bookbashuk Chapter 25 Detective Segment Part 2
Chapter 25 Detective Segment Part 2
Chapter 25 Detective Segment Part Two
Rewind to that afternoon of the horror and Spider-Man battle. Sheriff George Stacy stood at the door of an old apartment building in Harlem, taking a deep breath. Cracks crawled across the mottled walls, like scars etched onto the lives of the city's underprivileged. As he raised his hand to knock, his knuckles made a soft, muffled sound on the peeling paint.
The person who opened the door was a gray-haired Black woman, Herman Schulz's mother. Her eyes were like a stagnant pool, as if she had long since surrendered to fate.
"Mrs. Schultz, I believe you already know what your son has done."
George's voice was soft, yet it cut through the silence like a knife. The room reeked of cheap coffee and old furniture. He hadn't taken the mother to the police station; he'd chosen to visit her in person. His colleagues were downstairs, ready to respond to any potential alarm—but Herman clearly had no intention of going home.
"If you're asking about my son's whereabouts, officer, I know nothing," the old woman said numbly, rubbing the edge of her apron. Her voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping. "I never care where they went, what they did, or whether they died in the street."
"My father died in a gang shootout, my brother was shot dead, my eldest son was shot dead by the police, and my second son was stabbed in the lung in an alley and bled to death."
"...I'm so sorry, ma'am."
“I’m not blaming you, officer. This is just the ordinary life of people living here.” Mrs. Herman looked up, her eyes cloudy. “But Herman is different. He always felt he didn’t belong here. He wasn’t one of us. We didn’t have a common language, officer. So, do you think Herman would say anything to us?”
George's pen hovered over the notebook. The sound of an ambulance siren came from outside the window, growing louder as it approached, then gradually fading away.
"I can't give you anything, officer." She turned and walked towards the stove, her hunched back resembling a withered tree bent by the weight of wind and snow. "Because Herman... has already gotten everything he wanted."
George hesitated for a moment, then noticed a stack of money inside the cupboard. He silently closed the cupboard door, nodded, and left Herman's house.
-
The sunlight slanted into the empty clubroom after school. The "Super Detective Club," which boasted over twenty members, still only had Jessica and three newcomers sitting around an old desk. Peter suddenly pushed aside the old DVD of "The ABC Murders" that he had planned to show and pulled out a USB drive.
"I have a new proposal, how about we try catching the horror genre?"
Jessica nearly choked on her cola: "You mean, the four of us high schoolers are going to arrest a supervillain who can blow up an overpass?"
"We're just doing a club activity! We're not actually going offline to arrest anyone. What could be more meaningful than deducing the identity of a fugitive supervillain, friends? Neither the Avengers nor the police have caught him!"
"We don't have many clues. What are we going to deduce? The exaggerated reporting in the Daily Bugle?"
Peter simply smiled in response to Jessica's question.
"I have a friend, well, her father is the Midtown Police Chief, in charge of this case." Peter fabricated a source for his information, though it wasn't entirely fabricated. Peter Parker might not be able to get any information about the horror case from Chief Stacy, but Spider-Man could.
Jessica, unaware of the details, immediately brightened up: "You mean... you can get your hands on the latest internal police information?"
"It's not always possible to get it, but this time it's definitely possible."
As Peter spoke, he plugged the USB drive into the computer, and then the blue light from the projector illuminated the screen, displaying photos and related information about Hermann Schulz.
It's really ridiculous. Before Peter faced Herman, he didn't know much about the villain. With so many villains in Spider-Man, who cares about horror? The 94 Spider-Man didn't even have his own series or origin story. In the live-action movie, he was just a minor character with crossbones gloves. The Marvel Spider-Man game, which has the most screen time, not only doesn't have an origin story, but it also doesn't include the Sinister Six.
Even the chameleon gets a solo episode! No horror elements!
If I read more comics, I might actually learn about these obscure characters, but in my past life I was a Yunzi (a character from a Chinese novel), so you'd be better off sending me to the Three Kingdoms period than to the Marvel universe...
Peter mentally grumbled as he played the prepared PowerPoint presentation: "Thriller, real name Herman Schultz, a New Yorker, born in Harlem, Manhattan..."
"Wait, it says here that he only has a junior high school education."
Looking at the projected resume, Harry naturally asked, "Does this mean his equipment was made by someone else?"
"No, his equipment was homemade, and his criminal accomplices were absolutely certain of that."
Seeing the completely distrustful looks from his companions, Peter continued to explain.
"Although Herman only has a junior high school education, it was because his family prevented him from going to school. He has a very strong engineering background. Before becoming a horror movie star, he used similar shockwave weapons and robbed the bank where he fought Spider-Man, where he was defeated and arrested by Spider-Man."
Jessica immediately asked the next question: "When?"
"At the police station, he picked the lock with a hairpin, knocked out a policeman, stole his equipment, and left the station."
After hearing this, the group was completely bewildered, unsure whether to say that the NYPD's capabilities were truly inadequate or that this person was indeed a talent who had escaped immediately after being arrested.
"So, during his fight with Spider-Man, in the middle..."
"A week later."
Even Amadeus was shocked.
"You mean, someone with only a junior high school education, immediately after being arrested, managed to modify a suit of equipment comparable to Spider-Man's in just one week?"
After listening, Amadeus couldn't help but mutter to himself, "Aren't geniuses in New York a bit cheap...?"
"Okay, we've got something." Jessica keenly grasped something: "Guys, after this guy escaped, he built a suit of armor and then went to the bank where Spider-Man beat him up. He didn't do anything else in between, did he? He didn't rob anything from that bank, did he, Peter?"
"Uh, yes."
Peter then recalled something: "Actually, I heard from Sheriff George that he was initially very calm after being arrested, but during the interrogation, two officers didn't believe him when they heard that he had made the equipment himself, and they laughed at him. After that, he escaped from prison."
"So, we are dealing with a megalomaniac, and perhaps also an inferiority complex. He has some inferiority complex because he has not received a good education, but wants to receive one. He is also easily angered when others do not acknowledge his hard-won invention."
"That's why he sought out Spider-Man." Harry understood. "He did it for revenge?"
"Or maybe it's just about proving themselves." Jessica said, then shrugged. "What's the point? The police have access to all this stuff."
"But the police haven't found him, and neither have the Avengers, so knowing that's useless," Harry added. "We have to find him, or... lure him out."
"What if Spider-Man provokes him?"
In the ensuing silence, Peter suddenly brought it up, and Jessica was the first to react: "What?"
"When Thriller fought Spider-Man, he almost lost. He destroyed the overpass, allowing Spider-Man to rescue people, and then escaped. So, he didn't actually defeat Spider-Man; he ran away." Peter rubbed his fingers. "If Spider-Man were to provoke him again, would it make a difference?"
"perhaps……"
Harry scratched his head. "But how are we going to notify Spider-Man?"
"There's a website, a website where people express their gratitude to Spider-Man, because nobody knows who Spider-Man is." Peter smiled. "We could probably put our speculation on that website, and if Spider-Man sees it, he'll know what to do."
I've finished watching Thunder Force, it's very good, just two questions.
First, something big has happened in New York again: Spider-Man has disappeared again, and nobody knows where he went.
Secondly, even though the Winter Soldier believed that the people of Wakanda were human, and Captain America 4 even discovered adamantium, in the end the American agent still used his shield that the Sentinel had bent, and didn't even straighten it - he didn't even think about making a new one himself, wasn't his shield just made of ordinary metal?
(End of this chapter)