Chapter 2609: Rustling Down (55)

Gotham's autumn was inherently clearer than other seasons, and on those days when dark clouds shrouded everyone's heads, the mornings and evenings still revealed a streak of blue that was too brilliant for this city, woven with the faint light of dawn, blurring the colors of leaves and puddles.

When the dark clouds dissipated, the late autumn mornings filled with damp and cold air coalesced into hazy fogs; the red taillights of rush hour traffic flickered through the mists like beads on a broken string.

The towering city in the distance shifted between iron grey and deep brown, and the solitary neon lights on the streets that had quieted down after a night of revelry blinked within the sunlit, dew-glistened haze.

Gotham Court came into being alongside the city, an edifice even older than Gotham Cathedral and Gotham Theatre, and throughout the long history of the city's development, it had not been forgotten, having been renovated and rebuilt twice in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Like most courthouses in New Jersey State, Gotham Court featured a pristine white facade, solemn Roman columns in front of its entrance, a grey-green roof, and three round arches leading to its porch for daily passage.

This was the court's business hour, and the plaza in front of the entrance bustled with judges, judicial assistants, and legal advisors in business attire, toting briefcases back and forth.

The morning light had just climbed to the rooftops of adjacent buildings, casting everything in a bright, warm hue.

Stepping further inside, one could sense the historical heritage of this new construction, its interior not styled in a modern fashion but decorated with brownish-red wooden fixtures and dark natural marble, emitting a distinctly English charm.

At this moment, the reception hall was rich with the aroma of coffee, as a tall man in a suit held a cup in one hand and a briefcase in the other, nodding amiably to his colleagues while making his way inside.

He swiftly climbed the stairs through the crowd when a lady rounded the corner, almost bumping into him.

"Good heavens! Judge Dent, what brings you so early today?" the curly-haired lady exclaimed, pushing her glasses up in surprise.

"Because this morning, a special indictment is being delivered from the Gotham Police Department, and I want to check it out early."

"You've only been in the criminal division for three months, and you're already overseeing major cases?" the lady expressed her astonishment, "Do you need me to hit the do-not-disturb bell for you?"

"Of course, thank you. I must hurry along now."

Turning the corner, sunlight shone on the man as "Harvey Dent" stood out prominently on his nameplate.

As he entered his office, he saw an elderly man with graying hair sighing over a file.

"What's the matter? Professor, what case could be so troubling that you..."

"That James Gordon is becoming more and more unreliable!" the old man took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and said, "This murder and deliberate injury indictment he sent here... the only useful information it contains is the title!"

Harvey leaned over to flip through the documents and frowned, "Where's the copy of the arrest warrant?"

The old man glanced at Harvey, "They didn't arrest anyone."

Harvey was stunned and said, "How could it get to indictment without an arrest? Isn't the normal sequence arrest, search, interrogation, and then indictment? If there's no arrest, how does he appear in court? Who are we judging?"

Harvey had an expression that screamed, "Am I crazy or is this world crazy?" The old man shook his head and curled his lips saying, "You still don't know enough, Gordon said he would appear in court."

"What???"

Harvey's mouth opened and closed repeatedly as if he could not accept this fact. He said, "This is a criminal prosecution, they haven't even caught anyone yet, and then they tell us the suspect will appear in court. Do they think this is a divorce case?"

"You might want to take a look at this first." The old man handed a document to Harvey.

As soon as Harvey picked up the document, his heart skipped a beat, because there was a photo in the top-right corner of the document, a photo of Schiller Rodriguez.

At least now Harvey was somewhat certain about the suspect's court appearance.

Continuing to read, Harvey breathed a sigh of relief. It was a typical pre-trial conference checklist for plea bargaining, not going directly to court.

Then he looked at the indictment the old man had earlier, which listed many proposed charges, including intentional harm, murder, disability, and even terrorism.

Harvey felt a headache coming on, he took the document and sat down on the sofa, and said, "So what did Professor Rodriguez do?"

"To be honest, I don't know either."

Harvey looked incredulously at his teacher, who then appeared to be recalling something and said, "James called me last night, to be honest, I thought he was drunk. He kept talking about the Mexican Day of the Dead, bodies wriggling or something; I guess it might have been a crime scene he saw today."

"Crime scene? But isn't he a cop? And he is scared of crime scenes?"

The old man shook his head and said, "I know James. When he first came to Gotham, he was a particularly brave young man. The usual corpses wouldn't scare him like that, so I suspect it might have been the doing of a notorious serial killer."

"But what does this have to do with Schiller?"

"I'm also pondering over that question. What James roughly meant was that it wasn't a body, but a living person."

"What???"

The old man also sat down behind the desk, rifled through his drawer, and pulled out several photos to hand to Harvey. Harvey wrinkled his features with a look of disgust and held the paper a bit further away from him.

The photo depicted a man being skinned from a layer of skin, and Harvey felt like he shouldn't have eaten breakfast.

He covered his mouth, turned his face to the side, and quickly drank a few sips of coffee to suppress the urge to vomit. He gestured to the old man and said, "Excuse me, I need to use the restroom."

Harvey soon returned, too preoccupied to even button up his suit, and collapsed into his chair.

"That's how it is." The old man spread his hands and said, "The person hanging in the police department isn't dead, but the skin on his body definitely came from someone who is dead. The forensic and the Gotham evidence department compared it and found it came from a 32-year-old Mexican Descendant man named Brata Elsante."

"What about the man inside the skin?"

"He's the problem, he's an officer from the Gotham Police Department, Clay Aldo."

"Did he report the case?"

"Actually, there was no need to report it. The body, I mean the live person wrapped in the skin, was just hung in the lobby of the Gotham Police Department."

"What about the surveillance?"

"The power was out, nothing was caught on camera."

"Any eyewitnesses?"

"Officer Clay said Professor Schiller attacked him and sewed him into this human skin."

"Where did he attack him?"

"That's another problem, actually it was at Rodrix Manor."

"Ah???"

Harvey was stunned for a moment, then said, "You mean this Officer Clay broke into Rodrix Manor and then was attacked by Professor Rodriguez and sewn inside the human skin? Why did he break in?"

The elder shook his head.

"I asked James that question too, but James said he doesn't know. He told me that before Officer Clay left, he said he would find evidence of Schiller being a serial killer."

"Did he find it?"

"Of course not, otherwise Schiller would have been arrested long ago."

"We're back to square one," Harvey said, rubbing the brow that was starting to ache."

"There's also this." The elder took out another document from the drawer, yet another indictment. This time there was a copy of an arrest warrant.

"Home invasion, misconduct, false accusation..."

Harvey read the charges listed, shook his head, and said, "I have to say, this indictment is much stronger than the previous one. Just these photos of the crime scene being tampered with are enough for the prosecutor to heavily mark against this guy."

"So now they are accusing each other?" Harvey looked at both indictments and asked, "Clay accuses Schiller of murder, and Schiller accuses Clay of home invasion, misconduct..."

"Hold on," Harvey suddenly said. "How can Clay accuse Schiller of murder if he's still alive?"

"That's the most complicated part of this case," the elder said, deeply furrowing his brow and sighing. "Clay said it was Schiller who sewed him into the skin and hung it up in the police station lobby, but he didn't die; the one who died is that Mexican guy named Brata."

"Did Clay see Schiller kill Brata?"

"No, no one can prove Schiller killed Brata; there are no witnesses or evidence."

"Then why did he have Brata's skin?"

"He said he picked it up on the street."

Harvey was about to retort, but his professionalism stopped him just a second before he spoke; he was a judge who needed to rely on facts and evidence, not rumors.

Indeed, finding human skin on the street is absurd by common sense, but the logic of an American verdict is "we assume someone is guilty and look for evidence that they are not."

So if there is no other evidence to prove that Schiller's story about picking up human skin on the street is implausible, then it stands as plausible.

In other regions, you might argue against this citing "a serious violation of common sense" in the law, but in Gotham, finding human skin on the street doesn't completely violate common sense, it could be feasible.

"If we can't prove Schiller murdered anyone, then the only possible charge is intentional harm, but Rodriguez claims it was self-defense, because the officer broke into his home," the elder said.

Harvey felt a headache coming on.

He diligently analyzed the current situation; if Officer Clay's home invasion came first, and Schiller's assault followed, then according to the "stand-your-ground" law followed by most American states, which dictates that one should not retreat when attacked on one's own territory and has every right to defend oneself without the obligation to flee, Schiller has the right to self-defense.

New Jersey isn't a strong castle doctrine state, but it still requires evaluating the extent of the right to self-defense based on some circumstances. Schiller's situation is very likely to be deemed as having the right to unlimited self-defense.

First, the intruder has a gun.

Just this alone, as long as Clay is alive and can walk out of Schiller's house, almost every prosecutor wouldn't convict Schiller.

Second, the intruder is a police officer.

Unless Clay can prove his entry was for official reasons, like conducting a search warrant, it would be deemed violent law enforcement; otherwise, it's home invasion and misconduct.

That is to say, unless Clay really found evidence in the house, his actions do not belong to law enforcement but to unwarranted intrusion, lacking the notion of law enforcement, Clay's aggressiveness and attack would be judged as unlimited.

Finally, Clay caused a great deal of substantial damage, especially breaking doors.

This will easily be recognized as his intrusion being of a seriously violent nature, with immediate threats to the homeowner, and fully justifying a violent self-defense by the homeowner out of fear.

An armed, well-trained police officer breaks into someone's home in the middle of the night and destroys several doors, yet only receives minor injuries from the homeowner. Harvey thought the prosecutor overseeing the charge negotiation would likely be thinking, "And you have the nerve to sue him?"