Neverland

The clean and tidy apartment seemed to be swept across the border by a strong wind. The wooden dining table was tilted to the ground, and the slender wooden table legs were covered with horrible cracks. On the floor, the stubble is new.

The tea set on the coffee table was also turned over, the fragile porcelain was shattered and flying around, and the tiles were splashed everywhere, half of the broken teapot lid was under the sofa, half rolled to the door, and the middle It seems that they are separated by an insurmountable galaxy, looking at each other from a distance, and they will never die.

The ventilating fan of the air conditioner is whistling. It is already winter outside, and the temperature of the air conditioner in the house is also abnormally low. The shocking 8 degrees on the panel is enough to make the whole room as cold as an ice cellar, and the cold wind is indifferent Following the instructions of the master, it continuously spewed out from the ventilation fan, taking away the last trace of heat in the room.

The overturned tea flowed slowly along the marble coffee table to the edge, and fell down along the edge of the table. The sound of the water changed from loud to soft, and finally only the sound of dripping water was left.

The remaining tea became stingy, and it took a long time to accumulate on the edge of the table to fill up a single drop.This small transparent drop of water had to sway on the edge of the table for a while before it fell down reluctantly and dripped on the floor, mixing with the bright red blood.

The blood hadn't solidified yet, and was slowly spreading outward, flowing forward along the cracks in the floor without stopping.

——It flowed all the way to the feet of Xu Muzhou who broke in through the door.

Ten minutes later, the second criminal investigation team of the Municipal Bureau put up a blockade outside He Beibei's dormitory.

Zhang Shuang and Xu Muzhou stood side by side in front of the window on the other side of the corridor, silently sharing a cigarette from him.

The 120 ambulance was parked downstairs, but unfortunately it was a waste of time, there was no need to move people down.

After finishing the routine procedures, the doctor on board regrettably put the first aid out and put it back, so he almost said that he had to go with them for this matter.

"Dead." Xu Muzhou's eyes fell on the doctor on board the car downstairs, and suddenly said: "It's too late, the blood hasn't clotted yet."

"Zhang Yue said it." Shen Shuang frowned and took a puff of cigarette: "...the scene looks similar to Xu Kangna."

The same mess everywhere, the scene of the crime was in disarray, with blood all over the floor.

The only difference is that Xu Kang died in the bedroom, while He Beibei died in the living room. When she was dying, she was still struggling to ask for help from the outside world. Her whole body was twisted and lying on the floor. posture.

- It's a hell on earth.

"Brother Xu..." Shen Shuang hesitated for a moment before asking, "Is there—"

Xu Muzhou knew what he was talking about, he lifted the side hem of his clothes, took out a sealed evidence bag from his trouser pocket and handed it to Shen Shuang.

The corner of the evidence bag was stained red with blood, and it contained a paper poker card.

——This time it’s a six of hearts.

Compared with Xu Kang's bedroom with a large hanging picture and Fu Sihan's keychain, this poker card looks a bit ordinary.

As an ordinary poker card, it appeared at the murder scene so casually, even "as it should be".

"Where did you find it?" Shen Shuang asked.

"There's no need to find out, just hold He Beibei's corpse." Xu Muzhou said.

The dormitory area where He Beibei lives is an old-fashioned community in the city center that has not been re-planned. Their unit rented more than a dozen non-adjacent houses in the community to rebuild the dormitory.The room that He Beibei was assigned to was a bit far from the east side where most of his colleagues lived, and it happened to be in the penultimate building on the west side, so he didn't usually communicate with people.

Xu Muzhou lost his patience after knocking on the door for 3 minutes, called the nearest colleague, and after confirming that no colleague or leader had a spare key, he gave up the idea of ​​asking to open the door.

Before it was confirmed that He Beibei was indeed suspected of a crime and that his life was in danger, they did not have the authority to forcefully break into the door, so they found a nearby locksmith and spent 5 minutes picking the lock.

——Then the old locksmith almost fainted from fright.

He Beibei was only [-] centimeters away from the door. She was lying on the ground with one hand firmly pressed against the floor, as if she wanted to prop herself up, while the other hand was stretched towards the door, her eyes widened.Because the temperature inside the room was so cold that He Beibei's exposed skin was tinged with a purple cyan color.

The most important thing is that He Beibei's entire throat was cut open, and the blood flowed out along the opening like money. Most of her body was soaked in blood, leaving a winding bloodstain behind her.

The bloodstains ran across the entire living room, looking extremely heroic - she struggled to climb from the other side of the living room to the door, and died at the last step close to life.

"Hearts?" Shen Shuang held the evidence bag up in front of her eyes, frowned, and said, "Why did you change the suit this time?"

"I wanted to talk about this when I was in the car." Xu Muzhou bit his cigarette holder, his voice sounded a bit vague: "Xu Kang is a four of diamonds, Fu Sihan is a seven of diamonds, there is no connection between these two numbers , It’s a bit far-fetched to say that it’s a rule. So I kept thinking at that time, could this thing not be a number, but a code name.”

Shen Shuang was slightly taken aback.

These two new playing cards appeared almost at the same time, and it took only two hours for the front and rear legs. Before he had time to think about the meaning of these playing cards, Xu Muzhou had already made a guess.

"If it was an ordinary serial killer, then he would not use meaningless random numbers as numbers when killing people." Xu Muzhou said: "The murderer who killed Xu Kang had a very strong psychological quality, he committed crimes calmly, organized and treated the victims well. There is a joking sense of treating 'prey'. If this kind of person commits such a big serial murder case for some reason, no matter what criteria he uses to select the victims, he will not put his own 'prey' The results' are messed up - because it's not 'standard'."

"Standard?" Shen Shuang said.

"We haven't found any drawing tools for the four squares that appeared in Xu Kang's bedroom. The ability to draw them to such a standard either means that he has special drawing tools, or that he cares about standards very much. People who follow the rules—after all, there are standards for the size and proportion of playing cards." Xu Muzhou said: "From the perspective of psychological profile, he should be a person who has a very good plan for the scene, and he will not set himself up Made a mess of things."

"That's why I'm more inclined to believe that the playing cards are some kind of code name - He Beibei's cards also prove this." Xu Muzhou said: "Whether it's Xu Kang or Fu Sihan, according to what we know so far, They were all killed without knowing it. Although I am not sure whether He Beibei is the murderer who killed Fu Sihan, it is undeniable that the two victims are actively communicating with each other. Xu Kang personally opened the door for the murderer, and Fu Sihan also voluntarily went to meet He Beibei."

"There must be some kind of connection between them. The playing cards may represent a certain meaning, or they may simply represent their identities. When tracing Xu Kang's murderer, the murderer once said that he was the ace of spades, so this It shows that this way of communication should be unique between them—and maybe not only these few cards. The murderer’s self-defense family is spades, Xu Kang and Fu Sihan are diamonds, and the dead He Beibei represents the red card. Peach." Xu Muzhou said, "There are actually differences between different suits."

His brain is like a high-speed CPU, infinitely extracting various possibilities from limited clues, and then picking out the paradoxical possibilities in the shortest time to find out which is the closest to reality. possible situation.

Shen Shuang couldn't help clicking his tongue, thinking that he could almost hear the sound of gears turning in Xu Muzhou's mind.

"You mean, in that 'small group' including the three deceased, the suits on the cards represent different people?" Shen Shuang said, "The black suit is the murderer, and the red suit is the victim? It's magical."

"More than that." Xu Muzhou said, "Before He Beibei went to Fu Sihan, he went to Xu Kang's house. I suspect that the square piece represents the ignorant victim, but the heart represents the insider..."

As soon as Xu Muzhou finished speaking, there was a small commotion behind him. Xu Muzhou stopped talking for a while, put out the cigarette butt in the ashtray of the can on the window, and looked back.

Inside the opened door, the trace inspection was busy in an orderly manner. The forensic doctor who was temporarily arrested to work overtime was kneeling on the plastic sheet next to the corpse, carefully picking up something that fell on the ground with tweezers.

——It doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary.

"By the way." Xu Muzhou turned around and asked, "How is the matter I asked you to investigate?"

"Oh, speaking of this, I was about to call you when the results came out, so you called first to say that something happened to He Beibei, and I didn't have time to tell you." Shen Shuang said seriously: "Brother Xu, you You guessed it right, Fu Sihan really has sponsors, including Xu Kang and He Beibei, all of them."

He took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and said, "Actually, it's not easy to check, because they are not an orphanage, and the sponsors are different. But because of He Beibei, we I found out all the sponsors of the three children, and then searched up the vines, only to find that their sponsors belong to a public welfare foundation called 'Microco**ic', and the funding for these children is the same , from a man named Stephen Longch."

"Foreigner?" Xu Muzhou asked.

"Yes." Shen Shuang handed the list to Xu Muzhou, and said, "Here is the list, I haven't had time to read it yet."

Xu Muzhou unfolded the paper, and his mood suddenly became a little complicated. He didn't know whether he should be surprised or should feel "it's true" - the paper was full of familiar names.

Not only Xu Kang, Fu Sihan and He Beibei, but even the names of Qi Yuan and Qin Huai are also impressively listed.

Xu Muzhou looked at each name one by one, and when his eyes fell on the last name, he was suddenly taken aback.

"Deputy Captain Xu."

Xu Muzhou raised his head subconsciously following the sound, and his eyes met the white figure walking towards him across the corridor.

——and Yan Cen.