Chapter 98 Section 1

I read a Western humor a long time ago, saying that a rich man went to a theater, a very suspenseful play about murder.The waiter in the theater courted the rich man all the way to his box, hoping to earn a fat tip.Unexpectedly, this rich man is actually a glass mouse and a glass cat, who doesn't pull out any hair.The waiter was furious, and before leaving, he uttered the "answer" in the rich man's ear: "The murderer is the gardener." With one word, the exciting enjoyment that the rich man had been looking forward to for many days was ruined. For most American readers and television viewers, the first thing they read or hear about the case is the "answer," or rather, "part of the answer." At 5 a.m. on September 6, 1996, the "Baltimore Sun" sent to newsstands on the east coast of the United States published a front-page text message:

A U.S. Naval Academy freshman left Annapolis on Saturday after being expelled for possible involvement in a homicide, officials from the U.S. Naval Academy and Department of the Navy confirmed.The school made the decision after the girl was questioned by police officers from Texas.The murders are understood to have occurred before the reserve officer enrolled this summer. Annapolis is less than 30 miles from Baltimore in the same state of Maryland. At 6:02, the United Press published a similar message on the national media news network, saying that "the homicide occurred in December last year. The Naval Academy refused to release the details of the case and the details of the reserve officer being questioned by the police." The reason, also refused to disclose the name of the 18-year-old girl."The source also said that the girl's fiancé, a reserve officer in the U.S. Air Force Academy, was also involved in the case.

At this time, in Mansfield, Texas, the hometown of the two military cadets 2,000 miles away, it was still 5:02 in the morning.The continental United States is divided into four time zones except for Maine, which is the furthest to the northeast.Texas is an hour behind Maryland.Anyone who has read my book may recall that it was in Mansfield that "Texas Black Widow" Betty Petz was arrested on June 7, 1985. By the time Mansfield residents heard the U.P. report, two young cadets had already been arrested.Although the couple was not mentioned by name in the report, everyone knew who they were, because the news that they were both admitted to the military academy became a local sensation just three months ago.It's just that people never dreamed that these two outstanding top students would be involved in an equally sensational murder case.

On December 4, 1995, Gary Foster's first 911 call was transferred to the Grand Prairie Police Department.Because he was playing from home, and his family lived in the prairie. Maybe a few years ago, the prairie was a veritable prairie, but now it is the name of a city called "Grand Prairie City".Grand Prairie is located between two contiguous metropolises—Dallas and Fort Worth—in north-central Texas.These two metropolises have long been connected to each other and become one, so that the media and the public often refer to them as a city "Dallas-Fort Worth", and the part of the prairie in between is also referred to as "Dallas-Fort Worth". It's downright urbanized.To the south of Grand Prairie City is Lake Joe Poole, which has a radius of more than ten miles, accounting for one-fifth of the city's area.The surface of the lake is in the shape of a "person", which is a very thick and irregular "person", and it lies obliquely on the map, with its head facing northeast and feet facing southwest. The fork of the word "人" formed a small peninsula, and the peninsula was classified as Prairie City, but another town, Mansfield, bordered the peninsula.Therefore, before the highway bridge across Joe Poole Lake is completed and opened to traffic, if people who live on the peninsula want to do something in their own city, they must go around one leg of the character "人" and cross the other leg of Mansfield. Only the corner can reach the rest of the Prairie City.

The highway bridge was built in the 1980s.Later, because it was invested by the state, the state government went to the tip of the peninsula and the half of Foster's ranch near the lake to build a large recreation and leisure center.The Foster family not only moved out of their ancestral home, but like all other island families, they lost their former peace. I don’t know when it started, Gary Foster would stop by to take a look at his ranch every morning when he went to work. Gary Foster, 45, is an architect currently employed by Zell & Co., a well-known jeweler in Fort Worth.The ranch is the ancestral property of the Foster family and is now jointly managed by Gary and his uncle.Since the highway bridge came into being, people from the city often drove to the peninsula at night, and the barbed wire fence of the ranch was run over by those drunk drivers from time to time.Once, a few cows ran out of the gap, and it was easy for Gary and his uncle to find them.

December 4th is a Monday, that is to say, the night before is Sunday, the weekend, and the most accident-prone day.Gary Foster came out of the house a little after seven in the morning and went to the mailbox first to pick up the mail.The letter box stands beside the Sordon Road, but the new house designed by Gary for Foster’s family has retreated a long distance, and there is an unnamed path paved by the family between the house and Seldon Road. What first caught Gary Foster's attention was a strand of blue-green cloth hanging on the barbed wire not far from the mailbox, fluttering slightly in the cold winter morning wind.Gary immediately looked down the Sordon Road, and sure enough, the barbed wire gate of the ranch was opened.After supper the night before, Gary and his uncle had passed the door a few times to carry hay into the cowshed, and he distinctly remembered closing the door on his way out.

Gary's route to work was supposed to be a right turn at the Seldon Junction, but now he had to turn left to go to the ranch gate.Gary parked the car in front of the gate, and at that moment he saw a man lying on the grass behind the wire fence. Gary Foster later told police that he couldn't believe his eyes at first, so it took him a long time to recognize it was a woman, a young woman, a young woman who was dead. Gary Foster dared not get out of the car.He huddled in the driver's seat and looked around, and then looked behind the car through the rearview mirror, checking twice whether all the doors and windows were closed tightly.Gary fears it's a trap.A young woman was lying motionless on the grass, and when he was driven out of the car, a robber suddenly jumped out from the bushes.