5.Murdered housekeeper

Today is Sunday, the last day of the May Day vacation, the campus is sparse, there are some out-of-town students with luggage to return to school early.

The atmosphere in the girls' dormitory building of the junior high school was tense and depressing, a few girls who didn't go home on vacation were gathered downstairs, all of them with frightened faces and shivering, everyone knew that someone on the 2nd floor had died.

Wu Fan followed Fu Xueqing up the stairs to the 2nd floor, bypassed the security tape, and walked to the door number 243 in front of the dormitory. Fu Xueqing took out a pair of shoe covers and gloves from the box placed at the door and handed them to Wu Fan, took a pair for herself and put them on, then walked into the dormitory.

This place was visited by Wu Fan a week ago, and at that time he also had a fight with Ouyang Shanshan, who would have thought that a week later this place would turn into a murder scene.

The scene investigation is not over, two technicians are squatting on the ground while taking pictures and collecting physical evidence.

There were two bunk wooden beds on the left and right against the wall, but the beds were empty.

"The body has been transported away, right?" Wu Fan asked Fu Xueqing in a low voice, hoping to get an affirmative answer.

"Do you want to see the body, it's inside." Fu Xueqing pointed to the bathroom.

Wu Fan had two big heads and wanted to refuse, but he couldn't grind his lips as a big old man, so he had to walk towards the bathroom, and when he looked up, he suddenly saw a white behemoth blocking the doorway.

As a legal column reporter, Wu Fan also has a little knowledge of criminal investigation and forensic knowledge, off the top of his head shouted, "All giants view?" He hastily dodged out of the way.

At this time, the behemoth actually turned a circle in place, now a trapezoidal face, two small eyeballs fierce light, a glimpse of Wu Fan, swinging a big fat hand greeted: "Come on, that skinny with the 'wooden aunt milk' like kid you come over, come on, see I do not break you. "

Fu Xueqing covered her mouth and pretended to cough, forcing herself not to laugh out loud.

She introduced to Wu Fan: "This is the medical examiner Tian, the core of our police force. Just ask him if you don't know anything about corpses."

Tian Peng just was rubbed by Fu Xueqing to feel comfortable in his heart, and his anger also subsided most of the time, but he still looked at Wu Fan and deliberately said to Fu Xueqing, "Team Fu, this is the new rookie ah, I see that he is scared that his legs are soft, and his eyes are not good, it's better to hurry and let him go out."

Wu Fan knew that this fat man was deliberately provoking himself, but he still couldn't help but say, "What's so scary about this, I can't wait to take a good look at it."

He pretended to be full of concern and came over, wanting to stand in front of the bathroom door to take a look at it, but did not expect Tian Peng just make bad, big butt fling, arching Wu Fan into the bathroom, almost with the corpse to have a close contact.

Now Wu Fan can see clearly enough.

Wu Fan's instinctive reaction is to run out to vomit, but just a step was a big elastic meatball bounced back.

Tian Peng Gang blocked the doorway and asked wistfully: "How is it, can you hold on? Don't spit on the ground and pollute the scene."

Wu Fan forcefully held back the breakfast that surged to his mouth and swallowed back, full of grimace towards Tian Peng Gang sneered, "Nothing great, I'm just about to do a good research study."

"That's good, you study it."

As things stood, Wu Fan could only turn back to re-survey the corpse in front of him.

This bathroom was made up of two parts, the bathroom and the toilet, inside was a squatting toilet and a shower head, and outside was a sink. This female cleaning lady was currently sitting on the stool opposite the sink in a standard sitting posture. Because the stool was leaning against the wall, that was why the body was always in a leaning position.

In the middle of the body's neck there was a horizontal wound, just like Wang Wei. This was the murderer's unique technique.

Although the dead man's face was already blurred.

He didn't know if this was a force majeure that existed in the underworld, or if he didn't try hard enough, if he could have done more at that time, would the ending have changed?

Looking at the corpse, he was filled with guilt and remorse.

"When was she found?" Wu Fan asked in a trembling voice.

"This morning." Fu Xueqing said, "A returning girl smelled a foul odor emanating from this dormitory ..."

"In other words, the female cleaning lady was murdered in the last few days of vacation, that's why it was never discovered."

"It's like this. As far as we know, the female housekeeper would have cleaned the dormitory on her last day. But I don't think the victim could have died earlier than last Thursday night, the day before the vacation, or she would have been found long ago. But the victim was so badly decomposed again that I'm afraid the time of death couldn't have been too short."

"This is better for me to explain." The forensic pathologist Tian Penggang interjected, "I did a preliminary examination of the corpse, the side of the body has completely relieved, with the combined judgment of the liver and the temperature reduction of the rectum, the woman's time of death is not too far off from what Team Fu had speculated, about three days ago, that is, on the night of last Thursday. But I found a problem, the surface of the body is decaying far beyond the normal rate."

"What does that mean?" Fu Xueqing asked.

"The time between this woman's death and our discovery was about the same as Wang Wei's, you guys have seen Wang Wei's body, a normal rate of decay would be like Wang Wei's. With the current indoor temperature in Jiangzhou City, it would take at least seven days to reach this depth of decay, this woman is exactly twice as fast."

Fu Xueqing looked at the rotting corpse sitting in the bathroom and asked in surprise, "Why is that, what do you think?"

"Could it be caused by the high temperature of the bathroom?" Wu Fan interjected, "I see that the shower head is still dripping down, and it's on hot water, maybe the victim was killed when she was getting ready to take a shower, and if the murderer closes the door when he leaves, it probably won't be long before it's hot and humid inside ..."

"Okay, you are the forensic pathologist or I am the forensic pathologist, listen to you or listen to me?" Tian Penggang yelled in dissatisfaction.

Wu Fan hurriedly shut his mouth, thinking that this fat man is still not very good temper, is not all day dealing with corpses are like this?

Tian Penggang said to Xueqing, "What this kid just said is considered a factor, but it's not an important factor."

"What other reasons?"

Tian Penggang peeled Wu Fan to the side and pointed at the body, "I just carefully examined the surface of the body and found some unexpected signs, compared to Wang Wei, the murderer seems to be much more ruthless to this woman. At first glance, it looks like this woman only has this one wound on her neck, but in fact, she has countless tiny wounds all over her from head to toe, and I suspect that they were cut with something like a razor blade. Not only that, the murderer also applied a catalyst to the victim's body to accelerate the rate of decay."

"What catalyst?"

"To put it bluntly, it's this." Tian Penggang picked up an evidence bag from the forensic investigation kit, which contained an empty yogurt carton. "I found several of these yogurt cartons in my dorm room, and this is the catalyst the killer used. Yogurt contains a large amount of probiotics, microorganisms normally found in the intestines of humans and animals that work to break down food and convert it into feces. Meat is naturally a type of food, so applying yogurt to a corpse, especially to wounds, works on the same principle, speeding up decomposition considerably. This guy's methods are like he's doing some crazy experiment."

Fu Xueqing gritted her teeth and said, "The second case has seen a clear escalation of the crime, this guy has completely lost his humanity, if he isn't stopped soon, he won't stop."

Tian Peng just took out a transparent water cup sealed in an evidence bag from the investigation box, the cup was empty and blood stains remained inside.

Wu Fan's face was pale.

"With this guts to be a police officer, I think you are also suitable to be an entertainment reporter, writing gossip news." Tian Peng Gang deliberately took the opportunity to tease Wu Fan with words, in fact, he didn't know that Wu Fan was really a reporter, and he didn't know what Wu Fan was really afraid of.

What Wu Fan was worried about was the bottle of liquid of unknown origin that he had poured out.

Tian Penggang's laughter sounded more like a sneer full of hints to Wu Fan, making him even more suspicious.

In order not to let Fu Xueqing notice the difference, he hurriedly put aside those distracting thoughts and focused his attention on the crime scene in front of him, so that his mood was slightly more stable.

After some observation, he really did find something.

He noticed that right across from the body, above the sink, was a large rectangular mirror. The mirror happened to reflect most of the body of the cleaning lady in its entirety.

He walked over to the mirror and stared at it in silence for a long time, as if he had thought of something, but his thoughts were jumbled and unclear.

"Hey, rookie, aren't you going to study corpses, why are you studying yourself? You're still not as handsome as me, and you still want to be able to shine flowers." Tian Peng Gang got impatient waiting and started taunting him.

"Is the cup on the sink?" Wu Fan asked.

"Yeah, how do you know?"

"I guessed, I heard that the last murder scene was the glass sitting next to the vanity mirror."

"Yeah, that's true. But even if I guessed it, it wouldn't do much good. It's just a casual habit of the murderer."

"So what's up here again?" Wu Fan asked, pointing at some speckled translucent stains in the lower right corner of the mirror. He had seen the same stains on the vanity mirror directly opposite Wang Wei's body in the hair salon before, "I wanted to ask Fu Xueqing about it at the time, but I was interrupted by an unexpected circumstance.

"Hehehe, you rookie are still observant enough." Tian Penggang's fat face squeezed out an odd and ambiguous smile, "You might as well guess what this is again?"

"I can't guess. Could it be that you don't know either."

"How could I not know?" Tian Penggang immediately rounded a pair of small eyes and said seriously, "I have never missed any details in the scenes I have surveyed. Telling you to listen up, these things on the mirror are men's semen."

"Semen?" Wu Fan looked surprised.

Tian Penggang enjoyed seeing the rookie's puzzled expression, "You must be wondering how there could be men's semen in the girls' dormitory. No need to waste that brain cell, I can tell you that this is what the murderer left behind. This guy is a pervert on the ground."

"So this woman she ..."

"She wasn't sexually assaulted, just like Wang Wei." Tian Penggang could see Wu Fan's meaning, "This guy seems to be completely uninterested in the others."

Wu Fan thoughtfully, "Actually, I also found this on the mirror at the last crime scene, it turned out to be semen ..."

Tian Peng just came over, "You kid a stare I know you plan what, you certainly want to mirror from the height of the semen spot to speculate on the height of the murderer is not it? Not to lie, I also secretly calculated, haha ...".

Wu Fan could only laugh coyly.

Fu Xueqing's side was puzzled, not knowing what the two old men were muttering there. Tian Penggang is grinning a big mouth, the door suddenly came in a serious voice, "How to still have a laugh at the murder scene?"

Tian Peng Gang's big mouth hurriedly closed tightly, "grunt" sound to the second half of the laugh swallowed the stomach, put on a serious look, seems to enter the house this person is very weighty.

Wu Fan heart is wondering, just heard standing outside the bathroom Fu Xueqing said: "Captain Lu is here."

That person casually "hmm" a sound, has already stepped to the bathroom door, he first saw the fat Tian forensic doctor, did not say anything, followed by saw standing inside the Wu Fan, could not help but freeze.

He thought at first that Wu Fan was from the criminal police team, but upon closer inspection he hadn't seen this person at all, and he asked Fu Xueqing, "Who is this person?"

"He is a reporter from Jiangzhou Evening News." When it came down to it, Fu Xueqing had to tell the truth.

"What, a reporter? You actually brought a reporter here?" Lu Guangtong's eye brows stood up, so angry that the flesh on his face trembled, "Ah, I see, recently, Jiangzhou Evening News has been reporting back-to-back stories, spreading all the news that we have tightly blocked, and also analyzing it indiscriminately, engaging in some kind of interaction with the readers, making a mess of it. I was wondering where the news leaked from, after all it was you who brought the reporter to the scene, this is not to make fun of our police force? Even if Chief Fu agreed to it, you can't do that, right?"

The director is Fu Xueqing's father, Lu Guangtong always thinks that the director is always behind Fu Xueqing. Of course, Fu Xueqing was furious, but she didn't want to argue with Lu Guangtong, suppressing her anger, she said, "It's not that I intentionally went to find Reporter Wu to report on the case, there's some misunderstanding here. I have just negotiated with him about the exposure of the case, and will let him take remedial measures. But now the most important thing is to find out the clues as soon as possible, to catch the district hand, Wu reporter in this regard has his unique ideas, otherwise his news reports will not cause such a big impact, after all, his original intention is also want to help me solve the case. I simply brought him here because I also want to listen to his insights, which may provide some new ideas for our case solving."

"It's a joke. He's just a news reporter, can't we professional criminal police catch up with him? If we rely on him to help us solve the case, it will become a joke!" Lu Guangtong was unforgiving, he was not used to Fu Xueqing's trespassing, he even hated Wu Fan together, those eyes that could kill stared fiercely at Wu Fan's face, looking at Wu Fan's heart straight hair.

"Or I'd better not disturb you all." Wu Fan sheepishly looked at Fu Xueqing and then Lu Guangtong, the two of them can go ahead and pinch each other if they want to, don't get him involved.

He was trying to sneak out, but he didn't realize that Fu Xueqing intentionally or unintentionally sidestepped forward a bit, just blocking his way, only to see Fu Xueqing's face full of color, coldly lecturing him: "Reporter Wu, you know how big a trouble you've got yourself into, right, do you think that you're done after you've written a bunch of nonsense about this in the newspaper? We will definitely hold you accountable when the time comes, and make you suffer!"

Wu Fan almost vomited blood, what's the situation here?

Why did this woman flip her face faster than a book? Between them is not already discussed, he assisted her to handle the case, she allowed himself to do related reports in the legal column? After half a day to see the situation is not good, she immediately threw himself out for her to carry the thunder, do people can not be so unethical wow.

Wu Fan looked angrily at Fu Xueqing, not willing to eat so dumb loss, is trying to defend himself two sentences, suddenly found Fu Xueqing secretly gave him a look.

Wu Fan heart alert, this woman again want to play what tricks, he can not fall into her way.

Only to hear Fu Xueqing continue to say: "But now this case is really a headache, the first task is still to find a way to solve the case, this is the first thing. Even if you can provide a clue, you can get a reward from the bureau."

Wu Fan understood Fu Xueqing's meaning at once. She was reminding himself that if he could help solve the case, he would be able to make up for his mistake, and that cross-faced criminal police chief wouldn't dare to do anything to him. But how much help he could actually provide, Wu Fan's heart was not at all clear.

Lu Guangtong then slightly sneered, looking at Wu Fan with disdain, "Even we old policemen can't solve the case, what can he do as an amateur? Not to mention that we will be able to catch the murderer soon in this case, do we still need the help of an outsider?"

"What clues have you found?" Fu Xueqing asked busily.

Wu Fan also couldn't help but prick up his ears and listen curiously.

Lu Guangtong said rather confidently, "I just went to the school's surveillance room and specifically accessed the surveillance of the girls' dormitory in the last few days, and I've already found the murderer's trail. Just three days ago, that is, last Thursday night at 10:00 p.m. more than a person pry open the girls dormitory 1 floor of the utility room window, sneaked into the building. When he left, he didn't go back the way he came, but chose the back door, which happened to avoid the surveillance, presumably because he found out about the surveillance cameras and intentionally avoided them. It was vacation time and there were few people in the dormitories and on campus, so no one spotted the suspect. But it was still captured by the surveillance."

"You mean you captured that person's face?"

Lu Guangtong looked puzzled for a moment and immediately added, "It wasn't the front that was captured, but his figure was captured."

Hearing him say this, Fu Xueqing slightly disappointed, did not capture the face, that the difficulty of detection will not know how many times to increase, may be this is a waste of clues.

Lu Guangtong was confident and said, "I'm only talking about one of the surveillance cameras, there are two more cameras we are checking. And I've already sent people to check out the murderer's clothes and appearance along the way. I believe the murderer will soon reveal himself."

Fu Xueqing didn't say anything and glanced at Wu Fan.

Wu Fan understood that this was a good time for him to speak.

He plucked up the courage to interject, "I do have some personal opinions, I hope I can provide you with some reference." Lu Guangtong turned his head to look at him with a smirking expression on his face, "Did I hear you right, comrade reporter? Do you still want to get yourself into trouble?"

As things stood, Wu Fan had no way back, so he simply said, "Anyway, I'm here in person, are you still afraid to listen to what I have to say? If what I say doesn't make sense, you'll take it as a joke, and if it does make sense, you'll do it for reference, and anyway ... I think that there was a problem with your previous thought process of detection, and that's why you arrested the wrong suspect."

Lu Guangtong's face immediately became ugly.

Didn't Wu Fan mean Jin Zhancheng when he said that he had arrested the wrong suspect? That was the one who was arrested according to his thinking. In order to show that he was able to press Fu Xueqing, and to build up his prestige in the police force, he personally commanded the arrest of Jin Zhancheng, and this side even wrote the case report, but at this time, there was another cut-throat case, which hit his face hard enough. So Wu Fan's words in his ears is simply naked sarcasm.

But he is the most angry is Fu Xueqing, it is not this little girl a big mouth, should say should not say all tell outsiders, right?

With residual anger, Lu Guangtong turned his head to Wu Fan and said, "Fine, let's just listen to what you, an outsider, actually have in mind."

He glared fiercely at Fu Xueqing, who had to pretend not to see it.

Wu Fan organized his thoughts and said, "From the methods of killing and the scene of the two cases, I think the murderer is a hunting serial killer, and you can also call him a hedonistic murderer. He likes to randomly choose his targets and get psychological satisfaction by committing crimes, and he will even leave coded messages at the scene of the crime to tip us off about his next crime, increasing the thrill of the crime through this elevated risk ..."

Lu Guangtong waved his hand and interrupted him, "It sounds like you, the legal reporter, has read some books, but these books are nothing but bluffs to listen to, and they don't really help in solving the case ah."

Fu Xueqing interjected at this time and said to Wu Fan, "Aren't you good at analyzing murderers? There will be some criminal profiling, and now you've seen the crime scene. What do you think about the murderer as a person, for example, the behavior of laying out a corpse, what do you think about it, might as well say something."

Wu Fan did not know what is called criminal profiling, listening to Fu Xueqing's meaning, it is to analyze the characteristics of the murderer, in this regard he did have some ideas.

He glanced at the corpse and his gaze shifted back to the mirror opposite her, "The murderer is trying to mold himself into a Dracula."

"He was just trying to make himself look like a Dracula."

"What do you mean by that?" Fu Xueqing asked, "Are you saying that he was merely trying to fake himself into a Dracula?"

"Yes, faking." Wu Fan was certain about this conclusion.

"Why did the murderer do this?"

Wu Fan pondered for a suitable explanation, and a word suddenly popped into his head, and he said offhandedly, "Because he has Narcosis."

"What kind of disease is that?"

"To put it bluntly, it's narcissism."

"Narcissism?" Not only Fu Xueqing, Lu Guangtong and Forensic Physician Tian were all a bit surprised, they had never heard of such a disease as "Narcissism".

"It's a psychological disease, a sexual deviation that takes itself as a sexual object. The reason why it is called 'Narcissism' is from the ancient Greek myths and legends. Legend has it that Nakkasos was a beautiful boy who was unrivaled in the world, and he became obsessed with his own beauty, lying beside the river and reveling in his own reflection in the water, and later became so obsessed that he went mad and threw himself into the water and killed himself. And our murderer is actually such a narcissist."

"Is this a guess or do you have something to go on?" Lu Guangtong shrugged up his thick eyebrows in disbelief.

"Of course there's a basis for it, at the crime scene, it was revealed everywhere that he had strong narcissistic tendencies. He had to have a mirror when he committed the crime, and face the mirror to kill. Because he needed to admire himself at all times during the commission of the crime. He is not interested in the victims themselves, whether they are sexy young women or beautiful young girls, in his opinion they are far inferior to himself. That's why the victims in both cases didn't show the slightest sign of experiencing sexual assault. He was getting his kicks by watching himself kill to give himself a physical high to reach orgasm. This kind of narcissism is often accompanied by a cleanliness fetish, and he would keep the crime scene immaculate, even the modus operandi and body placement to his liking in absolute perfection. And because of that, I'd say he loathes anyone else." Wu Fan spoke his thoughts in one breath without even a single pause, and even he was a bit intrigued that he was quite knowledgeable.

"Then why did he have to disguise himself as Dracula?" Fu Xueqing asked.

"Because it's really hard for an image like narcissism to be accepted by society, and it's easy to be seen as a pervert by outsiders. I guess this criminal must have attracted a lot of criticism and ridicule from his various behaviors since he was a child, and it's highly likely that he grew up with an extremely low self-esteem. On the other hand, he was unable to accept anyone other than himself, and over time, he learned to fight the outside world with drastic means as a way to gain self-confidence. He also needed a strong shell to protect his sensitive heart. Therefore, the mysterious, elegant and cruel image of Dracula in the legend coincided with his psychological needs. So he builds himself up as Dracula, and deliberately arranges the murder scene to suggest his powerful image, hiding his narcissistic fetishism under the shell of Dracula. His self-confidence comes from the fear he creates for the outside world."

Wu Fan's analysis stunned the people around him, especially Criminal Police Captain Lu Guangtong, who originally despised Wu Fan as an amateur, but Wu Fan's silky analysis almost made it impossible for him to find any cracks.

After thinking about it, he said to Wu Fan: "You are still exaggerating, and it won't help us to catch the murderer. Even if the murderer is really a narcissist, where do you want us to find him?"

Wu Fan was silent for a while, "I have thought about this. Given the murderer's very iconic crime characteristics, he must not be a local, otherwise he would have been discovered long ago. And once this kind of criminal starts committing crimes, his cooling off period will be affected by his desires and usually won't be too long, I boldly speculate that he came to Jiangzhou for no more than three months at most. Therefore, he is still not too familiar with the environment of downtown Jiangzhou, and his crime location must start from the place he is familiar with first, and gradually expand outwards, which is also in line with the characteristics of serial killers. But it will not be in the place too close to his residence to commit crimes, that is his psychological safety zone. Combining these points, I think the hair salon where the first throat-slitting case took place is at least about one kilometer away from the murderer's residence, not more than two kilometers. The case in front of us is the second murder case, as confidence increases, the murderer will further increase the distance of the crime, I estimate that the furthest distance from the murderer's residence is no more than three kilometers. What we have to look for is the overlapping area with the radius of the two cases as the area, the murderer must have rented a house to live in, then look for those upscale residential buildings and hotels, I guess he should prefer to live in the high-rise overlooking the city, which can enhance his confidence and sense of superiority ..."

Fu Xueqing's eyes glistened as she listened, a connoisseur knows if there is one or not. She knew that Wu Fan had two tricks up his sleeve, but she didn't realize that he was actually a deeply hidden expert. Even in the entire Jiangzhou public security system could not find a person who could analyze the case so thoroughly like Wu Fan.

Surprised, she couldn't help but wonder if such strength could really be realized simply by reading a few more books, as Wu Fan himself said?

She asked Lu Guangtong, "What do you think, Team Lu?"

Lu Guangtong froze, "This ah, it still lacks some practical basis ... however, it can be used as a reference for mapping ..."

"If you don't have an opinion, I'm prepared to deploy manpower and conduct the mapping according to what Reporter Wu said ..."

Without waiting for Lu Guangtong to state his position, Fatty Tian suddenly came, "You guys wait first, I still have a question here, I don't know if any of you are interested in answering it."

While Wu Fan was doing his criminal psychology analysis, Tian Penggang was not idle and took the time to examine the corpse again, which really made him discover something he hadn't noticed before.

He put on latex gloves and removed some of the deceased's shorts, revealing a purple bow ribbon. Closer inspection can be found, the body waist wrapped around a circle of ribbon, tied right in the middle of a gift box on the common kind of bow, due to the body's abdomen filled with rotting gas began to expand, almost the ribbon are swallowed up, only to reveal that bow.

"You guys say this is the dead man's belt or the murderer tied it on?" Tian Penggang gave everyone a difficult question.

No one could answer.

Lu Guangtong said, "The last victim, Wang Wei, didn't have this kind of thing on her waist. If the murderer did it, it doesn't make much sense."

Fu Xueqing said, "But which cleaning lady would wrap a packing ribbon around her waist, it can't really be used as a belt, can it?"

Tian Peng just picked up the camera to take a picture of the ribbon first, and then carefully unraveled the bow on the ribbon, a little bit of the ribbon from the waist of the deceased out. When he stretched the ribbon to take a closer look, he suddenly "eek", "How is there a letter on it?"

Wu Fan and Fu Xueqing were startled at the same time, and couldn't help but think of the cryptic words and passwords that the murderer had left at the last crime scene.

"What letters are they?" Fu Xueqing asked busily.

"See for yourself." Tian Penggang said as he handed the ribbon to Fu Xueqing.

How could Fu Xueqing dare to take something that had just been taken off a rotting corpse. She frowned as she surveyed the ribbon on one of the sides where English letters, or possibly Hanyu Pinyin, were written all over it, one next to the other.

She immediately recognized that these capital letters were the same as those engraved on Wang Wei's string, but there were obviously more letters on the ribbon, almost all twenty-six letters were used, and there were also repeated letters, and there was no pattern between the letters. This could give her a headache, there were only five letters on Wang Wei's string, and she had taken it back to the police force and studied it with the officers for several days without coming up with anything, let alone such a coded belt. It looked like this narcissistic murderer was clearly trying to play a puzzle game with them.

She asked Lu Guangtong, "Team Lu, what do you have in mind?"

Lu Guangtong looked embarrassed and waved his hand, "What's there to study about this thing, instead of wasting that time, it's better to look for clues. I'm going to check the surveillance." Saying that, he turned around and left.

Fu Xueqing knew that he didn't want to lose face, and didn't expect him to be able to break the code, but just out of respect to ask for his opinion, she turned her face to ask Wu Fan again, "Do you see anything?"

Wu Fan sighed, "The five letters on the string are difficult enough, the murderer didn't give us any hints, just by disrupting the order of words and Hanyu Pinyin and arranging them haphazardly, it's enough for us to find for a while. The twenty to thirty letters in front of us are even more impossible to decipher, even if we use a computer, we may not be able to figure it out."

Fu Xueqing pondered for a while and said, "But since the murderer left these passwords, he wouldn't have no way of cracking them, right? If he wants to test us, even if it's a difficult problem, the premise has to be a solved question. If there is no way to answer, then what is the point of him designing this code?"

When Wu Fan thought about it, Fu Xueqing was not unreasonable. Since the murderer left this password, it should be decipherable, if he just simply wrote a bunch of letters haphazardly to mislead the police, it didn't show his superiority. It seemed they still hadn't gotten the right idea.

He looked at the string of irregular ciphers on the ribbon for a moment in thought and said, "I'm not good at cryptography, but I've heard that the more complex the cipher the more often a displacement cipher is needed, which can convert a simple sentence into a complex cipher that's hard to decipher."

"You kid knows quite a lot, so what is a substitution cipher?" Tian Penggang asked curiously.

"Let's say, if twenty-six English letters are replaced with Arabic numerals from one to twenty-six, then the word cat can be replaced with 3120, and this set of Arabic numerals is the replacement cipher. I'm just listing a simple example, the substitution cipher can be of various styles and types, if we know the substitution cipher, then it's easy to decipher, if we don't, it's very troublesome."

"According to you, the code on this ribbon would also require a substitution cipher to break out, is that what you mean?"

"I think it's very likely that this is the case, but I just don't know in what way the murderer designed the replacement code.

Fu Xueqing said, "If like you said, the murderer is playing mind games with us. Then he should have given the replacement code a long time ago, and it's likely to be right beside us, just that we haven't realized it yet."

Her words gave Wu Fan a great inspiration, don't look at her as only in her twenties, like a freshly graduated female college student, but after contacting her for a long time, she could find out that not only was this female police officer meticulous, but she could also reflect on what she said, and would often have unexpected insights. No wonder she became the vice-captain of the criminal police team at a young age. Compared to the imposing Captain Lu, Wu Fan felt that Fu Xueqing was even better.

Thus, the three of them, plus the two technicians in the room who were still collecting physical evidence, a total of five people, began to purposefully search for the replacement code left behind by the murderer.

No one had any idea where the murderer would have hidden it, it could be somewhere in this dormitory, or at the last crime scene.

Wu Fan watched as the police officers rummaged through all the books and papers they could find, fearing that they might have missed any place where the cipher might be written. He also wanted to help, but he couldn't intervene, after all, he wasn't a professional criminal police officer.

He glumly surveyed the contents of the room, and was a little apprehensive in his mind, unsure if his guesses were accurate or not.

"Hey, make way, get out of the way." Tian Penggang was pouting his big ass looking under the bed, retreating back and forth, topping Wu Fan's leg.

"Oh." Wu Fan hurriedly dodged aside and subconsciously held onto the railing of the bed.

He was violently stunned, a voice seemed to be nursing a whisper in the depths of his memory, and his gaze couldn't help but stare at the railing he was holding in his hand, slightly lost in thought.

Tian Penggang felt that he was in the way again and reminded him, "Hey, I say comrade reporter, can you hide a little further away?"

Wu Fan struggled to catch that voice in his head and hurriedly stepped over Tian Penggang and ran into the bathroom. "Ouch, do you know that you stepped on me?" Tian Peng Gang yelled, when he saw Wu Fan running out with his evidence bag, yanking out the ribbon that was in it, he was so furious that he almost didn't pounce on Wu Fan, "Didn't you hear me, look at what you've done, those dirty hands have destroyed the evidence!"

But Wu Fan was like he didn't hear him, his eyes were only on the password on the ribbon, smothering his head as he walked through Tian Penggang to the bed.

Tian Penggang grumbled and asked Fu Xueqing, "Team Fu, can I chip him?"

Fu Xueqing frowned slightly and shook her hand towards Tian Penggang, keeping her eyes on Wu Fan.

Wu Fan did a strange move next, he wrapped that ribbon around the round tube beam of the railing in a circle.

Everyone, including Fu Xueqing, looked at Wu Fan in disbelief, unable to figure out what he was doing.

"I know how the murderer designed the replacement code!" Wu Fan suddenly said excitedly.

Fu Xueqing came closer to take a look, and it suddenly became clear.

After the ribbon was wrapped around the beam, the letters were rearranged to form a meaningful English word.

"So the bed railing is the replacement code." Fu Xueqing sighed in awe, if not for Wu Fan's personal demonstration, they would not have been able to guess the murderer's trick in any case, "How did you guess it?" She couldn't help but ask curiously.

I also just thought of it in a flash of insight." In fact, Wu Fan himself couldn't quite say, it seemed like he had heard it from someone a long time ago, "But this method wasn't uniquely created by the murderer, it's an ancient encryption technique called the Spartan Stick."

"Is it hard to believe that this is still a foreign technology?" Tian Penggang temporarily forgot about his personal grudges and asked with curiosity. The relevant memories in Wu Fan's mind were also activated, "It is said that the Spartans in ancient Greece invented this kind of cipher stick. The diameter of this cipher stick had to be defined. The sender of the message would wrap the belt around the stick one after another and then write the message on it. After unwrapping the belt with the message written on it, a meaningless alphabetical belt would be obtained. The receiver only needs to prepare a stick of the same diameter and rewind the letter belt to reveal the hidden message."

After Wu Fan's explanation, the crowd was not without amazement, it was unthinkable that people thousands of years ago would have such whimsical ideas. They looked at the hidden message revealed on the ribbon, even though there were no spaces between the words, but the words were relatively simple, and those with a decent level of English could distinguish a few words relatively easily. It was actually a sentence.

Fu Xueqing tried to read it out, "Hi, Frank, my, brother."

"What does this mean?" She looked at Wu Fan in confusion.

Wu Fan was also puzzled, "Usually the murderer's messages at the crime scene are expressing emotions that match his crime, or simply excusing his behavior. This murderer's message on the other hand, can't see any emotion, as if it was ..." He suddenly had a flash of light in his head, and his words stopped halfway down the line.

"What do you want to say?" Fu Xueqing asked.

"Frank."

"What?"

"The murderer is simply sending us the message that it's Frank," Wu Fan said, "Remember the giant clam string that the last victim, Wang Wei, lost. The killer returned it with five letters engraved on the string-A, K, F, N, R. At the time, we thought it was a cipher that could never be cracked. But if you think back now, aren't these five letters a recombination of the word Frank, which is the riddle left by the murderer."

Fu Xueqing came to a realization, "Looking at the literal meaning of this sentence, this Frank is the murderer's brother, either someone who is a brother to him. The murderer was greeting this person, but I don't know why it had to be written in code and left at the crime scene through this way."

"Does the killer mean that if we can find Frank, we can catch him too." Tian Penggang interjected.

"But the problem is, there are too many people named Frank, and that one word alone doesn't have much real value." Fu Xueqing asked Wu Fan, "Do you have any more ideas?"

Wu Fan said, "The murderer has emphasized the importance of this name to us in two successive crimes. It means that this Frank has some kind of special significance to him personally. Maybe it's really his brother, or maybe it's just a metaphor for the murderer, and there are other deeper reasons involved. In short, the murderer didn't intend to tell us the truth so easily."

Tian Peng Gang skimmed the big mouth fork, "This grandson is also a pretense coward, causing us a good toss, if he really narcissistic to think that he is invincible, then simply write his name into the password for us to guess, that how exciting ah. He still doesn't dare to do it. What's the point of pretending to be a wolf, and pretending to be Dracula? Why doesn't he pretend to be Ultraman?"

Fu Xueqing didn't have the heart to listen to his nonsense, although there is progress in the case, it is still difficult, she said, "It seems that we should still line up as early as possible, and try to stop the murderer before he commits his next crime."

While the few people were chatting, a criminal police officer appeared outside the door and said to Xueqing, "Captain Fu, Team Lu's side has already organized the suspect's surveillance video. He asked if you want to go over and take a look."

"We'll go over right away."

At the moment, one more clue would give her more certainty, and Fu Xueqing also wanted to see what this "Dracula Killer" actually looked like.