Nightingale Play 1.3
A skeleton was curled up inside the iron cabinet in the control room.
"Male, around 40 years old, with an old fracture of the third lumbar vertebra." Fan Jinci's gloved knuckles traced the perforation at the back of the skull. "The fatal wound was a nail wound at the foramen magnum. The murder weapon was likely..."
"A stage nail gun." Jiang Zhaoyan pulled a blood-soaked blueprint from the corpse's hand. "Look at this."
The blueprints precisely marked the modification plan for the guillotine. The signature in the corner was blurred by bloodstains, but it was still possible to identify "Old Zhou"—the chief mechanic who had served the theater for thirty years and had disappeared five years ago when he "returned to his hometown to retire."
Wen Lin suddenly shouted into the walkie-talkie, "A living person has been spotted backstage!"
When everyone rushed into the prop room, they saw a young man covered in oil frantically dismantling the sound equipment. His work ID hanging around his neck read "Intern Xiao Liu".
"I didn't do it!" the young man cried hysterically, brandishing a screwdriver. "It was...it was Teacher Cheng who told me to oil the tracks every week! She said it was a tradition!"
Li Weimian ripped the old-fashioned pager off his waist; a new message flashed on the screen:
"Act Three is ready."
At six o'clock in the morning, the doorbell rang at director Xu Changping's apartment.
The surveillance footage shows a scaled-down stage model at the entrance: the audience seats are densely packed with puppets, and a puppet resembling a director is suspended under a spotlight with a noose soaked in rosin around its neck.
A charred theater ticket was stuck to the bottom of the model, with familiar handwriting on the back:
"Your closing scene tonight at 8 PM"
“Rosin is used for preventing slippage on old-fashioned nooses.” Fan Jinci frowned in front of the evidence bag. “The murderer is trying to reconstruct something…”
"Tradition." Jiang Zhaoyan suddenly interrupted him, holding up a 1957 copy of "A Study of Stage Execution Instruments." "In the 1950s, this theater really did execute Nazi spies by hanging."
He turned to a certain page and suddenly stopped—in the yellowed photograph, on the backdrop behind the tortured person, was a blood-red moon painted exactly like the stage backdrop today.
"You're going to be bait?" Yu Yan slammed his gun down on the dressing table. "That madman specializes in killing actors!"
Jiang Zhaoyan slowly and deliberately fastened his bow tie, a cold smile playing on his lips in the mirror: "Xu Changping was Cheng Xue's fiancé back then, but after the fire, he married the investor's daughter." He adjusted the platinum clasp on his cufflinks. "And tonight—"
"The substitute director for 'Bloody Mask' happens to have the surname Jiang."
Fan Jinci suddenly grabbed his wrist and used the tip of his scalpel to pry open his cuff—a micro-electrode was sewn inside.
"A brainwave jammer." Jiang Zhaoyan let him examine her, "just in case I'm hypnotized and fall into a trap." He suddenly leaned close to Fan Jinci's ear, "If the doctor is worried... why not give me a full body check-up himself?"
Yu Yan's fist grazed Jiang Zhaoyan's cheek and shattered the mirror.
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