“If one day, this case requires me to testify,” William Williams looked at Fiona Bennett and said, “I will tell the police, and the judge, that you are a mentally ill person who frequently experiences hallucinations. You know, that’s not a lie. So from now on, you’d better not have any unrealistic expectations of me.”

Fiona Bennett straightened up, but before she could respond, the doorbell rang.

“Looks like they’re a few minutes early. Fiona Bennett, you still had a chance once, what a pity.” William Williams said.

Fiona Bennett suddenly turned and ran. William Williams stared in shock as she dashed into the yard, vaulted over the low fence, and disappeared into the community garden.

III. The End of the Line

1

Fiona Bennett realized she had reached a dead end.

The morning after her narrow escape from the The Williams Family, she went to find Lawrence Carter, but came up empty-handed.

Lawrence Carter had nothing to do with the Susan Wright case. He was four years younger than Fiona Bennett, and in his junior year, he was severely injured by a roommate’s poisoning over a trivial matter—the poison was N-nitrosodimethylamine. Fiona Bennett had heard Gabriel Adams mention this case before. She went to see Lawrence Carter simply to cast a wide net, hoping to get some inspiration regarding the method or motive of the crime. In the end, Fiona Bennett gained no insight, and also learned that the police had already spoken to Lawrence Carter; after a brief conversation, they didn’t follow up, meaning they found nothing suspicious.

Now, not only was Fiona Bennett’s living space being further squeezed and threatened by Frank Bishop, but William Williams had also made his stance on future testimony clear. This meant that even if she exposed Winnie Hayes as a suspect, without solid evidence, the police would most likely ignore it. Just like how Fiona Bennett knew Frank Bishop was suspicious, but couldn’t do anything about it!

Fiona Bennett had pinned her hopes on the lead with Lawrence Carter, but the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.

The small bedroom had been turned into an “investigation room,” far messier than the small guest room at her old home. The curtains were half drawn, a laptop flickered on the desk, its screen showing a search page for “parasitic eggs entering the brain.” A half-open suitcase lay on the floor, with unworn clothes scattered about. The walls were covered with murder correspondence, and more than ten books—such as “Crime Reconstruction,” “Trace Evidence Examination,” “Investigative Psychology,” and “Criminology”—were strewn across the bed and bench at the foot of the bed. The room was like a maze, with Fiona Bennett wandering from one mountain peak to another, unable to find a way out.

She had already combed through all the clues left by Gabriel Adams, but a new breakthrough was still nowhere to be found. Fiona Bennett once thought that after devouring so many criminal investigation textbooks, she had made enough progress—hence her flash of inspiration yesterday in guessing Winnie Hayes, and previously, her deduction in the Blue Bar that the killer was a man disguised as a woman. But now she realized she was still far from it. All her discoveries couldn’t be turned into real progress, nor could they push the investigation any further.

She felt the wild beast in her heart crashing around, telling herself there would be a way out. That feeling—whether you call it inspiration or intuition—was just on the verge of bursting forth. She’d had the same feeling in the last ten minutes at William Williams’s house yesterday, which had brought her a name—Winnie Hayes. She believed her subconscious already understood something. Just a little light, a spark, to illuminate that shadow.

Fiona Bennett started flipping through those books again, for the third time in six hours. She read quickly, only looking at chapter and section titles, and the specific content would pop into her mind. Her mind was stretched to the limit, and she was ready for another hallucination. Maybe she’d see Gabriel Adams, maybe she’d get his mysterious guidance, and the inspiration in her subconscious would surface this way. But nothing happened. On one hand, her nerves were about to snap; on the other, she was unusually clear-headed, a contradiction that was driving her mad.

Suddenly, a line of red-highlighted text slid past her eyes. Fiona Bennett let out a “ha!” and jumped up from the bed in a most ungraceful manner, banging her head hard on the ceiling. She didn’t care about the pain; when she fell back onto the bed, she was still clutching “Criminal Psychological Profiling” tightly in her hand.

An investigation is usually considered incomplete if it fails to uncover the motive hidden behind the crime.

Motive!

For such an extreme crime as murder, there must be a very strong motive. If Gabriel Adams had only just started investigating, the killer would be wary and nervous, but wouldn’t resort to murder so easily. After all, it was a case from so many years ago, with most clues already buried, making the investigation extremely difficult. Creating a new murder would only increase the risk of exposure for the killer. So, only when Gabriel Adams’s investigation was closing in on the truth, and the killer felt greatly threatened, would they be forced to kill Gabriel Adams.

In other words, among the investigations Gabriel Adams conducted before, one of them pointed directly at the killer.

Which investigation was it? Fiona Bennett’s mind was now incredibly clear, as if every brain cell was firing at full speed. She thought of the time when the killer rented the apartment to murder Gabriel Adams, and the time they appeared at Yuying Experimental School to drop the forged letter into the “mailbox.”

Trace back along this timeline!

Fiona Bennett began carefully reviewing all the investigations Gabriel Adams had conducted before that, and immediately made a discovery. She calmed herself, wrote down the finding on paper, and then considered other possibilities, but after repeated thought, this was the only suspicious point.

Being able to think of it so quickly was actually thanks to Lawrence Carter. Gabriel Adams had told Fiona Bennett during their last meeting that he had arranged to meet Lawrence Carter a few days later, but he had decided to investigate the poisoning case even earlier—just before the timeline Fiona Bennett had drawn. At that time, Gabriel Adams was investigating two poisoning cases at the medical school: one involving N-nitrosodimethylamine, and the other thallium poisoning. Did he later look into the thallium poisoning case? Who did he contact? What was the case about?

All of this was a blank.

Compared to N-nitrosodimethylamine, the symptoms of thallium poisoning were much more similar to what happened to Susan Wright back then. So, this blank space had to be filled now.

With her mind made up, Fiona Bennett began searching for information on the medical school thallium poisoning case. The first step was, of course, an online search. But after trying several keywords and going through dozens of pages, she still couldn’t find any relevant information. Then Fiona Bennett changed her approach and searched for the N-nitrosodimethylamine poisoning case, finding many articles. She checked them one by one, and finally saw one that mentioned the medical school thallium poisoning case. It didn’t give the victim’s real name, but did mention the major—clinical medicine, one year below Fiona Bennett.

By the time she found this, it was already 3 a.m. Fiona Bennett couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in bed for hours, and got up again after seven. She contacted Harold Rogers, and as expected, the counselor claimed he couldn’t remember. Unlike Gabriel Adams, Fiona Bennett didn’t have the means to make him talk, so she had to risk being discovered by Frank Bishop and take a more roundabout route. She got in touch with a doctor she knew at Hesheng Hospital, and from him learned that there was a doctor at Hesheng who had been a classmate of the poisoned student—the circle wasn’t big, and through him, Fiona Bennett finally got the name of the victim from back then.

The poisoned student was named Vincent Parker, now working in general surgery at another top hospital in Shanghai. Fiona Bennett got his number and called him directly.

This Dr. Walter Parker was easy to talk to. When Fiona Bennett introduced herself as being from the sponsored class, he warmly greeted her as “senior.” Fiona Bennett said she wanted to ask about the poisoning incident, and before she could explain, Vincent Parker readily agreed, then asked if she knew Gabriel Adams. Fiona Bennett said she did—did Gabriel Adams come to see you? Vincent Parker said Gabriel Adams had arranged to meet him in October, but he was in Beijing for further training at the time, so they agreed to meet in Shanghai in November, but Gabriel Adams never contacted him again.

Fiona Bennett didn’t mention that Gabriel Adams was already dead, worried it would complicate things. The two agreed to meet at noon. Fiona Bennett had wanted to talk directly on the phone, fearing Frank Bishop would get wind of it and set a trap at the hospital, but such a request would be unreasonable and would only arouse Vincent Parker’s suspicion. If she wanted to be completely safe, she shouldn’t investigate this case at all.

They agreed to meet in the cafeteria. Fiona Bennett waited at the entrance for a while, greeting several familiar doctors and nurses, her heart pounding. There were too many people here who knew Frank Bishop; if anyone texted him saying they’d just seen his wife...

A chubby doctor with glasses came up with a big smile and said, “You must be Mr. Leonard Carter, let’s go in and talk while we eat.”

Vincent Parker used his card to buy Fiona Bennett three dishes and a soup, and the two sat facing each other.

“Are you off today, Senior?” Vincent Parker asked. He assumed, since Fiona Bennett introduced herself as being from the sponsored class, that she worked at Hesheng Hospital.

“I left the hospital after a medical accident during my internship.”

Vincent Parker’s expression immediately became awkward.

“That was years ago. I just wasn’t cut out for this line of work. Sorry to call you out of the blue—it’s mainly because a good friend of mine also encountered a suspected thallium poisoning case. Gabriel Adams and I are helping her look into it. I heard you’d experienced something similar, so I wanted to talk to you.” Unable to make up a lie, Fiona Bennett simply told the truth. She didn’t mention Susan Wright’s name, afraid Vincent Parker would overthink it.

“Is it about Susan Wright?”

Fiona Bennett was momentarily stunned, then realized Gabriel Adams must have told him. Luckily, she hadn’t made anything up, or her story wouldn’t have matched.

But now she didn’t know what Gabriel Adams had told him, so she could only nod.