dmims Chapter 70 Resolution—The Sandstorm Team Murder Case
Chapter 70 Resolution—The Sandstorm Team Murder Case
Perhaps it was the detective's caution that made him unwilling to reveal his address, or perhaps it was simply to avoid surprising the driver too much by seeing the Yuxi Mansion, the detective got out of the car one street away from his residence.
After getting out of the taxi, Hugo tossed his worn-out white coat into a roadside trash can, then stretched lazily and began to impart his detective knowledge to Azure as if having a casual chat—
"The worst thing in reasoning is to start from scratch and abandon proven conclusions. This can easily lead to a fallacy that I call the 'common sense trap'."
Passing by the dazzling array of shop windows on the street, the detective, who had taken off his white coat and was now only wearing a black shirt, chatted casually as if no one else was around, looking much neater than usual.
"People tend to follow intuitive thinking to connect simple facts, then become blinded by a single leaf, using this filter to interpret more information they like, thus ignoring all the main evidence that is unfavorable to the conclusion. But such speculation cannot be equated with the real truth. And if a detective's misunderstanding falls on the suspect, it will become an extremely malicious framing."
Azure nodded as if she understood, but she was still worried and simply told Hugo that she suspected the apartment manager might be the culprit.
Hugo expected to be ridiculed by the detective, but he simply shrugged nonchalantly, as if he were used to it.
"You mean that administrator? Yes, he was indeed doing some shady business. He didn't seem to have much sympathy for the deceased Mr. Greta. On my suspect list, he's probably just as suspicious as another partner from the Sandstorm team."
"Is the other partner the one who first noticed Greta's disappearance and finally arrived at the crime scene with the administrator?" the girl couldn't help but ask.
"That's just how it is."
The detective in the black shirt nodded: "The closer the partners, the more likely they are to have the most intense arguments; the more interdependent the interests, the more likely they are to engage in the most deadly battles. Besides, if it's a gift from a partner you see every day, wouldn't the victim be more likely to take it back to their apartment?"
Azure's eyes widened in surprise: "Ah, I didn't think of that. It's certainly very possible."
"That's impossible!"
Hugo rubbed his forehead, regretting his assistant's easily swayed performance: "Miss Azure, if it's just speculation, there are countless motives for a crime. What a detective does is to constantly eliminate illogical options and revise his suspicions repeatedly based on newly discovered evidence, so as to finally identify the real culprit."
So what exactly should we do?
“Let’s start with the apartment manager’s suspicion. In my opinion, if the person who premeditatedly murdered Greta was the doorman, then there’s an undeniable contradiction in the case,” the detective said casually.
"What contradiction?" The girl was already intrigued and eagerly awaited what would happen next.
"The contradiction is that the old man could have carried out the crime more meticulously. For example, he could have taken a Poké Ball out of his pocket, aimed it at the flowerpot, and quietly put the Corsola back into the ball while the other person who first discovered it ran to the police. If he had done that, even if we and the police had been lucky enough to discover the trickery in the flowerpot, we would have had no way of finding out the specific traces of the other party's tampering."
The detective stroked his chin and then added, "Of course, the same contradiction exists if the murderer is another partner from the Sandstorm team. Therefore, the possibility that the first discoverer was the murderer can be almost ruled out, unless new evidence can explain this contradiction, in which case they cannot be the perpetrators."
"Could they have simply forgotten? Or missed the opportunity due to negligence?" Azure naturally questioned.
“Azure, you don’t have much experience with murder cases, but I’m telling you, a murderer who plans a murder so meticulously and hides the traces of the crime will never forget such an obvious cleanup.”
"Is the locked room always a product of compromise...?" Azure recalled Hugo's lecture on the locked room in front of the crime scene.
“Not bad.” The detective snapped his fingers and said sarcastically, “The compromise of this locked room is that it is too perfect, so much so that the real murderer couldn’t even take the murder weapon out of the room. It’s ironic.”
"But how did you manage to find the real culprit among the residents of the building?"
Hugo scratched his cheek, looking somewhat embarrassed. Just as they arrived at the courtyard gate of the Feathered Residence, he stepped forward, unlocked the door, and turned his back to Azure, saying—
"Actually, the moment I entered the crime scene, I realized why the murderer had the intention to kill the victim. At that time, I hadn't even noticed the strange thing about the flowerpot."
"Huh?" Azure almost dropped her jaw in shock. "At that time? But why didn't the officers who investigated the scene before and I notice anything?"
"You are just watching, but I am observing."
The front gate of the courtyard was opened, and Hugo, in a show of style, twirled the key ring on his hand a few times before bowing and making a "ladies first" gesture to invite people in.
"From the four hints I gave earlier, you've probably already figured out the meanings of the words 'gift' and 'neighbor,' right?"
“That’s right.” The girl followed the detective into the Feather Residence. “A ‘neighbor’ gave the deceased a flowerpot with a murder trap as a ‘gift.’ Is that what you meant?”
"Yes, that explains how the locked room came about. And I hinted at the killer's motive in the last two words."
"Rocks" and "Interests".
"Was the motive for the crime a conflict of interest caused by the 'rock'?" Azure followed the detective into the Feather Residence, sat down on the sofa in the hall, and casually made up a guess.
“Who can argue with that?” The detective chuckled mischievously. “This is the murderous intent woven from rocks and interests; it’s the information I gleaned from the entrance to the crime scene.”
“Speaking of which,” Bilan suddenly raised her smartphone, the light blue device reflecting a faint light under the fluorescent lamp, “I actually took the liberty of taking a picture of the crime scene. I don’t think that’s illegal, right?”
"It doesn't matter if the police don't stop it, and besides, there wasn't a real body at the scene at that time."
It seems the girl's candid photography skills have been honed to a high level... Hugo pursed his lips and waved his hand, looking completely indifferent.
He reached out and took the phone, zooming in on the panoramic photo repeatedly, and said to the phone's owner, "Look here, do you see the everyday items here?"
Azure leaned closer to the phone: "What? This is just a regular cleaning tool, isn't it?"
"And here, do you see the floor and furniture? How do they feel?"
The assistant had no idea what the detective was trying to get her attention, so she could only honestly answer, "The floor is plain stone tiles, and the furniture is unstylish, looking short, stout, and bulky."
"And this door, note its width and height." Hugo turned the camera to the bedroom door in the distance.
"Hmm, it's probably a bit bigger than a normal room door, probably to allow large Pokémon to come and go freely? Hmm! Wait a minute!"
Azure finally noticed something amiss, and then, as if triggering a chain reaction, she immediately understood the common meaning of the objects Hugo had pointed out—
"Hugo, I understand! Mr. Greta's sandstorm team consists of large Pokémon. If we want them to roam freely in the apartment, we need to enlarge the doors, prepare sturdy stone floor tiles, and replace the furniture with the most durable models. As for the cleaning tools—"
Hugo nodded in agreement with Azure's reasoning, and then continued, "The cleaning tools are for easily sweeping away the dust caused by Pokémon's 'Sandstorm' ability. Although the special dust generated by the ability will dissipate naturally, as Rock and Ground-type Pokémon, they naturally carry a lot of dust on them. Besides, Greta has raised six of them. If we hadn't cleaned them properly, this apartment would probably be covered in dust by now."
“But the room we saw was very tidy…” Azure murmured.
"This shows that the homeowner is very diligent in doing housework, as evidenced by the somewhat bald broom in the photo. But his most frequently used tool should be this electric vacuum cleaner. Presumably based on his habits when buying furniture, he did not use those small and delicate silent vacuum cleaners, but instead used this model that looks very powerful, presumably to clean up the dust in the house in a timely manner."
"Wait, this still doesn't make sense." The girl noticed something odd in the detective's reasoning. "If he was so bothered by the dust, why were all the doors and windows locked when we arrived at the secret room?"
"Of course, it's to prevent the smoke and dust from drifting outside. This trainer has raised Sandstorm Team Pokémon for so many years, and naturally he has experienced all sorts of complaints from the neighbors. There are even people downstairs who want to hang clothes to dry on their balconies. Greta, who lives on a high floor, naturally has to lock the doors and windows to avoid causing trouble for the residents below."
"But he still caused trouble in the end, didn't he?" Azure had already vaguely seen the truth of the matter. She sighed, as if she was accepting an unacceptable reality.
Why is this firm always filled with such regrettable truths?
"Tyranitar weighs 200 kilograms, and Gigantamax weighs a full 260 kilograms. The other Sandstorm Team Pokémon don't weigh much less than these two figures. With such Pokémon active indoors, the downstairs neighbors naturally have to endure constant banging noise. Moreover, Greta uses a high-powered vacuum cleaner every day, and with the echoes in the enclosed room, the noise is even more unbearable."
Hugo shook his head helplessly, as if apologizing for the deceased Mr. Greta: "If I were the resident downstairs, I might also be driven to murder by the constant noise."