Chapter 362: Chapter 230: The Bizarre Case Cracked by the Team Member, Hostility_1
「Los Angeles.」
As soon as Dean got off the plane, he took a taxi and hurried to the Central Division.
「The Office.」
Only Harry and Daisy were there. Carlo had run off somewhere.
Harry greeted Dean, who had rushed back, with a warm hug. "Welcome back, Boss Dean!"
Dean pushed him away with disgust and said unhappily, "Tell me what’s been going on while I was gone. You all need to grow up quickly so you can stand on your own soon!"
His efforts to climb up the ranks were so that someday his underlings would work hard on solving cases, earning Experience Points for him. He wanted to be a boss, not a babysitter!
Daisy, licking an ice cream, came over. "Harry and Carlo did great. When you were gone, they solved two cases by themselves!"
"That impressive?"
Dean raised an eyebrow. "Spill the details!"
A smug look appeared on Harry’s face. "The first case involved a wife who killed her husband. She even tried to disguise it as a burglary where the thief killed him. We solved it in just one hour!"
Harry was somewhat clever, and Carlo had strong execution skills. Dean believed the duo could solve cases together. But he had doubts about them solving one in just an hour.
Had these two learned nothing about actual case-solving and just picked up his violent enforcement tactics?
Dean looked at Harry skeptically. "Give me the details of the case!"
Harry shrugged. "The call center received a report. A woman claimed a thief broke in, woke her, killed her still-sleeping husband, and then fled. When we got there, we found the house’s surveillance system had been broken for a few days. The wife was crying her eyes out, and there were signs of a struggle at the scene. I could tell right away something was off!
"Normal thieves would first check if the house had cameras, then consider how to break in and stake it out to ensure no one was home. But there was no evidence of the front door being damaged or the locks picked. Although items in the living room had been rummaged through, the ransacking looked haphazard, like a headless fly, which contradicted the idea that the thief precisely knew the surveillance was broken. Of course, it’s possible the thief was just a lucky newcomer.
"But the dead man’s throat was slit from behind with a knife while he was lying flat on his back! I can’t figure out how a thief, without waking the husband, could pin down the wife and then slit the husband’s throat! Only his wife, sharing his bed, could have done it so easily.
"The wife was crying very genuinely. It was clear she was truly heartbroken. Based on my understanding of women, it’s highly likely she killed her husband over his infidelity! Her composure wasn’t particularly strong. Carlo and I applied a little pressure, and the woman confessed. The outcome was laughable."
Dean asked, "What was the reason?"
"By chance," Harry continued, "the woman saw a photo of a strange woman in her husband’s phone photo album; the two of them looked very intimate. So, while her husband was sound asleep, she slit his throat with a kitchen knife. The woman hadn’t initially planned to report it. She was preparing to kill her husband’s mistress first and then herself. But when she was searching through her husband’s phone, she discovered the photo was of herself from years before, wearing makeup. She didn’t know how, but her husband had recently found that photo again and saved it to his phone. The woman was full of regret. But her husband was already dead, and she didn’t want to go to jail. In desperation, she called the police, hoping to bluff her way through!"
Dean was speechless.
This kind of thing actually happens! Not even a novelist would dare write a plot like this!
Seeing Dean stunned, Daisy giggled. "The other case is even more absurd."
...
The second case was indeed even more absurd than the first. This case involved the rookie, Carlo.
Before joining the detective bureau and working under Dean, this guy didn’t earn much. But being young, he liked to live the high life, so he’d racked up a lot of credit card debt. So, after work, he often took on nearby part-time jobs he found online.
A few days ago, Carlo took on a part-time job to fix a water pipe. He went there eagerly. At the time, only the lady of the house was home. That should have been fine. But during the repair, a pipe burst, soaking them both. Wet clothes need changing, right? The two of them moved from the kitchen to the living room, then from the living room to the bedroom, leaving traces of changing clothes everywhere. During this time, the lady also instructed Carlo in some bondage techniques highly regarded in Japan.
After they were done, the woman cheerfully pulled out a full three thousand US dollars. Then, she told Carlo some very unfortunate news: she had killed her husband and wanted Carlo to help dispose of the body. She warned that otherwise, with all the evidence scattered around the house, the ligature marks on her body, and Carlo’s bodily fluids inside her, he would be doomed!
And then... Carlo, to the woman’s dumbfounded expression, pulled out his detective badge...
The crucial part was that Carlo had come straight from the police station to the woman’s house after work. He had no time to commit any crime. The woman couldn’t frame him even if she wanted to. Thus, newcomer Carlo, on the job for less than half a month, successfully cracked his first case!
Listening to Daisy and Harry take turns narrating the events, Dean silently lit a cigarette. Even after finishing the entire cigarette, he still couldn’t figure it out. Why was it that after he joined, he always encountered such complicated cases, yet as soon as he left, his subordinates solved cases as easily as drinking water!
Am I jinxed?
...
"Alright, I’ll report your excellent performance to Captain Henry. Now, tell me about any problems you’ve encountered!"