“About the matter with the senior, I heard a bit about it back then. I didn’t expect that after all these years, it’s still being investigated?”

　　With these words, Fiona Bennett immediately understood that Gabriel Adams must have used the pretense of a police investigation.

　　“But I thought it would be Officer Gregory coming to see me.”

　　“He’s not really available right now, and besides, this matter—until there’s concrete progress—it can’t really be considered a police... well, not exactly an official investigation.”

　　Vincent Parker took a bite of his food, nodded, and said, “It’s always more comfortable chatting with the senior than with Officer Gregory. As for my situation, it was thallium poisoning, but it wasn’t from being poisoned by someone. I doubt it’ll be of much help.”

　　Then, as Vincent Parker ate, he recounted the “anecdote” of his poisoning back then. The details were particularly graphic—only a doctor could talk about such things over a meal without batting an eye.

　　Among medical students, those as squeamish as Fiona Bennett were rare. Especially by the second year, corpses were a common sight, and when it came to guts, everyone tried to outdo each other. So, whether out of curiosity, a desire to stand out, or some other adolescent psychology, things that would sound insane to most people were not unheard of in the medical school—for example, taking certain parts from dissected cadavers back to the dorm.

　　Back in his student days, Vincent Parker looked quite different from his current Buddha-like smiling self. Back then, he had a nickname: “Watson Foster,” named after the white beads he wore around his neck. In Journey to the West, the Curtain-Lifting General wore human skulls around his neck when he ruled the Tongtian River, but Vincent Parker’s white beads were made from human vertebrae, which he thought was very impressive. Later, during a basketball game, the necklace broke, so he gathered the beads and made them into a bracelet. When he wore them around his neck, his skin gradually developed a rash, but he didn’t pay attention. After switching to his wrist, a rash soon appeared there too, and then his wrist started to ache, followed by nausea and vomiting.

　　Needless to say, the problem was with the bone beads. If it had been anyone else, they’d probably have thought a vengeful spirit was after them. But as a medical student, Vincent Parker immediately went for a checkup. At first, nothing was found—thallium poisoning is extremely rare. Vincent Parker secretly asked a classmate to take the bone beads to the toxicology lab for testing. After more than half a month of back and forth, they finally detected thallium in the beads, which led to the diagnosis of thallium poisoning: thallium from the human bones had entered his body through skin contact. Although the symptoms weren’t especially severe, Vincent Parker was tested for toxins in the hospital for so long that the school formed an investigation team. Vincent Parker didn’t dare tell the team about wearing human bone beads—getting caught stealing human tissue would have meant serious punishment—so in the end, the school never figured out where the thallium came from.

　　Fiona Bennett sat across from Vincent Parker, listening to his story, finding it utterly bizarre—poison from human bones absorbed through the skin.

　　“So where did the bones come from?” Fiona Bennett asked in bewilderment. “Were they really from a cadaver used for dissection? But can someone who died of poisoning be used for medical dissection?”

　　“Normally, no—unless the hospital didn’t know the cause of death was thallium poisoning. As for the origin of the bones...”

　　Vincent Parker paused, took a few more bites, then looked up and smiled at Fiona Bennett: “They were from your class.”

　　“A cadaver from our class?” Fiona Bennett was shocked. Her first reaction was disbelief, but then she suddenly recalled a strange, unsolved case from the sponsored class.

　　Vincent Parker didn’t keep her in suspense and continued explaining the origin of the bones.

　　“One time, I went to your class’s boys’ dorm to hang out and saw a guy using a power tool to grind bones. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he wanted to make a string of beads for fun. I thought it was a cool idea, so I took a few vertebrae. Who would have thought the bones weren’t clean? After I found out the bones were toxic, I went back to warn him, but he said I’d taken so many that he couldn’t make a full string with the rest, so he just threw them away. Talk about bad luck for me. He actually dodged a bullet.”

　　Fiona Bennett quickly asked, “Who was the one grinding the bones?”

　　“Matthew Mitchell,” Vincent Parker replied.

　　The only classmate whose handwriting had never been analyzed. Was it just a coincidence that his name came up here?

　　Fiona Bennett asked again, “When you went there, did you see vertebrae? Were there any other bones?”

　　“I think there were some ribs too.”

　　With that, everything matched up with Fiona Bennett’s memories.

　　“Was that in January 1998?” Fiona Bennett confirmed again.

　　“Yes. Right before winter break.”

　　It was in January 1998, not long after Susan Wright’s death, that something strange happened in the sponsored class. After the anatomy course ended, when the medical cadavers were being collected, one of the bodies mysteriously disappeared. Fiona Bennett remembered it clearly, because the missing cadaver was the one she and Susan Wright had dissected together. Everyone said they hadn’t seen it, but who would steal an entire cadaver? Or was it like those stories in the pine woods, where the corpse got up and walked away? Even though the medical school had plenty of cadavers, a missing one still had to be found. For days, Harold Rogers racked his brains, and then, around the third day, the body turned up in the pine woods. The first thing found was a right hand, stuck in a small tree hollow, then the head, left hand, both legs, and pelvis. The body had been dismembered and scattered in different places in the woods. Even for medical students, it was frightening. The school thought it was a prank, did a token investigation, and then dropped it when nothing turned up.

　　But Fiona Bennett remembered very clearly that the collected body parts couldn’t be reassembled into a complete cadaver—the chest was never found. At the time, everyone assumed the chest must have been buried under some tree in the pine woods. It wasn’t a murder case, so there was no need to dig up the whole forest. Now, Fiona Bennett finally knew where the chest had gone.

　　Probably only the flesh and tissue from the chest were buried—organic matter like that decomposes quickly in soil and soon disappears without a trace. The bones—specifically, the ribs and vertebrae—were much harder to dispose of. From Vincent Parker’s account, it seemed Matthew Mitchell never intended to make beads, but rather to grind the bones into powder and destroy all evidence.

　　At that moment, Fiona Bennett felt like crying and laughing at the same time. There was no concrete evidence, but she already understood how Susan Wright had died.

　　Scenes of dissecting with Susan Wright flashed before her eyes like slides. In those moments, there was a big difference between her and Susan Wright—or rather, Susan Wright was different from everyone else in the class. Everyone else wore gloves during dissection, but Susan Wright didn’t—she used her bare hands! The teacher had once joked that if a student could dissect with bare hands, they’d develop a finer sense of touch and improve their skills faster. Susan Wright always wanted to stand out, so she was the only one who actually did it.

　　Someone must have smeared thallium on the chest tissue of the cadaver, so Susan Wright, who didn’t wear gloves, was poisoned again.

　　All of Susan Wright’s previous symptoms matched thallium poisoning, caused by long-term, low-dose exposure. When she was already extremely weak, her skin came into direct contact with a large dose of thallium, which became the final straw, triggering a massive toxic reaction and multi-organ failure.

　　The disappearance of the cadaver was, of course, a ruse to cover up the traces. The other parts could be recovered by the school, but the entire chest—flesh and bone—had to be destroyed to be truly safe.

　　Such a method—killing without spilling blood.

　　By this point, the mastermind could no longer hide from Fiona Bennett. Matthew Mitchell—it had to be Matthew Mitchell, it could only be Matthew Mitchell!

　　Not just because his handwriting was never analyzed, not just because he was the one grinding bones in the dorm, but also because he was the only one in the sponsored class who had interned in the toxicology lab! Thallium isn’t something you can find just anywhere—even in medical school, only the toxicology lab would have it.

　　Vincent Parker also told Fiona Bennett that after Gabriel Adams first contacted him, he told Matthew Mitchell about it, since the bones had come from him. Over the years, Matthew Mitchell had worked as a pharmaceutical rep and had many dealings with Vincent Parker.

　　Fiona Bennett’s lips began to tremble. She forced herself to stay calm and asked Vincent Parker, “So what did Matthew Mitchell say to you?”

　　“He just told me to tell the truth,” Vincent Parker replied. “He said it was just a silly prank from back then, nothing worth hiding.”

　　Fiona Bennett clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. Of course, what else could Matthew Mitchell say? Was he supposed to beg Vincent Parker not to tell the truth? He could only use the time before Vincent Parker met with Gabriel Adams to kill Gabriel Adams!

　　Back at her place, Fiona Bennett collapsed onto her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

　　It really was Matthew Mitchell. But why? What kind of irreconcilable hatred did he have with Susan Wright?

　　Tears streamed down her face, and she didn’t even notice.

　　Gabriel Adams, I’ve found the real culprit. I followed your path, chasing after the fleeting hem of your coat, stumbling through the mud, and then, before I knew it, I ended up here.