Chapter 33: An Alternative Honor Killing

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: An Alternative Honor Killing

Their daughter, Mia Scott, for whose safety they had been worried sick, got off a clearly modified motorcycle.

At a glance, there were four or five people crammed onto the single bike.

She was wearing a spaghetti-strap mini dress, the likes of which they had never seen on her before.

Their daughter, who was supposed to be at home studying, was now leaning against a young delinquent, a cigarette pinched between her fingers as she puffed out clouds of smoke.

The Scott Family’s apartment wasn’t on a high floor, and with few pedestrians around at night, they could clearly hear what was being said below.

"Millie, thanks for treating us tonight. Give me some time, and I’ll get you something special to enjoy."

The young man sitting behind Mia Scott leaned in suggestively, his fingers tracing her bare shoulder. Every now and then, he would move close to her face and sniff at her.

Mia Scott pushed her half-smoked cigarette into his hand, then pulled off the plastic gloves she was wearing. "Alright, I’ll be waiting for your surprise.

It’s getting late, and my parents will be back soon. I can’t hang out anymore. Remember to pick me up tomorrow."

With that, Mia Scott waved to them and headed toward her apartment building.

The young delinquents downstairs stood there, finished their cigarettes, and then scattered, leaving a mess of cigarette butts on the ground.

Teacher Scott and Mr. Donovan sat on stools, completely stunned, looking utterly crushed.

They never imagined that their own daughter was responsible for some of the cigarette butts they had been seeing when they came home from work lately.

Looking at the elderly neighbor lady, who was clearly unfazed by it all, Teacher Scott felt his face burn with shame.

"This has been going on for a long time," the neighbor said. "I know you two are busy with work, but you still need to pay attention to your child’s upbringing." She didn’t spell it out, but her meaning was obvious.

’A long time... That must mean everyone in the building knows about it.’

They had just kept quiet out of consideration for the family’s reputation.

"We understand. Thank you. We’ll be sure to discipline our child."

Mr. Donovan, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly spoke up. He then pulled Teacher Scott out of the neighbor’s apartment, and they stood before their own front door.

Teacher Scott checked his phone. This was about the time Mia usually got home. ’What will we see when we open the door now?’ he wondered.

With that thought, Teacher Scott abruptly pushed the door open and walked in.

But he found that their home, which had been somewhat messy, was now clean and tidy.

And their daughter walked out of her room as if nothing had happened.

Everything was just as it had been before; even the drawers that had been ransacked were now back in order.

It was as if everything had changed, yet nothing had changed at all.

After a perfunctory exchange with Mia Scott, the couple quickly made a decision. From then on, one of them would come home early every day to stake out a corner downstairs and watch for their daughter.

A week later, they saw the "surprise" the young delinquent had spoken of.

A bag of white powder.

And their daughter, after a moment of shock and fear, chose to accept it.

From that day on, Teacher Scott and Mr. Donovan felt that their neighbors began to look at them strangely.

It was as if they were all wondering how the previously well-behaved Mia Scott could have turned out like this.

’Could it be a problem with their parenting? Or maybe they aren’t such good people themselves?’ ℴℴ𝘮

Until one day, they suddenly noticed Mia Scott had become abnormally agitated. She seemed to have boundless energy, staying up all night and sleeping all day. Yet her spirits were listless, and her body began to waste away.

Under the prolonged, high-pressure environment, Teacher Scott finally snapped. He couldn’t accept his own daughter becoming a junkie!

’If the school administration, the students, and their parents found out his underage daughter was a junkie, would they start to suspect that there was something wrong with the two of them as well?’

The thought of spending the rest of his life under the suspicious gaze of others, all while having to support a junkie daughter, gave Teacher Scott an idea: it would be better to just kill her. That way, the mistake they had made would be buried forever.

Driven by this idea, he contacted a man, gave him a key to their home, and told him to find an opportunity to kill his daughter.

They were complete strangers, with no prior contact, so the police would never be able to trace it back to them.

In exchange, he would use the same method to kill the person the other man wanted to get rid of.

After listening to Teacher Scott’s statement, Zoe Sawyer looked like she wanted to say something but held her tongue.

’This sounds an awful lot like an honor killing,’ she thought.

But she had guessed correctly—it really was an exchange killing.

’So, what role did the man in the baseball cap I saw at the crime scene play in all of this?’

In the interrogation room, Teacher Scott, having confessed everything, fell silent once more. He kept his head bowed, picking at his fingernails.

The only sound in the stark room was the continuous tapping of the record keeper’s keyboard.

Captain Lynch stared at Teacher Scott for a long time without speaking. Just as Zoe Sawyer thought the interrogation was over, she heard the captain speak again. "You’ve said so much, but you’ve completely erased Mr. Donovan’s role in all this. Are you trying to get him off the hook?

I’m giving you one more chance. Tell me the whole story again, completely."

Zoe Sawyer looked over at Evan Keller, a hint of confusion in her eyes.

"In his version of events, he’s taken all the blame," Evan explained. "From contacting the hitman to later murdering another innocent person, he claims he did it all himself.

Mr. Donovan, meanwhile, seems to have only played the role of supervising their daughter at night. But think about Mr. Donovan’s behavior in his own interrogation. Is he really completely innocent?

His explanation and narrative were too smooth, with no hesitation at all. It’s like he rehearsed a script beforehand and is just reciting it to get through the interrogation." Evan Keller explained briefly, his long fingers tapping quickly on his phone screen.

’The two of them must have prepared their stories in advance, specifically for this scenario.’

Zoe Sawyer nodded, only half-understanding, then turned her attention back to the interrogation room.

But after this second telling, he clearly had no intention of speaking again, no matter what they asked.

Captain Lynch had no choice but to give up the questioning for now and leave the room.

He briefly conferred with his colleagues from the other interrogation, only to find that Mr. Donovan hadn’t said a single word since he’d gone in.

Seeing this, Captain Lynch became even more certain that the two of them were hiding something.

"Forget it," Captain Lynch sighed. "Let’s all take a break. Everyone’s been working around the clock all day!"

Zoe Sawyer had no choice but to go and rest with the other officers, but she couldn’t get the case off her mind.

The next morning, she was out of bed before Sean Hughes even had to call for her, and she ran over to Evan Keller to find out if there was any progress.

Evan Keller was holding a lab report, which he waved at Captain Lynch.

"I had someone put a rush on this test. The results in here are guaranteed to make them talk!"