cicada

Chapter 1316 Variables
Inside the military tent, Zuo Zhong put his feet on the camp table, glanced around, and first called out Wu Chunyang's name, asking him to talk about the progress of tracking down the murderer's whereabouts.

Wu Chunyang reluctantly stood up and truthfully reported Wenrentang's investigation results on the Jialing River, the Yangtze River coast and the ships.

"Vice-Commander, Sun Renyi's men have turned the waters of Shancheng upside down. No suspects have been found in any of the ships that departed from or passed through Shancheng recently, and there are no problems with official ships either."

After briefly introducing the current situation, Wu Chunyang added: "I suspected that the British and American navies were colluding with the murderer, so I checked their bank deposits and safes."

"What's the result?" Zuo Chong asked calmly.

"Everyone's deposit amount is within a reasonable range, and the items in the safe are from a clear source."

Wu Chunyang's voice gradually became lower, and then he added: "However, this cannot rule out the suspicion of the British and American navies in Chongqing. I have decided to continue digging deeper."

Zuo Zhong did not make any statement, but shifted his gaze to Song Minghao's face. Song Minghao immediately repeated the follow-up results of the footprint identification.

Apart from confirming that there were three tall and burly men among the eleven mysterious men suspected to be the murderers, there were no other valuable clues at the scene, which shows that the other party was acting very cautiously.

The technicians conducted a dragnet search at the weather station, the place where the footprints were found, and along the Jialing River, but they didn't find any new footprints or traces, not even a single hair.

After all, it had rained for two nights in the mountains, so even if the murderer had left something behind, it would have been washed away by the rain.

Two of the four directions of investigation were abandoned. At least the hope of catching the murderer based on the traces was slim. The atmosphere in the tent was a bit solemn, and the expressions on everyone's faces were not very good.

Someone gave the Military Intelligence Bureau a very clear order that the case must be solved before Melrose came to the Republic of China. If the case could not be solved, the Military Intelligence Bureau and they would be in big trouble.

Zuo Zhong remained calm. He smiled at his men and said, "Don't worry, the sky won't fall. By the way, Lao Gu, how is the investigation of the internal structure leak of the weather station going?"

"We have done a screening at both the construction plant and the bureau. Youguang, please talk to the deputy commander." Gu Qi gestured to Gui Youguang to speak first.

Upon hearing this, Gui Youguang stood up immediately and started talking incessantly.

There are more than 300 workers in the construction factory responsible for building the weather station, but only ten of them have access to the building blueprints, fully understand the internal structure and know the purpose of each room.

Gui Youguang checked these ten people, including their relatives and friends, and found nothing suspicious so far.

Having a fierce appearance has its advantages. The people involved in the case were scared to death when they saw the bald guy for the first time, so the possibility of them lying is very small.

So where did the weather station structure leak from?
Zuo Zhong looked at Gu Qi, who shook his head. He had investigated all the people who knew about the situation and there was no problem within the Military Control Commission.

Although the military discipline of the Military Control Commission is much worse now than before, no one dares to disclose the information of the Sino-US Cooperation Office to irrelevant personnel. This is a crime that can cost one's life.

Everyone knows clearly what can be said and what cannot be said, what money can be earned and what cannot be earned.

Three of the four breakthrough points have been ruled out. Everyone is staring at Ling Sanping, wanting to see what the forensic doctor has found. This is the last chance.

Ling Sanping stood up with a tired face and distributed the autopsy report in his hand to everyone: "After our inspection, the murderer did not have a specific order or target in the shooting. It was a random act."

Gu Qi and others sighed. It was obvious that the murderer was not targeting a specific person. The last way was blocked.

Ling Sanping's voice rang out again: "But there is something strange. I want to ask Captain Gui a question first. When you stab an enemy with a dagger, what posture do you use?"

What posture is used to kill people?
Gui Youguang was stunned, then he picked up a pen and used it as a dagger, stabbing it hard into the abdomen of Song Minghao next to him. Song Minghao even let out a cry in cooperation.

Ling Sanping looked at the two people's actions and nodded. He took out a few photos from the report, pointed at the close-ups of the wounds on them, and spoke slowly.

"As you can see, when performing a stabbing action, humans will subconsciously place the weapon parallel to the waist and move forward, because this way of exerting force is the most comfortable and more labor-saving.

The problem is that among the bodies, those who had fatal abdominal wounds had cut marks on the lower part of the wound, which shows that the murderer stabbed them with the tip of the knife at the top and the tail at the bottom.

As he spoke, he also used a pen to pretend to be a dagger and made an upward motion in the air.

The people present, including Zuo Chong, paused for a moment. Why did the murderer do this? Was he trying to aggravate the victim's injuries?

If this is the case, the murderer could have simply rotated the weapon while stabbing, which would have achieved the same effect. Why use such a laborious and awkward position?

As they thought about it, Zuo Chong and the others' eyes lit up, and four words popped up in their minds at the same time: disguise your height.

This is easy to understand. The knife will be inserted at different heights at different heights. If you want to cause wounds of the same height at different heights, you have to change the angle at which you hold the knife.

The murderer originally intended to confuse investigators in this way, but the change in the angle of the knife left a special mark on the wound.

Seeing that his discovery had been taken seriously, Ling Sanping took the opportunity to ask for benefits: "If the laboratory had not recently purchased a batch of new equipment, this detail on the body would be difficult to find. I want to purchase more."

"No, you don't!"

Zuo Zhong quickly interrupted the other party's spell. My goodness, a Renxin Hospital consumes several tenths of the Military Control Commission's funding every year. If they spend more money to buy equipment, Old Dai and he will be left in tatters.

Ling Sanping, who had failed to achieve his goal, shrugged and continued, "In order to make a comparison, I calculated the murderer's height in two ways."

"One is to calculate based on the existing wound height, and the other is to calculate based on the wound cutting angle, restoring the height of the wound when the murderer stabbed the person in a normal posture."

"The result is very interesting. The former murderers are all no taller than 1.6 meters, while the latter murderers are all at least 1.75 meters tall." Song Minghao was the first to react and shouted, "That's right! The three suspects with clear footprints are all taller than 1.75 meters!"

Now the case has a direction. The murderer must have a very important reason for concealing his real height.

Gucci narrowed his eyes. So many murderers were taller than 1.75 meters. The destruction of the weather station did not seem to be done by the Japanese.

Are there tall Japanese people? Yes, but there is no need for them to specifically select personnel over 1.75 meters tall for a sabotage operation. War is not about comparing heights.

After a long while, Gu Qi suddenly had an idea and asked Zuo Zhong: "Co-pilot, is there any relationship between the murderer's height and the second shot?"

At first, they thought the murderer shot again to silence the witness, but Ling Sanping just now said that it was a random act, so the possibility of silencing the witness was ruled out.

But considering the lengths the killer went to to conceal his true height, perhaps the two are somehow connected.

For example, if the murderer's height can guide witnesses and investigators to determine the murderer's identity, then the additional shooting would have a reasonable explanation.

The other party did this not to silence someone, but to kill all the staff of the weather station to ensure that their identity was not revealed.

So under what circumstances can height be linked to identity?

Gu Qi's question triggered everyone's thinking, and countless guesses flashed through their minds. Wu Chunyang was the first to speak and expressed his guess.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

“The murderer is white!”

These five words plunged the tent into silence. There was a large height difference between white people and yellow people, and the difference in skin color made it easy to distinguish them. So even if the murderer wore a mask, he would be exposed. To be on the safe side, killing him to silence him was the best option.

But there are many white countries, which country did the murderer come from? Why did he attack the weather station?
Germany?

The Australian pharmaceutical factory incident put the Abwehr in a very embarrassing situation. From this point of view, it seems reasonable for the Germans to destroy the weather station in retaliation against the National Government.

However, the Republic of China and Germany have severed diplomatic relations, and the two countries do not share a border. The risk of German intelligence personnel infiltrating the Republic of China is very high. Would Mu He's men take such a big risk to blow up a weather station? It's impossible.

Red Russia?

The relationship between Moscow and Yamashiro is complicated, but Red Russia needs the Republic of China to hold back the Japanese army and will not do anything that harms others and does not benefit itself.

Britain and the United States?
Just as Wu Chunyang thought, Britain and the United States had no reason to destroy the weather station. Even if the British and American navies in Chongqing were paid to do the job, they would not do it themselves, and ordinary sailors did not have such combat capability.

Zuo Chong scratched his head. With the weak foreign policy of the Republic of China, apart from Germany and Red Russia, he really couldn't think of any other white countries that had conflicts with Shancheng.

Since he couldn't figure it out, he simply stopped thinking about it. Zuo Zhong gave everyone a new order: secretly investigate all white people who came to the mountain city recently, no matter which country they were from.

Afterwards, he drove back to the Military Control Commission headquarters and reported the case to Dai Chunfeng.

After listening to the work of Zuo Chong and others, Old Dai praised them and told them some news about the weather station sabotage case and Sino-US cooperation.

"Be careful, when the weather station incident happened, Washington was furious. They began to doubt whether the National Government was capable of becoming the United States' ally in Asia, and even reconsidered their relationship with the Republic of China.

The Cooperation Institute was originally led by the National Government, but the other party took the opportunity to make trouble and demanded that the Cooperation Institute be used as the Far East branch of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) for use by American intelligence personnel.

The world situation is closely linked to the entire situation. The change in the Americans' attitude has caused many things that have been agreed upon to change. The chairman's command of the troops entering Burma may fall into the hands of others.

The Red Russians were also restless. They used the weather station case as an excuse to ask Washington to reduce aid to the National Government and transfer the aid materials to the European battlefield.

Dai Chunfeng had a worried look on his face. No one had expected that the bombing of a weather station would cause so many troubles. As for the troops entering Burma that he mentioned, they were the famous expeditionary force in later generations.

While Zuo Chong was carrying out missions in Japan and the United States, the Republic of China and the United Kingdom signed the "Agreement on Joint Defense of the Yunnan-Burma Railway."

The agreement contained a lot of empty words, with only one practical item: the National Government would send an elite force to support the British army in Burma in its fight against Japan.

At the end of December last year, the expeditionary force headquarters had already entered Dali, and the vanguard troops were stationed in Baoshan, but the British did not agree to the expeditionary force entering Burma on the pretext of waiting to see the movements of the Japanese army.

After the Pearl Harbor incident, the Americans proposed to establish a war zone in the Republic of China, with someone serving as the supreme commander of the war zone to command the anti-Japanese forces in the Republic of China, Annan, Thailand and other places.

It is not known whether the Americans did it on purpose, but Burma did not belong to the Republic of China's war zone, which led to extremely chaotic command of the expeditionary force. Britain, the United States and even Free France all wanted to get involved.

Zuo Zhong thought of the future CIA lackeys, the South Korean National Intelligence Service① and the Wild Man Mountain②, and immediately reminded: "Teacher, we must not allow large-scale US intelligence personnel to enter the cooperation institute. This is related to national dignity.

The Americans are trying to seize the command of the expeditionary force in order to prepare for the post-war order, so let them fight the British. The most important thing for us is to preserve our strength, the Red Russians..."

He suddenly stopped talking halfway. Old Dai was just about to hear his favorite disciple's analysis, so when he saw him standing there in a daze, he asked curiously.

"Shen Zhong, do you have any new ideas?"

It was as if a bomb had exploded in Zuo Zhong's mind. He was stunned for a few seconds before coming to his senses. He looked at Dai Chunfeng and revealed a bitter smile.

① South Korean intelligence agency, formerly known as the Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), you can tell what it is just by looking at the name.

②The expeditionary force failed in its first attempt to enter Burma and retreated to the Wild Man Mountains. Due to the harsh local natural environment and logistical collapse, more than 30,000 people died on the way.