The Blonde Murderer's usual haunts are Berlin, Paris, London, and so on.
Because more than one country was involved, the police set up a special task force, and they profiled the killer.
He was around 30 years old, over 5'8" tall, thin, had a good knowledge of firearms and ammunition, and specialized in the use of rifles and other handguns.
Many serial killers have childhood shadows, but this criminal, the blonde who experts believe was so memorable that she caused him to kill other blondes, is not the killer's childhood shadow, not a parent, relative, neighbor, etc., who he might have been close to as a child, but a lover in adulthood.
And the obsession was formed in a very short period of time, only about five years.
Five years ago is a delicate point in time, when the first case occurred.
The expert hypothesized that the killer had just broken up with his lover, so he might have accidentally bumped into the first victim and remembered his lover, and killed him.
The reason for the 'lover' is that the murderer seemed to hate the person the victim reminded him of, and hit him so hard that he shot each of the victims at least ten times.
But after the death of the deceased, the murderer will spend a long or short time to clean up the body, the body of the blood, messy hair and clothing, and sometimes even help to change a clean clothes, the body will be removed from the first scene of the crime, to a cleaner place.
Many killers move the body after the murder, creating a number of secondary and dumping sites, either in places that can be blamed on others or where the cause of death can be properly camouflaged, in places such as bathrooms where it is easy to cut, pack and clean, or in places such as the mountains or garbage cans where it is not easy for people to find it, and where it can contaminate the evidence, and so on.
The 'blonde murderer' is not, the few times he would move a body, he would move it to the nearest location and put it in a position where it looks like it is just resting with its eyes closed.
It's not like he's trying to dump the body to frame someone else or disguise the cause of death, it's more like he's trying to provoke the police, if you will.
But there's more than one way to provoke the police, there are more brutal ways, more suitable for the murderer, more capable of provoking the instinctive anger of human beings, and the murderer's placing of the bodies so close to each other has a certain morbid and bizarre tenderness to it.
Therefore, the expert hypothesized that those who were purposely placed were so like the victim's blonde lover that he was moved to compassion afterward.
All of the individual victims were young women with long blonde hair.
In addition to their blonde hair, the victims had another thing in common: they had done evil things.
They were men and women, young and old, some living in Paris, some in London, unknown to each other, some were known as brazen robbers, some had killed people, some were professional teams targeting the rich and famous, and some were even police officers who had committed crimes in private.
The experts' theory is that from the killer's point of view, the 'blonde lover' seems to be a cunning and ruthless person.
And because many of the deceased committed crimes openly, but there are also many people who are clean on the surface, they suspect that the murderer has a special and well-informed channel, and investigated the information of the deceased beforehand, so that he can kill with such precision.
Since the first murder was so skillful, the police assumed that the murderer was not a first-time offender, and that there must be other bloodshed in his life, in addition to the serial murders.
Ichijō Mirai flipped through the pages of the file, sweeping his eyes over the printed English handwriting, not saying anything, not frowning in thought, just flipping through the file like a glass of water until the last few pages.
The last pages were New York related.
Some serial killers who intended to provoke the police would leave their distinctive markings or send out advance notices before committing their crimes.
The Blonde Murderer was the latter, and for each of his murders, he sent his targets a teaser letter three days in advance, accompanied by a glass of rich, red wine.
This time, the place where the teaser letter and the red wine appeared was New York.
The 'blonde murderer' had been on the rampage for so long, but it was the first time he had come to New York, so the FBI in New York took it very seriously, not only setting up a special team to work on the case, but also synchronizing the case information with Ichijō Mirai with the mentality of 'there are specialties in this field, and you're the criminal, you know best,' so it was the equivalent of using two methods of crime solving.
After reading the last line, Ichijō Mirai flipped the file back and let out a little syllable to indicate that he had finished reading, "Hmm..."
Akai Shūichi was also re-reading the case, he was reading it with the mindset of looking for clues, so he was quite serious, and compared to Ichijō Mirai's super-fast speed of scanning a few times and turning a page, his reading speed was much slower, and he was only less than a third of the way through the case, he looked up at the sound of the voice, "Finished reading?"
Before Ichijō Mirai could speak, he continued, "This case is difficult."
"The FBI gave it to us, in large part because you've guided us through it, but..."
Ichijō Mirai played the FBI with such ease that it wasn't his first time playing the game. He was very familiar with it, and even more familiar with solving cases, even reading a lot of information from the newspaper, and sending letters directly to the FBI to dramatize the killer's characteristics.
The FBI, who checked the letters and confirmed from the criminals that Ichijō Mirai had captured the important information without much effort, were incredulous and couldn't understand it, and their impression of Ichijō Mirai was like a painting of an ink drop on a plum tree, blown up to look like an arrogant demon on top of an ink drop in the shape of a human being.
Akai Shūichi, on the other hand, was understandable.
After going through the statements of the criminals who had 'Masters' in almost every sentence, he realized one thing: when 'making friends', Ichijō Mirai would happily talk to his 'friends' about 'intimate topics', who the victim was on bad terms with, whether he was tired from yesterday's work, whether he preferred to have his body dumped in the valley or in the underground garage, what's interesting to him lately, and so on and so forth.
Ignoring the obvious intent to intimidate, Ichijō Mirai's questioning can be generalized as information-gathering.
Asking locals is always the most efficient way to gather information.
The strongest dragon can't repress a snake, and compared to the crab-like mindless rampage without knowing anything, of course, it's better to know the area well and then rampage and abuse, not targeting an individual, but sweeping everyone indiscriminately more Ichijō Mirai.
At least the latter, there will not be any fish that can be pinched to play with, to be the fish in his hands of the leakage of the net...
Criminals have an added advantage over ordinary locals: they know a lot about local police and crime.
While a single criminal might provide one or two sentences of information, a group of criminals could provide more than just one or two bits of information, enough to give Ichijō Mirai a quick overview of New York City, and to allow him to utilize his data base in case he had a case to pin down.
This is probably one of the reasons why Ichijō Mirai was able to solve the case so quickly.
Unlike the Blonde Serial Murder Case, the murderer was not a local New Yorker, he was new to New York, and it was his first time committing a crime in New York, so the usefulness of the New York Data Bank was drastically reduced.
"Hmm..."
Ichijō Mirai pondered again, looking at the 'blonde lovers' summarized in the previous cases.
After pondering again and again, he looked at the quest hints, and then looked at the files, and couldn't help but ponder: this case... what does it have to do with Rum?
He said bluntly, he felt that Rum probably could not produce so many cases so neatly, not to mention that each one of them was extraordinarily rigorous and did not sprinkle clues like a shower.
A loser who couldn't even speak human...
Besides, does Rum have any 'blonde lovers'? Gin and Belmode didn't say anything about that.
The hints are subtle. They don't point to a lover, they point to a hated one.
If the mission details were from Rum's point of view, then ignoring the description of 'blonde hair', Ichijō Mirai could have straightened his bow tie and cleared his throat and seriously miked up 'Yes, it's me'.
But with 'blonde', it's kind of like a reference to Belmode.
Also: the first case was five years ago.
It's a subtle point in time, but it's subtle because five years ago, Ichijō Mirai joined the organization and had a double operation with Rum.
Then Rum ran away...
Akai Shūichi was still looking over, and Ichijō Mirai could only utter a few words of musing, "I agree with some of the police's thoughts on this murderer, brutalizing and then arranging the body is a classic contradiction in terms, it seems like the murderer hated and loved someone at the same time."
It's not like the killer didn't kill someone he really hated and loved, but killed someone else, and came off as incompetent and rage-inducing and wimpy, which is kind of Rum's thing at this point.
The delivery of the teaser letter with a bottle of wine seems to be a reference to the organization.
But the murderer is not Rum.
After a moment's reflection, Ichijō Mirai was convinced that Rum could never be so capable.
It can't be Rum if one of his men is helping his boss!
Intending to ask Belmode about this later, Ichijō Mirai closes the file and asks about a point that's not in the file: "Did the task force only serve as an afterthought?"
The task force was set up early, and each of the victims was given advance notice, so why are there so many of them?
There isn't even a single victim in the file that the killer had to kill twice, and it was all done at once.
So the question is, what is the task force doing?
"The police theorize," Akai Shūichi murmured, repeating a message on the file, "that the killer has a very special source of information."
Ichijō Mirai's translation: The killer knew the movements of the task force, and the task force is leaking into a sieve.
...Okay, the killer can't be that punk Rum!
*
"Rum?"
Belmode repeated, "Serial killer?"
When she repeats the first sentence, her tone is still quite complicated, besides being puzzled, there's also the melancholy of 'Oh no, I'm the unlucky one today', the joy of 'Wait, the unlucky one doesn't seem to be me! I'm not the unlucky one!', 'What's that punk Rum doing again? What's that loser Rum doing now?', 'Never mind, bye bye, have a good trip', and so on.
But when she repeated the second sentence, she obviously reacted with a smile in her voice, "Oh my, did the 'blonde murderer' come to New York?"
That's the attitude of being in the know.
Ichijō Mirai inquired, "Are you going to keep it a secret?"
"Of course not," Belmode said in a serious attempt to defend herself in case she was being toyed with by the cheerful Milk Cat, who was jumping around every day, "I was just taking a sip of wine to wet my throat, I wasn't trying to keep it a secret, so I'll tell you."
She pondered, starting at the beginning, "Five years ago, you and Rum went on a two-man mission together, right?"
"After the mission, probably being very self-conscious and realizing that he had offended you that day because he could breathe, he immediately left the country, never returned to Tokyo, and disappeared from your sight ever since."
This, Ichijō Mirai knew, and could add: well, with your help.
"He had the good sense to leave immediately," Belmode said, "but he was always popular with that gentleman, and was practically the most powerful member of the organization, the highest-ranking member of the organization, under that gentleman."
"While running away, the fear of going against you still occupied his mind, but perhaps thinking he had gotten far enough, he developed some resentment and anger."
Huh?
Ichijō Mirai was in awe and immediately complimented, "Wow, what courage."
After praising him, he kept on going, "Since it's been so long, can you tell me where he was hiding in the first place? Don't worry, he won't be there now, right? Even if I knew his previous escape route, I wouldn't be able to kill him."
The tone of his voice was lively and sunny.
Belmode, however, leaned back tactically: Is that so?
Yes, it was, but Ichijō Mirai had to emphasize that it was wrong.
She coughed a few times as if nothing had happened, pretending that she had just coughed up a tickle in her throat and hadn't heard the milk cat's frantic bouncing, and continued, "But that gentleman thinks very highly of you, and treats you as if you were his own son, and he's afraid that he'll be too displeased with you to take you personally." and even more afraid that Ichijō Mirai would not take you seriously.
He was afraid that Ichijō Mirai would come to him with a sniper rifle.
"And so, the 'blonde murderer' appeared."
Wait a minute.
Ichijō Mirai ran through it, and ran through it, and ran through it, and it didn't make sense, "?"
"Can't figure it out," Belmode said calmly, "I can't figure it out either,"
"Probably still doesn't understand why you're suddenly mad at him, and after thinking about it for a long time, he decided in anger that I must have instigated something behind your back, and instructed his men to make a murder to get rid of it."
Stupid as a pig.
Smart as Belmode, she figured out in a second what Rum had done to Ichijō Mirai: either she had her left foot in the door, or she could breathe.
Absently, the smirk in her voice deepened as she said meaningfully, "That 'blonde murderer' is also a member of Codename, and I happen to have had a few dealings with him, so I know a little bit about him."
"His code name is Calva-"
Calvados.
But wait.
Belmode paused for a moment: the code name 'Calvados' seemed to be an explicit reference to Ichijō Mirai's brunette actress in her disguise.
Damn.
"What did you say?" Ichijō Mirai inquired, "'Calva'?"
"Did you mean to say 'Calvados'?"
"The code name seems familiar. Do you have any ideas?"