S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 12

Witness of the Three Murderers 12 – Rabbit or Hunter

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Two thirty in the morning.

The two officers in charge of security at the police station were patrolling the roof with flashlights.

The two walked to the stairwell in front of the roof door, swept around with their flashlights, found nothing unusual, and prepared to go downstairs.

"Did you hear something?" A young officer asked suddenly.

The other froze, "What sound?"

"Whooshing..."

"It's the sound of the wind, right..." The police officer was startled, "Don't wildly guess, can't you see that the lights are on downstairs in the SCI office? Hurry up and go downstairs, who knows what will come out of Gongsun's forensic room? "

"But the sound seems to be coming from outside." That young police officer pointed to the ajar iron door to the roof.

The two looked at each other, warily walked to the door and listened with their ears turned to the side, and sure enough... they heard a gust of "whooshing" wind coming from outside.

"What is that sound?"

"Should we go and have a look?"

The two looked at each other. In the middle of the night, the roof of the police station was just a helipad, so there shouldn't be anything strange, right? But the door was supposed to be locked, how did it open?

"I'm a little bit scared." The young officer held his flashlight and pressed the gun on his belt.

The other opened the door, "Maybe it's the wind, it seems to be coming from the direction of the tarmac."

The two men cautiously walked up the steps and probed in the direction of the tarmac... They saw that in the middle of the empty roof of the building, there stood a white shadow, holding a black wooden sword in his hand and practising his sword. That sound of the wind... was the sound made by the wooden sword swinging around.

The two young police officers blinked and silently glanced at each other – Looking at the full white figure and then looking at the body, it was definitely Bai Yutang. What was he doing in the middle of the night?

As the two were puzzled, they heard a voice from behind, "What are you two doing?"

The two turned around and saw a glowing face.

"Waaaah!"

The two men screamed miserably and sat down on their butts on the steps... When they looked again, they saw Zhan Zhao holding a flashlight in his hand, shining it in his face and smiling at the two of them.

The two young police officers were so frightened that they hiccupped and pointed at Zhan Zhao, "Dr. Zhan, you scare us to death!"

At this moment, another voice came from behind them, "How's it going?"

The two turned around and saw Bai Yutang standing behind them, holding the sword in one hand and a white towel in the other hand as he wiped his sweat.

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Found it."

"So soon? I thought he'd have to investigate until dawn." Bai Yutang jumped down.

The two young police officers then saw him jump from above their heads and land beside Zhan Zhao, walking back with him.

"It was originally expected that Jiang Ping would be investigating until dawn on his own." Zhan Zhao spread his hands, "He enlisted Mia's help, and the two teamed up and cut the time in half."

Bai Yutang nodded, "Not bad."

The two young police officers looked back at the distance of these stairs behind them and were speechless. Would a normal person jump down like this...

The two men stood up with their flashlights and followed Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang down the stairs.

Then they saw Zhan Zhao turn around and wave at the two of them.

The two were quite happy, Doctor Zhan was really amiable. When they went out the door and were just about to close it, the door was grabbed by something.

The two jumped in surprise, turned around and saw two people appear behind them.

Zhao Hu yawned and walked in, and behind him was Ma Han who casually closed the door.

The two young police officers had the sense to move to the side. Okay, these two masters walk without a sound...

Downstairs, the two young police officers passed the door of the SCI office, looked in and drew a breath of cold air.

They saw that the ground and the desks were covered with all kinds of information. Xiao Bai Chi was flipping through a book in the pile of information, and behind him, there were three whiteboards lined up side by side. On the whiteboards were all kinds of photos of corpses, and Gongsun was sitting on a desk with his legs crossed, looking at those photos.

The two police officers hurriedly ran away – The SCI floor was always abnormal no matter how many times they came.

......

Bai Yutang was originally analysing the case with Zhan Zhao and the others, so why did he run upstairs to practise his sword? Because after the analysis of the case, Zhan Zhao came up with a method, so the investigation entered the stage of massive data analysis and everyone needed to wait for some time.

......

Travelling back in time a bit.

After Zhan Zhao and the others had gathered all the information from Kalin, they determined that this series of seemingly "accidental" murders was actually a series of serial killings. The necks of the deceased were all stuffed with undead needles, signifying vengeance, and after investigation, the deceased may have committed serious crimes in their lives but escaped justice.

Therefore, the preliminary inference was that the murderer is a type that often appeared in serial killers – the punisher.

Of course, it was only a preliminary conclusion, and the key clue to finding the punisher was the black butterfly, as well as the Grim Reaper who seems to follow the butterfly to the funerals of the dead.

However, all of this is vague, it is difficult to find the clues in a short period.

Therefore, Zhan Zhao's expertise in behavioural analysis was used.

From the large number of clues collected by Kalin, Zhan Zhao deduced an image... It wasn't the image of the murderer, but the image of the next victim!

The most recent case would be the White Gull Park murder, which indicates that the murderer is still committing crimes, and it was difficult to deduce when the next case will occur, which could happen at any time.

But there is a premise here, how does the killer find so many murderers who have escaped the net of justice? What are the ways to have access to such a large amount of data? Excluding a portion that may have been learned by chance, then generally speaking, there must be a common channel for the source of information.

Jiang Ping focused on searching for the source of the relevant information, only to discover that most of this information did not have relevant reports, so, the murderer's channel to get the data wasn't through the internet.

Since it wasn't through the internet, Bai Chi had gone through a large number of newspapers and other written materials, but didn't find any reports about these unsubstantiated cases, so where exactly did the murderer learn about these cases?

Zhan Zhao, after looking at the results of Jiang Ping and Bai Chi's fruitless and extensive search, nodded in satisfaction, stating – the absence of clues is a major clue!

Everyone was puzzled.

"If a person has ever committed a major crime such as killing someone, then that crime is undoubtedly the biggest secret of their life!" Zhan Zhao crossed his arms and began his analysis, "Who can best understand a person's secret?"

While everyone frowned, Zhan Zhao had already answered, "Of course it's ourselves!"

Everyone nodded along with Zhan Zhao's train of thought. Indeed, one's secrets were known by oneself.

Bai Yutang thought for a moment, "So it was those people themselves who told the murderer their secrets?"

"Then what kind of person is the murderer where many people would tell him their secrets... Could he be a priest or something like that?" Bai Chi was puzzled.

Gongsun, on the other hand, shook his head, "Not all of the deceased are religious, and some of them don't seem like the type that would repent!"

"Not a priest, not a psychiatrist! Nor was it some volunteer priest." Zhan Zhao smiled as he ruled out all possibilities, "A person, good or bad, who would they tell their secrets, their sins, to?

The crowd glanced at each other again.

Luo Tian asked, "Spouse?"

Everyone shook their heads, many people hide their secrets from their significant other...

Zhan Zhao once again answered, "Themself."

The crowd froze, "Themself?"

Bai Yutang frowned, "Tell yourself?"

The rest of the SCI crowd also tilted their heads, looking at Zhan Zhao with the same expression as the small dogs collectively waiting for instructions in a circus.

In the lounge, Zhao Jue, who had come to join in the fun, saw this scene, hugged his book and laughed as he sprawled on the sofa. His shoulders shook, and he pounded on the sofa cushions as he muffled a grunt, "So stupid, hahahaha..."

Everyone looked at Zhao Jue resentfully.

Bai Yutang seemed to have thought of a possibility and asked Zhan Zhao with less certainty, "You mean... search?"

Zhan Zhao clapped his hands – Correct!

"Search?" Bai Chi didn't understand why he couldn't understand with such a high IQ.

Bai Yutang said, "Naturally, you don't want others to know a secret that only you know, so you will repeatedly confirm if this is something that only you know."

Everyone thought about it, and something seemed to be on the verge of coming out.

Zhan Zhao smiled, "Humans have a certain commonality, their attitude towards something that cannot be erased is generally similar, they care yet escape it! The case of escaping is deliberately avoiding it, but escaping is unrealistic. If you've killed someone, it's not as if forgetting about it makes it possible to make it so that you haven't killed. These people who have killed go on to lead relatively normal lives, and so the shadow of the past haunts them even more. As time passes, they will repeatedly try to make sure that the secret is known only to themselves and no one else in order to move on with their lives without fear. Thus, they go back to periodically search for that event that once happened."

Everyone understood what Zhan Zhao meant.

Xiao Bai Chi clapped his hands, "In other words, as long as the murderer identifies a certain number of events and then masters a certain amount of computer skills, he can monitor whether or not someone is searching for this case according to a certain pattern, thus choosing the victim!"

Zhan Zhao nodded.

Zhao Hu frowned and tugged on Ma Han who was beside him, "I think I understand, but I'm still a bit stuck, analyse it again for me in Chinese."

Ma Han looked at Bai Yutang, which meant – You're the only one who can speak human here, I'm relying on you.

Bai Yutang thought for a moment and said, "Let's say there was an accidental death case three years ago. At that time, there might be people searching for it, but after a year almost everyone would have forgotten about the case, and after three years, even fewer people would remember the case... If after five or six years, there are still people searching regularly for this case, then there are only two possibilities, they are related to the deceased or they are the murderer. After excluding the related people, there is a high possibility that the murderer is the one left, so it only takes a little bit of investigation..."

"Wow!"

This time, the entire SCI team understood.

"No wonder the cases all seem to be delayed!" Luo Tian said, "Several of the deceased committed the crime many years ago, but only got their so-called retribution years later. It turns out that this method was used to audition the victims!"

Jiang Ping said, "The person who can do this kind of surveillance should have certain skills, how are we going to find them?"

"Since he is watching for rabbits," Zhan Zhao winked, "we can follow his lead and go catch rabbits."

Jiang Ping suddenly realised, "Ah! We can use the same method to find his next prey!"

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Maybe we can even help solve an unsolved case and seek justice for the dead and so forth."

Gongsun agreed, "This is indeed quite a feasible method! Even though those deceased were the victims, if the crimes they committed back then are real, then they do deserve to be punished by the law."

"But there might be more than one future victim found this way!" Luo Tian cautioned.

Zhan Zhao nodded, "That's why I think you guys should screen first, and after the audition, we'll re-select and eventually see who gets targeted!"

......

That is to say, after going through the aforementioned process, Zhan Zhao, Bai Yutang and the others began to kill time, while Jiang Ping entered the big data screening stage.

Jiang Ping was too overwhelmed to do it alone, so Zhan Zhao called Mia. After a very brief few exchanges with Mia, this girl with amazing comprehension and intellect began to analyse the data together with Jiang Ping and thus shortened the complicated working time by half.

As for Bai Chi, who was searching for clues in the ocean of data, he was following Zhan Zhao's request to look for another clue that the crowd couldn't understand – a theft case.

‿︵‿︵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: January 11, 2024 by Angel

Edited: March 15, 2024 by Angel