The night is like an ink-soaked curtain, enveloping the entire city. The building where the crime occurred still lit up with a dazzling white light, like an isolated lighthouse, reminding everyone that there had been a suffocating death inside.
At two o'clock in the morning, the wind poured into the streets from the river, rolling up several scattered pieces of paper scraps and sticking them on the yellow cordon pulled up by the police. The air was filled with a damp metallic smell, the smell of blood, disinfectant water, and night fog.
Su Mo stood outside the cordon, his hands in his coat pockets, shivering slightly from the cold. Her eyes never left the building, her eyes focused, as if she wanted to see the mystery hidden inside through the layers of concrete walls.
It's not the first time she's run criminal news, but she's never been as tight as she is today. She understands that murder cases in general are often cruel, but there is still logic; But once the "secret room" is involved, the logic itself is artificially torn apart and becomes slippery. She recalled a sentence her mentor said when she was studying at the School of Journalism: "The secret room is a provocative book written by criminals to the world." "
At this moment, she felt that the recipient of the provocative letter was probably the man standing next to her - Lin Yuanzhou.
---
Lin Yuanzhou held a cigarette in one hand, but never lit it. In his other hand, he held a photocopied forensic preliminary examination report. The street lights were dim, and his shadow was stretched extremely long, looking lonely and cold.
The report reads: The deceased Han Zhuo, male, 35 years old, lives alone. The time of death is presumed to be between 9 and 10 p.m. Direct cause of death: asphyxiation. There are no obvious signs of resistance on the body, and no skin tissue is found between the nails. Blood tests preliminarily rule out sedatives or psychedelics.
Lin Yuanzhou stared at the line of "no trace of resistance", and his brows almost twisted into a line.
"It's not like a normal murder." He whispered to himself, "It's more like a ... voluntary death. "
Su Mo heard this, and his heart trembled: "Voluntarily? You mean he cooperated with the murderer? "
"Or," Lin Yuanzhou raised his eyes, his gaze seemed to pass through the night fog, "He didn't regard the murderer as an 'enemy' at all." "
As soon as he finished speaking, Qin Mubai walked out of the cordon, wearing a trench coat and looking serious.
"Lin Yuanzhou," his voice was depressed, "Your current identity is an outsider." Don't get too deep. "
This sentence is not mean, but it has unquestionable boundaries.
Lin Yuanzhou did not refute, just smiled faintly, folded the copy up, and stuffed it into Qin Mubai's hand. He didn't show dissatisfaction, but that smile was like a thin layer of ice that could shatter at any moment.
Su Mo captured this scene, but there was a subtle touch in his heart. She could feel that the relationship between the two was not simply a "former colleague relationship", but a complex and heavy past.
---
The wind under the building is colder. Lin Yuanzhou didn't leave, he seemed to be talking to the air.
He slowly walked around the building, his heels knocking on the floor tiles with a crisp sound. Su Mo hesitated for a few seconds, but still followed.
When he walked around the corner, he suddenly stopped and crouched down.
"Did you see it?"
Su Mo leaned down and saw a small metal object stuck between the bricks. Through the street lamp, she saw clearly that it was a button, black and bright as lacquer.
Lin Yuanzhou pinched it with a tissue and looked at it carefully: "This is not on the suit of the deceased." Han Zhuo's suit buttons are dark gray plastic, this one is metallic with an anti-rust coating, which is more common in coats. "
He paused, his eyes sharp, "And there is a fresh scratch on the edge of the button, which was recently dropped." "
Su Mo couldn't help but whisper: "Could it be just a passerby's drop?" "
"The scene of the crime, the time of the crime, fell here?" Lin Yuanzhou smiled coldly, "There are not so many coincidences in the world." "
He carefully sealed it with an evidence bag and handed it to the police officer beside him. Qin Mubai came over, glanced at it, and said in a cold tone: "Send it to the Physical Evidence Section, but don't get too hopeful." "
His words were like a basin of cold water, directly extinguishing this excitement.
Lin Yuanzhou did not respond, his expression was calm, but Su Mo knew that his eyes flashed with a touch of coldness at that moment.
---
Early the next morning, Su Mo visited Han Zhuo's neighbor alone. The hallway of that apartment was filled with the smell of paint and the dampness of old wooden boards, and the light bulbs flickered and flickered.
"Mr. Han, he rarely talks to people and doesn't make friends. An old lady frowned and said, "But last night, I seemed to hear someone talking in the elevator room, and my voice was very low, and I didn't dare to go out to see it." "
"What time?" Su Mo asked.
"Probably... Between 8:30 and 9 o'clock. The old lady thought for a while, "Then it was quiet." "
She wrote down her testimony and made waves in her heart. Elevator room. That was the only way to enter the floor where the crime occurred.
---
In the evening, she handed the recording to Lin Yuanzhou. The two sat in a dimly lit café, and the lamp on the table illuminated only a small space.
At the end of the recording, Lin Yuanzhou's fingers tapped lightly on the table, and the rhythm was extremely slow.
"Elevator room." He repeated, in a low voice.
Suddenly, he looked up and asked Qin Mubai: "What about the elevator monitoring on the floor where the crime occurred?" Why didn't you see it? "
The air froze for a moment.
Qin Mubai's eyes darkened, and his tone was stiff: "The surveillance is broken." The hard drive did not save the image from last night. "
Su Mo held his breath. Broken monitoring? At a critical time and place?
Lin Yuanzhou stared at the cup of coffee on the table, his eyes gradually deepened, as if he had fallen into a bottomless black hole.
"It's broken..." he said slowly, "Is it a coincidence, or is there someone who doesn't want us to see it?" "
The lights in the café shook slightly, as if even the air was stuffy.
Su Mo suddenly had an idea in his heart: this case was not a simple murder, but a premeditated game.
Lin Yuanzhou spat out two words softly at this moment:
"——Man-made."