Chapter 12 Disappearing Time
The girl walked over to Zhang Hai, who looked not that difficult to approach. "We have one day every week to roast beans, and yesterday happened to be the day for roasting beans."
“So, I thought the smell today was left by the roasted beans, which is why I didn’t look for it at the beginning.”
Lu Bai walked to the machine that found the severed hand and asked, "Are you the one who called the police?"
The little girl nodded in response.
Lu Bai's attention was focused on the scene. She just nodded slightly and then told Zhang Hai, "Take her to make a statement."
This coffee roasting room is not big, and Forensic Doctor Liu concluded that this is not the scene of the first crime, and the severed hand must have been thrown here.
The initial estimate given at the scene was that the time of death should have been the night before.
Because it is an old alley, there are many blind spots in the surveillance. The surveillance in the coffee shop only faces the inside of the store, which happens to avoid the front door and the roasting room.
The Metal Building is also a very old office building, and the surveillance cameras were installed by the owner himself.
If you want to conduct a further search, you must have definite substantive evidence before you can apply to the police station.
The useful clues given now are pitifully few.
Li Ziyu was not in a hurry to inspect the scene. Her eyes were fixed on a thick ventilation duct.
This pipe connects to the back of the roaster and goes straight into the interior.
She kicked Lu Bai who was squatting next to the machine and asked, "Where does this tube lead to?"
Lu Bai looked over and said thoughtfully: "This should be the ventilation duct."
A thick metal pipe led directly to the upper floor. Lu Bai stood up, put his hands on his waist, and frowned.
She instructed the police officers beside her, "Go check the surveillance to see if there are any other witnesses."
"yes."
Lu Bai took off his gloves and raised his chin towards the back door of the coffee shop. "Let's go and take a look."
Li Ziyu was even more silent than usual at the scene. She said nothing, her eyes scanning every corner, her mind filled with possibilities that she had rehearsed thousands of times.
It's still that familiar brotherly look.
Li Ziyu glanced at Lu Bai and said unhappily, "Do you really have to put your hand on me?"
Lu Bai smiled awkwardly. She hadn't figured out how to argue yet, but she was thick-skinned enough and remained indifferent.
On the side that Lu Bai didn't notice, a barely perceptible smile flashed in Li Ziyu's eyes.
[The time of death was the night before yesterday, but the machine was still in normal use in this coffee shop yesterday, which means the hand was not here last night.]
[The ventilation duct is big enough to pass a trunk. If this ventilation duct is connected to a place, someone could throw a severed hand in it...]
Li Ziyu's eyes stayed on the pipe, and he could see clearly that this building had three floors in total. The pipe extended from the top of the floor downwards and connected to the vents on each floor.
Finally, at the back of the coffee shop, there is a large fan that extracts the exhaust smoke.
[If this is the case, all three floors must be screened.]
When Lu Bai heard this, he did not feel as happy as before. Did Li Ziyu rule out the possibility that someone from the coffee shop committed the crime and dumped the body?
Instead, he fixed his eyes directly on the people on the other three floors?
This matter needs to be further investigated based on the evidence collected.
Li Ziyu felt the hand on her shoulder become a little stiff. She tilted her head slightly and asked, "What do you think?"
Lu Bai sorted out his thoughts and said, "You think someone will dump a body here, right?"
Li Ziyu touched the tip of his nose and nodded absentmindedly.
[But why did you throw the severed limbs here? Do you want them to be found, or do you not want them to be found?]
When Zhang Hai brought his men here, he only saw his captain flirting with Li Ziyu, looking very intimate.
His face was full of joy, but he was still afraid that Lu Bai would scold him, so he could only retract his expression.
Zhang Hai poked half of his head out from behind Lu Bai and said, "The surveillance shows that no one has been here since last night until the door opened. The road surveillance also showed nothing unusual."
Lu Bai was thinking about something in her mind, and suddenly a person appeared beside her. She was really scared. She retracted her hand and let go of the person under her arm.
She said unhappily, "Are you a ghost?"
Li Ziyu pointed to the pipe above his head and said, "Zhang Hai, please take another look to see if there is any human tissue or other things in this pipe."
"Oh, okay." Zhang Hai agreed, looked at them both meaningfully, then turned and left.
When Zhang Hai led his men to investigate, the two of them went to the monitoring room together for the first time in tacit understanding.
They all felt that there was something wrong with the surveillance.
The surveillance footage was played over and over again, and it seemed that apart from the pedestrians on the road, there really seemed to be no suspicious people passing by.
Li Ziyu lowered his brows in thought, "Please bring out the coffee shop's surveillance video for comparison."
The technician nodded, and after some operations, the surveillance video of the coffee shop appeared on the right screen of the computer.
Two surveillance videos from different directions, playing at the same time.
Time passes by.
The pictures passed by one by one.
Over and over again.
"stop."
"stop!"
They both spoke at almost the same time.
Li Ziyu pointed to the surveillance camera of the coffee shop on the right and said, "This man walked towards the door at 6:10 pm."
Lu Bai fixed his eyes on the road surveillance on the left. "The road surveillance was at 6:10, and there was no sign of this man."
Although there are blind spots on the road, the alley is very small. Unless this person can climb walls and fly over rooftops, he will definitely appear at the intersection in front of the alley.
But obviously, the man never appeared.
Lu Bai gave the order and patted Li Ziyu on the shoulder, "Go out and talk."
There were a lot of people watching here. It was a murder case. She and Li Ziyu wanted to discuss the case, so they had to avoid the crowd.
In the stairwell, Lu Bai casually sat on a step and brushed off the dust on the step beside him.
Li Ziyu raised his eyebrows, then followed her wishes and sat next to her.
The stairs were very narrow, and the two of them sat together, arms touching.
Lu Bai thought he was extremely smart.
This time it was Li Ziyu who spoke first, "Do you have any guesses?"
Lu Bai stroked her fingers and thought carefully. She did have a guess. "The coffee shop surveillance should be fine because people are always coming in and out. It would be too difficult to modify it."
"On the other hand, the road monitoring is in a remote alley. It has been raining these past two days, so there are not many pedestrians. It will be much easier to modify it."
【Ruzi is teachable.】
Lu Bai got Li Ziyu's affirmation, and combined with her experience in handling cases in previous years, she made an extremely bold guess.
"Since the body cannot be identified, we assume that this man is the murderer..."
Li Ziyu interrupted her, "He is dead."
[When he left the coffee shop, he had packed some dessert in his hand. Only an extremely perverted murderer would want to eat while killing someone.]
Lu Bai coughed lightly and changed his words, "OK, the deceased walked out of the coffee shop before he died, but he must not have left the alley, otherwise his figure would have been seen on the surveillance camera on the avenue."
"So it is very likely that he was killed in this building, and the surveillance did not show that anyone had checked in the body, so I have reason to suspect that there is a place in this building, which is the scene of the first crime, and..."
Her eyes were deep and her hands hanging on her legs were slightly clenched.
[The body is still in a corner of the building.]
【And the most crucial evidence is what disappeared and was tampered with in the surveillance.】
These two sentences simply meant that Li Ziyu agreed with her speculation.
Lu Bai turned his head and looked at the narrow and long staircase behind him that extended into the darkness.
Even though she had witnessed countless murders, she couldn't help but feel her hair stand on end and the back of her neck go cold.
"Ding-ling-ling~Ding-ling-ling~"
Lu Bai suppressed the fear in his heart and answered the phone.
"Team Lu, where are you? We found something here!"
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