The Entomologist's Perfect Crime Chapter 18

This middle-aged woman was the mother of the girl Zhou had rescued from the basement.

A week ago, I overheard police officers discussing multiple missing person cases in the city recently.

When browsing online, I also found netizens saying people went to the hospital for treatment and suddenly became seriously ill or even died.

That day I happened to encounter Mrs. Zhang coming to report to the police, so I paid extra attention and privately sought her out.

Mrs. Zhang said she'd already reported to the police multiple times.

But there were no useful leads at all.

She herself thought her daughter must be in grave danger, but as a mother, she wasn't willing to give up.

If alive, she wanted to see the person; if dead, she wanted to see the body.

Neither Mrs. Zhang nor I knew her daughter was being held right next door to me.

After all, if the police couldn't find her, I wasn't so omnipotent either.

I discovered something was wrong when I went to pay property fees once and found the neighboring house that had always been empty suddenly had people.

The people inside never came out, but there was often activity in the middle of the night.

I discovered these things because I often stayed up late writing novels.

What made me certain there was a problem inside was

One late night, when I went out for a walk seeking inspiration, I saw a woman with an abnormal expression enter the neighbor's house.

After returning home, I installed a camera on my balcony facing the neighbor's house.

But it captured nothing.

I felt I couldn't wait any longer. I didn't have much time.

But all my thoughts were speculation and suspicion. I couldn't even find a reasonable justification for a search.

So I fabricated a story.

If the police launched a related investigation with me as a suspect,

It would be reasonable and justified.

When my wife had her accident, Zhou happened to be there, so he could seal off the scene so quickly at the time.

Zhou knew the details in the story as clearly as I did, so his sense of immersion was strongest.

Based on my understanding of Zhou over the years,

He was extremely "persistent."

So I concluded he would definitely investigate thoroughly to verify whether my story was true or false.