There Were Plenty of Such Cases

The police car pulled up in front of an old building.

Of course, the two officers who had driven there were no longer outside. They were now inside an apartment on the building's second floor, accompanied by several forensic technicians.

Without a doubt, this was a murder case. Ordinarily, a crime scene like this should have had at least several times as many personnel as were present now.

But this time, there were clearly more forensic personnel searching for evidence than officers maintaining order and looking for clues—as for "maintaining order," that amounted to nothing more than putting up a cordon downstairs, which was not even being guarded.

The reason was not that the officers responsible for maintaining order in the city were shirking their duties or refusing to act—though the city had long been notorious for its poor public safety. The truth was that last night, there had been not only a major hostage-taking incident, but also an assassination attempt on the Council Chairman of the Senate while he was on his way home. At the same time, the local police chief, Jose, had been shot dead by criminals inside a theater. The entire police system had consequently fallen into extraordinary disarray, while large numbers of officers had been reassigned.

All sorts of circumstances had ultimately resulted in only two officers arriving at the scene.

"Mrs. Riley, please repeat that. You're the owner of this house, correct?" One of the officers was holding a recorder toward Mrs. Riley.

Mrs. Riley said, "Yes. My husband left this house to me. There are currently four tenants."

On the other side, the second officer was questioning Arno, the tenant of the apartment where the murder had occurred.

Naturally, the questioning here was much more thorough. The officer had not only turned on