Fire to the Abyss

The reason why speakeasies are called speakeasies is that they are extremely secretive. From the outside, they look no different from ordinary office buildings. Only by opening the thick doors that cut off light and sound can one see the decayed interior.

Countless empty bodies are looking for solace in this small one hundred and ten square meters, the eyes are stimulated by the dazzling colorful lights, the noisy heavy metal music is drumming the eardrums, and there is something inexplicable. It only takes a few seconds, and the nervous system secretes With a large amount of dopamine, the excitement value soared exponentially. Soon, people naturally danced to the drumbeat, and an expression called "extreme excitement" appeared on their faces. Of course, people with normal excitement thresholds will never be able to appreciate this twisted "Extreme".

When Xia Yan came here before, due to time constraints and a clear goal, he only searched the bar on the first floor, and didn't care much about the second floor.When I looked back a few hours later, I realized that the building was extraordinarily eerie.

The thick blackout curtains were torn open, the stereo was unplugged, and the spotlights hidden in every corner had not been completely "killed", and the faint blue lights were sweeping through the windows, making the whole building look like A monster lying on the ground and greedily spying on the outside world, the shining windows are its eyes.

When Xia Yan arrived, several brothers from the police were squatting on the side of the road and vomited violently. An old comrade looked at them and shook his head. Seeing Xia Yan coming, he sighed and said nothing, and pointed to the second floor.

The stairs to the second floor are relatively hidden, Xia Yan found the stairs with the guidance of a colleague.The staircase is not a solid concrete pavement, it is a simple staircase made of a steel frame and a few thin iron sheets, and this terrible staircase is stretchable, and the stretching function is quite rough. It made a "creaking" sound and looked shaky.

Two colleagues helped Xia Yan to support him from below, so that he could go up to the second floor smoothly.

As soon as Xia Yan went upstairs, he saw Liang Song leaning on the corridor smoking a cigarette. Judging from the scattered cigarette butts on the ground, he had been in this state for quite a while.

Xia Yan said while walking: "I have verified He Xiaonian's alibi, and there is no problem—by the way, don't you like the strong smell of cigarettes?"

"Well, I'll let off the smell of blood on my body." Liang Song spit out a puff of smoke ring, and motioned to the men's room behind him, "Ren Qiang is dead, and the forensic doctor is on the way. The scene is more... cruel, follow me The few comrades from the police who came up all went down and vomited, so you should be mentally prepared before going to see it.”

"It's okay. I've been working for so many years, what kind of scene haven't I seen?" After finishing speaking, Xia Yan patted Liang Song's shoulder habitually, and walked quickly towards the men's room on the second floor, obviously forgetting about this. A handsome guy who doesn't show his age has more seniority than him.

Xia Yan walked over with a sense of self-confidence that "I'm not like other weak chickens". He lifted off the isolation belt and entered the men's room on the second floor. Soon, he realized that he had overestimated himself.

The first thing that came into my eyes was a large pool of shocking blood, which flowed out from the innermost compartment, soaking more than half of the filthy floor—this bleeding man must be hopeless.

The air was filled with a high concentration of bloody smell, Xia Yan held his breath, and had to pay special attention to walking close to the sink so as not to step on the blood on the ground.

The door of the innermost compartment was opened, and a man covered in blood was sitting on the toilet. He was only wearing a vest on his upper body, and the original color could no longer be seen. A thick coat was thrown on the ground casually. There was also a dagger covered in blood.His head was tilted backward at an unnatural angle, and his facial features were distorted to varying degrees, making the combination even more terrifying.

There were many wounds on Ren Qiang's body, varying in length and depth. Visually, they were all caused by the dagger. Sticky and smelly blood covered his body, as if he had crawled out of a pool of blood.

Of course, the multiple wounds and the amount of bleeding alone were not enough to scare the comrades of the police to vomit on the spot. After all, such situations are often seen in gangsters fighting with weapons. The key lies in his left arm—that is An arm with half of its flesh and blood gouged out.

The lower half of his right arm and left arm are still intact, but the upper half of his left arm is not a thick arm with a blue dragon pattern, but a bone that has been stripped of flesh and blood, and the technique of bone removal is not very clever , a part of the tissue is semi-sticky and semi-sticky, attached to the bone so that it cannot fall off, a bit like a bone picked with a blunt knife.There were some bloody pieces of flesh scattered around his left foot, which should be the flesh and blood that fell from his arm.

Under the dual stimulation of sight and smell, Xia Yan felt a faint tendency to churning in his stomach, and rushed out hurriedly covering his mouth and nose. Fortunately, thanks to Zero, he hadn't eaten water since the afternoon, and finally only retched a few times. He leaned on the window frame and sucked in the fresh air desperately.

Liang Song looked at him full of sympathy, took out a cigarette and handed it over, Xia Yan didn't show any politeness to him, he took out "Pikachu" and lit it for himself.

Xia Yan took a few puffs, and the stench all over his body was dispelled by the long-lost smell of smoke: "I haven't seen such a restricted level of torture for a long time, if it's a puppet master, it's really disgusting—yes Alright, did you find any puppet dolls at the scene?"

Liang Song shook his head: "No, the entire floor has been searched, only some waste equipment and a few broken sofas. I asked the boss, and he said that the second floor has always been used as a grocery store, and things that take up space and are reluctant to throw away They are all stacked up, and usually no one comes up except himself. Except for a few regular customers, most people don’t know that the second floor can go up. Ren Qiang is also one of the regular customers. Of course, the boss did not admit that he was involved in the band’s drug business. He said that he invited He Xiaonian and the others simply to enjoy the music, and he didn’t know anything about their inducing customers to take drugs.”

"Appreciate music?" Xia Yan smiled coldly, "This boss has really unique taste, so what does he think about the incident of people being killed in his own territory?"

Liang Song: "The boss is a [-]% bastard. He's a man of his own. Whenever he asks a key question, he will chat with others. If his tone is a bit aggressive, he will say that he wants to sue us for torture to extract a confession."

Xia Yan snorted coldly: "I think this second floor is not just a utility room, but a temporary shelter. Whenever someone comes to make a surprise inspection, the customers who have taken drugs will be transferred to the second floor, and the stairs will be moved to the second floor." Once the partitions are closed and covered, no one knows that this is connected to the second floor."

Liang Song: "You're right, I thought so too, and when I brought people here, the stairs were on the second floor, if I hadn't come here in the afternoon, I wouldn't have known there were stairs in this place .”

Xia Yan: "Then are there other entrances and exits here?"

"Except for these two windows, there is no other entrance or exit."

Xia Yan went back and forth to study the two windows on the corridor carefully, and came to the conclusion: "The dust is so thick, if someone goes out through the window, it will inevitably leave traces, but there is no such thing as the window frame or the surrounding area. There should be no traces, no one should have entered or exited from here."

Liang Song nodded lightly: "I think so too. Besides, I'm more concerned about the amount of bleeding. The murderer must have splashed a lot of blood. There should be traces left during the escape. The blood dripping from his body, or bloody footprints, etc., but the large pool of blood on the toilet floor is intact, and there is no trace of blood dripping at all elsewhere. From the last time the band saw him to the discovery of the body, less than three It is impossible to clean up the traces in such a short time."

"Indeed, Eleven's case back then could be regarded as the case where the murderer was the most prepared and left the fewest clues, but he also inevitably left bloody footprints. No matter how clever the method is, the murderer has to walk on the ground, even if he commits the crime. Wearing shoe covers, or changing shoes after committing a crime, as long as he steps on the ground, he will definitely leave footprints."

Liang Song stubbed out the cigarette and rubbed his temples vigorously: "So, it's impossible to commit a crime?"

Xia Yan was about to speak when Zhou Forensic, a well-known reasoning enthusiast in the industry, came over with a smile like he had beaten blood on his face: "What? It is impossible to commit a crime?"

Xia Yan looked at Zhou Zhou's forensic doctor's heartless smile with great stomachache, he was the only one who could laugh on this occasion, and pointed in the direction of the men's toilet: "Edogawa Zhoubu, hurry up and see dead."

His voice fell, Zhou Forensic Doctor had already led a group of people to the direction of the men's bathroom excitedly, Xia Yan couldn't help complaining: "That chicken blood brother, encountering a tricky murder case, I am happier than myself winning 500 million .”

Liang Song reluctantly twitched the corner of his mouth: "I don't know if this case has anything to do with Zhong Qing's disappearance. I'll leave it to you first, and I'll go and investigate He Xiaonian."

"Ah."

After Liang Song's figure disappeared completely, Xia Yan found an empty corner, lit a cigarette, and dialed Lu Yuan's phone.But he smoked a cigarette until the butt almost burned out, but Lu Yuan never answered the phone.An ominous premonition rushed to his mind, Xia Yan relaxed his mind for a moment, and his uncontrolled thoughts pushed him into the worst scenario - where is Lu Yuan?Missing too?still alive?

After a long time, Xia Yan used that flu that made a fuss over a molehill, and the recent example of a certain bastard gaining love by acting, to warn himself not to worry about Lu Yuan. A bastard of his level can usually survive until the last episode of a TV series before he can get his love. He calmed down his messy mood a little.

Soon, forensic doctor Zhou completed the preliminary survey of the scene, personally used tweezers to put the scattered meat on the ground into bags and sealed them, and happily brought the corpse back to the detachment.

The autopsy report could not be released for a while, Xia Yan explained a few words before going to the band to identify the evidence at the scene.It was identified by the band members that the dagger belonged to Ren Qiang himself, and the jacket was the one Ren Qiang wore tonight.

Zhou's forensic doctor concluded that the time of death was within two hours of the discovery of the body. The cause of death was the excessive blood loss caused by the stab wound with a sharp instrument. The dagger at the scene matched the wound on Ren Qiang's body.The trace team soon brought the latest discovery: Ren Qiang's fingerprints were found on the dagger, stairs, the cover on the second floor, and the doorknob of the toilet cubicle, and Ren Qiang's footprints were also found in the corridor.In addition to the traces left by Ren Qiang on the second floor, there is another set of fingerprints and footprints. The fingerprints have been confirmed to belong to the bar owner, and shoe prints matching the footprints have just been found in the owner's house.

So it seems that the only suspect is the bar owner.

Of course, things are not that simple.The owner of the bar has an alibi that is more real than Zhenjin - he was taken back to the Municipal Public Security Bureau just after eight o'clock in the evening. Ren Qiang's death time was between 08:30 and [-] o'clock. He's always been under supervision.

Ren Qiang found his mobile phone from his coat pocket, and the technical department was digging out the information inside, and several other colleagues were still interrogating the sleepy yawning band members in turn.Xia Yan leaned on the seat in the monitoring room, stared at the screen with unfocused eyes, and said to himself: "So, before I went to arrest people, Ren Qiang went up to the second floor by himself for some reason. And put away the stairs and close the cover, so that no one else can go up, and then not long after, they were tortured and killed by an invisible murderer?"

After finishing speaking, he laughed at himself mockingly: "Shadowless? I don't dare to act like this in TV dramas. I'm afraid there is only one possibility..."

Before he finished speaking, Zhou Hengyu hurriedly opened the door and rushed in: "Captain Xia, it's time to interrogate He Xiaonian."