Decstemic

6

‘Roulette! Another roulette!’

Liam could not help but feel somewhat nervous. What did the Miracle System have planned for him this time? He hurriedly checked for the reward he obtained yesterday–the Invisibility Eavesdropper was still there! Without a doubt, this thing was made for eavesdropping. It was completely undetectable, and was definitely a valuable item.

Liam trekked back to the office, but saw that the office was not nearly as crowded as before There were only a few investigators working in their cubicles. People like Stephen, and Elton were not there.

Seeing Liam’s arrival, a few of the investigators could not help but awkwardly stare at the man. No matter how they saw it, yesterday Liam was just out of ordinary. The usually meek man-child had acted like such a violent thug, but then had single handedly solved the Taser Rape Case. It was hard to imagine.

But Liam could not care less about the stares, and headed straight for his work computer.

His neighbors were Jasper Roy and Jake Cole, the two were responsible for investigating cold cases. The so-called cold cases were those that happened a long time ago, but were still unsolved. As a part of the Key Case Investigation Unit, these cases were naturally of significant importance–usually involving robbery if not murder.

In these cases, due to the long downtime, most evidence or important personnel tended to disappear, drastically increasing the difficulty of the cases. Some cases could be left unsolved for over twenty to thirty years without a lead.

Because of this, the Cold Case Investigation Department was one of the least popular departments, and everyone avoided being transferred over. Not only were the investigations often fruitless, but there was often much pressure from the higher-ups. If there were not enough results in the allocated time, they would be punished.

Jasper and Jake were a pair of unfortunate souls. Due to various reasons, the two had been transferred to the department this year.

At the moment, the two were looking at a stash of photos and pouring through some file records with difficulty.

Liam was waiting for his computer to turn on, so he snuck a peek out of curiosity, only to see the photos were all of bloody corpses!

“Bro, what the hell was this? Hella brutal!” Liam asked with minor interest.

“This…”

Liam’s words were crude to say the least, making it hard for the other two to accept.

“This…” Jasper spoke first, “This was a murder case from ten years ago in the uptown area! The victim died very brutally, got slashed forty-something times!”

“Oh?” Although the computer had booted up, Liam had become interested in the case. He hurriedly picked up a photo, looking at it carefully.

“This case made a huge commotion at the time,” Jake said. “The victim was a jobless wanderer, walking around aimlessly, not to mention a gambling addict as well! Probably due to his debts with loan sharks, after being hacked to death, ‘return debts’ were written all over the wall, as well as things like an ‘an eye for an eye’. Because of the brutal death, this case was named Factual Murder Case!”

“Yeah!” Jasper followed up, “According to the previous policemen working on the case, the victim’s blood was all over the house. His wife even ended up with mental issues thanks to this! After the case, half the people uptown moved out in fear. The government had to enact their plan ahead of time and demolish the place early!”

“Ah…” Liam examined the picture intently, and asked, “With this much commotion, how come the case still hasn’t been solved?”

Jasper sighed helplessly, “If this case was already closed, us two wouldn’t be here suffering right now! In the beginning, the station pretty much mobilized everyone, searching day and night, even taking down quite a few gangs in the process. But the weird thing is that there wasn’t a sliver of the killer’s identity anywhere. The case ended up going cold like that, and now it’s just a headache for Captain Ortega.”

“And now,” Jake spoke again, “The area was already demolished. Other than these photos and some incomplete file records, we don’t have any other evidence. Where could we go and investigate? This is already a dead case!”

“Because it’s almost the ten-year mark, the higher-ups especially want us to investigate this case.” Jasper sighed again, “If we can’t solve it, then the two of us are probably going to be demoted to traffic duty!”

“Yep, Jasper !” Jake smiled bitterly, “Let’s just go practice now!” He made a slamming motion, “First thing I do, is to go down to those cars parked illegally near my apartment building, and ticket them all!”

“Hahaha…” Jasper could not help but laugh, then copied the same motion for ticketing.

“Say,” Liam drummed on his nose as he looked at the two, then picked up one of the photos, “Bro, I have a few things to say, dunno if I should-”

“Go on, go ahead!” Jasper noted, “We’ve accepted our fate at this point!”

“That,” Liam furrowed his brows, “It’s like this, I think this Factual Murder Case, isn’t right, or at least the name is wrong!”

“What?” The other two were more than a little shocked, exchanging a glance with each other.

“You guys misunderstood. A real gang wouldn’t operate like this!” Liam pointed at the photo, and started his analysis, “Think about it, if you guys owed me tons of money, would I try to force you to repay the debt, or just kill you straight up?”

“Uhh…” Jake pondered, “Obviously, force them to pay the debt!”

“Exactly!” Liam continued, “The gangs are only looking for money, there’s no reason to murder him, alerting the police. Even if the victim owed them millions or billions! They definitely wouldn’t kill him!”

“We have an occupational say…” Liam quickly corrected himself, “I mean the gangs have an occupational saying, called ‘go hard, die fast.’ If you hack them forty-something times, to do something so brutal, wouldn’t it be obvious it would cause a huge commotion? To cause such a huge commotion can only be bad for them, with no benefit in return.” Liam continued, “In fact, the gangs vandalizing, breaking glasses, destroying cars, and threatening women or kids are only trying to force people to repay their debt. If you kill them without reason, how would you get your money back?”

“R-Right?” Jasper’s eyes lit up, “How come I didn’t think of this?”

“Then…” Jake pondered, “The old police’s investigation target was wrong? It wasn’t done by a gang? Bro, what do you think?”

“Forty-something cuts.” Liam thought about it more, “Murder only takes one, yet the murderer hacked the victim forty-something times. My guess is that the victim and the murderer had some sort of deep-seated grudge. The killer purposely made this especially brutal just to mislead the police into thinking it was gang activity. This is called a diversion!”

“Oh. Makes sense…” Jasper considered the possibility, “But the record already showed that the victim was a jobless bum, and had quite a temper too. He had many enemies, and bad relationships with the neighbors too. To investigate this much is,” he paused, at a loss for words, “difficult.”

“Uhh, is the victim’s wife’s still around?” Liam suddenly asked, “Are they still crazy?”

“Nope!” Jake thought back on the records and answered, “Already remarried, with a kid now too. Apparently she’s doing pretty well!”

“Then why don’t you guys ask her? If the victim had any enemies, she would know. If she doesn’t, then it’s not too late to start practicing ticketing people!” Liam turned back to his own computer, “Not to mention, maybe the wife and the murderer could have some sort of connection!”

“W-what?” Jake almost knelt in front of Liam in gratitude, “You mean…”

“Forty-something cuts. A crime of passion is possible, right?” Liam started searching up rent information on his computer, “Why don’t you guys look it up, it’s not like…”

Before Liam could even finish his sentence, Jasper and Jake rushed out of the office.