Secret Killer

It was 7 Am in the morning. The streets were empty, and no one was around other than a few joggers and office workers doing their usual stuff.

A car passed by at high speed and stopped at the police department.

After a few seconds, the door opened, and Liam walked out. However, he was walking weirdly and with heavy steps.

He slowly made his way into the underground department and stumbled a couple of times on the stairs.

The guard at the entry saw Liam and asked, "Are you okay, Sir?"

  Liam raised his hand and nodded while entering the department. There were few night shift officers in the department, but Liam ignored them all and walked into the office in the corner.

It was a monitoring room of the entire city, shared by other departments in the city.

"Did you find anything?" Liam asked impatiently to the man who was focused on doing something on the supercomputer.

"No, sir," the man replied.

Liam slammed his hands on the table and shouted, "What have you been doing?! It has been almost a week since Eren was killed! And now it has been three days since the recent murder case! I don't even want to talk about the mass murder of the Halloween night!"

"We have been trying our best, Sir," the man responded.

"What best?!" Liam shouted. "You haven't even found one clue!"

"It's not magic, Sir. It's not like we need to snap our fingers, and everything will be automatically done," the man replied in a disdainful tone.

"What's going on?" an elderly officer walked into the monitoring room and asked, "Why are you yelling, L?"

"Why are we not finding any clues for the recent murders?!" Liam yelled.

The elderly man raised his brows and asked, "You are handling too many cases at once, L. You need to take a break."

Liam once again slammed his hands on the table and shouted even louder: "Why the hell is everyone asking me to take a break? I don't need a break! I need to find the killer and punish him!"

"And how are your shouting and disrespecting other officers going to help in finding the culprit sooner?" the elderly man remarked.

"..."

"L…" the elderly man placed his hand on Liam's shoulder and said in a gentle voice: "Everyone is doing their job here. And you are disturbing them, making their jobs harder for them. If you keep doing this, then I will have to ask chief U.B to detain you for a week.

"...!" Liam's face turned pale after hearing that.

"You can't do that!" Liam retorted.

"When was the last time you slept?" the elderly man asked with a curious look on his face.

"Last night," Liam replied.

"That's a lie. Tell me, when did you last sleep?" he asked again.

"Before Eren's case…"

"That was a week ago, do you know that? Or do you think that pushing yourself harder is going to help others in finding  the culprit sooner?"

"..."

"Everyone has their own life, L. You can't tell them to do something they are already doing. You might be one of the genius detectives in the world, but in the end, you are still an 18-year-old kid."

"You are smart but not mature," the elderly man added. "And that's why Diana dumped you."

Liam frowned his face and shrugged the elderly man's hand from his shoulder.

"You don't know anything."

The elderly man shrugged his shoulders and said with a sigh: "Take some time off and cool yourself. Otherwise, I will have to talk with the chief, and I am sure he will agree with me."

After saying that, the elderly man left.

Liam turned to the man on the computer and said, "I apologize for yelling at you. I shouldn't have done that."

"It's fine. In fact, I am motivated after seeing your dedication to your job, Sir," the man said with a smile on his face.

It wasn't a dedication; it was an obsession.

Liam was obsessed with catching and punishing the criminals. He couldn't get justice to his family, so he wanted to bring justice to others' families so they wouldn't meet the same fate as him.

Liam wanted to make a crimeless world where no one committed any crimes, but it was more of a selfish desire.

"Sir…" the man called out to Liam and said, "I think I have found a clue."

"Show me!"

The man played footage of a certain street where a man wearing a hoodie and a mask walked by with a heavy hammer-like weapon in his hand.

The footage was blurry and almost unseeable, but the man ran the footage through a process to make it less blurry. However, it was still a little blurry, and they could make out anything from it.

But Liam caught something.

"Can you zoom into his hand? The one holding the weapon," Liam asked.

The man zoomed in and said, "This is the best quality image you can get."

'This body build and the walking style is matching with the secret killer. Could they be the same person? But… Why would the secret killer go for a new look? Unless… he is trying to divert the police's attention.'

Liam was indeed a genius detective, and his perceptive skills far surpassed that of an ordinary human. He had solved 199 cases (200 including the Ray Marriat case) and solved his best case in 20 seconds.

Of course, there were times when he was wrong, but he was right most of the time.

"Can you zoom in a bit more?" Liam asked.

The man zoomed in to the hand.

"What is that?" the man wondered after seeing a strange gradient on the killer's hand.

"It's a scar!" Liam turned around and dashed out of the department. He got into his car and drove off somewhere.

'This might be too much, but if the secret killer and this killer are the same person, then I might solve 5 cases at once. And my most prime suspect for the identity of the secret killer is…'

===

Thanks, @Oseni_Precious_1089, @Hlf_Hogstar, @Ap3x_NightWolf, @Exoloty, for the gifts!