Chapter 20 Chapter Four

But how would we explain the situation we now face?Is the witness required to confess?If it is repentance, it should not be an escape but a responsibility. Repentance is not death but a rebirth. Repentance is not despair but hope.I don't know what kind of mentality that informer wanted to put the blame on Ethan. Therefore, when Eliot interrogated Ethan, he said: "Some people may ask, why do people have to repent?" Ethan said: "The person who framed me should repent, because only true repentance can make him feel remorse for this strong and profound crime. Each of us must know the crime before we can destroy that kind of crime." False and arrogant moral conceit."

Elliot nodded, expressing his appreciation for Ethan's attitude.Yes, confession shows a person's awareness and anxiety about his own moral situation.So people must truly repent. But would the whistleblower feel the same way?We have no way of knowing. Tim had no choice but to drop the charges against Ethan.As a prosecutor, it felt pretty bad when he had to drop an indictment in a death penalty case because all that time had gone to waste.When Tim complained to me after the charges were dropped, all I had to say was, "We have hope, but we need to be patient." Ethan always believed that he would be acquitted, he never gave up hope, never wavered, he knew he would come home.

But there is a renewed sense of fear among the families of the victims that the killers are still at large, that they are vicious and evil people, and that they are likely to do bad things to others. And we can only start over to find the suspect. I said to Tim, "Let's think about the topics that can make us feel better first, that would be great! Let's put this aside for now, Tim, are you familiar with Ohio?" Tim replied: "I am very familiar with the plants and trees here because I grew up here. I know the water system and soil here are formed by past glacial activities. The Allegheny Plateau is from Pennsylvania The state and West Virginia extend westward, they account for about half of the state, and of course, many places here are at an elevation of 425 meters. Also, the Lake Erie Plain runs along Lake Erie to the state's Northwest Territories and the Michigan border stretch."

"We need to relax so much. After this case is solved, I will cross the Mississippi River and go to Mount Campbell, the highest point in the state, just near Bellefontaine, where it is 472 meters above sea level. Where there is the highest, there is the lowest, that lowest point , at the confluence of the Miami and Ohio rivers near Cincinnati, where the elevation is only 130 meters..." "Diane..." Tim stopped me, "I got good grades in geography when I was a kid, and I still remember the forest area in Ohio—more than 2 million hectares, almost one-fifth of the state. 1. The average water depth of Lake Erie is less than 19 meters. 70% of the state's regional rivers are fed into the Mississippi River system of the Ohio River by the Miami River, Scioto River, Muskingum River and other waterways; the remaining 30% The river, through waterways like the Maumee and Cuyahoga, flows into Lake Erie."

It's a miracle, and we're proud that the Ohio River is one of the busiest great rivers in the world.This large river surrounds the southern boundary of Ohio and is more than 3 meters deep.It carries more cargo annually than the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Panama Canal, and is the world's largest center for inland coal shipments. After talking like this for a while, both of us felt much better, and we continued to discuss the case. I said, "Tim, what are you still thinking about?" "I am devastated because two elderly people have been brutally murdered in our community and we have been slow to catch the killers. We have some good evidence like blood and missing pendants and if we can track down If we can find out the whereabouts of the pendant, we will definitely find the suspect."

However, Tim's words did not bring us good luck, and in the next two years, we did not make any progress.God, who knows what's wrong with this? All detectives know the "72-hour rule", which means that if a case cannot be solved within three days, it will take a long time to solve it.And it is true.This case will continue even if it has not been solved for three years. In the two years since Gertrude and Edward were murdered, we have followed the various leads in the case.We continued to try to get some information from the whistleblower, but the whistleblower didn't give us any more information, she said she has wronged a good person, she doesn't want to do it anymore, if it continues like this, she will have a conscience feeling anxious.As for the name of the drug dealer and the address of their home, we also have it, but our internal division of labor is different. I can only continue to investigate the cause of death of the two old people.