S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 2 Chapter 13

The Innocent Murderer 13 - Inner Ghost

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"What did you think of?" Bai Yutang was curious.

"Hmm..." Zhan Zhao touched his chin and got up from the bed. He ran to the storage room and brought out three boxes.

"What are those?" Bai Yutang looked at the boxes in confusion. He had always thought it was a shoe box. Zhan Zhao opened the box and saw that it was full of letters.

"They are all written by readers. The editor sorted them out for me." Zhan Zhao whispered and looked up at Bai Yutang.

"Cat..." Bai Yutang pointed at the three shoe boxes, "Why didn't I know about these."

"You are so jealous..." Zhan Zhao whispered, "if you knew you would have burned them all!"

"Mhmm..." Bai Yutang raised his eyebrows, and said in his heart, I'll burn them when you finish reading them!

Zhan Zhao held the envelopes up to the light one by one as if he was looking at the contents of each one.

"What are you looking for?" Bai Yutang was puzzled.

"I remember that there were a few letters with a few petal-shaped objects in them."

"Petals?" Bai Yutang also held the envelope and pointed to the light. "Cat, you haven't opened these letters?"

"Mhmm... Each one has a photo, which is very interesting." Zhan Zhao said honestly, "Ah! I found them!" As he said this, he pulled out three letters with the same pink envelope and showed them to Bai Yutang. "These letters."

"The earliest one was mailed half a year ago." Bai Yutang raised his eyebrows, seeing that there was no sender's address on the envelope, only the name "student".

"Heh... this name." Bai Yutang shook his head and opened the envelope. Sure enough, a few petals slipped out from inside, but their colour was black or brown rather than red. Bai Yutang has been a policeman for a long time, and he is naturally familiar with this colour; this is the colour that blood turns to after it has dried up.

Zhan Zhao quickly took out the letter paper and read it.

"What did they write?" Bai Yutang leaned forward curiously and looked at it with Zhan Zhao.

The letter in front of him was very long, with many pages. It was neatly written, with tables and pictures in it, and it looked like a student's homework. It was really worthy of the name "student". At the speed Zhan Zhao was reading, he finished reading the page before Bai Yutang could read a few lines. He decided to give up and just wait for Zhan Zhao to tell him after reading it. He lowered his head to study the few petals intently.

"Huh..." Zhan Zhao quickly read all three letters, put down the letter paper and let out a long sigh.

"What's the matter?" Bai Yutang looked up at him, "What did the letter say?"

"These letters perfectly represent a person's psychological evolution process!" Zhan Zhao held up the first letter, which has four pages, and said, "When writing this letter, they were curious and interested in psychology but made a mistake: researching students."

He picked up the second letter, two pages, "This letter, they have gone further and further on the wrong path, and they have begun to overturn their entire outlook on life."

"This last one." Zhan Zhao picked up the letter paper that was only the size of dried tofu. "They are already abnormal."

Bai Yutang took the three letters, looked at them, and asked Zhan Zhao, "What else?"

"The first letter." Zhan Zhao pointed to the letter and said, "This person almost memorised my book and questioned some points. The rough idea is that they are very interested in some topics that I deliberately avoided."

"A topic that you deliberately avoided?" Bai Yutang was also interested, "What topics did you deliberately avoid in the book?"

"For example, some details of psychological crimes, hypnotic techniques, and subconscious hints. They are all professional techniques that are not very easy to learn." Zhan Zhao said, "I'm afraid that someone will go out and use it after only learning part of the technique then hurt themself and others."

"Mhmm," Bai Yutang nodded thoughtfully, "but it seems that they are more interested in the techniques that are not made known to the public."

"Let's put these aside for now. Look here." Zhan Zhao pointed at the last line of the letter, "Look at what they wrote, 'I know you may not be able to read this letter, or that you will not take it seriously, but I still want to say this, I LOVE YOU!'"

Bai Yutang curled his lips, "They fell in love just from reading your book?"

"Then there is the second letter." Zhan Zhao pointed to the second letter. "In this letter, many of their own psychological research results are about putting the techniques into practice. Look at their last sentence! "

When Bai Yutang looked at it, he saw the last sentence said: "If I use the method I researched to commit a crime, can you catch me?"

"Catch..." Bai Yutang was dumbfounded, and turned to the last one, "Is there a "body" in it?"

In the last letter, there was only one sentence, "It seems that all theories are just empty talk... If you want to do research, you must experiment! Let me create a body."

At this time, the two were completely shocked.

Bai Yutang was stunned for a long time before he came back to his senses, "Cat, is this kid doing an experiment?"

Zhan Zhao frowned and walked to the sofa to sit down, shook his head and said, "They are not only doing the experiment by themself, but they also want me to do it with them."

"What is it for?" Bai Yutang sat next to him, "This is also a clue. I will hand it over to the colleagues in the forensic department tomorrow so that they can find the source of this letter. That way we can check it."

"Mhmm." Zhan Zhao nodded. "This person should be near us." He whispered. "Or there is a direct source of information, otherwise how can they know our whereabouts clearly, or even deliver things to the door of our house?"

"It's really suspicious." Bai Yutang stretched out his hand to collect the things and put them in the evidence bag, "Study it again when we go back to the police station tomorrow morning, you are too tired tonight!" After speaking, he took Zhan Zhao and walked back to the room to lie down on the bed.

The two of them laid back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling in a daze. After half an hour, the two gave up on their messy thoughts, hugged each other and fell asleep.

In the early morning of the next day, the two of them left the house feeling refreshed. Sure enough, they found that the bloody flowers at the door were still there, but the blood was all dried up. They packed it in evidence bags and the two strolled back to the police station.

The rest of the SCI members also returned to the police station. As expected, Bao Zheng attached great importance to the case last night. After a meeting with the higher-ups, he left after saying one sentence, "If you can't solve this case in half a month, you will all be cleaning the toilets!" 

When Bao Zheng left, the remaining people stared with big eyes. Zhao Hu poked Ma Han and whispered, "Say, why do you think he threatens our boss with cleaning the toilets every time?"

Ma Han didn't answer, but glared at him.

"Did Gongsun's autopsy result come out?" Bai Yutang asked.

"It probably will soon." Luo Tian said, "Gongsun stayed in the forensic room all night..." As soon as his voice fell, the door was pushed open with a bang, and Gongsun rushed in aggressively. His face was pale, and his eyes were bloodshot with dark circles under them and a murderous look in them. 

Everyone was obediently silent, waiting for Gongsun to tell them the result of the autopsy.

Bang! He slapped the information on the table, and Gongsun gasped and cursed, "Damn it, we were fooled!"

The other people looked at each other and a chilling atmosphere spread. Bai Yutang asked, "How were we fooled?"

"The two corpses contain drugs which are similar to those used for rape!" Gongsun sat down angrily. "This crime is not at the same level as the 'I LOVE YOU' case!"

"What?" Zhan Zhao frowned, "There's drugs?"

"There's more!" Gongsun said, taking out the photo of the corpse of the 'I LOVE YOU' case, "Look at them. At first, we thought that these fingerprints were bruises, right?"

"Mhmm." Everyone nodded.

"They aren't from cutting the corpses." Gongsun said, reaching out and grabbing Zhao Hu's arm. "Let's say I make a cut here!" He said, referring to the position of the upper arm artery. "If I wanted to drain the blood out, naturally I would squeeze here!"

"There are also ones on the legs and neck. All the bruises were caused by draining the blood out! The blood was drained first and then the corpse was dismembered!"

"Blood..." Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked at each other, and immediately remembered the bloody flower last night.

"I wondered about it on that day; almost all the blood in the corpse was drained, but the blood on the ground was less than three people. It turned out to be drained out and taken away!" Gongsun pointed to the corpses of Pang Xiaoqin and An Lingli again and said, "The handling of these two bodies is much simpler and rougher than in the first case! It feels like it was not done by the same person at all!"

"This is evil!" Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao, and the two took out the bunch of flowers and the few letters and put them in front of everyone.

"What's this?" Gongsun picked up the bunch of black flowers and looked at it. He called a young officer from the forensic department to take it for some tests. He compared it with the blood of the previous corpses to see if he could find the source.

"According to the letters, the criminal should be one person." Bai Chi looked puzzled, "But why is this happening?"

"Impossible." Zhan Zhao shook his head. "This murderer is almost obsessed with hypnosis, suggestion and so on... how could they use such unprofessional methods of medicine?"

As he was talking, Lu Fang walked in with a black face and said, "Something happened!"

"Why are so many things happening recently?" Bai Yutang frowned.

"Watch the TV!" Lu Fang stretched out his hand to turn on the TV and they saw the report that was currently being broadcast on the news program, "According to reliable sources, a series of recent cases are criminal acts aimed at challenging the police. The murderers left messages on the scene of the crime: 'I LOVE YOU', 'catch me', 'body', and others. The identity of the victims also seem to be randomly selected. The craziest thing is that according to this group of photos, the murderer once sent a warning letter to Dr. Zhan of SCI saying that he wanted to use humans for the experiment, but it did not cause the police to act. This time it has led to the tragic killing of a police officer's daughters in front of many other policemen."

Bai Yutang didn't understand at first, and looked back at Lu Fang, "How can they know so many details?"

Lu Fang sighed, "All major newspapers and TV stations have received the video material this morning, and the news on major portal websites is even more detailed... Obviously someone released it deliberately!"

"Who would do that?" Zhao Hu stared.

Zhan Zhao looked at him and flatly said, "The murderer."

As soon as his voice fell, the phone rang in the SCI office. Jiang Ping went to answer it, and was stunned. He quickly turned it onto speakerphone and then walked over to the computer to track the source of the call.

When everyone saw his actions, they all concentrated on listening. After a while, there was a voice that had been digitally changed. They said in a smiley tone, "Hello, Dr. Zhan, and everyone from SCI."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at each other and asked, "Who are you?"

"The murderer." The person smiled softly, "I was the one who did the dismemberment case, the split body case, and the body swapping case."

Bai Yutang frowned and sneered, "The case of dismemberment has been solved."

"Haha..." The person laughed twice and did not answer, but changed the subject in an instant, "Dr. Zhan, let's play a game."

"What game?" Zhan Zhao asked coldly.

"First of all, you have to know that I do everything for one purpose." The person was a little excited when they spoke.

"What's your purpose?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"I LOVE YOU!" The person on the other end of the phone said slowly.

Zhan Zhao sneered, "I don't see it."

"Hey, you will see it later." The voice continued, "Let me talk about the rules of the game."

"Say it."

"It's very simple! You have to catch me in the shortest time, otherwise, you will find more and more bodies!"

After speaking, he hung up the phone and the busy tone rang out.

Bai Yutang looked up and asked Jiang Ping: "Have you found it?"

Jiang Ping's hands shook and he stammered, "Found... found it..."

"Where?" Bai Yutang felt that his mood was weird.

"It's... in this building!"

...

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: March 15, 2021

Re-edited: December 7, 2023