Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

It was already night when Songgong and the others ran out of all the assigned residents, and the bags of the two of them were full of plastic bags containing collected grass samples. Matsumiya himself didn't know whether their trip was fruitful. Among all the families visited, there seemed to be no one who seemed to kill a little girl.In his view, everyone is so ordinary. Although the living conditions are somewhat different, they are all working hard to live every day. "Not in this neighborhood." Matsumiya said as he walked towards the bus road. "Only perverts would do that kind of thing, such as those single men with distorted sexual orientation. Come to think of it, he suddenly turned into walking." He dragged the girl into the car and hijacked her on the spot. Although I don’t know what kind of dirty business he was going to do, under normal circumstances, he would always try to escape as far as possible? Then he killed someone somewhere, and then Returning to this block and discarding the corpse, in order to make us think that the murderer lives in this block. If we analyze it this way, the murderer will not be a resident of this block. Is there a problem with my reasoning?"

Kaga, who was walking beside him, didn't speak, he lowered his head, his expression seemed to be thinking about something. "Brother Gong!" Song Gong called him. Kaga finally looked up. "Aren't you listening to me?" "No, I'm listening. I see what you mean, and it doesn't sound too far-fetched." This way of answering in circles made Matsumiya feel impatient. "Just say what you want." Kaga smiled bitterly. "I have nothing to say. As I said, the people in the jurisdiction are only following the instructions of the first department."

"Your statement sounds infuriating." "I didn't mean to offend you. If it makes you uncomfortable, I apologize." When the two came to the bus road, Matsunomiya was about to hail a taxi, but Kaga spoke first. "I want to go somewhere." Seeing an empty car, Matsumiya raised her hand in the air and put it down hastily. "Where do you want to go?" Kaga hesitated for a moment, maybe because he felt that he couldn't hide it from Matsumiya, and replied after sighing. "There is a family that I am concerned about, and I want to investigate."

"Which one is it?" "The one named Maehara." "Maehara..." Song Gong took out the file from the bag, looked at the household list, "It's that family, it's just an old lady with dementia, why do you care about them?" "It's a long story, and I'm just starting to think about it." Matsumiya put down the file and stared at Kaga's face. "Don't the people in the jurisdiction act according to the instructions of the first department? Then don't hide anything from the people of the first department." "I don't mean to hide it." Kaga scratched his bearded face with his fingertips in confusion, shrugged his shoulders, "Okay, but it's very likely that our trip will be in vain."

"I have no objection at all. He once told me that the more you run in vain, the results of the investigation will change accordingly." That was what Takashi said, and Matsunomiya wanted to see what kind of expression Kaga would put on, so he watched his face, but the other party walked without saying a word. Song Gong followed Kaga to Ginkgo Park. Although the police have lifted the restrictions on the entry of ordinary people, there are still ropes around the public toilets.There was no human presence at all, and the darkness was naturally one of the reasons, but perhaps more importantly, it was because the news of the case had already spread.

Kaga stepped over the rope, approached the toilet, and stopped at the entrance. "Why did the murderer abandon the corpse here?" Kaga asked standing up. "Well, the park is not easy to be seen at night, and there is no need to worry about the body being found before dawn. This is probably the reason for this." "But there are places that are hard to find everywhere. Even if you don't go to the deep mountains and old forests, as long as you go to Xinzuo City adjacent to here, you can find a lot of grass that no one will step into for a while. If you throw it in that kind of place, the corpse It should be discovered later, why didn't the murderer think of it?"

"Didn't I just say that? He was trying to blame people in this neighborhood." But Kaga tilted his head and said, "Is that really the case?" "You don't think so?" "It is more beneficial for the murderer to make it difficult to find the body than to carry out the kind of disguise you mentioned. Because there is a possibility of kidnapping from the beginning of this case, the police dare not act openly." Kaga slowly turned his face to Matsumiya. "My thought is that the murderer had no choice but to dump the body here." "What can I do?"

"Yes, the murderer has no choice. Although he wants to abandon the body further away, he doesn't have the means." "Means...you mean the car?" "That's right, the killer couldn't drive, or he didn't have a car." "Really? I don't think it's possible." "why?" "You think, if he didn't have a car, he wouldn't be able to commit crimes, just moving the corpse. Could it be that he came here with the corpse? Even a child weighs more than 20 kilograms. And the corpse is packed in cardboard It's in the box, and that box is quite big, so it's hard to carry it around."

"Did the cardboard box claim come from the Styrofoam pellets on the body?" "Well, that's why I presume the killer used the empty cardboard boxes used to pack the appliances." "There are styrofoam particles stuck to the body," Kaga raised his index finger, "it means that the murderer packed the body directly in a cardboard box." Matsumiya couldn't comprehend the meaning of Kaga's words for a while, when the scene appeared in his mind, he finally agreed with the other party's point of view: "Yes." "Do You have a Car?"

"Yes, but it's a second-hand car." "Second-hand or not, it's always your precious car. What would you do? Would you put the body in a cardboard box while moving it?" "I think there's nothing wrong with it." "Even if the body is wet?" "wet……?" "The victim was incontinent when he was strangled, and his skirt was wet when the body was found. I saw the scene earlier than the people in the identification department, so I remember it clearly, although I didn't feel the smell because I was in the toilet .” "Hearing what you said, I remembered that there were records in the investigation materials."

"Then let me ask you again, would you still put such a corpse in a cardboard box?" Matsumiya licked his lips. "It's really hard to do that if the urine from the dead body is leaking out of the cardboard box and dirtying the car." "It stinks when it gets dirty, and there are traces of dead bodies on the car." "Usually, it is always wrapped with plastic film or something before putting it in a box..." "The murderer in this case didn't do that, why?" "You mean...he didn't carry it in a car?" Kaga shrugged. "Of course, we can't draw conclusions. It may be that the murderer's carefree personality made him not mind the car getting dirty, but I think this possibility is very small." "But if he didn't have a car, how did he manage to move such a large cardboard box?" "That's the question, what would you do if you did?" "As I said just now, it is very difficult to carry it around. It is convenient to have a trolley, but it is too conspicuous to push such a thing around in the middle of the night." "I agree. Is there anything that is both inconspicuous and can play the same role as a trolley?" "Prams... no, it would be fine if they were old fashioned, but those strollers don't work now." Kaga smiled slightly, took out his mobile phone, and after doing some operations, turned the screen to Matsumiya. "have a look at this." Matsumiya took the phone and saw a scene shot by a camera that seemed to be the ground. "this is?" "This photo is somewhere around where you are standing now. I think the people in the identification department should have taken it too, but I still took it." "What happened to this image?" "If you look carefully, you should be able to find that the ground seems to have been wiped to remove some traces, right?" There are indeed a few thicker lines on the ground. "If my hypothesis is correct, then the fact that the murderer left no trace will be doubtful. He should have brought the body here on a cart or some substitute, and the rain that fell yesterday and into the morning will leave On the ground, we can imagine that the ground in this area was soft when he came." "Then this might be a trace, but since it's been wiped out, there's nothing we can do about it." Matsumiya said, ready to return the phone to Kaga. "Take a closer look, what is the approximate width of the cleared area?" "Width?" Song Gong looked at the screen again, "It's about thirty centimeters." "That's what I estimated too. If it's 30 centimeters, it's too narrow for a trolley." "Indeed, then this is..." Song Gong looked up and looked away from the screen, "Traces of bicycles?" "Nine times out of ten," Kaga said, "and it's the kind with a shelf, because there are many models that don't carry it recently. To be more specific, it's a small bicycle." "How did you know?" "You'll see if you try it, put a cardboard box that big on a shelf, and hold the cart on the handlebars while you're leaning on it, it's out of reach for a big cyclist." Matsumiya imagined the scene and found that what Kaga said was logical. "There is a lawn near the murderer's residence, and he doesn't know how to drive or doesn't have a car, but he has a not-so-big bicycle with a shelf..." Songgong said, thinking of the family that met these conditions, "So you I just noticed Maehara, they really don’t have a garage or a place to park, what about bicycles... By the way, Brother Gong, did you see their bicycles back then?” "There are racks, and the cart can handle big cardboard boxes." "So that's the case, but..." "what?" "Is it too arbitrary to lock down a family for this reason? It is also possible that the murderer has a car at home, but he can't drive it himself." Kaga nodded after listening. "I didn't just stare at their house for this, there is another point that also caught my attention, that is a pair of gloves." "gloves?" "I went to that house once during the first round of investigations, when I was collecting sighting information by providing photos of Yuuna Kasugai. I met their old lady with dementia, and she wobbled. Go into the yard, pick up a pair of gloves there, and put them on your hands." "Why did she do that?" Kaga shrugged. "It's futile to rationalize the behavior of dementia patients. The more important problem is the pair of gloves. The old lady showed it to me, like this." He spread his hands in front of Song Gong. "At that time, I smelled a bad smell." "what……" "It's an inconspicuous odor, it's the smell of urine." "The victim's urine was indeed incontinent...you mean that's the smell?" "I don't have a dog's nose, so it's impossible to judge so clearly. But I thought at the time, if the murderer wore gloves... no, he probably did, because direct hand contact with the body will leave fingerprints. If it is That way, then the gloves should be stained by the victim's urine. And when I got the information about the foam plastic, I thought about what I just told you, and then I became more suspicious of that family." Matsumiya recalled the Maehara family, an ordinary family that seemed to be everywhere.The head of the household, Akio Maehara, did not look like a criminal at all. If I had to say anything, he was troubled by his mother with dementia.