The investigation was unexpectedly slow. They heard the neighbors’ words. In general, they said, “We weren't close. We just thought she was weird, and we never argued. She didn’t even like to talk.” As the questioning was getting longer, Tim started to feel nervous. What if this is the first crime of another serial killer? What if he didn’t have any feeling towards ‘Mrs. Zejens,’ and just hated women in that age? What if he just turned random door knobs and committed the crime?
“Not sure…. I don’t know if the door was opened. I didn’t hear any particular scream and resisting sound. If that’s the case, hm, was it opened?”
“I see.”
A lady living next door Amada’s testimony.
“That lady? I know. When I was playing baseball, the ball went in that house’s lawn. She came out with scary eyes, so we couldn’t ask her to give back our balls. We just ran away.”
Little boy neighbor Hans’ story.
“Ah, now I think of it. I think I saw a suspicious man roaming around that lady’s house. I was wondering why he was doing that because there wasn’t any pretty woman. Even if it was a robber, it’s a poor house only people come by is that salary man, so her son.”
After they heard the story from the house across high school girl Clara, Jude and Tim stopped walking around the neighborhood and headed to the scene. The scene where it had a yellow tape wrapped around still had dried blood smell.
“Do you think that high school girl’s story is correct?”
“Who knows. We can have some kind of evidence coming out from the lab.”
“Do you think it’s possible…. to be a robbery?”
“It’s not impossible. But the reason of this homicide was not a robbery. If it was a robbery, he could’ve just stab few times and find the money, but this is too much. Did you investigate the son?”
“Yeah, the money relationship was clean, and there was no evidence of arguing with the mother. It was only him that visited this house, and he was a very obedient child when he was young.”
“Ah, I see.”
“And all the neighbors near here have their alibi. Just like that son said, this lady never had any fight that would cause this kind of homicide. Everyone is just a common household. They didn’t have anything weird. So that’s why the focus is going…”
“Alvin Johns looked normal too. No, he looked way intelligent.”
Tim stopped walking at turned around and saw Jude. His partner didn’t have any particular emotion in his eyes.
“This case… Do you think Alvin Johns did it?”
“No. I didn’t mean that way. To be Alvin Johns, this guy has too much feeling. You could feel his strong hatred. Alvin Johns is, how should I say it, killing and torturing like kids killing ants. Hm, you know like kids say innocently, ‘I was curious how long will it take to burn an ant.’? It’s highly likely that he did those with full of experimental mind.”
“….Even, even though they’re the same humans?”
“That guy doesn’t see other people as same level as him. And that guy can’t feel other people’s pain. You know how psychopaths are? To be exact, he seems like he’s a hybrid psychopath, but he perfectly has those kind of characteristics.”
“While you guys were talking, did he say that?”
“Yeah…. Hm, the main reason was the pure experimental mind, the things that trigger that were very minor things seriously minor things. Like being rude to him little bit, trying to get overly close to him, or getting confessed in front of his face from a person he never had any feeling. Then he thought, ‘Ah, if I’m gonna do it, these people will be good.’ Well, after that, you know.”
I shoved in my colleague by himself for four hours listening to these kind of story! Suddenly Tim felt deep guilty and anger at the same time. He turned his head and said,
“Shit, those kind of guys need to feel pain to feel how painful dead people felt.”
“That guy, he can’t even feel his own pain well. When he gets hurt, he faintly recognizes his own pain. Among the psychopaths, there are some cases that they feel sympathy to themselves only, but this guy is totally opposite. He doesn’t even have attachment to himself that much.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told him he’s gonna get executed, but he didn’t move a single muscle on his face.”
“………Crazy bastard.”
He spit out a curse with a deep hatred and slowly looked around the blood stained kitchen. They still couldn’t find the weapon that killed the lady, but the autopsy result suspect a big kitchen knife. They said the unsub sincerely sliced the person’s throat. Probably the he took the weapon.
While Tim was trying to avoid stepping on blood stains, Jude was looking at the sink carefully and waved his arm at Tim to call him.
“Tim, Tim. Come here.”
“Why?”
“Here, look at the place where the knife was stored in. Among the knives, one spot is empty.”
He looked at the sink and among the knives, the biggest one was missing.
“Ah, that’s true.”
“The weapon, do you think he took it out from here?”
“Maybe. Other place is completely clean and perfect like an illness. This spot is mis