traces of all things

Professor Mei Taihong is thin and small, his eyes are full of panic. Since there is no absolute evidence found at the scene, Lu Zheng has no reason to invite him to sit in the interrogation room, but it is only a questioning job. The professor was terrified.

It's no wonder that after a lifetime of dignity, this may be the first time in Professor Mei Taihong's life that he has set foot in a place like the inquiry room of the Public Security Bureau.

Since the doubts about Professor Mei were too great, a group of backbones of the city bureau, including Vice Captain Xian Hongru, were dispatched for this inquiry. Quite huge.

"I said, I said, I said it all." The timid Professor Mei was so frightened by the two men's black faces that he almost wiped his tears: "I was wrong... After he came, many resources in the courtyard were gone. Leaning towards him, I feel a little unbalanced... just, a little jealous, but I don't have the guts! I never dare to express any contradictions on the surface..."

Xian Hongru nodded: "Professor, don't be nervous, just answer our questions directly. May I ask how did you see the fire and smoke in Professor Guan's office when you closed the windows and curtains?"

Professor Mei's face turned red up to the ears, he hesitated and couldn't speak.

"Professor Mei, the situation you are facing now is not optimistic. The recording from the fire brigade is not good for you. If you cannot provide a reasonable explanation, your suspicion of arson will definitely increase greatly. It will not be good at that time." Done, please think carefully and tell us the facts completely.”

One pretended to be red-faced and the other pretended to be white-faced. The two who were at odds with each other cooperated tacitly at the moment. Professor Mei choked up for a while, and finally spoke the truth while covering her face.

"Actually... it's because of me, there's a problem with the floor in the corner of my office." Professor Mei said with difficulty, with a face full of shame.

Have a problem with the ground?Lu Zheng and the others exchanged puzzled looks.

"The physical and chemical building is relatively old, and then...the corner of my office was a little bit subsidence...so, one day I suddenly found a big gap, I could hear the sound downstairs, and I could see a little bit of the downstairs The office scene..."

Lu Zheng nodded in a daze, while listening to the sound of his three views shattering.

The detectives in the entire office were shocked, and they all looked like they were out of their wits.

Professor Mei may also have broken the jar, blushing all over his face, and shaking it out: "...I didn't think much about it at first, but then I became obsessed with ghosts for some reason, so I always wanted to secretly listen to it." Listen to what Xiao Guan said to the people in the office and the group, and hear if they have any new research inspiration recently... The gap is not big, and it is in the corner, so it is not easy to notice. I use a wastebasket It was blocked, and I called the fire alarm when I saw the smoke floating up when I removed the wastebasket..."

While listening, Lu Zheng took out two floor plans of the upstairs and downstairs offices: "Professor Mei, can you mark the location of that seam?"

Mei Taihong took the floor plan in embarrassment: "No, no problem."

"This is the corner, there is a wastebasket on it." He pointed to the most northwest corner of the room.

Lu Zheng raised his eyebrows, and quickly found the floor plan of Professor Guan's office.

Directly below that slit was the point of fire—the fabric sofa in Professor Guan's office!

**

Although I'm sorry, Professor Mei was invited into the interrogation room.

"Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

In the interrogation room, his hands could not move freely, so the vice-captain Xian Hongru had to stand beside Professor Mei and wipe his tears for a gentleman.

"Professor Mei, don't panic." Geng Zhizhong rubbed the back of his head helplessly: "Recall, did anyone enter your office between 8:25 am and [-]:[-] pm on August [-]th? Was there any suspicious behavior?" ?”

While weeping, Professor Mei sniffed and recalled: "I didn't have an appointment that morning on Sunday, and it seemed like no one had come to my office. I myself didn't go in until almost eleven o'clock."

"Then have you ever left?"

Professor Mei suddenly became emotional, blowing his nose and shouting loudly: "I left! I remembered! I left!"

"At that time, I received a call from a student in the laboratory, saying that there was a smell of gas in our laboratory, and then I hurried to look, but found no suspicious dangerous chemicals It leaked, and then I communicated with the safety association in the courtyard before I came back, and not long after I came back, I found the smoke downstairs!"

"More! And more!" Professor Mei became more and more excited, and almost jumped off the tiger chair: "I remember very clearly, I was in a hurry, and I didn't close the door of the office!"

Lu Zheng and Geng Zhizhong immediately turned their heads and looked at each other.

There was an unconcealable excitement in everyone's eyes.

**

"After conducting an in-depth inspection of the site, our current doubts mainly include the following." Lu Zheng stood at the front of the meeting room and pointed at the whiteboard in front of him: "First of all, the scene mentioned by Professor Mei has been found. A small hole. We took some samples from the wall of the cave and found traces of being burned by high temperature. It can be basically concluded that the fire entered the locked office of Professor Guan Bin from the floor of Professor Mei's office. So who is here? Professor Mei brought fire into the office when he left the office? What kind of fire? And how can the arsonist be sure that Professor May will leave the office at that time and not close the door?"

"Swipe, swipe, swipe—"

Lu Zheng looked down, and it was Xue Yiwei who was writing exaggeratedly below. Tang Shaoyuan and Wei Xiongfeng were sitting on the two sides, and they all looked at him with contemptuous eyes.

Ignoring Xue Yiwei's overreaction, Lu Zheng coughed twice and continued.

"First of all, we don't have an answer to the first question." While talking, Lu Zheng made a small cross in front of a line of words on the whiteboard.

"But for the second question, I already have a highly probable conjecture." Lu Zheng said while posting a photo taken at the scene of the crime. There is a narrow and thin line on the photo, "L " type gap.

"This is the small hole that appeared in Professor Mei's testimony. The investigators and I have sampled points on the wall of the cave, and found that the burn marks on the wall on the west side are very wide, and the shape of the small hole on this side It is relatively narrow and long, and it is preliminarily determined that the ignition object is a very thin, large-scale, and flammable thing."

"We didn't find any definite igniter at the scene, which shows two possibilities. One is that the igniter is quite flammable and has been completely burned in the fire. Another possibility is that it is the igniter. Professor Guan's There are so many in the office that it's hard to tell which one started the fire. There's one thing that satisfies all of these conjectures."

While talking, Lu Zheng patted the notebook in his hand.

"Paper...!" Tang Shaoyuan and Xue Yiwei reacted instantly, and they said in unison.

As soon as the words fell, the two looked at each other, and they both saw a little hostility in each other's eyes.

"Huh, but if it's paper, isn't it a bit too flammable?" Wei Xiongfeng asked his own question a little confused: "Besides, the weight of the paper is very light, and the process of falling is very slow. Could it be that it hasn't fallen yet?" It burned on the sofa?"

"Good question, Daxiong." Lu Zheng glanced at Wei Xiongfeng's direction approvingly, and then took out the other two evidence bags from before him: "Look at these two things and you will understand."

Two transparent evidence bags were placed under the projector. One bag contained a thin steel ruler about two centimeters wide and twenty centimeters long. Strips of shredded paper.

"I picked up these pieces of paper at the scene of the crime and dried them." Lu Zheng said, "Compared to the remaining paper found in other fire scenes, did you find anything special?"

Tang Shaoyuan squinted his eyes and observed through the lens for a while, and suddenly blessed his heart: "Edge."

"That's right!" Lu Zheng saw Tang Shaoyuan immediately noticed the problem, narrowed his eyes happily, and gave him a thumbs up generously: "The edges of these papers are in the shape of a 'J'. It's very unusual, but when I checked the ruler that had been dropped in the office, I found something interesting."

While talking, Lu Zheng gently stacked the two evidence bags in his hand.

The semicircular shape of the end of the ruler coincides perfectly with the edge of the "J" shape created by the burning of the paper strip.

"So, there is a high possibility that the arsonist folded the stack of printed papers in half, sandwiched this steel ruler in the middle, and then lit it and threw it down through the gap." Lu Zheng gestured , with a flash of light in one eye: "The weight of the steel ruler is considerable, so it fell quickly with the flammable paper, and fell on the fabric sofa and ignited the sofa. And because of the pressure of the ruler, these pieces of paper burned to the ruler. The edge part could not continue to burn fully, leaving a "J" shaped edge. After the firefighters entered the room, the impact of the high-pressure water gun caused the ruler and several remaining pieces of paper to be washed to the ground .”

As soon as Lu Zheng finished speaking, everyone in the meeting room showed stunned expressions.

"Clap clap clap-"

There was still applause from one side of the conference room. Lu Zheng turned his head and saw that Xue Yiwei was leading the applause again, and he was blowing rainbow farts with a sincere face: "It's so perfect! You are indeed the leader of the Lu team!"

After all, he still looked like he hated iron and steel, and glanced at a row of small investigators from the city bureau sitting opposite him.

The little investigators suddenly realized, and hurriedly applauded along with their leader Xue Yiwei. People who don't know why probably thought it was some kind of commendation conference.

The scene can be said to be extremely embarrassing.

Lu Zheng really didn't know how Vice Captain Xian survived Xue Yiwei's rainbow fart.

"Okay, okay, thank you brothers, but let's applaud after we solve the case, how about it? Are you confident?" Lu Zheng smiled awkwardly, made a gesture of pressing his hands down, and poured another drink by the way. tablespoon of chicken stock.

"Have!"

The young man full of vigor yelled the word "yes" so that the ground trembled three times.

Seeing that everyone is in good spirits, Lu Zheng nodded with relief: "Very good! Now we have solved the second problem, and the third problem is how the murderer controlled Professor Mei to leave the office without locking the door." ?Professor Mei’s interrogation records have pointed out a possibility for us, Shao Yuan, come up and tell everyone.”

Tang Shaoyuan, who was suddenly named, raised his head in surprise: "Me?"

"There is a second Shao Yuan in our room?" Lu Zheng laughed, with a deep dimple on his face, he reached out and patted the podium in front of him: "Why are you standing still, come quickly."