Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 12 Tracking
"You drive."

In the courtyard of the law enforcement office, Rebecca jumped into the carriage with Daisy in her arms and gestured for Milo to follow quickly.

As Milo drove the carriage out of the law enforcement compound, Rebecca gave the officer on duty a death order:
"Keep a close watch on all import and export routes, and don't let anyone leave!"

……

A torrential downpour began outside.

But the madwoman in the red robe outside the law enforcement office remained kneeling on the sidewalk, her hunched body leaning against her cane, letting the large raindrops pound against her, pointing at the carriage, wailing in her hoarse voice:

"The calamity has come true; no one can escape it..."

As the rain intensified, her voice was completely drowned out.

……

Milo drove the carriage at breakneck speed toward the hospital.

His mind kept replaying everything he had just witnessed.

Because it doesn't make any sense at all.

The law enforcement office is one of the safest places, at least it's a place criminals wouldn't dare to easily set foot in. Moreover, he and Rebecca had visited Daisy once just ten minutes before she was attacked, and afterwards the two of them had been staying by the conference table outside the door...

Could someone possibly sneak into the archives and commit a crime without them noticing, right under their noses?

And then be able to get away unscathed?

Milo firmly believes he is not that blind.

At the time, only the two of them and Daisy in the room were on the second floor of the entire law enforcement building.

Rebecca brought Milo in to secretly investigate the serial murders, and she must have made sure that no one else was on the second floor before she dared to openly put those dusty documents on the table.

So what's going on?

Who moved the hand?

Ghosts? Calamities?

Nonsense! Absolutely impossible.

If we attribute all inexplicable things to metaphysical theories, the world would be in chaos.

They only had a dozen minutes to commit the crime.

Rebecca and I were there the whole time...

No, I wasn't there the whole time.

I left for a few minutes.

Is it...

...

Volunteer hospitals were a group of medical institutions built during the Great Plague.

The target population is mainly the lower and middle classes of society.

Public officials such as those in law enforcement offices and city guards, who have royal medical care, can receive free treatment at volunteer hospitals.

……

Daisy was wheeled into the emergency room by a nurse.

The doctor replied that the bleeding had been stopped in time so there was no immediate danger to her life, but could not guarantee that an infection would not occur later.

……

Rebecca slumped down on the steps outside the hospital.

Her upper body was covered by a white shirt and a black vest. The collar and cuffs of the shirt were stained red, and even the sleeve tabs on her arms were covered in blood.

"..."

Milo stood quietly to the side, watching Rebecca.

He went over the events in his mind again and again, the image of Rebecca comforting Daisy in the archives room still vivid in his mind.

He looked at Rebecca's reddened eyes, remained silent for a long time, and then finally spoke:
"I remember I was away for a few minutes."

“I understand what you mean. If I were you, I would have the same doubts.” Rebecca stared blankly at the bloodstains on her hands.

The whole process only took about ten minutes.

During this time, Milo and Rebecca remained at the conference table outside the door, and no third person appeared.

Milo left for a few minutes to go to the kitchen, so from a purely rational perspective, Rebecca is the only person who had the time and space to commit the crime.

She was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Law Enforcement, so she naturally understood this basic line of reasoning.

What she couldn't accept was that Daisy was brutally murdered right under her nose...

……

Criminal investigators must approach everything with absolute rationality. Even if Rebecca is a law enforcement officer, and even if Daisy was someone she risked her life to save from the monster, she still had the means to commit the crime, which is undeniable, at least from Milo's perspective.

The act of saving a life cannot be used as grounds for clearing one's name of murder suspicion.

Because these are two completely independent events.

"Why……"

Rebecca was somewhat distraught.

She probably couldn't understand how the murderer could have done all this, since she had been guarding the door the whole time and hadn't left.

"Are you going to sit here and shut yourself off, or should we go back now and find the murderer?"

Milo stared at Rebecca.

“Didn’t you say…” Rebecca looked up at Milo.

"Please, you called me here to find the real culprit, right? Now that he's come out on his own, I'll trust you this time. But please do something useful too. Before you left, you ordered the police station to be sealed off. Now you have to come back with me. There must be some clues left behind at the scene."

Milo hadn't yet figured out what had happened to Daisy, or how the killer had committed the crime. But one thing he was certain of: Rebecca couldn't be the killer.

From Milo's perspective, Rebecca is indeed the only one who is most obviously capable of committing the crime, but if she is identified as the murderer, then her plan to commit the crime tonight is a complete failure.

……

"Be quick."

Milo tossed Rebecca her blood-stained black trench coat back to her and turned to walk out of the hospital.

“Shouldn’t we leave someone here to watch over the child?” Rebecca put on her trench coat and followed Milo.

"It's pointless. The murderer has already gotten what he wanted. Now we should pray that he hasn't found a chance to leave the police station yet."

Milo shook his head.

……

Ten minutes later, the two returned to the law enforcement station one after the other.

It was already late at night.

Just ten minutes of heavy rain caused the drains in the parish to become blocked, and now there is nearly ten centimeters of standing water on both sides of the road.

It's unclear when it started, but the sewer pipes in this neighborhood have been clogged for a long time. Every time it rains, the streets flood severely, and municipal workers have been searching for the cause for a long time without finding it.

Milo and Rebecca practically waded into the law enforcement office.

But the two men moved quickly, their eyes filled with anger.

Daisy was someone they risked their lives to save, and yet she suffered right under their noses—no one could accept that.

Moreover, as Milo recalled Daisy's gaze in the archives earlier, a sense of unease gradually arose in his mind. He had a guess, but he couldn't be sure for the time being.

When the two entered the law enforcement office, the red-robed madwoman was no longer on the street, probably because she had moved to a different location due to severe flooding.

Rebecca had completely shed the gentle emotions she had displayed in the hospital; her eyes were filled with unwavering determination, almost to the point of being fierce.

Milo felt that, given this woman's current mental state, if she found the murderer tonight, she would probably tear him apart alive.

……

The crime scene—the archives.

In the room filled with countless file boxes and shelves, Daisy's blood and the milk that Milo had previously heated were mixed together on the floor, and a nauseating, strange smell permeated the air.

“It’s confirmed. After we left, both the front and back gates of the law enforcement office were locked, and no one left. Unless the murderer had already escaped before we found out about Daisy’s accident, he is likely still inside the law enforcement office.”

Rebecca said to Milo, tossing him a black law enforcement officer's trench coat:

"Put it on, your city guard uniform is too conspicuous."

Milo nodded, putting on his trench coat as he said, "The stairs are on the west side, then there's the open-plan conference room where we are, then these departments, and to the east there's only this straight passage. There shouldn't be any other hidden passages to go up or down the stairs, right?"

“No,” Rebecca answered with absolute certainty, “there’s only this staircase behind us.”

“Well… the archives room contains only paper documents, so it was deliberately designed as a windowless room. That means the archives room door is the only entrance and exit. For the murderer to commit the crime, they would have to come up the stairs, pass in front of us, and then push open the door and enter the room right in front of us, right?” Milo was standing at the conference table, with the stairwell to his left and a straight corridor to his right. He looked at Rebecca:
"How do you think he did it? Or is there some blind spot in our vision? Or... what do you think the killer might be?"

"What is that? Could it be that monster from last time?" Rebecca recalled the shroud-like figure that had almost killed her last week.

"Certainly not."

Milo shook his head: "Such a big monster would be conspicuous anywhere. If it wanted to kill someone, it could just barge in and kill them. The two of us might not be able to stop it. There's no need to sneak around."

"So you mean there's a second murderer?" Rebecca raised an eyebrow.

"What are you surprised about?" Milo rolled his eyes, then reached out and pushed aside the documents on the round table, first placing a death report of a coachman on it, then tossing aside information about a patient shelter:
"The coachman didn't commit suicide out of guilt, that's what we both agree on, right?"

“Yes.” Rebecca nodded.

Milo patted the asylum files: "On the day the carriage accident happened, besides the Shroud Monster kidnapping Daisy, there must have been another person who took the coachman away and killed him. To be even bolder, the killing of the coachman and the disemboweling of the horse were done by two different people. Including the Monster, that makes a total of three perpetrators—a gang. We've only encountered the monster so far. Assuming there are two other killers lurking in the shadows, we can even speculate: given that the monster doesn't die from a bullet to the head, could these other two killers also possess some kind of…strange ability?"

Rebecca: "That's why you asked them what...things they are."

“But actually I don’t recommend making connections to things that can’t be explained.” Milo changed the subject: “Daisy was in the middle of our accident. If we were both out of our minds, we wouldn’t be able to investigate this case.”

"Damn it, you're the one who led the conversation in that direction."

Rebecca looked at the dimly lit passageway before her:

"But... I really can't figure out how I could do it in such a short time... Although the door to the archives wasn't always in my sight, it was only a few meters away. If someone got close, there was absolutely no way I wouldn't have noticed."

I thought about it for a long time, and wandered around the archives, passageways, and stairwells for a long time, but I still couldn't find the key to the problem.

Rebecca steeled herself: "I'll just have people turn the law enforcement office upside down, I refuse to believe it."

"Are you stupid? How do you know the murderer is definitely hiding? Couldn't he be some familiar face in the law enforcement office? Like someone on duty? On guard duty?" Milo was speechless.

“Then I’ll drag everyone out and interrogate them one by one.” Rebecca frowned.

“Now I understand why the law enforcement agency’s case-solving rate is so low.” Milo shook his head.

"Then why don't you break it? Explain what exactly happened!" Rebecca immediately became anxious.

Or to be more precise, she had actually been anxious for a long time, but she had been holding it in until now before finally letting it all out.

……

"..."

Milo ignored Rebecca.

He squatted in front of the archives room door, staring at the blood and milk mixed together on the floor, mentally replaying the whole incident.

Soon, he sifted out some overlooked details and unusual phenomena.

He turned his head to look at the shelves piled high with documents in the cluttered archives, his expression growing increasingly serious.

……

"If that's the case..."

(End of this chapter)