After Renji politely greeted them, he abruptly twisted his fingers.
“Crack!”
The sound of the police officer’s neck breaking was especially clear in the confined space of the police car.
Renji twisted the officer’s neck as easily as twisting the stem of a raw celery stalk.
In Renji’s palm, the officer’s throat slightly compressed, after which his body suddenly lost all support, and his head tilted unnaturally to the side.
Renji released his grip and casually wiped the bloodstains from his gloves onto the shoulder of the officer’s uniform.
Then Renji opened the driver’s door from the inside, crouched down, leaned halfway inside, and pulled the deceased officer’s mobile phone from his belt.
Renji turned on the phone.
On the lock screen appeared a family photo.
The police officer himself in uniform stood in the middle, next to him were his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, in school uniforms.
In the background was Cinderella’s Castle from Disneyland.
“Fingerprint unlock.”
“It’s still fresh after death, can be unlocked.”
Renji grabbed the officer’s dangling right hand, then pressed his thumb against the screen.
The phone screen flashed with an unlock animation, after which Renji gently placed the officer’s hand on his stomach and patted it lightly.
Then he unlocked and took the other officer’s phone, after which he gently closed the car door.
“Good night, officer.”
Having said that, Renji turned, took the phones, and headed toward the “stage.”
The car window was still open, and the two dead officers were still sitting in their seats; only one of them would never snore again, and the other would never fish again.
Rainwater seeped through the open car window and dripped onto the pale young face of the passenger, falling drop by drop onto his still-closed eyes.
Renji didn’t cut off each person’s finger to use as an unlock key, since fingerprint unlocking uses capacitive recognition technology, which relies on the conductivity of the finger’s skin to form an electric field and create a fingerprint image.
After death, a person’s bioelectricity completely disappears, the skin dehydrates, and its conductivity drops sharply, making fingerprint recognition impossible for sensors.
But since they had just died, you could still ask someone else to help you unlock it with their fingerprint.
The reason Renji decided to use the police officer’s phone to make the call, rather than doing what he had done with Tobe and Ooka, was that Renji wouldn’t try to break into Yamato’s home tonight.
He had already prepared a wonderful scene for “Yamato” and was only waiting for the moment when he could perform on it.
Additionally, he wanted to use the police officer’s phone to check the current situation inside the police station.
Renji noticed that this guy had arranged his software icons very neatly and even sorted them by color, so it seemed he had a mild case of OCD.
Instead of calling immediately, Renji opened Line on the go.
There weren’t many unread messages in Line; mostly it was ordinary conversations with family.
His wife had sent a photo of tonight’s dinner: fried pork cutlet and shredded vegetables, with the caption: “I left some for you in the fridge.” That was an unread message.
His daughter had also posted a photo asking when her dad would be back.
This post had been read, with the read time at 6:12 PM.
In other words, after dinner, whether at the police station or outside, the officer hadn’t checked any messages from home.
Scrolling down, he found a group chat called “Night Shift – Central Office.”
The last message was sent today at 9:08 PM; it was a message from the shift supervisor.
“The two of you keep watch over the surveillance target’s residential area. Park your car near the intersection and immediately report any unusual activity.”
The message ended with a GPS coordinate link and three clenched fist emojis.
The replies below were simply “Understood” and “Received.”
Then Renji opened the officer’s work email client.
In the inbox were emails from the last three days, arranged in reverse chronological order.
Among the most important documents were the investigation reports on Tobe’s murder, all titled identically: “Investigation Division – Victim No. 1.”
Renji opened the latest email.
The first half of the text was in standard format, and the second half indicated the current direction of the investigation, with an emphasis on examining interpersonal relationships within the campus.
This included interviewing every acquaintance of the victim, cross-referencing personal messages on social media, and checking the list of students who had recently applied for transfer or withdrawal.
In other words, the police’s main hypothesis at this point was that a conflict within the school had escalated into violent revenge, and the only commonality between the two victims was that they attended the same school, were in the same class, and were in the same grade.
This focused all their attention on the closed environment of the school, and at the end of the email, a special note was attached in bold.
The LINE chat history confirmed that Tobe and Ooka had been involved in usury, which naturally became an important clue for the investigation.
Renji’s lips twitched slightly beneath the mask.
Did the chat history between Tobe and Yamato only contain the loan agreement, without mentioning the reason?
Renji knew that Tobe had borrowed money to buy shoes.
Perhaps because it was discussed offline, it wasn’t mentioned in the online chat history.
Renji continued scrolling through the emails and saw another internal notice sent at 4:00 PM that day, titled “Victim’s Family Situation.” Renji only glanced at it and didn’t find any useful information.
The information on the other phone was virtually identical.
Then Renji opened the call log interface and found that there were no records of contact with “Yamato.” However, this was normal, since he was just a patrol officer, not a detective from the investigation division, and didn’t have direct contact with “Yamato.”
Tonight, he was probably only there to monitor any unusual activity and be on the lookout for any suspicious persons.
To make sure he didn’t miss anything, Renji also checked the call logs on the other officer’s phone.
Instead of directly calling Yamato’s number, Renji browsed the police officer’s internal contacts, sorted by department, and found Yamato’s number in the “Victims and Interrogated Persons” category under the Life Safety Division.
In the notes section, it was clearly stated: “lives alone.”
Renji hadn’t expected that after the deaths of Ooka and Tobe, Yamato would still be living alone in his former apartment.
His parents hadn’t taken him back or moved in with him.
“You hoping you’ll get away with this?”
Renji’s reasoning was quite understandable.
After all, in the real world, most people wouldn’t immediately change their locks just because a neighbor’s house had been burglarized, nor would they cancel their travel plans just because someone on the plane shouted that it was about to explode.