Chapter 4 Section III Information

"? We have long felt that there is something wrong with her mental state." Mei Peng handed me a glass of water with an apologetic face. "It's nothing.? Thank you for saving me just now." I rubbed my sore neck.Some places have been dug by Kanpur's sharp nails, and my fingers touched them, burning hot-I frowned. "Can I get a Band-Aid?" "Okay, you wait." Mei Peng went out. I opened the drawer where May Peng took out the pepper and honey cakes, and there were still quite a few in there—I took a small piece and hid it in the pocket of my jacket.

Maypen found me an extra-large Band-Aid.I looked at the half broken mirror on the wall of the prison guard's office, and stuck it on the wound indiscriminately, and it hurt again. "I haven't had lunch yet, can I have a pepper and honey pie?" "That's the last half. Her luck is better than yours." Mei Peng smiled awkwardly. On the subway on the way back, I spit out the small half of the cake I just took into the trash can—it might be more appropriate to call that thing a "salt block". It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when the poor man returned to the bureau, and Handik and the others had long since disappeared.I made a cup of coffee and went to the archives where old Jim was sitting: pen in hand, but not writing.The look of racking his brains seemed to be rushing to report.

He was delighted by my unexpected arrival: "Hey! Young man, why are you hurt? Believe me, it's better to do less about jealousy." "? Well. I want to look into that Romeo case." I didn't take old Jim's joke--I'm afraid it didn't amuse him: he yawned, and took the register from the drawer: "Date and ID number." "OK." I picked up the ballpoint pen on the table, filled it out, and handed it back to him—he didn't even look at it, and stuffed the book back. "It's probably at LS District 15, so look for it patiently."

"thanks." Old Jim didn't work in the archives - although he always joked that the archives were "the worst place for a film policeman", his original job was actually a detective.I don't know how his original job performance was, but at least the archives room is under his management. It's no exaggeration to say that he is a "coffee-loving file auto-querier". There are not many files in the district, but the books are seriously dusty. On the simple iron frame marked 15, in a hidden and backlit low corner, I found this book labeled "1984-(Serial) Eli Ze (·Hofer)?Beheading Case - Chimer District (Additional)": The words in brackets and the question mark in front of "Beheading Case" were added later-if any book uses such a lengthy and dull title, I guess it will not sell well.

Surprisingly, there is not much dust on this dossier that was born in 1984—perhaps this should be attributed to its yearly update: the colleagues in charge of this case probably drop by when adding materials to it every year Let's do a general cleaning, so that it will be easy to find when adding materials again next year. The production of this dossier is not in chronological order, but is divided into categories such as "crime scene", "autopsy data", "witness data"....For serial homicides, this approach, while reasonable, was not very convenient to flip through—I had to take them apart and reclassify them according to my needs.

Under the dim fluorescent tubes, scribbled on-site transcripts, printed autopsy reports, headless corpses lying on the scene in different poses, real or false witnesses' interrogation records, things that have been denied or not yet denied The portraits of the suspects, the bloody head portraits, and the analysis summaries of batches of detectives and agents over the past eight years...spread messily on the large old wooden table in the archives room, creating a cloud of dust It was almost nine o'clock when the dossier returned to its original location—after the original order of the materials in it was completely out of recognition, I could finally use the large number of clues that were useful, useless, true, or false in this case. Make the following inferences:

The next case will occur in the early morning of March 19 this year at (Bianca Str.) in the Langlingen district. Please don't be surprised by this conclusion - there is only so much reasoning can do so far. The first to die was Miss Eliza Hofer, whom we all know.The murder time is presumed to be in the early morning of March 1984 - at about 6:40 in the morning, Benda Blessing (a morning jogger) found on the White Swan Bridge (Weissschwanbr.) at the foot of Buch Mountain her. The blood splatter left at the scene showed that the murder took place at the part of the White Swan Bridge near the left guardrail of the bridge center.The bridge body of the White Swan Bridge is not very wide (it seems to be barely enough for two cars to pass side by side, and there is no sidewalk), and the corpse probably fell on the ground—the blood flowing from the headless carotid artery, in the bridge A small lake formed in the center.

Eliza's head was on the right side of the body lying on her back, her expression seemed serene, her eyes closed. The incision is not horizontal, but extremely flat (forensic doctor Gondel pointed out in the autopsy report that even the fastest scalpel cannot make such an incision), and from the perspective behind the corpse, it appears that the right side is high and the left side is low— -The fallen body is also leaning towards the right hand: Detective Hans analyzed that the murderer was not left-handed—if the murderer didn't stand outside the bridge and swing the murder weapon, or waved the sickle with his back to Eliza (or something else) : I admit that this reasoning is very reasonable.

In fact, if Romeo was standing outside the bridge and wielding the scythe, Eliza would have been terrified before she died-this obviously does not match the real expression of Eliza's head, so this should be ruled out first. Mr. Benda Blessing has insisted on a fixed route for morning jogging since he moved to Chimer District in October 1979. His neighbors, friends and family members can all testify to him. time is excluded. Rügenmann Hofer was on a business trip to Meer with his secretary Leonore Mittag from March 15th to 20th, and he was born left-handed— He was also ruled out.In fact, quite a few testimonies show that he loves his daughter very much on weekdays.

Karolina Hofer, Eliza's stepmother and Rügenmann's successor - her mysterious disappearance the day before Eliza's murder made her the most important suspect in the case.Rod Schmitz, the housekeeper of the Rügenmann family, confirmed that at about ten o'clock that night (March 17), he saw a car rushing out of the garage of the villa-the car even crushed the new plants in the flower beds. The German Primrose: And this car, which never came back, was the one most frequently driven by the hostess of the villa. The second deceased, Palm·Ossietzky, was an alcoholic middle-aged priest. On the morning of March 7, 1985, the headless body was found in the parking lot of the Ariel-Kirche church in the Denach district by sixteen-year-old Mommsen Lindau (Mommsen·Lindau), who was a member of the church holiday volunteers.

Palm's head was found in a trash can at a bus stop between Hamburger Platz and the Jewish Museum - Hartlaub Zwirner, the cleaner, at the Triangle Street bus stop on Friday morning After discovering the red-nosed head wrapped in a paper bag, the colleagues of the Fifth Bureau had spent a day and a night searching for the head in all corners of the Arel Church and its vicinity. Volunteer Momsen had had a quarrel with Father Palm over some trivial matter on March 5, so he spent all Wednesday playing pool with two friends in the tavern on Pera Street.At two o'clock in the morning, his friends drove him home, who was already very drunk, and his mother, Mary Lindau, woke him up the next morning—the neighbors said that he cursed and said that he would kill the alcoholic priest early in the morning. However, when Momsen called the police, he couldn't even speak a complete sentence, and he vomited badly when he took the on-site transcript-St. The report also pointed out that the murder occurred around midnight: due to the perfect alibi (more than a dozen drinkers in the tavern all proved that he was still drunk at the time: It is said that one of the reasons why alcoholics insist on the veracity of their testimony is that they are sure that the moon they saw that night was full. ), the lack of objective conditions for committing the crime, and a plausible motive, the suspicion of volunteer Momsen was ruled out. The Triangle Street Station is very close to the Jewish Museum—eventful newspapers and periodicals produced a series of associations combining the identity of the deceased: the Freedom Herald even described the incident as "a bloody demonstration of Judaism against Catholicism."The church organizations in this city were obviously influenced by public opinion. Two weeks after the murder, they submitted the "Statement on Restricting Jewish Activities in this City" to the Police Headquarters and the City Hall respectively. Strong reaction. The smooth beveled incision and the coincidence of timing led the police to connect the case with the Eliza case a year ago - the forensic report confirmed that the wounds in the two cases were caused by similar murder weapons: After the news was announced, there was a public outcry ——For a whole year, he failed to catch a serious criminal and allowed him to commit another crime.Opinion polls expressed extreme disappointment with the city's law enforcement, and the Libertarian newspaper even published "Whose Heads Should Beheaders Behead?" "Criticism article. The arrival of the third dead is dramatic. In March 1986, everyone was wondering whether the "Shadow Killer" would continue to wield a knife.The General Administration and various sub-bureaus deliberately increased the number of film police officers patrolling at night, and reminded the public through the TV media not to go out at night if there is nothing to do. As a result, the crime rate of this month has been greatly reduced-as of the 24th of the month, the police in the city only received one murder case, which was solved on the same day. The "Liberty Herald" on the 24th even predicted that the "shadow killer" had already died, and the "serial beheading case" in this city would come to an end in a hurry. At 8:5 in the morning on the 25th, Ms. Illinois Cahill (·Cahill), who was engaged in supply work at the Chemical Research Institute of the city, came out of the apartment building at No. 17 Umbriel Str. , hurriedly came to the underground parking lot jointly used by the three apartment buildings No. 16, and No. 18 to pick up the car and go to work. In parking space B071 (Ms. Illinois's parking space is B072), she saw a policeman lying there-it turns out that sleepy people who were woken up by the alarm clock were not very clear in the morning. What: She completely ignored the blood-stained concrete floor and the thick stench in the air, but just stopped and asked loudly in doubt: "What's wrong with you? Need help?" Her inquiry attracted the attention of a neighbor who also came to pick up the car, Mr. Steven Antolovich who lives in No. 16.Ms. Illinois had already passed out when the early-rising gentleman discovered that the body in police uniform was missing its head. The seniors of the bureau who arrived immediately confirmed through the police officer's ID on the uniform of the corpse that the dead was the new police officer Derek Messler (Derek Messler), who had reported for three and a half months-he was supposed to meet another police officer John at three o'clock in the morning. Washington was on shift, but John, who arrived at the appointed place on time, did not see him.A letter was found in the pocket of the headless corpse, and Derek hoped to propose to his girlfriend Daisy Rowland and Father Palm through this 14-page long letter. Similar to that case, Derek's head was not found in the underground parking lot. At exactly 2:30 p.m. on the 26th, two primary school students who were waiting for the 206 bus at the Little George Street bus stop near the Sindalore Hotel suddenly heard a shrill alarm—the sound came from the bushes behind the bus shelter. clump.The older David Hall made his way around thick, thorny flower-bed shrubs to reach a cardboard box that had stopped ringing and was sealed with wide tape.Since the bus had already arrived at this time, the two did not have time to unpack the box, but took the box to the first school in Kacherqu where they were studying. In the break time after the first class, the two opened this so-called "magic box with magical treasures" in front of almost all the students in the class - the film policeman Derek Messler's The head was placed side by side with a brand-new ringing alarm clock in this small cardboard box. Derek's police cap was padded at the bottom of the box, and six crumpled No. 24 "Freedom Heralds" were used in the gap. The third edition (and indeed the fourth edition—they are, of course, inseparable) filling: the most striking headline on which edition is "The Shadow Killer Is Already Dead?" ! " The public generally viewed the case as an act of revenge and condemned the Freedom Herald to a limited extent. "Libertarian" and FW1 also called the police case of Derek a "direct tragedy brewed by the media's irresponsibility". The police combined and analyzed a large number of clues obtained from the three cases, and obtained the following characteristics of the beheading case: , The criminal committed the crime around the early hours of the night of the full moon in March every year; Except for the Eliza case, after each crime, the criminal would throw the victim's head near a bus stop not far from the murder scene ;, There was no social connection between the deceased;, The murder weapon used by the prisoner was extremely sharp. According to the fourth point above, from the third case onwards, people in the bureau began to refer to this case as the "Romeo the Scythe" case-this reference has not officially appeared in any official documents, it is completely a conventional name (And, as it turned out later, the name was apparently quite prescient). The most troublesome thing for the police is that Romeo's crime method is quite clever-no one has ever really seen him committing the crime, and he has never left traces such as hair, fingerprints, and clothing fibers on the scene.Of course, it is probably impossible to leave no trace at all, but it is a pity that every time the scene is severely damaged by onlookers who have no sense of on-site protection and rough reporters who come after hearing the news: and these innocent perpetrators often Again the main force condemning the incompetence of the police (forgive me for what seems to be partiality to my colleagues - these are actually facts). Although the police dispatched a large number of police officers and plainclothes officers to patrol various places in the city every March full moon night in the next few years.Unfortunately, the area under the jurisdiction of the City of Liberty is really too large—even if there is a general mobilization of more than 37,000 police officers in the city, it is still impossible to guard every corner of the City of Liberty; The notice not to go out at night” had little effect (people are lucky), and after the Derek film police case, it happened one after another: The Ronald Baron case, March 15.The deceased, a professional ophthalmologist, was killed in the underpass of Titania Square, and his head was dumped at the bus stop outside the No. 1 school in Katschchu. On March 3, 2009, the thirty-eighth art festival parade case.The deceased, Phillp Jones (Phillp·Jones), was a 44-year-old plumber.At the end of the parade in Oberon Square, Philip's body was hidden under a huge hollow Shakespeare statue, and the blood was also skillfully covered by the murderer with artificial turf-until the morning of March 5 when the venue was cleaned up , The cleaner Walter Michigan (Walter Michigan) discovered him.As early as the afternoon of March 3, people had already found his head at a bus stop (Loony—Loony Station) very close to Perseus Street. Ashok Saxena (also known as the "Third Square" case), March 23, 2019. The deceased, long-term unemployed, was killed in the underpass of Miranda Square, and his head was dumped at the Shah station between Chogori Square and Deauville Abbey. March 12, Diana Virginia (Diana Virginia case).The deceased professional history museum administrator, was killed in the underground parking lot at 93 Cordelia Street-this is similar to the Derek film police case, the head was dumped at a small bus stop on the corner of Hesses Street (Patty — Patty Station). On March 31, 2009, the Masahiro Meshii case (also known as the "Second Weekend Day Two" case - there were two full moon nights in March of this year, Romeo chose the second).The professional railway dispatcher of the deceased was killed in the garden square in the center of Ophelia Street—the body was found by the policeman on duty at 2:30 in the morning of the same day, Nicolas Liebert: the blood flowing on the tile floor was still there It was steaming, but the head had disappeared.Nicholas immediately notified the General Administration and blocked Ophelia Street, and various small bus stops nearby also set up ambushes within half an hour. This is obviously the best police have done so far in the case of Romeo the Scythe—unfortunately, it was a step too late, when the ambushed at Diadem (Diadem), a small bus station about two kilometers away from the scene of the crime. Detective Sebastian Schilling (Sebastian Schilling, a bus stop near Tessera Street) accidentally bumped into a trash bin next to the station when he stuffed a half-cup of coffee and a paper cup into the trash can next to the station. By the way, the three imitation cases of Bernhardi Singer and Kanpur Gran, Happened on September 8, 1987 (in the alley next to No. 9 Toyd Street, the deceased Pascal Gehring, a retired bank employee), and on November 24, 1988 (at the scene at 21 Venice Street In the alley next to the number, the deceased Nancy Baum (Nancy·Baum, a primary school student) and May 20, 1989 (the scene in the alley next to the Swiss Painter's Square, the deceased Huck Bush (Huck·Bush), a civil servant) .In particular, similar to the case of Romeo the Scythe, the heads of Pascal and Lancie were thrown into the Lay Street (Lay Str.) station (not far from the car gate Teeter Street) ) and the 7th Police Station in the trash bins next to the two bus stops - the latter is considered to be a provocation to the police by imitators. Presumably, Deputy Inspector Apel Daniel (Apel Daniel), who loves literature very much, put forward another feature of this case after summarizing the place names of the various scenes of the Romeo the Scythe case: All the place names of the scene of the case (except Ambrel Street) are from the characters written by Shakespeare. Ariel-Kirche and Miranda Square - both Ariel and Miranda are from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Titania Square and Oberon Square - Titania and Oberon are the names of the Elf King couple in Shakespeare's famous book "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Cordelia Street - Cordelia is the name of Lear's daughter in King Lear. Ophelia Street - As everyone probably knows, Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius in "Hamlet". But this remarkable discovery solves no practical problem: the city has hundreds of street and place names named after people in Shakespeare's works—three in Hamlet Street alone.In addition to Oberon Plaza, there are two other streets named after Oberon. In fact, the fundamental reason why the hypothesis put forward by Deputy Inspector Appel is not taken seriously by too many people is that it cannot accurately predict which street the crime scene was in March this year.Moreover, the ready-made counterexample of Umbriel Street also weakens the reliability of this hypothesis. However, I have to say - thanks to Apel's inspiration, I can connect these scenes according to some wonderful rules: "Popular Astronomy" is one of the magazines I am most interested in - this cannot but be said a coincidence.