The reason why these people, the Charcoal and Fire Gang, have been able to stay hidden and remain undiscovered is mainly because they have continuous financial support.
They don't need to receive relief bread, and naturally have never registered their identities.
Hitzfeld asked again: "Does Ms. Gretzer know that you are refugees?"
Charlie replied: "Although she never mentioned it, I guess I know it."
"How do you feel about her?"
"Very good! Because she is very kind and willing to give us some old books to read."
"That means she is not with you."
"Definitely not—I know all the people who came with me, and she is definitely not among them."
Hitzfeld frowned, lost in thought.
After walking for another ten seconds, she seemed to have given up on some idea and asked Charlie more directly: "Is there anyone stronger among your companions?"
"What?" Charlie obviously didn't understand.
"Strong--strong and muscular, like a person about 175-180 cm tall, with arms as thick as your legs combined, and a back so broad that four of you can fit inside--is there such a person?"
"No!" Charlie shook his head firmly. "I'm not lying... Miss... Really, I know all my companions... And the money is really not much when it's dispersed. Sometimes we don't even have enough to eat, so how can anyone gain weight?"
what?
After hearing these words, before Lori could react, Xia Yibing immediately realized that something was wrong.
She knew exactly who Hitzfeld was referring to in his description just now, as they had asked the same question together: the general characteristics of the murderer who shot Ms. Gretzer!
That is, the guy who guided Lori and them to the corner tower, the fugitive!
How could Charlie not recognize him?
No... Didn't that man shoot Gretzer just to silence her?
If that guy wasn't from the Charcoal Gang or the Firewood Gang, why did he shoot Gretzer?
Why didn't he go somewhere else after shooting Gretzer - such as escaping directly by car, but instead rushed to the corner tower here?
"…I'm afraid we've been delayed for too long!"
At the same time, Hitzfeld reminded his companions with some trembling: "He is not going to join them..."
"hurry up!"
"What floor did Charlie directly say they were on?"
I had wanted to continue asking Charlie if he knew about the theft of Ross's golden crown, but now I had no intention at all... A group of people were running wildly in the dark and narrow corridor, and they did not stop even when they passed three or four waves of refugees, until they entered the triangular area at the end of the corner building - the sixth floor! As soon as they came up, they smelled an extremely strong smell of blood.
It’s too dark here… Hitzfeld reminded: “Light!”
Xia Yibing and Lori both took out small flashlights from their arms, and two beams of light lit up almost at the same time.
"Oh!" Charlie stared and groaned from his throat.
“Oh Goddess——!!!”
It's no wonder that he lost his composure like that. The scene before him was really too horrifying.
The triangle area is divided into different compartments by several walls. Some of the compartments have open walls, while others are semi-enclosed with only one door for entry and exit.
But no matter whether it was an open compartment or a closed compartment, they all had one thing in common at this moment, that was blood… A large amount of blood was flowing out from the inside of the compartment, and corpses were lying twistedly on the ground in a pool of blood.
"Who are these?" Daryl put him on the ground and shook his shoulders. "Are they the people you mentioned? Speak!"
“It should be them.”
Hitzfeld walked over, half squatted, and dipped his hand in the pool of blood.
"It hasn't coagulated... this blood has been out of the human body for less than two minutes."
Lori originally wanted to follow and see, but he felt a chill in his heart when he heard the words, and quickly raised his gun and aimed around.
He was afraid that the murderer had not left yet.
"But—why?" he cried. "I don't understand—"
Could it be that the strong man he was tracking was from the "Light of Savior"?
The "Light of Savior" realized that he might be exposed, so in order to prevent everyone in the entire line from being caught, he sent someone to silence him?
"It's possible." Hitzfeld narrowed his eyes and turned to Charlie, "Identify the body. Can you do it?"
Charlie half-knelt on the ground, stunned.
No matter what, he was a murderer who tried to murder a police officer. Daryl was not polite to him. She slapped him so hard that he saw stars. He nodded hurriedly: "Okay... I'll try my best!"
Hitzfeld turned to Lori: "Cooperate with him and click on the body."
The results came out quickly. There were 33 people in total, including Charlie, who slipped through the net, which just met the upper limit he had mentioned before.
"The body was badly mangled."
Xia Yibing's voice was very soft.
"Human beings cannot do this..."
Normal shootings would not have caused this amount of bleeding. All 33 bodies had their limbs and torsos torn apart without exception. They were killed easily without any ability to resist, which sounds quite incredible.
If you can’t beat him, can’t you just hide?
Even if there are 33 pigs, some of them should be able to run away after being frightened, right?
The triangle area becomes narrower as you go inward and wider as you go outward. There is no situation where the route is blocked and there is no way to escape. Xia Yibing couldn't figure out how so many people could be killed so quickly in just over ten minutes.
From the time they met Charlie, captured him, and interrogated him, only about ten minutes had passed.
Hitzfeld was also deep in thought, and at this moment a voice suddenly said to her: "Why not use the divine eye?"
"It's useless for conventional cases, but when it comes to supernatural cases, can't we just watch the video?"
I had almost forgotten I could do this...
Hitzfeld patted his head gently and immediately pulled off the blindfold.
The view in front of her eyes shook like water waves, and she gradually saw clearly... there was a figure in front of her that was twisting and shaking.
But contrary to her expectations, the image lasted less than a second before it shattered!
She was ejected!
The backtracking state was popped up for the first time!
"Oh wow!" Ms. Yusilian spoke again, and this tone...she sounded quite excited.
"The power that can resist true blood..."
"Congratulations little Annie."
"He has what we are looking for."
--------
Ten thousand words completed~ By the way, thank you Yanyan for the golden treasure chest! Congratulations to Yanyan for becoming another cute protagonist of this book!
PS: I will update more... Wait for me to rest for a few days, cough cough...
Chapter 41: Thick Mist
Two hours later, the intersection of No. 13 Xianshui Road, which was outside the corner tower and where the group first went up, had been blocked by a large group of gray-clad policemen.
There is no such thing as a "coronary line" in this era. The police officers block the scene by directly blocking the road. The entire intersection is temporarily blocked by a pile of vehicles, and several chains are pulled around the outside, with notice signs added to prevent idle people from entering.
The ragged refugees were being escorted out one by one by the black-clad police, basically in groups of ten. They were put into vans together with the escorting police officers and driven to the nearby checkpoint from the only exit.
Hitzfeld sat in the car, watching the scene through the inky black window, wrapped in a blanket, holding a cup of hot water in his hands, lost in thought.
"...That's probably what happened."
To her left, the female police chief in the driver's seat had just finished telling Li Ang about their experiences: "All the people Charlie had betrayed died there, 33 of them, without a single one was spared."
Charlie has been taken back by Lori and placed in solitary confinement. As for Duolei... the young girl encountered such a "big" case just after entering the industry. Xia Yibing seemed to be sure of her mental state before using her, and just now she let her go to the Dream Gallery.
Now only a few of them are still at the scene, with Aisuen sitting in the passenger seat and Daryl sitting in the back seat... This is actually to wait for Li Ang who will definitely arrive at the scene.
"This is bad news." Leon stood in the cold wind, puffing out smoke. "If they're all dead, there's no clue. Does Charlie really know that much?"
"If you're worried, you can go back with Lori and ask."
"That's not what I meant." Li Ang shook his head.
Asking more questions was just an occupational disease. He never had any doubts about the professionalism of this woman in investigating cases.
This was indeed the case. Xia Yibing handed him a small notebook and said, "I called the medical staff... the ones from the bureau. We can't completely trust the hospitals outside. When the autopsy report comes out, you can go and check it with them. I want to see if there is any difference."
"Who are you suspecting?" Li Ang took the notebook, flipped through a few pages, and stared at her face. "Don't tell me... my dear director, you suspect that someone might be behind this..."
"Either 'The Light of Salvation' is Charlie's nonsense, or it must be a large organization with a cross-city scale." Xia Yibing gripped the steering wheel, "We don't know who they are or where they are, but the most basic thing is that such a large organization must have a lot of people, and there are not many masters who can support them."
Many cases seem troublesome, but after handling so many of them, Shadow Lion has also developed a set of fixed procedures.
For example, for an illegal organization that is hiding like this, if there are only a few people, then more investigations will be done; if there are a lot of people, then the powerful ones will be investigated - because the more people there are, the more difficult it is to support them. This also involves the ability to organize actions, and these are not something that uneducated refugees can do.
That means you need to be rich and capable, and most importantly, you need to have information channels that are ahead of public opinion, so that you can avoid searches... After all the calculations, you can only be the powerful.
Perhaps this view is a bit arbitrary and this way of doing things is also old-fashioned, but it has been proven to be very useful. Countless cases have been solved through this unreasonable method.
So this is why Xia Yibing made preparations for both situations: if there is a great nobleman behind the "Light of Salvation", he may also bribe people to make changes, or simply secretly send people to tamper with the autopsy report in the hospital, temporarily misleading Shadow Lion.
The effect of this misdirection is very limited, but even if they are delayed for only a few hours, they may miss some important clues.
"Do you think that 'Light of Savior' was raised by a certain minister?" Li Ang thought for a moment and asked in a low voice when no one was around.
Maybe Xia Yibing thought so, but he always felt that it was not quite like that.
The reason is simple. No matter how law-abiding the "Light of Savior" has been in the past two years, the crime of sending escapees to Wayne is enough to send everyone on this line to the gallows.
If it was a great noble who was behind this, since they knew very well that this was a life-threatening undertaking, there was absolutely no reason for them to keep this card hidden and unused.
The rebellion of the old royal party, this card should be played.
And there's Alfred.
Even though Old Crow made a big mistake this time and, to put it bluntly, deserved to die, Leon felt that he had not yet fallen to the point of working for those exploiters.
Hitzfeld also said that he thought he was righteous and that was why he could deceive the Dream Weaver time and time again.
If he was a dog for those people, he probably couldn't even fool himself, so how could he fool others and keep it secret for so many years?
"I won't consider these things based on personal relationships, Cornerel." Xia Yibing warned him not to act on his emotions. "Didn't I ask you to check his account information? What was the result?"
"It's his savings." Li Ang sighed, took out a rolled-up document from his arms and gave it to her, saying, "His savings expenditure has always been abnormal. Hitzfeld's judgment on this point is correct. They compared and communicated with the information sent by many money merchants and concluded that he planned to spend money to do something as early as after the first golem curse occurred."
"Here." He pointed at the page Xia Yibing was reading. "This is the first time he cursed his salary before the case was closed."
"The latter part is new. You can find that he has some weird hobbies, such as alcoholic beverages and tobacco. But in fact, according to our multi-party investigation, he doesn't smoke or drink very often. In other words, he has 'hidden' the money. He has always had an invisible vault outside of supervision."
"Isn't it easy to find out?" Xia Yibing flipped through the papers, her tone full of dissatisfaction, "It's been more than 40 years since the first curse case was closed! How come no one cared about it before?"
Li Ang didn't answer this time, he just stared at her with his lips pursed.
Xia Yibing frowned and looked up at him, and when she saw the weird expression, she realized what was happening - at that time, the bureau simply couldn't spare the manpower to do that.
Just think about it. When the golem curse occurred for the first time, an evil disaster broke out in Blackwood Town, which was so close to the royal capital that it could barely be considered a "shield" or "warning line". Logically speaking, this was a very serious disaster, but the bureau couldn't even spare 200 people at the time.
Otherwise, Mrs. Glee wouldn't have to work day and night. There were only two extraordinary people in the entire Blackwood Town who could take charge of the overall situation, including her. How could she not be anxious? This also laid the groundwork for her mental exhaustion and withdrawal from Shadow Lion.
If we think about it further, since they can't even spare this kind of manpower, they naturally can't spare anyone to investigate these messy accounts.
It is not easy to have these records... Later, it was Villefort's turn to be in power, and he took a friendly approach. He was ruthless and impartial in public matters, but basically didn't care about private matters.
Yes - if you need people who work hard for the country and the people, but you have to haggle over even their little hobbies and small expenses in their daily lives, how can you expect them to devote themselves to their work wholeheartedly?
They had to defect before they were driven mad by the evil spirits.
As for the hidden dangers in this regard, because of the existence of the Dream Corridor, there has always been a large number of the most professional medical teams, dream weavers, and hypnotist teams. They have never thought of carefully examining how a person saves money.
At most, we can check his income to see if he has been bribed.
"There's another problem here." Li Ang spread his hands. "The internal audit department was responsible for auditing accounts. After that incident, the department was separated and turned into an audit team. A lot of information was taken away, and I can't get it today."
"Then I'll leave this matter to you."
Xia Yibing had finished reading the file and put the things on the toolbox.
