At 123 Central Park, Manhattan, a crime scene unfolds.
After hearing the police officer's report, Detective Rodson questioned, "He transferred two million to a seventeen-year-old boy with a note for buying a doll?"
"Was the boy's account checked? Could it have been hacked?"
The female officer replied, "We checked, there's no evidence of hacking. Today, this kid named Kate bought a ticket from New York to Florida. The name on the ticket and the bank account matches, and airport facial recognition confirmed he boarded the plane."
"So, Kate likely has no direct connection to this case since he was on the plane when the victim was killed."
Rodson shook his head, "Don't jump to conclusions, let's investigate Kate thoroughly, along with the victim's family."
"Yes, sir!" Rodson then turned to another officer, "Did we find anything suspicious at the scene?"
The officer shook his head, "We thoroughly inspected every room except the bedroom where the crime happened. No suspicious fingerprints, footprints, but we did collect some hair from the bathroom drain, which has been sent back to the lab."
Hearing "except the crime scene bedroom," Rodson and Nathan both fell silent.
Taking a deep breath, Rodson put on a mask, and said to Nathan, "Let's go, together. Don't expect these youngsters to handle this kind of job."
Nathan's already pale face turned even whiter.
In the second-floor bedroom, Rodson, wearing a mask and gloves, carefully avoided the blood stains on the floor, trying not to look at the dismembered body sitting against the bed, and placed a blood-stained circular saw into an evidence bag.
Nathan, with a camera, took photos of every corner of the bedroom.
The two worked together, one documenting the scene and the other collecting physical evidence.
Afterward, they both looked visibly distressed. Just as Nathan was about to pat Rodson on the back for comfort, suddenly, Rodson grabbed him first!
"What's wrong?" Nathan followed Rodson's gaze to the floor, only to see a trail of small red blood spots that appeared out of nowhere, resembling small animal footprints. The next second, they both looked back into the bedroom, noticing the trail leading from a pool of blood under the victim.
Rodson asked gravely, "Did the victim have any pets?"
A lightbulb went off in Nathan's head, he looked around the messy bedroom again, then at the evidence bag in Rodson's hand, feeling like he missed something but couldn't remember what.
"What are you dazing out for?! Answer me!" Nathan quickly shook his head,
"No, there were no signs of pets in the victim's home."
"What's this then?" Rodson pointed at the blood spots on the floor, "This wasn't here when I arrived."
He followed the trail forward, with Nathan behind him.
On the first floor, although not the direct crime scene, several officers were recording the environment.
A female officer was scanning the floor with ultraviolet light, looking for any overlooked clues, when suddenly, she noticed a palm-sized humanoid ghost doll appearing at her feet. The doll, with its limbs on the ground, slowly crawled forward, leaving behind a few blood spots with each movement.
"An electric toy?" she curiously picked up the doll, and the moment her eyes met the doll's tiny eyes, a cold breeze suddenly passed over her. she saw the doll's originally expressionless face gradually form a smile.
Startled, she instinctively wanted to throw it away but found her hand frozen in place, unable to move. As the doll's smile widened, a surge of cold and intense negative emotions welled up from the bottom of the she heart.
Feeling unjustly wronged, the emotion slowly turned into sorrow, then despair. The intense despair made the officer's eyes, filled with endless sadness, fall on a colleague's handgun nearby... However, the next second, the smile on the ghost doll's face disappeared, it turned its head away from the she, and jumped down from her hand.
As the doll's limbs touched the ground again, the negative emotions in the officer vanished completely. Emerging from the depths of despair, She with a shocked expression, watched the ghost doll crawl away, second by second.
"Wah!" She sat down and burst into tears. Seeing the crying officer, Rodson and Nathan, just coming down from the second floor, were speechless. It wasn't the first time they had seen an officer scared to tears at a crime scene.
Soon, they noticed the crawling ghost doll on the floor, both relieved, "So it was just an electric toy..." But then, Rodson's brow furrowed again, noticing the doll stopped crawling at a corner of the villa, which led him to realize something.
Rodson discovered, this detached villa didn't have a basement! It doesn't make sense. Waving over an officer, Rodson instructed, "Go check the floor plan of this house!"
"Right away!" After reviewing the floor plan, Rodson and Nathan saw that where the ghost doll was located should have been a staircase leading to a basement, now sealed with concrete. Instantly, the sight of the ghost doll on the floor gave them goosebumps.
"Oh my God!" Was the doll hinting at something? Pointing to the area where the doll was, Rodson told the officers, "Break that spot open!"
...
In Yundu Road, Florida, a pedestrian street. Ding-ling— The clear and pleasant sound of a wind chime rang out as a taxi stopped at the curb. In July, Florida was already very hot, but the driver felt chills down his spine.
He glanced at the young boy in the backseat through the rearview mirror, wearing white clothes and gold-rimmed glasses, daring not to breathe too loudly. From the airport here, it was usually an hour's ride, an hour and a half at most in case of unexpected delays.
But today, they encountered two traffic jams, a car accident, a near altercation with a pizza delivery guy, ran out of gas, and had to queue for a refill...
In total, it took two hours and twenty minutes to arrive, exactly as the boy had predicted, not a minute more, not a minute less.
At that moment, the driver looked at Kate with awe. Kate, looking out the window, asked with a smile, "Hey, buddy, we're here, right?"
The driver nodded hastily, "Yes, yes! We're here!"
Kate handed the driver $50, "Thanks, keep the change."
Then he got out and walked away. The driver, looking at the fare of $66 on the meter, held back tears, and with a forced smile, called out to Kate's departing figure,
"Thank you!"
.....