After cautiously glancing at the reactions of his senior colleagues, the young policeman continued, "So I suspect the deceased might have been left-handed." Having stated his assessment, the young officer then turned his gaze to Wang Shen.
Wang Shen also looked at the young policeman. Suddenly, a smile appeared on Wang Shen's face, and he clapped his hands lightly. "Xiao Liang is absolutely right." After Wang Shen finished speaking, everyone present turned their gaze to the young policeman, their expressions showing surprise.
“I spoke with the deceased the day before his death. It was mainly about Sang’s traffic fatality and the bar girl’s murder in the alley. Some of you here probably know about these two cases, but due to time constraints, I haven’t had a chance to go into detail. We’ll deal with them together after this case is closed. Okay, back to Song Mu, the deceased in this case. When I was talking to him, I noticed that he used his left hand for everything, whether writing or drinking. Based on this, I deduced that he was left-handed. I also specifically observed the position of his cup after he finished drinking; it was also placed on his left. So, as you can see in this picture, the cup is on his right, which is strange. This situation probably explains something.” Wang Shen didn’t continue, but instead kept everyone in suspense, glancing at the audience, hoping someone could offer further reasoning for the case.
Everyone looked at each other, silent. Wang Shen looked at the young policeman and pointed at him: "Xiao Liang, it's up to you to give your opinion on the next step."
Hearing Wang Shen call his name directly, the young policeman nervously stood up from his chair and replied, "Yes, sir!" "The explanation is that the last user of that cup wasn't the deceased, but someone else who placed it on the desk later. If we analyze it from this perspective, the person who placed the cup last is very likely the murderer. Their purpose in placing the cup was to mislead us into believing the deceased died by suicide. However, there's a contradiction here." The young policeman paused, looking at Wang Shen, as if hesitating whether to state his judgment.
"It's alright, just say what you want to say." Wang Shen noticed the young policeman's doubts. Wang Shen smiled warmly at the young policeman, trying his best to dispel his worries and doubts.
The young policeman nodded at Wang Shen. “Judging from the placement of the cups, the murderer probably didn't know the victim was left-handed. Therefore, the murderer likely didn't know much about the victim. However, this contradicts the confession on the computer. If the confession wasn't written by the victim herself, then it's highly likely it was written by the murderer. Judging from the content of the confession, the murderer should have known the victim very well. I really can't understand this contradiction.” The young policeman frowned, his gaze fixed on the photo on the projection screen, completely absorbed in the case's deduction.
“What you said makes a lot of sense.” Hearing Wang Shen speak, the young policeman sat back down in his chair. “Xiao Liang, but you’ve overlooked a criminal psychology issue.” Wang Shen looked at the young policeman, then at everyone present, and smiled.
"Xiao Liang, if you were asked to kill someone right now, would you be nervous?" Wang Shen changed the subject, leaving the young policeman somewhat at a loss.
"Huh?" The young policeman immediately stood up from his chair, looked at Wang Shen with a puzzled expression, and then quickly understood what Wang Shen meant. "You must be very nervous," the young policeman replied calmly.
“Yes. People are most prone to making mistakes when they are under extreme tension. Even if the murderer knows the victim's habits very well, under extreme tension, people will still act according to their own lifestyle. For example, the placement of this cup. As we all know, our habitual thinking is to put the teacup on the right after drinking from it.” After listening to Wang Shen's judgment, everyone seemed to have a sudden realization. “However, all of this is based on the premise that the murderer is a first-time offender. How can I judge the number of times the murderer has committed crimes? Look at this picture.”
Wang Shen tapped the projection screen, and a photo of a plastic bag appeared. The bag was quite large, and upon closer inspection, a single hair was visible inside. "I found this hair at the scene, between the victim's fingers. The victim was clutching it very tightly. I think the victim was trying to convey some message. If my reasoning is correct, this hair likely belongs to the murderer. I had the hair's biometrics analyzed and compared with our archived criminal gene database, but no match was found. This indicates that the murderer has no prior criminal record. That's why I concluded that this was the murderer's first offense."
Wang Shen tapped the projection screen again, and a close-up of the cup on Song Mu's desk appeared on the screen. "Therefore, based on the above judgment, I believe that the deceased is more likely to have been murdered. Please take another look at this cup. This is the water cup that the deceased used before his death. Last night, when I talked to the deceased, I personally saw him drink water from this cup. And today at the crime scene, I found that there was still half a cup of water left in the cup. So I had the forensic team test the water and the cup separately. The test results surprised me a bit. Neither the water nor the rim of the cup showed any trace of the deceased's saliva. May I ask everyone, why would a cup that has been used normally have no trace of saliva left in such a short time?" Wang Shen turned to the side and looked at everyone present.
“Unless someone washed this cup, and washed it very carefully,” a middle-aged policeman sitting on the right side of the conference table said with a serious expression.
“That’s right, I think that’s the reason too. In that case, we have two questions to answer now. First, who washed the cup? Why did they wash the cup? Second, after washing the cup, why did they pour half a cup of water back in?” Wang Shen said as he walked to the whiteboard on the side and briefly wrote down these two questions.
Wang Shen's gaze swept across everyone's faces, finally settling on the young policeman. Wang Shen smiled at the young officer, who immediately understood and stood up again. "I think there are two possibilities depending on who washed the cup. First, the person washing the cup was the deceased. The deceased washed the cup because he wanted to drink water, but found it dirty. But why would the cup be dirty? Perhaps it contained some other liquid before. This hypothesis fits the deceased's almost obsessive-compulsive personality. But why didn't the deceased drink the water after pouring it? Maybe he didn't have time to drink it... No, that hypothesis is unlikely, because as mentioned earlier, the deceased was left-handed..."
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