For a long moment, the room remained suspended in disbelief, still echoing with the audacity of Adam's words.
"Are you serious?" Mayor Hank Milton Hill stared at him, incredulous. "Adam, this isn't something to joke about."
Three to ten minutes to solve a serial case? It was beyond unrealistic. No officer in Gotham—hell, maybe no one in the country—had ever accomplished anything remotely close.
But Adam met the mayor's eyes, calm and unwavering. "I'm absolutely serious," he said. "I already have a strong idea of who's behind this. I just need a search warrant—and I need it within the next hour. If I get that, I can move immediately without wasting any time."
His voice carried a quiet certainty, but around him, the officers were stunned into silence. This had to be some kind of bluff.
Everyone in the room knew how difficult it was to get a search warrant—especially under U.S. law. To gain entry to a suspect's property, a detailed application had to be submitted, justifying the request with concrete evidence and a clear line of suspicion. Judges didn't hand out search warrants on vague hunches, and even then, approvals took time. Hours. Days, even.
In other words, Adam's proposal had a catch: he'd only solve the case in ten minutes—if the impossible condition of getting a warrant in sixty minutes was met. Two back-to-back miracles. It was the perfect escape route, veiled in ambition.
"Cut the crap," Weaver snapped, his frustration spilling over. "You need evidence for a warrant. Do you have any? You don't even understand how these patients were poisoned, and now you're making outrageous claims?"
It was clear Weaver believed Adam was trying to talk his way out of the case. To him, this whole performance was nothing more than misdirection—like a story from Aesop's Fables, where a man boasted that he could drink the entire ocean, only to later insist all the rivers be blocked first, or it didn't count.
Weaver wasn't about to let Adam wriggle free. He'd spent too much effort shoving him into this corner to watch him slip out now.
But Adam didn't flinch. Instead, he replied evenly, "It's not that complicated. These victims weren't killed by blunt force or weapons. They're suffering from neurotoxins. Dr. Hugo already confirmed that their gastrointestinal systems were clean—so if nothing was ingested, that leaves only one explanation: targeted neurological poisoning."
The room went quiet again.
Most of the officers looked puzzled, but Dr. Hugo's eyes lit up.
"The detection of neurotoxins is notoriously difficult," the doctor said slowly. "Our labs are still running blood panels, but... yes. What Detective Adam just described is very plausible."
That endorsement from Hugo—a respected figure in his field—carried weight. The other officers, uncertain themselves, held their tongues. They knew enough about toxins to recognize the symptoms: erratic behavior, hallucinations, elevated body temperatures. It wasn't out of the question.
Weaver, however, wasn't ready to back down. "If that's true, then why do the victims only show symptoms at specific times every day? Shouldn't the effects be constant?"
Adam gave a faint shrug. "It's about dosage—and method of delivery. The person behind this has likely been testing their poison on animals, calibrating effects. That would explain the timing. Maybe they miscalculated the human threshold, so the effects occur cyclically rather than continuously."
He paused, then added, "Also, as far as I know, Gotham has a provision for emergency search warrants. All that's required is a guarantor from a higher-ranking official. If the warrant's abused, the guarantor takes the fall."
Adam's gaze drifted back to Weaver. "And just now, Chief Weaver, you were so passionate in recommending me for this case. I was moved, truly. So now I'm confident you'll back me up—and apply for that emergency warrant."
The entire room turned, slowly, to look at Weaver.
For a second, he looked like he'd swallowed a nail.
This—this was the trap. The ten-minute boast, the demand for a warrant, the brilliant deduction—it was all leading here. Adam hadn't just stepped into the job; he'd flipped it. Now Weaver was in the hot seat.
If he backed Adam with the emergency warrant and the kid failed, he—Weaver—would take the blame. But if he refused, he'd contradict everything he just said in front of the mayor. Either way, he was stuck.
It was a masterstroke of political judo.
Mayor Milton Hill, meanwhile, glanced at his watch impatiently. The media had already picked up the story, and the morning editions would be hitting the streets any moment. By sunrise, the whole city would know there was a neurotoxic serial attacker on the loose. If the case wasn't solved quickly, his re-election campaign would take a beating.
"Well?" the mayor said sharply. "Detective Adam has the will—do you have the responsibility, Chief Weaver?"
Weaver felt the walls closing in. He opened his mouth, then hesitated. His instincts screamed that this was a trap. Adam was bluffing—had to be. No one could solve a case like this in ten minutes.
But he'd just spent the last five minutes showering Adam with praise, calling him the future of Gotham's police force. To backpedal now would be to humiliate himself completely—and in front of the press-hounded mayor, no less.
He looked into the mayor's eyes and saw it: that faint expression of disgust, the disappointment of a politician whose agenda was being delayed. Weaver wanted to shout, to expose Adam's bluff for what it was.
But he couldn't.
He was trapped. Caught in Adam's logic, skewered by his own pride.
And now the pressure—the risk—was all on him.
—
If you want to read 40+ chapters, visit my Ptttn.
ptttn.com/MiniMine352