Chapter 7 Chapter VII

Puller parked the car slowly on the side of the road and looked out through the window.Such an opportunity is unique in solving a case, after which the insight gradually becomes numb due to the repetition of the process. He stepped out of the car door, leaned against the body of the Chevrolet, and took a deep breath.His sense of smell detected the smell from the mining site he had just driven past three kilometers away in the airflow.His hearing caught the distant roar of coal trucks.His vision picked up a searchlight to the west, streaking across the night sky.Why?he does not know. He began to observe the neighborhood carefully.Puller's night vision ability is first-rate, and with the bright moon set off by the starry night, he can clearly identify the surrounding objects, whether they are far or near, large or small.Small, dilapidated, uniform houses; toys scattered in the yard; a rusty car abandoned in the corner; a stray cat slipping away.It's a stale, dying place.Maybe it's dead, like Reynolds.was destroyed by others.

What troubled Puller most, however, was not what he had seen, but what he hadn't seen. The police isolation belt has been circled in front of this house, silently reminding people to stay away from it.On the family's private driveway, someone buckled two five-gallon oil drums upside down on the road, and put a yellow barrier between the drums to serve as a temporary roadblock. What Puller didn't see was the presence of any of the policemen.It was only fourteen hours since the incident, but there were no on-site security personnel here.This is not good.In fact, it's unbelievable.He understands that any evidence collected at a crime scene that is not closely guarded will only be vulnerable in court.

He really didn't want to do what he wanted, but it would be negligence if he didn't, and he and some others might have to pay the price of losing their jobs.He took out his mobile phone and pressed the number from memory. She answered the phone on the second ring: "Whoever you are, I swear to God I'm going to shoot you." "Sheriff Cole, or Puller." "Do you want to court death?" she yelled on the phone. "There is no security guard here." "where?" "Crime scene." "How did you know?" "Because my car is parked right outside the house."

"You're wrong. There's a patrol car over there with my men on duty. I gave the order myself." Puller looked around. "Well, unless he hides in the woods and throws the car in a ditch, he's going to be invisible. Isn't the point of having on-site protection so he can be seen?" "Are you really there?" "Indeed it is." "And there really aren't any police cars there?" "Not really." "I'll be there in thirty-five minutes." "Can't you go any faster?" "If I drive any faster on the road here at night, I'll either be killed in a tree or overturned in a ravine." She stopped, and Puller heard her thump barefoot on the ground, open a drawer, Pull out some clothes.Not bad at all.

"Listen, Puller. Can you do me a favor and temporarily secure the scene? I'm going to call the bastard who was supposed to be there, and I'm going to swear at him." "I can secure the scene. Is the body still in the house?" "The body is still there." The body had been on the scene long enough, but Puller decided not to comment.And he's kind of happy about it.He wanted to see what the killer left intact. "I don't want to mess with the murder scene. Did you take fingerprints? Search for the killer's tracks or something?" "We have done a lot of these things, and we will continue to do them this morning."

"Okay. Any signs of forced entry?" "can not tell." "So I can go in through the front door." "The door is locked. At least it must have been locked." "Then I'll go in through the front door." "Puller—" "Thirty-five minutes." She said slowly, "Okay, see you later. Well...thank you for your help." Puller turned off his phone and looked around again.There are eight houses in this small street.No matter which building is dark, there is no light.There was nothing unusual about this at this hour of the morning.There are cars parked in the driveways of these houses.Behind the houses on both sides of the street was the jungle.

He grabbed some items from the military backpack and put them in a small fold-up backpack that he always carried with him.He puts on a headset and connects it to a portable tape recorder in a pouch by his belt.Then he quickly put on the thin blue gloves again. He walked to the house, looked down at the gravel shoulder beside the drive, and shone the spotlight on the road.There are tire marks.It could have been left over from any car that came here for investigation.He ran things through in his head in chronological order. The postman found the body at 2:00 p.m. and called the police immediately.The first person to call the police arrived half an hour later.

Another ten minutes later, the military received a call.high speed.Some of the police officers on the scene were very knowledgeable.He wondered if it would be Cole.He was notified in Kansas and flew back immediately.The voyage was smooth sailing, forty minutes earlier than expected.He made a trip home and arrived at CID headquarters at 6.20pm.He started driving here at 7:50.Driving almost like a rocket, he reached Drake at 3:00 a.m.It's almost 5 in the morning now. Puller stared at the wheelchair ramp in front of the door.Matthews Reynolds was not over fifty and had a good military build.

His wife, who is five years younger, has no health problems and has almost nothing on her health insurance record.One of the children is sixteen years old and the other is seventeen years old, and there is no record of any serious illness.They don't need ramps like this.This is not their home.They were here for another reason, perhaps the same reason that took their lives. He looked at the tire marks on the shoulder of the road again, and then focused his attention on a dark spot next to him.If the front of the car is facing east, the location of the spot is just under the engine of the car.He crouched down, carefully avoiding the tire tracks, and ran his fingers over the patch of liquid.warm.Oil spots.not long time.The one left by the policeman who was in charge of securing the scene?possible.If so, where did he go?

Moving nimbly toward the door, he noticed the shattered glass.He hastily pulled on the shoe covers.The front door was indeed locked, but not some complicated security lock.It only took three seconds to open the lock. He moved forward, flashing the flashlight in one hand and holding the M11 drawn from the front in the other. Puller imagined the possibilities a person would encounter if he walked into a house where four people had been murdered and the police who were supposed to be guarding the door were nowhere to be found.He comes to the living room.The flashlight caught them. They are all lying on the sofa.Listed in a row.The four corpses leaned crookedly together.

Puller holstered the gun, stepped back, and began dictating into the headset, recording the scene before him. The father is on the far right, the daughter is on the far left, the mother and son are in the middle, and the mother is next to the father.Puller checked the carpet in front of them by the light of his flashlight. There was no blood spatter.He raised his head and shone the flashlight on the heads of the dead. The father was shot in the face.Judging from the wound, the killer shot almost close to his face. The mother's face was relatively intact, but her upper body was almost smashed.Puller looked at the dead woman's hands, which were hard to discern.He deduced that the woman raised her hands to her chest the moment the killer fired the bullet.Of course, only two hands can't stop the rain of bullets, this is just an instinctive action she made when facing the muzzle of the gun that was raised towards her. The two teenagers had indistinct wounds, perhaps on the back of their bodies.The parents were not killed here. If they were here, there should be blood everywhere in the house.The killer executed them elsewhere in the house, and moved them to line up like a family watching TV together. Simply psychopathic.Of course, only a pervert can slaughter an entire family. A pervert, or a cold and numb professional killer.Maybe the two are the same thing. Puller stepped forward, moving his feet carefully to avoid stepping on anything on the carpet that had been marked as evidence.The father of the family of the deceased was wearing an old-style Class B green military uniform. According to regulations, this kind of military uniform will not be officially eliminated until a few years later.The right half of his face was blown off, and the bullet left a large hole in the back of his neck, exposing his spine.A shattered cheekbone and a hollow eye socket coldly responded to Puller's gaze.There were no wounds on his upper body.The wounds from the point-blank shots were concentrated on his face and neck. The weapon that caused such devastating trauma would probably only be a shotgun. There were several small white residues on the body's bullet holes.The plug that seals the gunpowder in the cartridge case.Hopefully they'll be able to gauge the caliber of the shotgun from the bung, or find the manufacturer's name stamped on the bung, if identification is still possible. Mother's eyes were fixed on Puller.Those indulging in sensational melodrama must have assumed that the woman's expression conveyed a shocking plea—to catch the killer. Puller illuminated her chest with a flashlight.A dozen or so projectiles created groups of bullet holes scattered randomly.Still a shotgun, but at a different distance. Mrs. Reynolds's white shirt had turned mostly crimson.Puller took a ruler from his pocket and measured the distance between bullet holes on her shirt.He calculated in his head and moved the ruler aside.He touched the couple's arms again.It is still stiff, but it will gradually soften and the muscles will become looser and looser.The temperature of the body is about the same as room temperature, or slightly lower. He took out a thermometer to measure the temperature.The blood of the corpse flowed to the lower part and stagnated into a pool of blood. The intestines and bladders of the corpses have long been emptied, the skin is blue-green, the smell of decay has begun to emanate, and the facial features are either destroyed or distorted.People are ugly when they die. His attention turned to the two children.Suddenly, he stopped looking and turned around quickly. there's noise.from somewhere in the house.Apparently, he wasn't the only one alive here.