Script Murder's Method of Solving Cases

The tall police officer looked Lin Qiye over and gave a slight nod.

Lin Qiye, however, felt nervous. Tian Nina's eldest uncle's eyes were far too sharp.

That gaze felt as if he were inspecting him on behalf of Tian Nina's father, sending a chill down his spine.

Fortunately, the tall police officer had only glanced at him out of professional instinct.

He continued, "Although the scene is messy, most of the places that were searched were where valuables were kept. Combined with the fact that the door lock wasn't damaged, we suspect the perpetrator opened the door and entered, and was very likely someone familiar with the inside of the dorm room. But after questioning, all three of them insist they weren't at the scene when the crime happened."

"Then what do we do?" Tian Nina asked.

"We need to investigate further. It definitely won't be settled today. I still have other cases to look into." After Tian Nina's eldest uncle finished speaking, he called inside, "Are the scene photos done? If they are, we're heading to the next reported location."

Another police officer walked out from inside and lifted the camera, indicating they were finished.

Then Tian Nina's eldest uncle and his fellow officer simply left.

"That's it?"

Lin Qiye, who had originally been looking forward to watching the case-solving process from the sidelines, felt a little disappointed.

An electronic voice sounded in his ears.

In locked-room-like cases, they may seem difficult to solve from a logical standpoint, but the key lies in discovering the problem with the logic itself.

The simplest method of deduction is to have the suspects prove themselves, then look for suspicious points by checking the timeline, and use those to work backward to logical contradictions.

The specific method is to have all three recount their separate experiences before the incident at the same time and record them. The process must be quick, without giving the suspect too much time to think, then find the suspicious points within.

This pattern felt so familiar. Wasn't this just the Script Murder routine?

Lin Qiye whispered with Tian Nina for a while.

Tian Nina's eyes lit up, and she praised him, "You really are a genius. We'll do it your way."

She entered the dorm room and said to the three female university students inside, "Let's play a deduction game to solve the case. We can use it to find more clues, and maybe we'll even crack the case."

The three female university students were hesitant at first, but when the girls from the neighboring dorm heard it was a game, they all came over to watch. Under the crowd's urging, the three of them agreed instead.

He was in a girls' dorm, being watched by a huge crowd of girls, and he couldn't let his eyes wander either, in case he saw something he shouldn't.

Lin Qiye felt somewhat constrained.

He could only say in an extremely proper manner, "The game isn't complicated. I need each of you to write down in detail what you did from the time you left the dorm room until the time you returned. You have no more than ten minutes."

The three girls followed his instructions and took out paper and pens.

Because the time limit was very short, the three of them barely had time to think. They each recalled what had happened last night and wrote it all down on paper.

Lin Qiye signaled to Tian Nina. "Read out the contents."

Tian Nina picked up the first sheet of paper:

"Fang Ya.

At five in the afternoon, she went outside to mail a letter and stayed at the post office for about forty minutes.

Then she went to the supermarket to buy some snacks and spent twenty minutes there.

After that, she went with a friend to the shops around Fallen Street to look at clothes and stayed for about an hour.

Then she went alone to Yonghua Restaurant for dinner. It should have taken forty minutes, and finally she returned to the dorm."

A group of girls took out paper and pens to take notes. This kind of group deduction game was extremely immersive.

One of the girls even stepped forward voluntarily, saying she was the friend who had gone clothes shopping with Fang Ya.

Seeing everyone so engaged, Tian Nina became even more enthusiastic.

She picked up the second sheet of paper.

"Xiao Xia.

She left the dorm room at five in the afternoon and went to Furun Commercial Building in Jiangbei to watch a movie, which took about two hours.

After that, she had dinner at a restaurant on the fifth floor of Furun Commercial Building and spent an hour there.

She returned to the dorm at around eight."

The third sheet of paper.

"Qin Yuelu.

She also left the dorm room at five o'clock and went straight to the school computer classroom, where she studied for about an hour and a half.

After that, she went to a café and chatted with a friend for about an hour and a half, then returned to the dorm."

The three statements had been read out.

Before Lin Qiye and Tian Nina could summarize, the girls began discussing it all at once.

"The three of them all went out at the same time. Fang Ya returned to the dorm around eight, Qin Yuelu was also at eight, and Xiao Xia was also at eight."

"Then that means they went out at the same time and came back at about the same time. During those three hours, one of them secretly ran back."

"Who on earth was it? My head hurts. I can't figure it out."

Lin Qiye spoke quietly with Tian Nina. "Look at what you recorded earlier."

The little notebook was opened, and written inside were the questions Tian Nina's uncle had asked.

The two of them went through it line by line and began analyzing it.

"Fang Ya said she arrived last. Qin Yuelu and Xiao Xia were already in the dorm before her."

"Qin Yuelu called the police. She was the first one back to the dorm."

"Xiao Xia was the second one back. In her statement, she said Fang Ya and Qin Yuelu even had an argument."

This time, without needing the Intelligent AI to analyze it, Lin Qiye spotted something himself and smiled. "I found it. Did you notice?"

Tian Nina quickly waved a hand. "Don't say it yet. Let me think."

So anxious she was breaking into a sweat, she looked over the notes in her hands again and again, but still couldn't spot the difference.

"What did you find? Why can't I find it?"

"Keep looking. The logic is actually very simple. The key is in the details." Lin Qiye was in no hurry to reveal it. Things like this were most interesting only when people discovered them for themselves.

"Could it be Xiao Xia? She took the initiative to reveal that Fang Ya and Qin Yuelu hated each other because they were fighting over a boyfriend. Could she have been trying to divert attention and use that to cover up something?"

"That isn't evidence, but it does have something to do with her."

Tian Nina continued racking her brains. Now that she had a direction, it wasn't hard to find the suspicious point.

"I've got it. The timing is wrong."

Once she had the answer, Tian Nina stepped forward excitedly.

"I found it!"

The arguing stopped instantly, everyone waiting for the mystery to be revealed.

"They all said they stayed outside for three hours before returning to the dorm, but the truth can stand up to scrutiny. Lies can't."

Tian Nina pointed at Xiao Xia, and the calm she had been pretending to maintain vanished instantly, leaving her face full of panic.

The reveal continued.

"She said she went to Furun Commercial Building in Jiangbei to watch a movie, which took about two hours. After that, she had dinner at a restaurant on the fifth floor of Furun Commercial Building, which took an hour, then returned to the dorm at eight. It looks reasonable, but think carefully. Taking a car to Furun Building in Jiangbei takes twenty minutes. A round trip is forty minutes. Where did the extra time go?"

As all eyes gathered on Xiao Xia, Tian Nina continued, "Obviously, she carefully fabricated a lie, but because she was pressed for time, she didn't think it through. That was why she slipped up in the chaos."

As soon as those words came out, the seemingly polished lie was immediately exposed.

The two roommates looked at Xiao Xia in stunned disbelief.

"How could it be you?"

"Why?"

Under the scrutiny of countless gazes, Xiao Xia lowered her head and said nothing.

Tian Nina added another weighty sentence. "Talk. You can't talk your way out of this. As long as it's fake, it won't survive an investigation."

That sentence nearly made Xiao Xia collapse. Sobbing, she replied, "I'm sorry. I really had no choice. They forced me."

"Who was forcing you?" Lin Qiye asked.

"Loan sharks." Through tears, Xiao Xia explained what had happened.

She had always wanted to buy an iPhone, but the price of over four thousand yuan made her hesitate.

Later, while browsing online, she saw an advertisement saying she could get a genuine iPhone 5 for eight hundred yuan.

As if possessed, she clicked the ad, only to learn that it was a purchase through installment payments.

She thought that if she saved a little afterward and paid off the remaining balance, it wouldn't be too hard.

So Xiao Xia chose to agree.

That same day, someone called her, and they even sent a person to her door to sign the contract.

Just like that, she got the phone—and the nightmare began.

She never expected that what she had signed was a high-interest loan contract. Every month, she had to pay a large amount of interest. By last night, she could no longer afford to pay it back, so she begged for an extension.

There was no such easy thing. The other party threatened that if she still didn't repay the money, she would have to take nude photos as prepaid interest.

Forced into a corner, Xiao Xia had come up with the idea of stealing her roommate's money.