Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 161 20. Clues and Bones

"So, a detective in Dangerous Girl was assigned the task of investigating the deceased in this case, and then she disappeared during the investigation?"

Listening to Carl's story, Johnson roughly understood what was going on.

"To add to that, when the detective was investigating someone, the person was not dead yet."

Karl glanced at the bloody situation within the cordon: “Now, this is getting interesting.”

"The man the detective was investigating was found dead in an alleyway in the city center, and the detective who was investigating him has disappeared."

Johnson murmured, feeling that this police trip was not as simple as he had imagined.

"It seems that my previous guess was wrong. This might not have been done by the scavenger."

Johnson said so. The city center had been cleaned up recently, and the new cleaners were not capable of causing a detective from a detective agency to mysteriously disappear.

"Can I see the deceased's profile, Mr. Johnson?"

"Since this matter has been brought up, it's fine."

Johnson handed the document in his hand to Carl without much hesitation. According to the rules, even the people involved in the incident could not do this, but the NCPD did not follow those explicit rules now, and Johnson did not follow them either.

Carl glanced through the document briefly, wrote down the information, and without even thinking about showing it to Kenichi Shiro, who was in charge of decoration, he handed the document back to Johnson.

"The deceased was from Santo Domingo and had only been active in the Santo Domingo area in recent days. However, the place where he was found dead was in the city center, and it was not at a key traffic surveillance point according to the documents. The surveillance footage showed him walking out of the Santo Domingo area, which means."

Karl thought for a moment and said, “Either he has the ability to block surveillance, or he came to the city center by car, or he could be in the trunk.”

There are only a few ways to get around in Night City: walking, driving, and taking the subway. The subway has a subway card that records your identity, so as long as you take the subway, there will be a record. So the only ways for the deceased to leave Santo Domingo were walking and driving.

"Of course, he could have left Santo Domingo in a hovercraft, but considering the deceased's financial situation, this is unlikely."

The deceased was a deliveryman, a low-level employee. Even the delivery truck he used had more than two years of installments left. The possibility of him riding in a floating vehicle was too small. This possibility could only be the last possible option after eliminating all other impossibilities.

"What's the reason the Dangerous Girl detective is investigating him?"

Johnson and Carl shared and thought about the information, looking for a breakthrough.

"It seems he was having an affair with a married man. The husband suspected his significant other was cheating on him, so he hired a professional detective to do an investigation. You know, most of the things detectives do are not likely to solve cases. Homely investigations like this are the norm."

"Cheating?"

Johnson is not surprised that married men are free to fall in love. In this era where gender can be changed at will, this kind of love can only be said to be very normal. What he is thinking about is the possibility brought about by cheating.
"Could it be a revenge killing? For example, the detective found out that the husband's partner was indeed cheating on him, so..."

"There's nothing wrong with the employer, and neither is his significant other. After the detective disappeared, the agency collected information about the employer. In this regard, it's just a misunderstanding. The married man cheated on his wife with someone else."

"The possible clues are broken again."

Johnson frowned. To be honest, when he was young, he was a good detective in the police station. But as it was useless to solve the case, no matter how much evidence there was, the suspect would always be released safely. He no longer insisted on investigating. It was useless anyway, so he might as well fire a few more shots and try to kill the suspect before he could explain. He practiced shooting but not investigation, and now it is a bit difficult to pick it up again and regain the sensitive feeling of the past. Kenichi Shiro was watching the two of them from the side, still silent, but his artificial eye was flashing from time to time, as if data was constantly flowing in it, transmitting the images he saw to somewhere.

Carl, who didn't pay attention to his boss on this mission and knew this was some kind of test when he came, is now thinking about the clues.

People from Arasaka especially like to do things like trials. He had already experienced it indirectly last time, and this time it was just a real experience. There was no need to care too much. Compared to boring tests, Carl was really interested in this detective-like work.

It’s nice to COS a great detective like Sherlock Holmes occasionally.

Since there were no external clues, it would be better to start from the victim. Carl had already looked at the autopsy materials, but those examinations had missed one thing.

Carl walked into the cordon, squatted down and began to look at the broken meat, bones and blood on the ground. His concentration reached the highest point, and everything he had learned and remembered began to converge and analyze in his mind.

Johnson didn't disturb him, he just stood by and watched Carl, curious about what Carl could discover.

Carl kept scanning the scene and analyzed the original positions of each broken bone in the human body. Finally, he found the clues left at the scene.

Standing up and walking carefully along the edge of the bloodstain, Carl came to a place and bent down again. He picked up a blood-stained bone from the broken bones that looked no different from the surrounding ones.

“I found something interesting.”

Carl held up the bone and gestured to Johnson: "This bone is not from the deceased."

"Not the deceased?"

Johnson walked closer and stared at the bones in Carl's hand: "Could it be that there is a second dead person here?"

"No, it's not so much the dead as the..."

Carl held the bone horizontally with his index and middle fingers, then applied a little force to break the bone into two pieces in his hand. He then showed the cross section to Johnson: "This is not a human bone at all."

"Not human bones?"

"That's right. Others may not be familiar with it, but I am quite familiar with it. I even dismembered it myself a few days ago."

Carl smiled and placed the broken bone in Johnson's open palm.

“These are pig bones.”

"pig?!"

After the surprise, Johnson fell into deep thought.

Here comes the interesting part.

It is not an easy task to transport pigs into Night City, and the cost is definitely not a small amount of euros. How could the bones of such precious meat be mixed with human bones from the murder scene?

(End of this chapter)