Chapter 180: The Blackmailed Murderer (1/2)

Before we left the ward, I asked the police officers to track down a few clues for the case. Firstly, I wanted to see the rich lady’s phone records. I needed to know who she was in contact with recently. Secondly, I needed to see her bank account activities. Lastly, because she was the president of a pharmaceutical company, I wanted to see the list of drugs that her company had recently developed.

Dali, Xiaotao, and I then went down to the parking lot. I brought the Autopsy Umbrella with me too. When we got there, Dali stood under a surveillance camera and announced, “Dude, I’ve made a major discovery! The murderer is 1.8 meters tall!”

“Because the camera is 1.8 meters from the ground?” I laughed.

“Uh-huh!” Dali nodded enthusiastically. “You see, your reasoning skills have rubbed off on me!”

“You’re wrong, though,” I argued, pointing at the camera. “You don’t need to be as tall as the camera to reach it. I’d say the suspect could be anywhere from 1.75 to 1.8 meters tall.”

The sky was clear that day, so I opened the Autopsy Umbrella and scanned the area beneath the camera. I found a clear set of footprints there, and judging from the length of the feet, I inferred the suspect’s height to be about 1.7 and 1.75 meters.

Apart from that, I noticed another curious detail. The footprint of one foot seemed to be deeper and heavier than the other. “The suspect’s left leg is limp,” I concluded.

“Why don’t you say the suspect had a stroke this time?” Dali asked.

“While people who had a stroke might have a limp,” I explained, “not all of them necessarily had a stroke. Right now, there’s evidence that the suspect has a limp, but we can’t make any conclusions about what caused it yet.”

Xiaotao took pictures of the footprints with a camera that she brought. When the forensics team arrived later, they would make a mould of the prints and keep it as evidence.

I examined the positions of the three cameras and found that there were no overlapping areas between them, so the suspect was definitely not captured on camera after all.

I went back to inspecting the footprints on the ground with the Autopsy Umbrella. They led to a parking space nearby. Xiaotao examined the tire tracks there and stated, “It’s an SUV.”

“That doesn’t narrow down our search at all, I’m afraid,” I sighed.

“Let’s ask the employee at the parking ticket booth anyway,” responded Xiaotao.

We found the employee in question, but didn’t glean much information from her. She had seen up to a hundred cars by that time of the day, so we left without any further clues.

The police had all packed up and left the hospital at that point, so we had no reason to stay either.

“Let’s take a short rest for now,” said Xiaotao. “There’s a caf nearby. I haven’t had a drop of water to drink all afternoon!”

We entered the caf and sat at a table by the window. After ordering three cups of coffee, Xiaotao asked me, “Do you have any theories about this case so far, Song Yang?”

“Well,” I muttered, “so many things just happened so quickly. In half a day, two murders have occurred. I have no idea what’s happening anymore.”

“Why don’t you just run some ideas by me?” she suggested.

I thought about it for a few seconds and began to lay out my analysis of the case.

“From what we’ve seen so far,” I said, “both cases are clearly related to the rich lady. I think the mastermind behind this case has a deep connection to her. It’s likely that they’ve got some devastating information about her that forced her into committing murder.”

“But why kill the secretary?” Xiaotao wondered.

“I don’t think it matters at all who she killed,” I replied. “If the mastermind wanted the secretary dead, they had plenty of opportunities to kill him a long time ago. I think they just wanted to force the rich lady into a corner and make her do something to prove her obedience to them. Something that would prevent her from ever turning back. I think her next move is what we really should be worried about.”

“But we don’t have a single clue about what she’s going to do next!” Xiaotao grumbled.

Just then, my attention was caught by an old woman with gray hair by the road. She was carrying a burlap sack and her clothes were tattered. She wiped the windows of a car with a grimy rag then stretched out her hands to beg for some money. I suddenly realized that beggars like her usually stayed at one place for a long stretch of time.

“That beggar may have seen the killer!” I exclaimed. “Let’s go ask her!”

We rushed out of the caf and approached the old beggar.