The fifth victim's apartment has been cordoned off, and after several visits by police and FBI investigators, the house is now clearly organized, with white circles around every area of interest.
It's easy to reorganize the crime scene by following the white circles and checking all the traces that have been found.
This is how the FBI agent who came with Akai Shūichi re-examined the scene.
With footwear that wouldn't contaminate the scene, he carefully examined the marks on the door lock first, and nodded, "There are indeed marks on the door lock, suggesting that the murderer broke in while the victim was asleep in the bedroom..."
As he said that, he realized that Akai Shūichi stepped into the room without stopping, without any intention of checking the door lock, and couldn't help but turn his head in confusion, "Hey, Mr. Akai, aren't you going to look at the door lock?"
The FBI is a special division, special in that in addition to the obvious positions, people will tacitly respect the ability to have the ability to always respect a lot of people.
Take Akai Shūichi, for example.
He's been with the FBI for a long time, and has gained almost universal respect.
Whether it's a case or a fugitive, Akai Shūichi is one of the FBI's youngest, and some of the older FBI members even treat him with a certain amount of respect and favor.
Of course, that means above and beyond his rank.
Lower-level FBI investigators and informants are supposed to treat him with respect and favor.
Because Akai Shūichi was so strong, the FBI agent was at a loss: Is it so difficult to recognize the lock on the door first?
But in reports of apartment murders, the locks are the most important thing to look at, except for the bodies, which are the center of attention.
Many police and FBI investigators have found signs of lock picking in the locks that the killer tried to hide, so it's safe to assume that the killer was a sneak thief who knew how to pick locks.
"It's true to recognize the lock first," said Akai Shūichi, who had already pushed the bedroom door open with a gloved hand, "but it doesn't work with cunning criminals."
"They'll create false evidence."
"To draw the right conclusions, you have to search based on the most tangible clues."
The bedroom was clean, except for a human-shaped mark on the inside of the bed, and roughly framed white coils on the tiles of the nearby walls and corners of the floor.
After spraying the Luminol reagent, a crystallized spray mark lit up inside the coil, and it was blood.
Akai Shūichi looked at the traces and pulled out the first batch of police photos of the bedroom.
In the photo, there was still blood in the bedroom, the quilt was still covering the victim's body, the spatters had dried, the bed was red, and a glass of water that had been sitting on the outside nightstand was already stained with a semi-reddish color.
When he saw the photo, Akai Shūichi had already confirmed one thing, but he didn't say it until now, "The murderer is not an infiltrator."
He said lightly, "The victim in the fifth case and the murderer knew each other."
"Same as the second case."
The voice was soft, but his colleague heard a thunderclap, "Huh?"
"Yes, they know each other?" He adapted to this conclusion, which was very different from the FBI's current assumptions, "The same as the second case?"
The victim in the second case had died in the bathtub.
Akai Shūichi responded simply, "Uh-huh."
He handed over the bedroom photo, and pulled out an additional photo of the bathroom from the second case, "It's obvious."
Obvious?
The coworker looks carefully at the bedroom photo, compares it to what's there, and then looks carefully at the bathroom photo.
The bathroom was white, and seemed quite large, divided into sections for washing, toilet, shower and bathtub.
The bathtub area is in the innermost part of the bathroom, and only one side of the bathroom near the bathtub is splattered with a large amount of blood, because the body of the deceased was not found at the first time, and in the long night, he first lost his strength and sank into the water, then floated up, and his posture has changed, and when he is fixed in the photo, he is half-turned around and floated up.
One bemused eye is visible, flickering in the flash of the camera, giving it a slightly ghastly appearance.
There was also some blood on the ground near the head of the body, both low and splattered, and it looked clean and clear.
It was really gruesome, the colleague didn't see any clues, he looked down hard at the photo and didn't say anything for more than ten seconds.
"The bedroom is a double bed, divided into inner and outer sides, the cups were placed on the outer nightstand, but the body slept almost on the inner side." Akai Shūichi pushed open the closet door and toured the interior while pointing out the anomalies, "There were no water marks on the floor of the bathroom, no traces of water, and the bloodstains were clearly intact."
The former suggests that someone was sleeping with the victim the night of the shooting.
The latter, on the other hand...
"The victim didn't resist?" My coworker was confused. "Isn't it normal that he didn't resist?"
Akai Shūichi corrected, "Not a bit of resistance."
If you take a bath in a bathtub full of water, and if you resist a little bit, or even if you don't resist, but just make a few movements out of instinctive fear, you'll make a splash, and the blood won't fall to the floor with the spot intact, but rather blurred by the water.
Either the murderer snuck in unnoticed and didn't even let the victim notice when he entered the bathroom.
Or, the murderer was someone who didn't surprise the victim even when he entered the bathroom.
In the former case, there's the problem: "The bathroom is huge."
"There are no stereos, headphones, cell phones, etc. in the bathroom."
The killer didn't even realize he'd sneaked into the bathroom and walked over to the bathtub. Was the victim deaf?
It's possible.
Unfortunately, the police retrieved her medical report from the hospital several years ago and found no indication that she had any tendency to be deaf, let alone any record that she had any intention of registering for a doctor's appointment for weeks or months at a time.
"There's no sign of a second person's clothes being in the closet and urgently removed," Akai Shūichi finished his examination and closed the closet, "the deceased and the murderer were not in a cohabiting relationship."
He lowered his eyes, looked at the white closet, and pondered for a moment.
The colleague who was just thinking about what he just said heard him suddenly say: "…If one day, you dye your hair white, why?"
What?
Colleague: "Huh?"
Akai Shūichi turned around and repeated with a straight face: "The reason for dyeing your hair."
Patiently, he changed the question, "Which of the local gangs, customs, beliefs, are related to white hair? Or any other neighboring state custom that has anything to do with white hair?"
"You're a local."
To learn about obscure customs, outsiders have to ask locals.
My colleague shook his head blankly: "No, I've never heard of it."
This answer was a bit unexpected from Akai Shūichi, who raised an eyebrow, "Never heard of it?"
Soon after, he suddenly took a few quick steps, walked past the end of the bed, stopped in front of the bedroom window, pushed it open, and looked up to sniff a few times.
"What's wrong?" Colleagues rushed to follow, trying to follow a few sniffs, sniffed a fragrant smell, "Huh, mint?"
In the air, there is a mint flavor, smell like shampoo or shower gel flavor, not heavy, rather fragrant, so that the dull scene more fresh.
It's very light, almost so light that it's about to dissipate completely, at a delicate moment when it's about to dissipate.