S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 75

Countdown from the Murderer 05 – Locked Room

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After Bai Yutang heard Zhan Zhao's words, he directly brought Ma Han and Zhao Hu into the restaurant.

At this moment, there were many busy employees in the restaurant who were setting up plates.

At the bar sat a man in a black jumper, drinking.

Bai Yutang and the others walked up behind him, but he didn't notice.

There was a cell phone on the table, and the person drinking was none other than Liu Tian.

Bai Yutang patted him. Liu Tian turned back, looking like he was pretty intoxicated. Seeing Bai Yutang, he drunkenly pointed at him with his liquor glass and said, "Wow! Handsome man! What company are you from?"

Bai Yutang looked at the sky and took out his ID to show him.

But Liu Tian was already drunk and a little confused. Squinting his eyes, his face was almost stuck to the ID, and his mouth slurred, "S... S, I... S"

Behind Bai Yutang, Zhao Hu whispered to Ma Han, "Xiao Ma Ge, this doesn't look like a murderer."

Ma Han also doubted whether this drunkard had the ability to kill and dismember a body. If after killing and dismembering the body he was still here to drink until he was drunk, then his mental quality was really something.

"Do you know Li Feng?" Bai Yutang asked Liu Tian.

Liu Tian had a look of 'amnesia', "Li Feng... Li..."

"Did you just see a dead man?"

When Bai Yutang said that, Liu Tian's expression suddenly changed. He opened his mouth and started to cry while talking nonsense, "Murder! Murder! That woman! It's all because of that woman Wang Meiyun!"

Bai Yutang patiently tried to communicate with the drunk man, "What did you see just now?"

"I..." Liu Tian patted himself on the back and stammered, "I just went to deliver a cheque to that detective."

While saying that, he took out a cheque from his pocket and placed it on the table.

Bai Yutang glanced at it and slightly raised an eyebrow – The amount was quite substantial.

"As soon as I walked in... there was no one in the room, but there was a sound in the bathroom, so I thought ah... must be taking a bath!" Liu Tian waved his hand, yelling, "I put the cheque on the table, but I couldn't go ah, I had to wait for him to come out, I also wanted the photos ah, video ah, help Wang Meiyun take them away... But I wait ah wait ah wait ah..."

Bai Yutang reached out somewhat helplessly and squeezed his eyebrows, asking, "Stop waiting, what about after that?"

"After that..." Liu Tian froze for a moment, then a look of horror appeared on his face, "After that, the sound of water didn't stop for a while ah, how could a big man take a bath and wash for so long ah... I just walked to the bathroom door, then found that the door was not closed. I opened it a crack, looked inside... I looked... ah! Murder! Ah..."

Liu Tian's harsh scream caused all the waiters in the restaurant to look over.

Bai Yutang reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him to clear his head, "What did you see?! Tell me in detail!"

"Blood! There's blood everywhere! There's blood all over the floor!" Liu Tian's hands kept scratching, "That detective, his head was lying on the sink, and his body was lying on the ground, full of blood..."

"Wait a minute." Bai Yutang asked, "You said his body was on the floor? What about the bathtub?"

"The bathtub... there's someone in the bathtub!" Liu Tian mysteriously lowered his voice and said, "I saw that the shower curtain was drawn, and there was a shadow of a person, someone was showering!"

Zhao Hu and Ma Han looked at each other.

"I..." Liu Tian said while covering his mouth with both hands, "I just hurried ah, I hurried to cover my mouth... I backed out! "

"If you retreated, why did you go back again?" Bai Yutang asked.

"Go back? Oh right! I went back! I forgot my cheque on the table!" Liu Tian grinned, snot and tears streaming down his face, which made Bai Yutang feel sick to see.

"What did you see when you went back?" There was nothing he could do about the drunkard, Bai Yutang had to try to be patient as he continued to ask.

"I saw.... gone!" Liu Tian had a confused look on his face and cocked his head, "That detective was gone! Do you guys think... the dead can crawl up on their own... and put their own heads on, and then... blegh~"

Liu Tian said, then suddenly lunged forward and vomited.

Fortunately, Bai Yutang reacted quickly and dodged out of the way.

Zhao Hu and Ma Han were also a bit speechless as they looked at Liu Tian in that awful state.

After that, Liu Tian was basically unable to carry on a normal conversation. He would vomit and cry at the same time, while screaming and having an emotional breakdown.

Zhao Hu and Ma Han escorted him to Wang Meiyun's room and assigned two police officers to guard the door.

Li Tian fell asleep. Wang Meiyun and Qian Fu's faces became even more ugly, and they sat on the sofa without saying a word.

Zhan Zhao also heard the conversation just now and seemed to be interested in the murderer's actions, "That is to say, the murderer didn't leave immediately after killing the person, but instead put the head on the sink, threw the body on the floor, pulled the shower curtain closed himself and took a shower in the bathtub, then came out, threw the body into the bathtub, and left halfway through dismembering the body?"

"Probably something along those lines." Bai Yutang frowned.

"Then what was the point of him taking a shower?" Zhan Zhao felt that this kind of behaviour was completely in line with the standards of a pervert, and it wasn't just any pervert, so...

Zhan Zhao asked Bai Yutang curiously, "What exactly does it have to do with Mark Fan?"

Bai Yutang then felt his brain ache. Was this considered a side issue or was there a connection between the two cases?

"There's an exact time period though, right?" Zhao Hu counted. From the time Liu Tian left 2603, to the time he went back to pick up the cheque, a total of only half an hour had passed.

"The murderer was no longer in 2603 when he went in for the second time." Bai Yutang told Jiang Ping to check the surveillance.

But the most confused person at the moment was Jiang Ping. He had checked the surveillance several times. In the short section of video between Liu Tian's departure and his return, he had gone back and forth and watched it frame by frame, not to mention people, not even a ghost had floated out from 2603.

"No one went in or out!" Jiang Ping and the several technicians responsible for checking the surveillance looked like they had seen a ghost.

"Is the surveillance intact?" Bai Yutang asked as he led Zhan Zhao and the others back to 2603.

"The surveillance is intact!"

Jiang Ping had already started doubting life a bit, "In the morning, Zhou Ping knocked on the door, and Li Feng came out to open the door. Later, the one who went in and out was Liu Tian."

Back at the door of 2603, the people from the forensics department had almost finished collecting evidence, Li Feng's body had also been transported away, and Gongsun was still collecting blood samples in the bathroom.

Probably a little confused about the distribution of blood at the scene, Gongsun stood at the doorway, directing Xiatian and Ma Xin to draw various blood spatter lines to find the haemorrhage point, but it never felt quite right.

Bai Yutang, Ma Han and Zhao Hu entered the room and opened all the cupboards and cabinets, but of course, there was no murderer hidden inside.

The room's glass windows could only be opened about thirty centimetres at the top, which was meant for ventilation, and it was basically impossible for an adult to burrow in or out through it.

......

In the washroom, Gongsun, who had heard Zhan Zhao describe what Liu Tian had seen, was completely shocked, "You mean that the murderer took a bath first, then set up such a messy scene? Then he split the body in half and disappeared into thin air?"

Zhan Zhao nodded.

"Then it's not an impulse killing, right..." Gongsun asked Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Not only was it not impulsive, the murderer was also very calm and had planned it well, he deliberately set up such a chaotic scene. Sometimes, it's harder to find clues in a chaotic scene than a tidy one."

"No wonder it feels weird." Gongsun had the police officers from the forensic department take off the shower curtain and take it away, and at the same time, they lifted fingerprints from the edge of the bathtub and the shower controls.

"Evil, where did the person go?" Zhao Hu searched around the room and outside the room, but there were no holes that could fit a person. How did that person enter a confined space, and how did he disappear? Zhao Hu even opened the toilet to have a look, muttering under his breath, "Could it be that he time-travelled?"

Zhan Zhao looked around the entire bathroom, "This bathroom doesn't have a window, but there isn't any sign of mould in the bathroom either, indicating that the ventilation is okay..."

After Zhan Zhao finished speaking, Gongsun glanced at him, and the two of them raised their heads together, looking towards a ventilation fan at the top of the bathroom.

It was a square ventilation fan equipped with a heating element, and was a square of roughly half a metre or so.

Zhan Zhao took Ma Xin's flashlight and shone it at the ventilation fan.

Gongsun looked at the sink again, "This area is quite clean." Gongsun pointed to an area on the sink that was free of bloodstains and told Zhao Hu to climb up.

After Zhao Hu climbed up, he stood there and reached out, and he could just reach the ventilating fan.

Zhao Hu yanked the flap of that ventilation fan... With a clatter, the entire fan along with the heating fan was yanked down, exposing a dark hole behind it.

Ma Han took the fan that Zhao Hu handed him and held out a flashlight for him.

Zhao Hu shone a light into the hole, and with the flashlight in his mouth, he grasped the hole with both hands and jumped upwards, entering the ventilation duct.

"This ventilation duct is quite wide!" Zhao Hu found that the duct was a square metal tube, which was enough for a person to crawl through, so he crawled forward. In a short while, he crawled to the top of the bathroom next door in 2602, and in the same direction, he crawled to 2601, and eventually crawled to the air vent in the stairwell.

Zhao Hu pushed the vent and found that the screws were loose. They should have been loosened in advance. He descended into the stairwell, and was in a blindspot of the surveillance.

"Fuck!" Hu Zi couldn't resist swearing, "He ran away from here!"

Bai Yutang and Ma Han ran to the stairwell.

The vent in this stairwell was a blind spot for the surveillance camera, but they would definitely be caught on camera when they left the dead spot to go up or down the stairs.

Jiang Ping accessed the stairwell's surveillance again, and finally, found the footage of a man wearing a hotel employee's uniform going downstairs. This person was different from Liu Tian, very conscious of counter reconnaissance, he always reached out and held down his hat, cleverly covering his face, and he wasn't captured by any of the camera angles.

However, the hotel waiters all had a small badge on their clothes, which had their names.

Jiang Ping zoomed in on the image and identified the name on the badge – Chen Zhihong.

Bai Yutang asked about his experience, and whether there was a staff member named Chen Zhihong in the hotel.

The manager said yes, he was the hotel's baggage handler.

Bai Yutang asked, "Is he here now?"

"He should be at work..." The manager asked if he wanted to call him over.

Bai Yutang signalled for him to keep quiet and take them to him!

‿︵‿︵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 8, 2024 by Angel

Edited: June 27, 2024 by Angel