Chapter 98 - 97: Teaching the Pre-Murder Reasoning Formula

At the crime scene, a man in high heels subdued a woman, gouged a bloody hole in her thigh, and finally, raped her...

Was that even possible?

The depths of human depravity could exceed an ordinary person’s imagination!

"A pervert?!"

"A cross-dresser?"

Qian Hua frowned.

Linlan City was a major metropolitan area with a high volume of traffic. As the sole Captain, he had naturally seen all sorts of characters.

Cross-dressing. The name said it all—a psychological fetish for wearing clothes of the opposite sex.

It usually referred to men who wore skirts, stockings, and women’s lingerie.

Of course, women could also be cross-dressers, but most people would just call that an androgynous fashion style. Thus, the term was almost always used to refer to men.

"Wearing high heels?"

"Then might he have been wearing other things? Like a skirt? That might let us make some guesses about his physique."

"The shoe size is a standard 36. Height is approximately one-point-six meters, weight around one hundred jin, with a petite build..."

A single footprint could reveal a great deal, such as a person’s general physique.

Suppose you wanted to target a detached villa but weren’t sure if you could handle the owner. You could simply check if they’d left any footprints in the garden.

How can you use footprints to deduce this data?

First, ninety percent of people’s bodies grow in proportion.

For example.

Look down at your own feet. They seem pretty normal, maybe even small, right?

But in reality, for nine out of ten people, their feet are as long as their forearm!

Go ahead, try comparing them.

Second, you can continue the deduction based on the proportional relationship between the foot and the body.

(Shoe Size + 10) ÷ 2 = Foot Length in Centimeters.

The high heel was a size 36, which means a 23-centimeter foot.

The ratio of body height to foot length is roughly 6.5 or 7 to 1. This means the killer’s height is approximately one-point-five-five meters, under one-point-six meters.

By analyzing the depth of the footprint, you can determine their weight and, consequently, their body type.

And just like that, you have a general profile of the homeowner’s physique. You can pick your targets based on their footprints!

"So, you’re saying the killer is a man about one-point-five-five meters tall and weighing around one hundred and ten jin?"

Qian Hua’s brow furrowed as he stared at the footprint.

"And he likes to wear high heels?"

A petite man who wears high heels...

Hearing this, the others couldn’t help but picture the scene. A shiver of revulsion ran down their spines.

"No."

Li Jianye shook his head. He frowned in thought for a moment, then slightly turned the corpse’s thigh.

The bloody hole on the front of the thigh was now fully exposed.

"It wasn’t one person. It was two... at least two. This was the work of a group!"

"The wounds are on the front of the body, which means the killer attacked her head-on. But to overpower a woman in sneakers from the front... and rape her at the same time? That’s not something just anyone could do."

Consider the situation.

In most frontal rape cases, the victim is forced to the ground, beaten, and held down by multiple assailants.

The reason is that it’s difficult to gain control from the front; the victim has a much greater ability to fight back.

"The crime scene is a bathroom, and it’s a mess, but there are no signs of a struggle on the floor where someone was pinned down. This means that if there really was only one killer..."

"...then their posture must have been something like this."

As he spoke, Li Jianye motioned for Qian Hua to come over.

He and Qian Hua stood face to face. Li Jianye grabbed one of Qian Hua’s hands, holding up his phone in his other hand as a mock weapon. With only one hand connecting them, it looked almost like they were about to take a walk.

"Try to struggle," Li Jianye said.

Qian Hua nodded.

With just a little effort, Qian Hua made Li Jianye lose his balance. They both staggered, and Qian Hua was still able to move side to side and kick with his legs.

"In a situation where you’re being restrained with just one hand, and the killer is wearing high heels."

"And at the same time, they’re supposed to be holding a weapon, gouging a hole in the victim’s thigh, taking off their own pants, and committing rape..."

Li Jianye let go, his eyes scanning the area for any signs of a struggle.

"Is that possible?"

Is it?

No way. Not even Tyson could pull that off.

And no, not the boxer Tyson. I’m talking about Tielo in his human form.

The physics of the situation are obvious. Even an idiot could fight back under those conditions!

And that’s not even mentioning that our current profile of the killer is someone who’s one-point-five-five meters tall, weighs a hundred and ten jin, and is wearing high heels.

Any physical advantage a man might have over a woman would be completely negated by all these other factors.

"So..."

"It’s extremely likely that there was at least one accomplice at the scene!"

Li Jianye’s train of thought was crystal clear.

When one theory leads to a dead end, there’s no point in inventing far-fetched excuses to make it work. Better to try another path!

"Meaning, one assailant restrained the victim, while the other—the one with the knife—committed the rape."

At his words, looks of astonishment appeared on the faces of Qian Hua and the others.

"Wait, were there any other footprints at the scene?"

Xu Huo shook his head. "No. We only detected one set of suspicious footprints. The other set belongs to the deceased."

This only deepened everyone’s confusion.

If they followed this line of reasoning...

"Which means this was a homicide committed by a group."

Wang Hu summarized after a moment of thought, but then raised a question of his own.

"But if it was a group..."

"...then was the person in the high heels a man, or a woman?"

’Setting aside why there weren’t any footprints from a second person...’

The high-heeled footprints of the first suspect alone were enough to leave them reeling with questions.

If multiple people were involved, then given the high heels, the owner was most likely a woman.

The semen found in the wound on the victim’s thigh also proved a man was present.

Looked at that way, it meant...

"A woman helping a man rape another woman?"

Qian Hua frowned. "What the hell?"

"Who knows."

Li Jianye shook his head as well.

As he’d said before, for a crime to occur, the reasons on one side of the scale must outweigh the costs on the other.

Applying that to this case:

what reason would a woman have to help a man rape another woman?

What could she possibly gain?

She wouldn’t gain anything. She wouldn’t even get the most basic gratification that comes with rape.

Was she a lesbian?

Perhaps. But the evidence at the scene didn’t suggest a woman had raped another woman.

So why would she risk the death penalty to help a man rape another woman?

What was the reason?

Where was the motive?!

"Was it like the situation with Han Shi and Wang Jinyuan?"

Wang Hu offered a new theory.

"Was she being coerced?"

"No, if she was being coerced... why wouldn’t the killer just have sex with the woman he was coercing? He wouldn’t have needed to cut a hole."

"Was it because he was sick of her? Or because she was too ugly?"

"But even so, it doesn’t seem to match Han Shi’s situation."

Han Shi was targeted and abducted because she was beautiful.

If we assume the coerced woman in the group was beautiful, and he could still sleep with her, would he really target someone else? It’s possible, but highly unlikely.

If she were ugly, she wouldn’t have been coerced for sexual reasons in the first place.

So was it some other form of coercion? Blackmail?

Even less likely.

If you knew someone embezzled a million from their company, you could threaten them and demand one hundred thousand, maybe even five hundred thousand.

But could you threaten them into taking the fall for a ten-million-dollar crime?

No.

In other words, when you’re blackmailing someone, the crime you force them to commit can’t be worse than the crime you’re holding over their head.

Working backward from the effect to the cause: she assisted in a rape-murder. That’s a capital offense!

What leverage could possibly be greater than the death penalty?

After all, even the law’s most severe punishment is death!

"So, we’re back to square one."

"If it wasn’t coercion, blackmail, or lesbianism, then she must have been..."

Looking at the others, Xu Huo spoke slowly.

"...a willing participant."

Li Jianye’s expression flickered.

’An even more absurd angle than blackmail!’

’Blackmail at least involves coercion; there’s a reason.’

’But being a willing participant? That defies all logical reasoning!’

"Why would she do it willingly?"

"Is she related to the killer?"

Li Jianye’s brow furrowed.

’Willingly. That means she wanted to help the killer commit murder.’

’Help for no apparent reason!’

’Why?’

’Their relationship must be unusual. Family? Lovers?’

’If they were lovers...’

’A girlfriend helping her boyfriend rape someone else?’

’Cases like that existed, but he’d never heard of one this depraved.’

’Especially since...’

"After her death, the victim’s fingers were repeatedly hacked with a weapon. They were horrifyingly mangled."

Xu Huo’s gaze shifted to the hands of the deceased, Chao Yang.

Her hands had been beautiful.

Before the incident, of course.

They were pale and tender, slender and seemingly boneless. Holding them must have felt like grasping a piece of smooth, soft tofu.

Pale with a hint of pink, with delicate skin.

Without a doubt, they were what the internet would call "jade hands."

You could tell the deceased had been proud of her hands; judging by her skin, she had clearly moisturized them often.

However, on the night of the 24th, she was murdered. The killer strangled her, then took a knife and hacked at her hands again and again.

"A mangled mess of flesh and blood, with the bones clearly visible."

Xu Huo held a photo of the victim from before her death, comparing it to the body and clicking his tongue.

Was this a revenge killing?

It looked a bit like one.

Excluding crimes of passion, the most obvious feature of a revenge killing is torture.

For instance, dismembering a body, or like Song Si and the others in the bombing case, who tore the factory owners’ families to pieces.

The scene before them looked similar, but...

"A revenge killing wouldn’t be limited to just one part of the body."

"You might see a case where the whole body is brutalized, with particular focus on one area, inflicting secondary damage there."

Xu Huo reached out, touching the corpse’s mangled hands.

’They felt hard to the touch.’

"But you’d never see a case that *only* targets one specific part."

The scene of the bombing.

The four victims of the Modern Jesus case.

In both of those cases, the bodies were brutalized all over. There was no hatred focused on a single body part.

"So..."

"Why did the killer only target her hands?"

The question was spoken aloud, echoing in everyone’s mind.

"For now, it doesn’t look like the killer had any personal hatred for the victim. It was about sexual release. If you ignore the bizarre details about the accomplice and the cross-dressing, it’s a typical rape-murder."

"But the hands... these beautiful hands..."

"Why were they smashed to a pulp?"