Chapter 179: The Living Corpse (2/2)

I pointed at the body and continued, “The murderer attacked him from behind. He fell facedown. Judging from this scenario, the victim had no chance to scratch the murderer at all.”

Then I placed the victim’s hand under my nose and smelled it. “It smells like processed leather.”

“Leather?” Xiaotao wondered.

“Do you remember what kind of bag the rich lady had?” I asked her.

“It was too chaotic to notice that kind of detail back then,” she replied. “Wait, are you implying that the victim was clutching at the rich lady’s bag, and then it was violently snatched away from his hand?”

“That’s not all,” I added. “The truth is, the rich lady wasn’t kidnapped at all. She was the real murderer!”

Everyone gasped when I revealed this fact.

“Look,” I added, “there were no traces of outsiders breaking into the room. The victim collapsed close to the bed, so where would the murderer stand to attack him? On the bed? That’s not possible since the rich lady was still lying there.”

I stood up and scanned the room. Then, I began to reenact the case.

“At the time, the rich lady was sitting on the bed. She then asked her secretary to get her bag. As soon as the victim turned his back, she grabbed the IV drip bottle, broke it against the bedframe and hit the victim with it. The victim fell to the floor. She jumped out of bed and snatched the bag from the victim’s hands.”

“But why would she kill her own secretary?” asked Xiaotao. “Did she lose her mind? Didn’t she know that there are surveillance cameras in the hospital? She must know that we’d catch her in no time!”

“This murder and Chen Da’s own murder attempt at the party have one thing in common,” I said. “They were acting in a way that they would never do in normal circumstances.”

I wondered what in the world could make them suddenly behave so abnormally.

The police then obtained the surveillance video. Sure enough, at about 2 pm, the rich woman was seen sneaking out of the room while still wearing the hospital gown and holding her bag in her hands. It was also clear that no one had entered the room apart from the secretary. This proved that the rich lady was undoubtedly the murderer.

“What about the murder weapon?” asked Xiaotao.

“It’s in the bag, of course!” I replied. “She acted as if she didn’t want anyone to know that she murdered someone, which means that she was definitely conscious at the time.”

“But wouldn’t she look suspicious if she ran out of the hospital dressed like that?” asked Dali.

I gave it a thought and answered, “No!”

I drew the curtains and looked outside. There were many people wearing the hospital gown in the hospital compound. It wouldn’t look conspicuous to walk around dressed like that within the hospital, but it would indeed look suspicious if she tried to leave like that.

“What happened to her car?” I asked.

“It’s still in the hotel’s underground parking lot,” an officer replied. “The secretary accompanied her in the ambulance when she was sent here.”

“She must’ve planned to take the cab somewhere if she took her bag with her,” another officer chimed in. “Should we check all the cabs that came to the hospital today?”

I looked at the car park outside and considered the question, then replied, “I won’t rule out the possibility of that happening, but I think it’s more likely that someone picked her up downstairs.”

“What are you waiting for?” Xiaotao asked the officers. “Go get the surveillance videos of the parking lot now!”

They left and then returned with the surveillance videos of the parking lot. There were three cameras there. We quickly played the videos on a laptop. As we were in the middle of one of the videos, Xiaotao suddenly interrupted and told an officer to pause it and replay the last few seconds.

What happened in the video was that it changed from the scene in the car park to nothing but the blue sky. We checked the other two cameras and sure enough, the picture video turned to that of the sky right about the same time it happened to the first camera.

“Very cunning!” exclaimed Xiaotao. “They pushed the camera upwards so we can’t see anything!”

“Let’s go and check the car park now!” I urged.

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