On a thunderous rainy night, the rainwater fell on the roof of the manor, making a rustling sound which mixed with the remaining crackling of the fireplace.
Such a sound was highly soporific, thus Professor Shearer enjoyed a deep sleep on his bed, until a hurried ring from the telephone brought him out of his dreams.
Looking out of the window, a streak of lightning traced across the sky, casting reflections of the window mullions onto the floor and his bed, one of which scanned across Shearer's eyes.
He drew a deep breath, stood up from his bed and began to tread through the dark manor in his slippers. Arriving downstairs, he picked up the phone receiver, not surprised to hear Gordon's agitated voice on the other end, "Harry Cooper is dead, Professor Shearer, you need to come down."
"Is it connected to the serial murder case? If it is, call Batman."
"Batman is already here, Professor Shearer. I know it's late and I shouldn't disturb you, but the situation this time is kind of messy, you'd better come..."
Shearer glanced at the floor-clock in his room which just pointed to two in the morning. He remembered Gordon's last call being on a rainy night when Fish Mooney died.
Shearer dressed and picked up his umbrella. As he left the manor, Gotham's night was still terrifyingly dark. The damp air ingested into his lungs dispelled his drowsiness.
A black car glided into the manor, a black suit, black umbrella, black sunglasses, the typical silent style of the Gotham Gang. The man opening the car door remained silent and Shearer asked no question.
Cooper's manor was on the west side of the North District, quite far from Falcone Manor. When the car carrying Shearer halted at the front of Cooper's manor, Gordon rushed down to meet him. Shearer got out and Gordon led him inside.
"What's going on? You're rarely so flustered, I presume even a serial murder case won't make you so panic-stricken?"
Gordon's expression wasn't so good. He did not explain much, just told Shearer, "You will find out when you see the scene."
They went up to the third floor. There were a lot of policemen near the stairway. After Gordon passed by, he nodded at a sturdy-looking senior cop. "Hello, I'm Smith, the chief of Gotham Police Department. Nice to meet you..."
Shearer shook hands with him with a brief introduction. It seemed the chief was not into pleasantries. He gestured to Gordon to take the professor in, but with caution.
Gordon nodded and together with Shearer, they squeezed through the crowd to the room at the end of the third-floor corridor. He took out the key to open the door, and the room before Shearer's eyes was a horrific mess.
Unexpectedly, there was no body in the room, or rather, no intact body.
The room was red, but the floor, ceiling, and furniture in the room should not be this color. The red was from the blood and shredded viscera.
There was said to be no body in the room because it had been evenly smeared throughout the room.
Batman stood in a corner, his eyes focused at the centre of the room, where a 'Magic Array'-like pattern, drawn using black ink, was the centre of attention. In the middle of the pattern was a pile of black ashes.
Shearer walked into the room and then stopped at the threshold. Gordon squeezed past him to close the door. Shearer used the tip of his umbrella to touch the ground, then lifted it up and saw the blood on it.
He raised his head to survey the room which was roughly twenty square metres. It seemed to be a guest room - floor-to-ceiling windows, three sofas on each of the two walls, a round table in the centre, and a desk and bookshelf on the farthest wall. This was a regular layout of an English guest room, same as ones in Shearer's manor.
The black magic array was located in the exact centre of the room, and the redness began spreading out from it to the lower half of the room, including all the floor, walls, and the ceiling at the centre of the room.
"I did not elaborate on the phone because I was not sure whether this could be termed as 'dismembering a corpse'. It's rather... too shredded." Gordon said, covering his mouth.
Shearer turned around and asked Gordon, "Do you have shoe covers?"
Gordon pulled shoe covers and gloves, essential tools for investigations, from his pocket. He also prepared a facemask and visor for himself, which Shearer declined when offered.
After putting on the shoe covers, Shearer walked into the room. He looked around the entire room, just as Batman was saying, "Cooper's corpse has been shattered and evenly spread all over the room, a completely different method from the previous three cases..."
Shearer, squatting and examining the floor not far from the magic circle, said: "The body was shattered? Nah, that's not entirely accurate."
"This is not called shattering?" Gordon asked, "We can't find one intact piece of the body. The blood, skin, bones, everything was crushed and spread across the room."