who did it," he said, imitating the detectives in novels, one hand behind his back, the other hand casually shaking the report. He ended up dusting himself and coughing profusely. Elio patted him on the back, and Tim reluctantly continued. "From what I know, a vehicle exploding after an overturn is a rare event, not nearly as common as in the movies. Maybe only about 1%."
Elio nodded in understanding. His eyes sparkled, a look Tim knew all too well: a look that said, "You're so cool!" The young detective coughed, a little embarrassed but also a little pleased with himself, and pursed his lips before continuing.
"Also, while the flames from a vehicle explosion can cause extensive burns and even carbonize the skin," Tim said seriously, "it's rare for the skin to be completely carbonized to the point where DNA can't be detected. At least, fuel explosions caused by ordinary traffic accidents rarely carbonize bones. Usually, only terrorist attacks and bomb explosions can do this, and it's not without conditions. It requires sustained high temperatures and sufficient oxygen to cause this."
Under these circumstances, the completely charred and undetectable body inside the car seemed suspicious. It wasn't impossible, but the probability was incredibly small. Think about it: even if it had been directly exposed to a bomb blast, it wouldn't have been destroyed so completely!
"Unless there's a bomb in that car," Tim said casually.
·
"There was a bomb in the car." John tapped the bar thoughtfully. "The explosion had a shock wave, but a car leaking oil and burning it shouldn't have. A bomb is called a detonation, a car leaking oil is called a deflagration. They are fundamentally different. So I think even if the police car hadn't damaged the car's tires, even if the car hadn't rolled over and leaked oil, it would have exploded. It's just that what happened at the time was too coincidental, covering up the traces of the mastermind."
"So who did it?" Elio asked. He put his mask back on and stared at John with red eyes. John avoided his gaze, pulled a coin from his pocket, and pushed it across the table.
Elio held down the coin.
It looked like a normal coin, with a smooth profile of the president. But when Elio turned it over, he saw another profile on the back. But it was a scratched, hideous face.
This is an iconic coin with two faces.
Elio suddenly grasped the coin. He said nothing, but the veins on the back of his hand bulged. John had no doubt that if given the chance, the kid would have grasped Two-Face's neck as tightly as he had the coin. As Elio stood to leave, John quickly held his hand.
"Your parents gave it to me before they died," he tilted his head, motioning Elio to sit down again. "They said this is what they needed me to retrieve. But they didn't have time to tell me how to find their contact, nor did they tell me how to open it. I tried many times, but I still couldn't figure out what to do with it."
Elio sat down slowly with a sullen face. He opened his hand again, and the coin left a red mark on his palm.
"I thought about the possibility that you could find a way to open it." John saw that his attention had been diverted and he breathed a sigh of relief. "But you can see that you are only ten years old now. I can't tell him these things."
"I understand," Elio said hoarsely. "This isn't something I should be dealing with at ten."
Then the assassin unsheathed his hidden blade. The tip of the blade slid smoothly into the scratch on the back of the coin, and with a snap, it broke in two. As John watched in shock, a small piece of microfilm fell out of the broken coin.
-----------------------
The author has something to say: *"The most fatal mistake in a detective's case is not to reason based on clues. The result is often that the facts are distorted to fit the reasoning, rather than the reasoning fitting the facts." From "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Bohemian Scandal".
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
