Chapter 961: Another Murder Case

"Ugh!"

Chen Shi sat in the office, rubbing his face helplessly. Lin Dongxue knocked on the door and came in. "Captain, are you being depressed here alone? I’ve already heard what happened between you and Captain Peng."

"Was what I did terribly wrong?"

Lin Dongxue sat down in front of him. "There’s nothing right or wrong about this. Think about it from another angle. If something like this happened to you and I, would you want me to disappear or be found sooner?"

Chen Shi smiled bitterly. "I don't even want to think about it."

"That's right. No matter how it’s delivered, this kind of thing is always hard to accept. Give Captain Peng some time!"

"That’s true."

Chen Shi nodded and picked up a piece of paper. "I sorted out the accidental death cases. I found that this man always commits crimes on Wednesdays. This shows that he has a stable job and that committing murder is his 'part-time job'."

Chen Shi asked Lin Dongxue to come over, and he laid out a map on the coffee table next to them. He had marked it with many dots of different colors.

"The scope of his activity is mainly confined to the Longyang District. If these are indiscriminate and unpremeditated murders, I think his place of residence is probably around here according to criminal geography!" Chen Shi pointed out an area.

"What about these other points?"

"Those are cases that don’t conform to his criminal behavioral pattern."

"He didn’t do it if they didn't conform? What if he isn’t the only one committing the murders?"

"He isn’t alone?" Chen Shi considered. "But murders for pleasure are rarely committed by gangs. The murderer is more inclined to enjoy this kind of pleasure alone. If it was a gang committing the crimes, they would have other motives, but I can’t see the point of killing these ordinary people."

"Today is Thursday. If the murderer only commits crimes on Wednesdays, there’s still a week away from his next crime. Let's continue investigating the male domestic abuser's case. Do you have enough energy to investigate the two cases together?"

"Male domestic abuser?" Chen Shi had a headache just from thinking about it. "If the next case doesn’t happen, we have nothing to investigate. There are really too few clues."

"The 'Life Function' brought back from the scene hasn't been analyzed yet, right?"

"Yes, I wanted to show it to Old Peng originally, but then this kind of thing happened."

"Could the Information Department decipher it?"

"Let’s try them!"

Thus, the two took this piece of paper to the Information Department, and asked their colleagues there to help analyze it. The Information Department’s officers who had science backgrounds took turns looking at them one by one, but they were all confused. They said that the proof was written messily, and that there were many parts that were undefined variables. Basically, they couldn’t see what it was driving at.

At this time, Xu Xiaodong hurriedly found the two of them and exclaimed, "Captain, there’s a case!"

"Let’s go!"

The police officers arrived at a coffee shop near People's Square. The people in the shop were gathered around in a circle. On the ground lay a gorgeously-dressed woman in a twisted posture with a horrifying face that had blood at the corners of her mouth.

Seeing that the police had arrived, the shop manager heaved a sigh of relief and said to Chen Shi: "This woman is a regular customer at our shop. She would come and sit for a while every morning. This morning I was washing the cups when I suddenly heard a ‘dong’ noise. I wondered if something had fallen on the floor. I looked out from behind the counter. She was struggling on the ground and stopped moving after a while. It scared me to death... It shouldn’t be food poisoning, because the coffee she drank was machine-ground by me and there were several other guests who drank it before her."

"Which table was hers?"

The shop manager pointed at a table with half a cup of coffee on it as well as an unfinished tuna sandwich. Chen Shi picked them up and sniffed them. There was no peculiar smell. To be on the safe side, he let someone put them away and take them back for testing.

The forensic officer accompanying the team looked at the corpse and said, "Captain Chen, the deceased died within the last two hours and she died of poisoning."

"Are you sure?" Chen Shi squatted down to have a closer look.

"There are scratches on the neck, discoloration of the lips, bloodshot eyes, and vomit in the throat, which are obvious characteristics of death by poisoning."

Chen Shi immediately lifted up the deceased’s head and checked it. He saw an obvious needle prick hole on the back of her neck, which was very close to that found on the male domestic abuser. He asked Lin Dongxue to come over and have a look. Lin Dongxue said in surprise, "It’s exactly the same killing technique. It was obviously done by the same person, but it's only a day later?"

𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"If it really was him, he would definitely have left something behind."

Chen Shi flipped over the coat of the deceased and checked her handbag. He found an envelope in it. When he opened it, the words "Life Function" came into view, and there were dense formulas below as before.

"Sure enough, he’s working alone!"

Chen Shi looked around. "Her seat was over there. How could she die here...?" Then he noticed a back door, walked over and opened it. He found that there was no lock, and there was an alley outside.

Chen Shi asked the store manager, "Is your back door always unlocked?"

"That’s the unloading bay, so it’s not for the guests. However, Little Ya often comes and knows about it."

"The deceased's name is Little Ya?"

"Yes, it is."

"Tell me everything you know about her."

The shop manager recalled that Little Ya should be a white-collar worker in a nearby office building. She should be a high-income type. She drove a luxury car every day. The clothes she wore never seemed to be the same, and her hairstyle also changed every week. People who often drank coffee with her were also men who seemed to have successful careers.

Such a woman would naturally be the focus wherever she went. The store manager didn't chat much with her, and only greeted her occasionally.

"So did she come here in the morning to wait for someone, or did she sit alone?" Chen Shi asked.

The shop manager thought for a while. "I remember she said, 'I’ll call for you again later' when she placed the order. I guess she needed to meet a client, but I didn't see anyone coming even up till the incident happened."

"Do you know where she works?"

"I don't, and I haven't heard her mention it either, but there’s always a nice scent on her body. Saying this may be a bit disrespectful to the deceased but I think the scent is too strong sometimes. It doesn’t smell like perfume."

Chen Shi thanked him and the manager left. Chen Shi said to Lin Dongxue, "Although I don't know what 'Life Function' is, I think the murderer wants to tell us that this person was killed for a reason. The deceased must be bearing a 'crime' equal to that of the male domestic abuser."

"We found a person in the surveillance footage."

"Let’s go and see."

The security camera in the shop faced outside. At about 9:30, a man in a suit and a bow tie walked to the window, looked inside for a while, then suddenly turned and left.

Rewinding it, Little Ya had walked in half an hour ago, after which three or four guests came in one after another.

According to the estimated time of death, Little Ya had probably just died when the bow tie man came. Chen Shi said, "This may be the person she was waiting for. He chose to leave when he saw that something happened to her. By the way, I noticed a detail. Her handbag was zipped closed. The deceased struggled violently after the incident, so the envelope should have been placed inside before her death. It’s very likely that Little Ya had put it in herself. In this case, the murderer had pretended to be the person Little Ya wanted to see."

"Little Ya didn’t know what the person she wanted to meet looks like?" Lin Dongxue asked.

"From the present point of view, she probably didn’t know him. Look at the person in the video just then. He was dressed like a secretary. He was probably just delivering things on behalf of someone."