132: Chapter 132 The Locked Room Murder Case

The door to the mayor's office was a heavy double oak door. The brass handle was wrapped in blue and white caution tape, printed with the words "Interstellar Police Department · Do Not Enter."

Everything in the room remained exactly as it had been when the crime was reported.

On the leather chair behind the desk, a human outline traced in white chalk slumped crookedly against the backrest.

The items on the desk had been circled by forensic investigators with evidence markers: an overturned brass nameplate, a ceramic coffee mug bearing the City Hall logo, and a glass ashtray containing a cigar that had been stubbed out halfway through.

Thompson stood at the doorway, not rushing to enter. Having worked at the New York Police Department for twenty-two years, the first rule of crime scenes he had learned was: Don't rush to rummage through things. Stand and observe first.

Let the crime scene speak to you. The corners most easily overlooked often hide the things that should least be ignored.

He slowly scanned the room. The bookshelves were packed with leather-bound political science treatises and several rows of dusty picture frames, mostly photos of the mayor with previous presidents.

In the corner stood a floor-standing flag pole, with the Stars and Stripes and the Gugu Gaga flag displayed side-by-side.

"Ga."

Before Thompson could react, Gugu Gaga had squeezed through the gap in the door on her short little legs. She raised a magnifying glass and began a carpet-style investigation of the room.

"Has she studied forensics?"

"No." Agor leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, her golden pupils calmly tracking her daughter's movements across the carpet. "But she remembers last night's episode of 'Sherlock Holmes' quite well."

Realizing the little penguin was just playing and couldn't actually help, Thompson began by inspecting the water cup and cigar on the desk.

After all, when it came to cardiac-related deaths, his first thought was poisoning.

"The autopsy report has been sent over."

At that moment, Agor pulled an electronic tablet from her pocket. She swiped her finger, projecting the report into mid-air.

"Deceased: Robert Coleman, fifty-seven years old. Time of death: between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM. Cause of death: acute cardiac arrest. No history of heart disease. No signs of trauma. Blood and urine toxicology screens were negative. Analysis of stomach contents indicates he had eaten within about six hours of death; the food consisted of steak, mashed potatoes, and red wine."

"Myocardial tissue sections show typical myocardial fiber rupture caused by an excess of catecholamines."

"Looks like he was scared to death!" Thompson tapped the overturned mayor's nameplate on the desk with his finger. "When a person is in extreme fear, the brain releases massive amounts of stress hormones, which leads to rapid heartbeat, skyrocketing blood pressure, and a sudden increase in myocardial contractility."

"If the concentration is high enough, the heart will simply quit. The medical examiner calls this a 'catecholamine storm.' I've seen two cases before: one was a drug dealer cornered by someone who he thought was going to shoot, but the other person just pulled out a phone to take a picture, and he died on the spot."

"The other case was an old woman who woke up in the middle of the night to find someone standing by her bed and just expired right then and there."

Agor put the electronic tablet away, and the blue text projected on the screen dissipated into the air. "So Mayor Coleman was scared to death."

"But the question is, what was he scared to death by?"

"The surveillance footage has arrived too." Agor turned the tablet toward him, and another set of data was projected into the air.

The screen was divided into a dozen small windows, each showing video footage from different corners of City Hall, with a uniform date and time stamp blinking in the upper right corner.

Thompson leaned in close to the tablet to look carefully. "Pull up all the surveillance footage from the corridors, stairwells, elevators, and entrances around the mayor's office for the hour before and after the incident."

Agor's fingers slid quickly across the tablet. The windows were automatically filtered and rearranged, forming a new layout in less than ten seconds.

Soon, Thompson had finished watching all the footage.

Outside the mayor's office, in the corridors and the lobby, there were no suspicious people entering or exiting, aside from the regular night cleaners and security guards.

And these cleaners and security guards had already been interrogated by the New York Police Department throughout the night, and their suspicion had been basically ruled out.

In other words, this was a very standard locked-room murder case!

Thompson felt a bit numb. He was indeed a veteran police officer, but he wasn't the kind of detective seen in movies who could deduce the method of the crime at a single glance.

However, as a seasoned cop, he certainly had his own methods for handling cases.

He, along with Agor and little Gugu, rushed all the way to the New York Police Department to pull all the mayor's interpersonal relationship files, preparing to start from those connections to root out the killer.

But soon, an awkward situation arose. Thompson discovered that many people had reasons for wanting the mayor dead, yet it seemed none of them had a reason to do it this way, and the investigation suddenly hit a deadlock.

As the day grew late, Thompson rubbed his throbbing temples.

"Let's stop here for today," he said to Agor. "You take Gugu Gaga home first. I'll handle the rest myself."

Agor was packing up things for Gugu Gaga, who was asleep on the office desk.

The little penguin let out a muffled "Ga" in her sleep, rolled over, and buried her face into the feathers of her belly.

Agor glanced at him, didn't ask what he was going to do, and only said one thing: "Stay safe!"

——————

Twenty minutes later, on the fifth basement level of Renhe Hall, the moment the elevator doors opened, Thompson froze.

The last time he came here, this floor was just an empty hall.

But now, it looked like an operational intelligence center, with at least twenty people busy at their respective workstations.

At the stainless steel laboratory bench in the center of the hall, several old men in white lab coats were gathered around a vial of blood, discussing something.

One of the old men pointed at a peak on the fluorescence spectrum, speaking in English with a thick German accent about "gene editing," "protoplasm," and "immune rejection"—terms Thompson could only understand half of.

Thompson suddenly felt like he had seen this man before; he seemed to be an expert in the field of gene therapy who had been on television.

Black Panther stood in the innermost part of the hall, hands resting on an electronic sand table.

The sand table displayed a 3D map of New York City, marked with dense clusters of red dots.

These red dots represented the areas where A-Zu's base was marching.

"How is it, Officer Thompson?" Black Panther didn't look up. "How does it feel to work your first day at the Interstellar Police Department?"

"It feels terrible." Thompson walked over and stood on the opposite side of the sand table. "I ran into a tricky case on my first day; the mayor is dead."

"And he died in a locked office. The medical examiner says it was from extreme fright. I'm completely confused right now."

Black Panther smiled. "Don't rush on that problem for now. Tell me, what intelligence have you gathered?"