Chapter 182: Snow Mountain: The Detective’s Investigation

Chapter 182 Snow Mountain: The Detective's Investigation

To prove he hadn't deliberately messed with the crime scene, Lucas randomly picked two people from the crowd to come into the room with him, where they kept an eye on him and filmed the whole investigation.

Under the watchful eyes of the monitors and the phone cameras, he gave the corpse, the furniture, and every trace in the room a thorough once-over.

After the investigation was done, everyone filed out of the room. Lucas closed the door in front of everyone and motioned for everyone to head downstairs to the first-floor lobby.

"I need to question each of you individually about what you did from the time you split up last night until the body was found. It's freezing in here—how about we move to the first-floor lobby?"

Nobody argued, because it really was freezing, and with a dead body right there, it gave everyone the creeps, physically and mentally.

As everyone turned and helped the two scared-stiff students head downstairs, Lucas suddenly called out from the rear of the group, "Miss Everly, one moment."

Everly stopped and looked at him calmly.

She was ready—if Lucas started trouble or ran his mouth, she'd pop him a couple of times and teach him a lesson.

To her surprise, Lucas didn't say anything nasty. Instead, he held out his phone to Everly, with a surprisingly serious look on his face: "These are the videos and photos from the crime scene. Maybe you'd like to take a look."

He pushed up his glasses and added, all serious, "After all, since this is a competition, it should be fair."

"..."

Okay, so the guy had a sharp tongue, but he had good character.

Everly was sure of herself and didn't need any extra help, so she turned Lucas down with pride.

"Thanks, but no need. I have my own ways of finding the killer."

Lucas clearly didn't have much patience either. When Everly refused the phone, he put it away, the corner of his mouth twitching, a smug look crossing his handsome face: "Fine then. Hope it goes well for you... and by the way, I look forward to seeing your reasoning."

"Thanks, I look forward to it too."

The two of them were at each other's throats and parted ways on a sour note.

Once they got to the lobby, without even stopping for lunch, Lucas found a seat on the sofa by the fireplace, took out a voice recorder and a notebook, and called people up one by one to question them.

When it was Everly's turn, he asked four pretty standard questions: whether she'd left her room after going back last night, what time she got up this morning, whether she'd been to Room 205, and whether anyone could vouch for her.

Everly answered every one of them honestly.

The whole questioning dragged on for almost two hours.

After the questioning was done, Lucas lowered his head to organize his notes. During this time, since Lucas wouldn't let anyone wander off, everyone sat off to the side, murmuring in low voices, and anyone going to the bathroom had to be escorted by someone Lucas picked at random.

Though no one bothered Lucas, you could tell just by looking that this big-name American mystery novelist was frowning, his expression getting worse by the minute.

Clearly, his investigation was hitting a wall.

After sorting his notes, he called the innkeeper couple and the front desk girl aside for a few more questions, and had the three of them show him the boiler room and the kitchen.

When he came out of the kitchen, Lucas looked even more sour.

"So, Mr. Lucas, have you figured out who the killer is?" When Lucas came back, a student named Daniel couldn't help asking.

Lucas blew past Daniel and, with his long strides, walked over to Everly, looked down at her and asked, his voice stiff, "Do you know who the killer is?"

Everly was in the middle of a card game with Old John and the others—playing Guandan, a game she'd taught them. Everyone had gotten into this newfangled Eastern game and was totally hooked. At Lucas's question, she looked up from her cards and slowly turned her gaze to the young man's face.

Brows furrowed, lips pressed tight, face grim—it was obvious his investigation hadn't panned out.

Ha, just as she figured! If he was miserable, then she was happy.

Everly found she kind of enjoyed watching Lucas get taken down a notch. The more arrogant and full of themselves someone was, the better it felt to watch them tumble off their high horse, looking like a sad, soaked mutt...

So she kept her cool and said, in a deliberately casual voice, "Of course. This case is simple, isn't it? The killer's obvious at a glance."

As she talked, she lazily pulled four jokers from the deck and tossed them on the table like it was nothing: "Bomb."

"Hey! Everly, how could you! I finally managed to put together a straight flush!" Misha, whose hand she'd just crushed, let out a wail of protest.

Lucas stood there in front of Everly, silent, staring at her hard for a moment. His face went red and then pale, and with his jaw clenched so tight, the corners of his mouth were twitching almost imperceptibly.

"Fine... very well. Then let's see exactly how you reason this out."

He ground the words out through clenched teeth, turned, and walked toward the others scattered around the hall.

"Everyone, gather around. I'm going to share all the clues I've found during my investigation. Unfortunately, I haven't pinned down the culprit yet, so the killer's identity will be revealed by this young lady who calls herself a detective—Miss Everly."

"Her? She doesn't look like a detective."

"With a face like that, she'd do better in a beauty pageant than solving crimes..."

The crowd whispered among themselves, but they all followed Lucas's lead and took seats on the sofa by the fireplace.

Everly was used to being written off as just a pretty face. Ignoring the whispers behind her back, she stayed cool and sat there without a care.

Then Lucas pulled out his notebook and, true to his word, started by sharing what he'd found.

"The victim, Samuel Bruce, was a botany professor at Fortas University and an expert in artificially cultivating cushion plants. He went into his room around 6:25 PM last night, and at various points—like when he was writing his speech—he had his four students come in one after another."

"At 7:45 PM, Fatima was the last one out of his room, and after that, nobody saw the professor leave, and nobody saw anyone else go in either. It wasn't until around 11:45 AM today that two students brought Samuel food, swiped open the door, and found the professor's body."

"Based on the scene, the cause of death looks like excessive blood loss. The fatal wound was in the abdomen—clean, straight edges, a clear cut, with curling and contraction at the margins and heavy splatter patterns. It was definitely an antemortem injury—in other words, the victim was sliced open while still alive, his organs ripped out, and he bled out in agony..."

Lucas clearly hadn't given up on nailing the killer. As he talked, his sharp, hawk-like eyes swept over everyone's faces.

Everly couldn't speak for everyone, but she, Old John, and the other two looked totally calm, because this kind of death was pretty run-of-the-mill compared to the cases they'd dealt with.

When Lucas's gaze swept over her, Everly's mischievous streak kicked in. Her eyes crinkled as she shot him a grin.

"..." Lucas's voice hitched for a second. Like he'd seen something gross, he quickly looked away from Everly, and it was plain to see his face had gotten even gloomier.

"...The killer's organ-removal technique was sloppy, with lots of scratches around the wound edges, showing they had no clue about anatomy. As for why the killer was so set on taking the organs, I see two possibilities: one, the killer had a grudge against the victim and did it to blow off steam; two, the killer's in a cult, and putting the organs by the window might have some religious meaning. By the way, I'm leaning toward the first option, because the killer also cut up the victim's genitals—in murders, that usually points to punishment, which makes me think the killer might've been sexually abused by Samuel."

"Either way, whatever the killer's motive, they got one thing right—by taking the organs and opening the window to freeze the body, they made it hard to pin down rigor mortis and body temp. So I can only ballpark the time of death between 10 PM last night and 10 AM this morning, based on the lividity on the back..."

Next, Lucas shared what he'd gotten from his one-on-one interviews.

According to him, between 10 PM last night and 6 AM this morning, except for the innkeeper Joshua, who stepped out for 5 minutes at midnight to put out the boiler, nobody else left their rooms—or at least, that's what they said.

At 6 AM, the innkeeper couple woke up on their own and were the first ones out to fix breakfast and start the fireplace, but they stayed on the first floor and never went upstairs.

After 6:10 AM, people slowly got up and came down for breakfast.

From 6 AM until the body was found at 11:45 AM, people were moving around all over the place. Some hit the public bathroom at the end of the first-floor hall, some went back to their rooms for extra layers, some went up to charge their phones... Since nobody knew about the body yet, no one was really tracking who left when. The only thing they could confirm was that Daniel, Fatima, Ella, Rebecca, and Lucas himself had all gone back upstairs at some point that morning.

"Then there are a few clues I found myself that might help narrow it down: First, the murder weapon. It wasn't at the scene, which means the killer took it with them. Going by the wound, it was probably a sharp blade under 6 inches long with a pointed tip. Ms. Layla told me a boning knife went missing from the kitchen, and the size and shape match perfectly. The knife was still there last night, so that's likely the murder weapon—which means the killer probably paid the kitchen a visit."

"Second, the door to the room. When the body was discovered, Room 205 was tightly shut. Ella used a key card to swipe it open and only then found that the professor had been murdered. From start to finish, there were no signs of forced entry on the door, and the snow layer on the exterior wall remained intact, making entry through the window unlikely. This indicates the murderer entered the room through normal means."

This points to two possibilities: either the murderer knew the victim and was let in willingly, or the murderer got hold of a key card and swiped their way in directly.

"As far as I know, the inn hands over both room key cards to the guest at once upon check-in. Professor Samuel's cards—one was inserted in the slot behind the door, and the other was given to student Ella last night. Apart from these two cards, the front desk retains a master card, locked in a drawer with the key hidden under a decorative item on the counter. The day before, Jones and Hilda had borrowed the master card once after they accidentally locked their key card in their room. Therefore, theoretically, the professor's four students, the innkeeper, the front desk staff, Jones, and Hilda all had the means to enter the professor's room and kill him..."

"That's got nothing to do with us! We don't even know him, so we have no motive to kill him. Murders like this are usually committed by someone close to the victim!" Before Lucas could finish his sentence, red-haired Jones immediately shot back.

Following Jones, the innkeeper couple also stated that they bore no grudge against the professor and had absolutely no reason to kill him.

"Are you suggesting we killed the professor? Ridiculous! We were counting on his mentorship to get involved in more research projects—how could we possibly harm him!" Fatima let out a cold laugh and shot back at Jones, not about to back down.

Jones wasn't intimidated in the slightest: "Why not? The closer the relationship, the easier it is to build up resentment—that's how it always goes on TV. Take Ella, for instance. Who knows what the professor had in mind giving her that key card. If you ask me, maybe that pig of a professor did something to her behind closed doors, stirred up her hatred, and she couldn't take it anymore, so she killed him in the middle of the night!"

Jones had just been speaking off the cuff, but unexpectedly, Ella seemed to have hit a nerve. She had been dazed ever since seeing the professor's body, teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Jones's words hit her like a trigger, and as if she could no longer bear it, the girl covered her ears, let out a piercing scream, crouched down on the spot, curled up, and burst into sobs.

Her reaction clearly suggested that something had indeed happened.

The looks on everyone's faces suddenly turned a bit strange.