LVPD monitoring room.

Dean replays surveillance footage of Abby on 9.20 at Blackjack's Bar and the IKEA Hotel.

"Abby deliberately let the police see her face through the video and arrest her."

Dean looked at Holden,

"In your experience, why do you think she did it?"

Holden stared at the screen with his hands on the table for a while,

"Deliberately left video evidence, and after being arrested, he pleaded not guilty. There is only one explanation for this situation – Abby is provoking the LVPD, betting that we can't sanction her. ”

"The premise of active provocation is that the perpetrator is confident that he will not be convicted." Dean interjected, "But the situation is the opposite, Abby is at an extreme disadvantage, almost half a foot into prison. ”

"Don't sell it, if you have something to say."

"I think of another plausible explanation." Dean's face flashed with a strange brilliance, and he said word by word—

"The murderer is someone else! He deliberately exposed Abby's face to the cameras and witnesses so that we could treat Abby as a criminal and close the case quickly so he could get away with it! ”

Dean's voice landed, the air in the monitoring room froze, and only the sound of his heart beating could be heard for a while.

Holden's smile broke the silence.

"So the person in the tape isn't Abby, it's a twin sister who looks exactly like Abby? Or a person wearing a mock mask, with the same body and fingerprints as Abby? ”

Di Anxin nodded, then shook his head again.

He also considered that if it was another person or some kind of existence disguised, or transformed into Abby, then the thing was not Abby after all, and it stands to reason that the DNA test result should be different.

Holden pinched his knees with both hands,

"So what do you mean? I warned you not to overindulge in supernatural theories, but you have gone mad, you can fake your appearance, but the DNA and tooth marks left on the victim are all consistent with Abby, and these evidences do not lie, and the murderer can only be Abby. ”

"No, the evidence doesn't lie, but Abby doesn't lie either." At the same time, Dean's mind flashed through the various clues he had investigated in the past few days, especially the strange state that Abby had fallen into on the day of the crime, and made an unprecedented bold assumption after comprehensive consideration-

"Abby is controlled by hypnosis."

It could also be possessed, but that didn't convince Holden.

"The scar on the hand is the medium of hypnosis."

Dean word by word,

"The real murderer manipulated Abby to kill Bucky Fran, and deliberately left biological samples at the scene, leaving video evidence under the surveillance video on multiple occasions, so that the police mistakenly arrested Abby and convicted her."

"And afterwards, Abby woke up from the hypnotic state, naturally ignorant of the previous sins, so she insisted that she was innocent."

Dean's voice grew louder and louder, echoing in the monitoring room like an unstoppable wave.

"The real murderer hides in the shadows unharmed and watches our jokes!"

……

"I'm done, what do you think?"

Dean took a deep breath and glanced at the system, his brow furrowed.

After this deduction, the progress of the investigation jumped from 40 percent to 42, which was much less than he expected.

Isn't it hypnosis, is it another being that transforms into Abby?

Some kind of being possessed by Abby took control of her?

Supernatural beings created a clone of Abby?

But despite Dean's guesses, the progress did not change in the slightest.

Dean suddenly understood the gameplay of this progress bar, except that at the beginning of the case, it would give a little hint based on the important things that Dean was exposed to.

For heavyweight inferences, if there is not enough heavyweight evidence to support them, the progress bar will not be recognized at all, and it will not change.

Random guessing is useless.

……

Holden hesitated for half a minute, and his eyes became complicated.

Hypnosis?

"I'll admit, I underestimated you before. Dean, you not only have good skills, you also have the talent of screenwriting, the story just now is very exciting, you are really a bit condescending to be a policeman or a detective, I suggest you go to a Hollywood film company in the future. ”

"I'm serious."

"I would also really recommend that you change careers. Your imagination knows no bounds, hypnotize..."Holden seemed to hear a big joke, "hypnotizing Abby to sneak out of the house and run a few miles away on her bicycle, brutally kill a child, and then run to the bar to ask for whiskey, and run to the hotel camera to dangle. ”

"It's not hypnosis, it's demonic possession, right?" Holden concluded, "This is more nonsense than psychic theory. ”

"I'm just offering an idea." Dean looked Holden in the eye, "As incredible as it sounds, it's the answer to the contradictions that best explain it at the moment." ”

"Even if you guessed it right." Holden glanced at him and asked lazily, "Go on, how are you going to follow this line of thought to find the real culprit, the master hypnotist?" ”

"That's where I ask you. Use your experience to help me think about how to catch the murderer? Dean paused and said with a slight pleading, "If you really can't accept it, you should play a detective's game with me, let go of all restrictions, and free your imagination." ”

Holden was silent for a long time, a trace of struggle flashed across his face, and finally he sighed,

"I'm crazy enough to make up stories with you, but I'm a little thirsty." Holden patted his desk.

Dean immediately diligently brewed a cup of coffee, as long as the murderer can be caught, what about being thick-skinned?

"Then let's take a look at it together." Holden took a sip of his coffee and tapped the table rhythmically with the middle finger of his right hand, "Your imaginary hypnotist is currently hiding in the shadows. ”

Holden threw a test,

"What was his motive for killing Bucky Fran?"

A hint of thought flashed in Dean's eyes, and he circled around the device a few times,

"There must be something big wrong with the brutal murder of a child, and you said that psychopaths have to go through a process from nothing."

"He may have been subjected to some kind of special physical or psychological persecution as a child, and this negative effect gradually distorted his mind as he grew older, and by chance, he began to draw joy from these abuses!"

"Special psychological needs are a strong motivation to commit crimes, just like addictions that cannot be stopped." Holden nodded, adding, "Of course, there is a second motive, Bucky Fran has had some of his organs removed, disemboweled, and there are bite marks on the edges of the torn tissue. This kind of death is much more serious than ordinary indecent assault cases, and is not only terrifying, but also exudes extremely inflated desires and mysteries. ”

"It's like using death to complete some kind of ritual and fill yourself." "I've seen similar deceased, naked with special symbols, antlers on their heads, and kneeling in the branches of trees with their hands tied. ”

"But whether it's to satisfy a perverted psychological need, or to complete some mysterious ritual, or some other motive for killing—in my experience, the murderer can't stop there!"

Di An's head moved,

"You mean he's going to keep committing crimes, he's a serial killer?"

"Serial killer." The corners of Holden's mouth suddenly curved slightly, and there was a look of nostalgia in his eyes, "I came up with this professional term with a few colleagues. That's right, I think there will be a next time for this hypnotic master. ”

"So we just have to wait for him to show his feet?" Dean asked,

"It's the dumbest way to do it." Holden hesitated, "The time and place of the next crime are unknown. ”

Dean sighed, the system only gave him half a month, and Abby couldn't afford to wait, she would go to court in a few days, and according to the current trend, she would most likely lose the case.

But he remembered that the bar owner, Jack, also had a scar mark similar to Abby's.

"I think I could send someone to keep an eye on the bar owner Jack, who, like Abby, has a scar on his wrist and could be the next murderer!"

"What reason? Just because of a scar, you want the guys at LVPD to stare at an old friend, it's impossible, you need stronger evidence. Holden shook his head, rubbing his smooth chin, and changed the angle,

"The real murderer uses hypnosis to frame the innocent Abby and hide himself seamlessly, such a superb criminal skill must have undergone many experiments, and it is likely that he is a repeat offender. So I think, moving back in time, he had already committed the same type of case before he killed Bucky Fran. ”

"It's just that in the past, scapegoats like Abby helped him stop the crime, and after the case was closed, all the information was sealed in the archives and no one knew."

Dean was full of excitement when he heard this, as if he was being poured down by a bucket of cold water in the middle of summer, and couldn't help but ask excitedly,

"So if we find the files of its previous crimes, we can use them as important evidence to dig out more clues and flaws in it, arrest it, and exonerate Abby!"

Holden nodded, "That's right. ”

Dean paused and asked,

"Has there been a similar case in Las Vegas before?"

"I've read the child death files here several times in the last three years." Holden shook his head, "There are no cases similar to Bucky Fran, not one. ”

Dean calmed down.

This is reasonable, if the real murderer is not a fool and does not want to attract the special attention of the police department, he will definitely not commit crimes in the same place in a row.

So where is it most likely to have committed crimes?

Where was his last hunting ground?

Dean hung his head, his brow furrowed, lost in thought.

In the dim light of the equipment room and the hot mist of rising coffee, Holden stared at the contemplative face opposite, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

"Last crime site."

"Last crime site."

Dean muttered to himself in a daze, and at one point, the computer screen lights were a little too harsh, and he turned to look.

He saw Abby wearing the Adidas three-bar tracksuit.

Suddenly, like seeing the sun, his brows stretched, his heart suddenly brightened, and he grinned and showed his white teeth.

"I have proof at hand! The white tracksuit and the crescent scar on Abby's hand are all from the city of Santa Monica! ”

"If there was a last crime, it would most likely be in Santa Monica!"

Progress jumped to fifty percent.

……

Dean took a pen and paper from his desk, waved his hand, and wrote two names on both ends of the white paper.

"The real murderer", Abby Clark.

He teases out a few timelines in between:

On July 22, the real culprit injured Abby's left wrist on Santa Monica Beach, leaving a crescent-shaped scar as a hypnotic marker and medium.

In mid-September, the real culprit got a white tracksuit in Santa Monica and came to Las Vegas.

On September 20, in Booker Park, Las Vegas, Abby was controlled by the real murderer, wearing a white tracksuit, and killed Bucky Fran.

……

"See, Holden." Dean excitedly showed him the timeline, "The killer was in Santa Monica for a while, and the last crime was most likely there!" ”

Holden grabbed the timetable and glanced at it, and his expression became very exciting,

"How do you put together these few things and places that are not very related?"

"Why do you have to dwell on scars and tracksuits?"

"I'll ask you casually, you made up a hypnotic reason for the scar, but what about the sports coat? Why did the murderer run all the way from Santa Monica to Las Vegas and let Abby wear it to commit the murder? ”

"I haven't figured it out for a while, maybe this dress is also some kind of medium, a mark, just like the scar? Or props for special ceremonies? Dean said uncertainly, glancing at the system, and there was no change.

"Holden, take me to the Santa Monica Police Department to help find out if there have been any child deaths similar to Bucky Fran in recent years, as long as we can find it, it proves that our inference is correct, the murderer is a deeply hidden serial killer! Abby was wronged! ”

"Have you really figured it out?" Holden folded his hands, supported his chin with the back of his hands, and looked at him sharply, "At the beginning, the hypothesis that you put forward that the murderer was a hypnotic master was very far-fetched, and you asked me to play a detective game with you, and on the basis of this unreliable hypothesis, I conducted a lot of deductions, and then came to the conclusion that the murderer committed a crime in Santa Monica." ”

"This conclusion is untenable, and I will not make a trip in vain to prove it."

"This conclusion is well-founded, it is... Gut feeling. Dean looked at the system's voice for a moment, Santa Monica's conclusion can touch the progress, and the system has not made any big mistakes so far, and it is worth investigating.

But this occult evidence cannot be explained to outsiders.

Holden shook his head empirically,

"You didn't learn it when you were a volunteer? Don't make assumptions while observing and gathering evidence, otherwise you will subconsciously distort the facts to support this assumption and you will lose objectivity. ”

"But you're going to do it, you're building a house on top of a shaky foundation in the sky."

"The more luxuriously you build in front of you, the worse the final collapse will be."

"All your self-righteous inferences and conclusions will crumble into ruins, and all that awaits you in the end is ruin and disillusionment."

Holden had a look of reluctance on his face, but then struck mercilessly.

"All your efforts will eventually turn into a joke!"

Dean's face froze, his lips moved, and his eyes struggled to look into the air,

All my inferences are ridiculous imaginations and assumptions, doomed to fail?

No.

It's all in the supernatural world, why do you have to follow the rules of the investigation?

The system is an abnormal thing, and the process of investigating and reflecting the reality according to its prompts is bound to be jumpy, even absurd and incomprehensible, just like looking for possibility in the impossible.

But Dean's twinkling eyes regained firmness, he had no better choice, and turning around now would mean giving up on the incident and Abby.

……

Dean's expression became more serious and sincere than ever, and he made a solemn promise to Holden,

"Man, have I ever let you down from the Alexander Raphael case, to the last Bud Burton case, to the weekday volunteer assignment? Help me this time, count me in debt to you! ”

Holden grinned silently.

But staring at the tense face in front of him, the resoluteness burning in his eyes, the persistence of the truth, and the stubbornness of not looking back.

He thought that when he was young, he had such passionate, unbridled fantasies, stubborn and incomprehensible.

Failure is failure.

Holden lowered his head to look at the table and shook his head, revealing a helpless smile,

"If you have to hit the wall once, then I will fulfill you and accompany you to the Santa Monica police station to find out."

"But I'll have to make a couple of phone calls and convince Carl that powder keg to let us go at such a critical moment."

Dean stretched out his hand,

"Wise decision, trust me, you won't regret it."

Holden shook it gently,

"Depart tomorrow morning and drive your Bronco, by the way, the fuel cost will not be reimbursed."

(End of chapter)