area51novel Chapter 12 The Blind Spot in the Night Sky
Chapter 12 The Blind Spot in the Night Sky
"I see! There's definitely something wrong with the organizers of this exchange program!"
Officer Jenny snapped out of her reverie about the female thug's motives for murder and keenly realized the problem.
"Based on the current information, the deceased was not someone who would abuse Pokémon! Although the Leopard had injuries from battles at the time of the incident, there were absolutely no signs of serious abuse. Moreover, the deceased's Fried Pig had even stood up for its former owner in a battle. If the college student were truly a sadistic person, this kind of thing would not have happened."
“There are many explanations for the behavior of ‘Chao Chao Zhu’,” the detective said critically. “Recent behavioral psychology seems to have proposed a theory that some kidnapping victims develop special feelings for their kidnappers. These feelings can cause the victims to develop affection, dependence, or even assist the kidnappers.”
"Do you think there's such a phenomenon in the case?" Officer Jenny was speechless and asked cautiously.
“In fact, no. I also tend to think that the victim was completely innocent.” Hugo, leaning against the stair railing, spread his hands, which drew Officer Jenny’s gritted teeth.
“I agree with your analysis of the deceased,” Hugo said to the policewoman, “but I haven’t figured out who harmed him or what their motive was. The only thing I’m certain of is that there must be an even more shocking crime hidden behind this.”
"Is it intuition? You detectives actually believe in this kind of thing?"
"It's a vague, subconscious judgment gained from years of criminological research... well, this term is even less accurate than intuition."
"Alright! Now listen to my thoughts!"
Officer Jenny then took over the detective's deduction: "I have a hypothesis—the person who really wanted to murder the victim was actually the organizer of the exchange event. He deliberately gave misleading information to the thug the day after the exchange to incite her murderous intent, using her as a tool to kill the victim. What do you think of this reasoning?"
The policewoman eagerly turned her gaze to the detective, only to find Hugo lost in thought, shaking his head and muttering nonsensical phrases like "organizers...exchange meeting...photos...conflict..." in the dimly lit hallway.
"Damn it, I can't connect the dots!" The detective inexplicably became angry.
However, Officer Jenny, who was being ignored, was even angrier than him. She yelled, "Hey, listen to me!" and kicked the detective in the knee.
Hugo was suddenly ambushed and, without realizing it, jumped up in fright.
Unfortunately, at that moment, he was leaning against the handrail of the stairwell. After his feet left the ground, his center of gravity shifted backward, and under the influence of gravity, his figure fell backward, headfirst, towards the next flight of stairs.
Officer Jenny, the instigator, was terrified and quickly grabbed the detective's legs as he struggled to maintain his balance in mid-air.
Officer Jenny and the horizontal stair railing became the two fulcrums supporting Hugo's body, lifting him up before he completely lost his balance, thus saving the detective from the misfortune of falling headfirst.
"Hehe, haha, hahahaha."
Hugo was held by the policewoman's legs, his whole body suspended on the horizontal handrail like a balance beam, yet he was emitting a chilling, neurotic laugh.
“Hugo, great detective, it was wrong of me to kick you suddenly. If you've been through something traumatic, let's talk it out. Don't do anything rash... Now, don't move around. I'll slowly pull you back... Good boy, good boy, you're perfectly safe. Don't panic..."
Officer Jenny never imagined that one day she would be doing her old job in the police station's security department—comforting mental patients and dissuading suicide.
“Officer Jenny, your reasoning doesn’t make sense. If the organizers really intended to kill the victim, then the success rate of this scheme to use someone else to do the dirty work would be too low. The organizers couldn’t completely control the actions of the people attending the exchange, and if they had intervened more directly, the thug who had already confessed would definitely have implicated the culprit—after all, that would have significantly reduced her charges. The fact that the thug didn’t confess means that the murder was entirely her doing.”
The detective's voice seemed to come from a distant place, whether it was hell or heaven, or something even worse—like the sky above the courtyard outside the stair railing.
"Yes, yes, yes! You're absolutely right!"
Seeing that the detective was about to slip again, Officer Jenny grabbed his leg and pulled him toward her, but the detective didn't cooperate at all and continued to chatter on, maintaining his balance beam posture.
"So what was the organizer's purpose in sowing discord? What benefit would it bring him to have thugs kill college students? At this point, we can look at the issue from a different perspective."
The detective looked up at the layered staircases and the square ceiling at the end of the courtyard, using his physical state to make people see things from a different perspective, which was almost ridiculously reasonable.
"His goal wasn't to kill the victim, nor was it to have the murderer kill; the organizer's real goal was chaos!"
"Confusion?" Officer Jenny, clinging to Hugo's leg, finally noticed Hugo's reasoning.
"Create conflict, escalate tensions, and breed chaos—that's the purpose of the exchange organizers, huh—"
Hugo returned to Officer Jenny in a sit-up position, his sudden close proximity almost making the policewoman scream.
"Do you remember what happened at the police station today?"
“It’s hard to forget even if you want to.” Officer Jenny released Hugo’s leg, let out a long sigh, and answered with a bitter face.
"Disputes are rampant in the city, the police department is understaffed, everyone is running around, and in the end everyone is exhausted and injured. There are also piles of reports to write. I guarantee you won't find a single energetic Feiyun City police officer in the entire month."
"Have you ever considered that all these disputes might involve a specific activity?" the detective asked persuasively.
"An exchange meeting?" The policewoman's eyes lit up.
"Yes, the difference between the exchange and other events is that it allows him to legitimately collect information on the trainers who participate, and then legitimately pass that information on to other trainers. It's a perfect way to create conflict."
Hugo spoke eloquently, becoming increasingly engrossed in his speech.
"The combination of anonymous emails and forged photos may just be one of the many bizarre methods of sowing discord. Having obtained all the personal information of the attendees, they have countless ways to cause conflict between any two trainers who have traded Pokémon with them."
Officer Jenny's eyes widened: "You mean all the conflict cases the police mediated today were actually the work of this organizer?"
"The vast majority, right? I listened to some of today's cases in the office. Although most of the conflicts involved complete strangers, the pattern of provocation that sparked conflict due to information from unknown sources was almost identical to what the female thug encountered."
Sitting on the railing, swaying back and forth, the detective was engrossed in counting on his fingers.
"Last night, a trainer with six gym badges came to the door of a stranger's house to provoke him. He claimed that he had been receiving the same vicious challenge letter every day for a week, and the address listed was this very house, the residence of a retired trainer. After the police spent a full team of officers to stop the fight, they discovered that the two people did not know each other at all. The challenging trainer had previously traded Pokémon at a Pokémon exchange event, and the retired trainer had also visited the exchange event and purchased high-level healing items used by expert battlers."
And then there was this afternoon, a chaotic ten-on-ten group battle broke out on a street. After a hard-fought battle by the police, who finally managed to calm the crowd down, it turned out that the two trainer groups each claimed that one of their key members had been kidnapped by the other, believing that the other wanted to use this as leverage to take over the other's group—but that was completely untrue. The two missing people were a couple on a date, and when the battle broke out, they were sitting in a movie theater with their phones off. And their movie tickets were a free gift they received at an exchange event…”
Officer Jenny couldn't hold back any longer: "Why would the organizer do something so despicable? Could he be a pleasure offender?"
"His ultimate goal is you."
Officer Jenny pointed to the tip of her nose: "Us?"
Hugo pointed to the ceiling: "Police station."
Outside the window was the neon-lit night view that Feiyun City was so proud of, but the lights could not illuminate the night sky outside the police station. The sky was still as dark as the ceiling at the end of the stairwell.
The detective spread his arms wide and spoke as if reciting a poem:
"When the city lights are on, the stars of the night will hide, and that's when the deepest secrets will surface. When the police in Feiyun City are all busy running around, the real crimes will naturally have an opportunity to happen."
He jumped off the handrail, stood in front of Officer Jenny, and asked the policewoman:
"Speaking of which, has there been any large-scale cash flow in Feiyun City recently?" the detective asked.
Officer Jenny thought hard for a moment, then thought again, and finally replied, "I don't know, but I think it's necessary for the police chief to know about this."
.
While the detective and the policewoman were performing acrobatics in the stairwell, a large truck slowly drove up to the vicinity of the entrance to the Feiyun City Financial Bank in the darkness of night.
"Boss, your plan is perfect!" A burly man with dark skin looked at the bespectacled middle-aged man driving with admiration.
"We just casually organized an exchange meeting and managed to get all the trainers' personal information. We also completely outmaneuvered the cops in Feiyun City. Now those cops and their Pokémon are exhausted and injured, and even most of the guards who were supposed to be watching the bank here have been transferred away. Now, in the middle of the night, if we go and rob the vault, it's practically a sure thing."
The big guy spoke with an air of intellectual deficiency, seemingly full of confidence about the upcoming operation.
The driver was more cautious, saying, "We still need to be careful. Our target this time is the half ton of gold that was just put into the financial bank's vault. It will take a long time for the machine to dig through the vault wall, and we still have a high chance of facing a manhunt by the Feiyun City police."
"What's there to be afraid of?" The burly man pounded his chest with his thick hands, making a loud thud.
"We've prepared a full twelve super-powerful Pokémon. Heh heh, even if that Gym Leader from Flying Cloud City comes, his little bugs won't be able to beat us! Those cops must be exhausted by now, how many of them can actually fight? At worst, we can still fight our way out."
The driver adjusted his glasses but didn't respond; he had a bad feeling about this.
Beyond the blacked-out car windows, the headquarters of Feiyun City Financial Bank was right in front of them; this was the heart of Feiyun City.
Less than 200 meters away, there is a two-story building called "Yuxi Residence" that stands out abruptly.
For some reason, even though Hugo, the only current resident of the house, was not home, light was shining from the windows on the first floor.