Everyone’s gaze fell on Jiayi, whose young face, when speaking earnestly, revealed a serious and resolute expression that exuded a strong convincing power.
Fang Zhenyue nodded in agreement, and everyone sat back down at their tables and chairs, all eyes turned expectantly towards Jiayi, waiting for her to speak.
Jiayi took a deep breath, walked to the whiteboard, and exchanged a glance with Fang Zhenyue.
He nodded encouragingly, and Jiayi responded with a smile.
Fang Zhenyue then walked among the tables and found a chair to sit on.
Jiayi scanned everyone, seeing that all attention was focused on her, she finally cleared her throat and began her prepared speech.
She reached into her trouser pocket, pulling out a handful of white crystalline substance with her left hand, and another with her right, displaying them respectively to the agents and then asked:
“Can anyone tell which is sugar and which is salt?”
“Can we taste them?” Liu Jiaming responded eagerly.
Jiayi shook her head, of course not.
“Then, it’s hard to tell,” Gary also shook his head, “We don’t often cook.”
“I have cooked before, but I can’t tell either,” Uncle Jiu also leaned in for a closer look.
“Yes, they have almost identical appearances,” Jiayi raised her right hand, saying, “This is sugar.”
Then she raised her left hand, “And this is salt.”
“I see,” Gary nodded with a smile, reaching out to try some sugar.
Jiayi smiled and handed some over, letting him pinch a bit and taste it. In an instant, Gary spat repeatedly towards the trash can, then grabbed a cup to rinse his mouth: “That’s cheating!”
Jiayi couldn’t help but smile as Gary, after rinsing his mouth, glared at her resentfully. She then continued:
“I am the narrator, as well as the planner.”
“Sugar and salt were placed in my pockets by me, and it was also me who told you which was which.”
“The salt and sugar in my hands represent the truth of the case.”
“The narrator can be the evidence, witnesses, the body, and even the murderer.”
“In most cases we handle, the majority of narrators are evidence, with the body and witnesses also being part of the evidence, including the murderer. This evidence ultimately points to the murderer, whom we can catch.”
“That is to say, the reason sugar and salt were in my pockets, like Gary on my left holding sugar, and Jiaming on my right holding salt, means sugar is in my left pocket and salt in my right.”
“According to the natural logic of things, we will head towards the correct goal.”
“But there is another possibility, that the narrator is not the evidence.”
Gary and the others watched as Jiayi threw both the salt and sugar into the trash bin, vaguely understanding her point, and gradually frowned.
“What if the narrator is the murderer? What if the murderer placed the sugar and salt where she wanted, and then deceived Gary by saying the right hand held the sugar?”
Jiayi pointed at the trash bin, “Facing the salt and sugar that look almost exactly the same, can everyone still discern the truth?”
“Are you saying ‘Clara might be the murderer’ is like ‘the right hand holding sugar,’ both lies told to us by the real murderer?” Sanfu furrowed his brows, “Including all the evidence at the crime scene, was it all staged by the ‘narrator’?”
Jiayi nodded.
“Yesterday, Brother Sanfu had doubts whether Clara was truly the suspect, even concluding from all her reactions during the interrogation that she didn’t seem like the real murderer.” Jiayi stared at Sanfu, locking eyes for a few seconds before firmly stating:
“Maybe intuition is not reliable, but if we develop a strong intuition during the investigation, we should remember it, and then work hard to verify it. We must not ignore our own intuition, something every detective should remember, as Brother Yue taught me on my first day in the major crimes unit.”
Taking a deep breath, Jiayi nodded firmly at Brother Sanfu again:
“I think Brother Sanfu’s intuition is not because he felt sorry for Clara crying, but rather not driven by emotion.”
“But all the evidence points to Clara, if not her, then who could it be? At least for now, we should treat her as a suspect until she clears herself of suspicion, right?” Sanfu frowned, this has always been how they handled cases, following a clue until confirming whether it is useful or not, then pushing forward or switching directions.
How come he feels Jiayi doesn’t handle cases this way?
It’s as if the clues can’t guide her, but rather she uses her reasoning to guide everyone to actively distinguish and seek out clues?
Pursing his lips, Sanfu thought, if Jiayi’s method proves reliable, she might really develop a style completely her own.
An investigator more inclined towards reasoning than even Brother Yue.
But, such reasoning out of thin air, even going against solid existing evidence… can it really be reliable?
“It was only possible to do this before, extracting clues from the only suspect, Clara. Only after following this path to its end will we know if it was right or wrong, whether to change direction, or if we should arrest Clara and send her to prison or the electric chair.”
“But—”
Jiayi walked to the whiteboard, staring at the words written there, took her usual red pen, skimmed it over several names, and firmly encircled the name ‘Qin Hongliang’ with a strong circle.
The familiar red circle determines the murderer.
Uncle Jiu took a deep breath, looking at Jiayi’s solemn and cold eyes, and suddenly felt a mix of respect and fear. After exhaling, he became excited again.
Straightening up, Uncle Jiu, who usually seemed too lazy to care about anything in the world, perked up!
“What if we find a second suspect, one who’s even more hidden?” Jiayi stood in front of a whiteboard, snapping the cap back onto a red marker, her gaze sweeping over everyone like a cold blade.
“Qin Hongliang? Clara’s tall pole-dancing roommate?” Sanfu stood up unconsciously.
“…” Liu Jiaming scratched his head, puzzled as he looked at Clara and then at Qin Hongliang, starting to feel out of his depth as another suspect emerged.
“Yes,” Jiayi nodded, twirling the red pen in her hand as if she were presenting a Word document in a meeting room to Chief Huang and others. She began to lift her head, engrossed in her speech, her typically soft demeanor replaced by confidence and an authoritative air, prompting everyone to unconsciously look up and listen intently:
“First, if someone cleans an entire room thoroughly, they couldn’t possibly leave behind so many clues.”
“This photo shows the murder weapon, a crystal ball, with the fingerprints wiped clean. Why leave bloodstains? Does the murderer think we are fools? It’s clear that she is not afraid of us finding the weapon because she has wiped off all her fingerprints. The murderer is so arrogant, and it is exactly this detail that reveals her conceit.”
Jiayi wrote the word “conceit” on the whiteboard as the first point of her profile, then continued:
“Seeing that every room of the victim is exceptionally tidy, one would first think that the victim, Zhao Meini, liked cleanliness—she must have wiped the floors, and tidied the tables and sofas herself.”
“However, after examining the scene, we found that Zhao Meini’s wardrobe and other hidden areas were quite messy.”
“Looking at past photos taken at Zhao Meini’s home, the backgrounds are also quite disorganized.”
“I believe all detectives here must have had the same doubt as I did: How could someone who is normally so messy suddenly tidy up their room just before dying? The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.”
“Then, the other possibility, no matter how strange it sounds, must be the truth: the murderer killed Zhao Meini and then tidied up the entire house.”
“Not just the places where she left footprints and fingerprints, but the whole room. The murderer wiped the floors, cleaned the tables, arranged the sofas, folded the blankets, and thoroughly cleaned every place she could reach.”
Last night, Jiayi had spent the entire evening reviewing materials and key logics of detective cases, as well as learning some psychology.
One key concept she picked up was that when you want to persuade someone, use words that suggest you and the audience are on the same side.
For instance, she used the phrase “I believe all detectives have the same doubt as I do,” and she agreed with Sanfu’s intuition right off the bat.
All of this was done to make everyone feel that they were on the same page as Jiayi, in order to brainwash the audience at that moment, making them think and agree with her thoughts completely.
Seeing that there were indeed no significant objections from everyone, and that any doubts were merely personal contemplations, she knew that what she had learned was useful.
At this point, Jiayi paused appropriately, and Liu Jiaming asked very aptly:
“Why is that?”
Jiayi smiled, her eyes brightening under the light:
“Because the murderer is a clean freak.”
Everyone frowned at this conclusion, and then followed Jiayi’s line of thought: among the people they had visited in the past two days, was anyone a clean freak?
Or, was Qin Hongliang, whom Jiayi had circled as the murderer, a clean freak?
As if guessing what everyone was speculating, Jiayi nodded vigorously and wrote “clean freak” on the whiteboard for the second time, then explained:
“That’s right, Qin Hongliang is a clean freak.”
“When Brother Jiaming and I inspected Clara’s kitchen, we noticed that it was very clean. Normally, any kitchen used for cooking at home would have grease stains, which are stubborn and hard to clean. But Clara’s kitchen was immaculately clean, almost spotless.”
“Two people sharing an apartment, it’s hard to say who caused the cleanliness of the common areas, but looking at Clara’s bedroom, we all knew. Earlier, Sir Fang also mentioned that Clara’s bedroom was messy, except for the clothes, which were neatly folded. Sanfu asked Clara, and her answer was that in her line of work, clothes must be neat and cannot be crumpled as it affects the visual appeal and makes clients uncomfortable. So, the house could be as messy as a dump, unseen by anyone, but the clothes had to be worn outside and must be neat.”
“From this, we can conclude that the reason the common areas are so clean is entirely because Qin Hongliang likes cleanliness, and she is the one managing the house alone. This point, when Sanfu interrogates Clara for the second time, can be asked about, and I believe the answer will be the same as what I guessed.”
When you are confident enough, the credibility of your words also increases.
Upon hearing her words, Sanfu did not question them but instinctively nodded in agreement. Unknowingly, he seemed to have been persuaded by Jiayi.
“Furthermore, there’s another very peculiar thing about Clara’s house. Um, or here, we should call it Qin Hongliang’s house.”
“The seasoning bottles on the kitchen counter are arranged in three rows of six small jars each. There are six bowls and six plates in the dish rack.”
“On the small wall shelf in the living room, each row only holds six items.”
“The simple shoe rack at the door has six tiers.”
“The moment Qin Hongliang opened the door to the room, I saw that her room was not only clean and out of place with the rest of the house, but there were also six bottles of cosmetics on the small table.”
“After I arrived at work this morning, the first thing I did was ask the forensic officer, Sir Xu, based on my guess, to help examine the wound on the chest of the deceased, Zhao Meini, to see if it was possible that she was stabbed six times.”
Hearing this, the office was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and even Fang Zhenyue unconsciously clenched his teeth due to the tension.
Everyone was completely stunned by Jiayi’s reasoning.
It was hard enough to find these details; the way she pieced together her reasoning based on them was so brilliant it gave the listeners goosebumps!
After Jiayi finished speaking, she checked the time, picked up the phone, and dialed the forensic department.
“Major Crime Team B, Jiayi speaking, please find Sir Xu.”
Uncle Jiu swallowed and turned to Gary sitting next to him, the young man was still staring at the whiteboard, not yet recovered.
Liu Jiaming tried to absorb everything Jiayi said, worried he was the only one slow to react, and hurriedly looked around to see that both Sanfu and Gary were also frowning in thought, which reassured him.
Everyone was equally shocked and needed time to digest the information, which was good.
After Sir Xu answered the phone, Jiayi switched the call to speaker and politely asked, “Sir Xu, this morning I asked you to help examine the chest wound of the Portland Street case victim, to see if it was possible the murderer stabbed her six times. Do you have the results?”
“Right, I was just about to call you. I got tied up with Team C’s case and was delayed,” Sir Xu took a deep breath, which could be heard over the phone:
“The logic of reasoning is truly magical. As a forensic officer, I used to believe that evidence trumps all, but dealing with you detectives often leaves me amazed. Reasoning and logic can sometimes give a mystical, magical feeling.”