Chapter 153: "The scene was too clean, so clean it seemed like it had been deliberately staged.
Tuberculosis Rabbit didn't think much and chose to enter the map again!
When the Map Access Pass fell into Yi's hands, it had a total of five uses. Yi used it once, he used it once, now there were three chances left!
After reentering the map, what met his eyes was the same familiar scene.
A somewhat cramped bedroom with a computer desk and a computer on it. The computer screen was on a browser page, as if searching for something.
The ashtray on the desk was piled high with ashes, and several cigarette butts had even spilled out.
Tuberculosis Rabbit glanced around and, with a distracted look, began gnawing at his fingernails, holding the mouse with panicked and hurried eyes, constantly flipping through the browser pages on the screen.
He didn't, like last time, start cleaning the bloodstains as soon as he landed.
Instead, he first used the information in the computer diary to learn that the identity he was playing had a habit of biting his nails when nervous, trying to boost his performance rating a bit.
He put himself in the shoes of the character he was playing and thought about what he would do in this situation.
After all that was done.
Tuberculosis Rabbit finally rushed to the living room. Instead of cleaning up the bloodstains and starting to dismember the body immediately, like last time, he looked at the female corpse lying in a pool of blood in the living room.
Instead, he lifted his head to glance at the clock on the living room wall and swiftly began a series of actions!
Firstly, the signs of struggle in the room needed some basic handling. They didn't need to be entirely dealt with, just a bit of manipulation was enough.
Once his line of thought changed, things became much simpler.
The blood didn't need to be cleaned, nor did the corpse.
Tuberculosis Rabbit then looked down at the bloodstained dagger on the coffee table. It was the dagger the original owner of the identity he was playing had used to kill his wife, covered with a lot of the woman's blood and the original owner's fingerprints.
Last time he'd entered the map, he cleaned off all the blood and fingerprints from the dagger.
But this time he didn't do anything to it.
Instead, he gripped the dagger in reverse, took a deep breath, and stabbed himself in the abdomen multiple times!
He was too familiar with the wounds on the body. A person stabbing themselves in the stomach and a wound inflicted by someone else were very different, and could easily be distinguished with the naked eye.
And because he understood wounds so well, he was able to make the self-inflicted wound on his stomach look like it was inflicted by another person.
He could also roughly fabricate the height, force, and weight of the assailant by the way he used the dagger.
After everything was done, he twitched slightly at the corners of his mouth from the pain, and then he leaned against the sofa, lying on the ground as if half-dead.
And the next second—
"Police, open up!"
The door was suddenly forced open, and a flood of police officers in uniform, holding guns with serious faces, rushed in. As soon as they entered, they saw such a bloody scene before them.
Their expressions shifted dramatically.
"Homicide, we have two victims."
"Wait!"
"One seems to be still alive, request an ambulance!"
...
More than twenty hours passed.
Tuberculosis Rabbit slowly opened his eyes, looking somewhat dazedly at several uniformed police officers standing in front of his hospital bed, full of incomprehension.
He had awakened a long time ago, to be precise, he should have never lost consciousness.
Although the wound in his abdomen wasn't small, he always felt as if such injuries were trivial, as if he had suffered more severe wounds before. Yet, he could not recall ever being seriously injured.
Maybe it was because he was naturally tough and had a high tolerance for pain with such injuries.
Still, he pretended to be comatose on the hospital bed for a long time, letting those clumsy doctors sew his stomach with needle and thread. After the bandaging was done, these officers had been guarding by his bedside.
He had intended to wait for these officers to leave, and then naturally clear his suspicion to smoothly exit the map, but now it seemed that if he did not wake up, they intended to keep standing there.
"Sigh."
After silently sighing in his heart, Tuberculosis Rabbit looked up with white lips at the police officers in front of his bed and said with a trembling voice, "How is she? Did she wake up?"
"..."
The middle-aged man leading the officers in front of Tuberculosis Rabbit's bed fell silent for a long while with an expressionless face, then stared straight into Tuberculosis Rabbit's eyes and said word by word.
"I'm sorry, your wife died at the crime scene, resuscitation was ineffective."
"No trace of a third person was found on the scene, only you and your wife's traces were in the entire room."
"There were no significant damage marks on the security door, nor traces of ropes on the windows."
"And only your fingerprints were found on the dagger."
"Additionally, before the crime, someone heard you having a vehement argument with your wife. We also found your diary in your computer."
"In your diary, you wrote that you failed in your business, and after the failure, your wife's attitude towards you changed drastically. We have ample reason to suspect that, dissatisfied with your wife's attitude, you killed her after a violent argument."
"You have sufficient motive for the crime, and all the clues at the crime scene point directly to you."
"Impossible!!!"
Tuberculosis Rabbit's eyes filled with disbelief as he shoved his fingernails into his mouth, enveloped by grief and an inability to accept the situation, his body shaking uncontrollably as he curled into a ball.
It seemed like he fell into profound grief after his wife's death.
He did not offer a single word of rebuttal to the accusations of the officer in front of him, but rather, he sank into endless sorrow following his wife's passing.
After a long while,
Tuberculosis Rabbit, looking a bit better, finally raised his head to look at the officer standing in front of the hospital bed, "Have you caught him?"
"Who?"
"The murderer."
"Based on the current clues, all the pointers are directed at you. You are the prime suspect."
"Get out!"
Tuberculosis Rabbit surged with anger, paying no heed to his own injuries as he sat up and hurled the pillow from the hospital bed at the officer, "A bunch of idiots!!!"
...
An hour later.
The middle-aged officer stood outside the hospital room, leaning against the wall with furrowed brows, deep in thought, before he spoke hoarsely after a moment.
"I believe what he said."
"The scene is too clean, so clean it seems deliberately arranged."
"Let's make an assumption."
He turned his head towards the young trainee officer beside him, "If you were someone whose business failed and, in a fit of emotional breakdown, killed your own wife, how would you handle it?"
"Me?"
The trainee officer trailing behind the middle-aged one hesitated slightly before replying, "I'm not married yet, I don't quite understand that kind of emotional collapse, but if it were me, I might first wipe off the fingerprints on the murder weapon."
"That's right."
The middle-aged officer nodded expressionlessly, "That step is important. Almost everyone, whether in a state of emotional breakdown or having accidentally killed the person beside them in bed, will subconsciously perform some actions to conceal evidence."
"Like wiping off fingerprints, destroying crime scene traces, or even disposing of the body."
"It's a subconscious reaction from people's self-preservation systems."
"Even if most criminals who turn themselves in after the crime, before surrendering, they would have taken these actions. There are various reasons why they surrender, whether they can't stand their conscience's condemnation, are weary of fleeing, or longing for a sound sleep."
"But regardless of the situation, these criminals would have subconsciously made some changes to the crime scene to hide the fact that they are murderers."
"However, our case's crime scene is too perfect."
"The suspect's fingerprints on the murder weapon, the suspect's footprints at the crime scene, the suspect's motive detailed in the computer diary, the external witness who heard the argument, arriving at the scene to find the victim and the suspect, and so forth."
"The whole process looks as if someone is hand-feeding us the perpetrator's case."
"If I didn't know my father wasn't the bureau chief, I would almost suspect that my father deliberately created the crime scene to hand me a meritorious case."
"The entire crime scene coincides almost perfectly with the cases we studied at the police academy."
"Uhm..."
The young officer standing beside, leaning against the wall, touched his nose somewhat awkwardly, but his eyelids began to droop, and he started to harbor some doubts.
Put like that, it indeed seemed rather strange.
Could it really be that his bureau chief father constructed this merit for him to ascend the ranks more quickly?
Isn't this manner of feeding merit a bit too crude?
Next time, set up something with drugs, that would bring even greater merit.
"So Captain, what are you implying?"
"My implication is simple."
The middle-aged officer lit a cigarette, his eyes heavy with the weight of the world, and put it to his lips, speaking hoarsely, "Every medical student understands a principle, that in reality, it's nearly impossible to see a case that mirrors those in textbooks exactly."
"The cases in the textbooks are perfect cases, but reality has many variables."
"Once you encounter a case that's as perfect as the textbook cases, nine times out of ten, it's already buried."
"We should also understand a principle, that in reality, it's nearly impossible to have a perfect case consistent with the textbooks. There should also be various variables, and if encountered, there must be doubt."
"Based on the information we've gathered, I have a deduction, that the criminal suspect is someone else, somebody who entered the room, killed, destroyed the crime scene, and fled."
"Uh..."
The young officer leaned against the wall in deep thought without speaking. He was a bit reluctant to let the captain continue investigating. After the captain's reminder, he began to suspect that perhaps his own father, the bureau chief, was involved in foul play. If the investigation led back to his father, that would be quite the spectacle.
He cleared his throat softly, tentatively beginning to speak.
"Captain, so far except for the suspect's testimony, all evidence points towards the suspect. Technically, we could already convict him, and the merit from a homicide case is not insignificant."
"You're the main officer handling this case, and the lion's share of the merit would go to you."
"Isn't it a bit wasteful to create additional complications?"
His intention was clear; whether or not this man was the true murderer, since the evidence pointed to him, they might as well pin the murder on him and secure the merit for themselves.
"Do you realize what you're saying?"
The middle-aged man swept a cold glance at the young officer beside him, "Remember the oath you took when you joined, our goal is to uncover the truth and seek justice for the people, not to wrongly convict on false charges."