The Clue is Broken (Seeking Follow-up Reads on Tuesday!!!)

Audrin was the owner of a fast-food stall on the commercial street.

He was a repeat offender with a long rap sheet and had gone inside twice for theft and selling homemade explosives.

Because of business.

Audrin and the deceased, Kenneth, had even gotten into a fight.

Even worse...

Audrin had not won.

With all those reasons added together, Brian and the others naturally identified him as the prime suspect in the commercial-street food-truck explosion.

Neither Susan nor Brian had expected

that he had actually died before the explosion happened!

Half an hour later, the two drove to Audrin's house.

What surprised Brian was

that Audrin's house was only two streets away from his own place.

This area was full of detached houses from earlier years.

Later, as Los Angeles began decentralizing, large numbers of rich people moved out.

So this area became a gathering place for the homeless.

That meant public security here could hardly be called good.

When Brian and Susan arrived, they saw quite a few Black people and middle-aged or elderly white people in ragged clothes, with messy, dispirited stubble and long hair like weeds, gathered outside the police tape to watch the commotion.

The two pushed through the crowd, showed their IDs, and walked into the house.

The whole house was a very American-style detached two-story wooden house. There was a lawn outside, but it had not been trimmed much and looked withered and yellow. Near the house stood a shabby little doghouse that had long since been abandoned.

There was no one inside the house.

The two passed through the house and came to the backyard.

There was a tree in the backyard, and it did not look like it had been tended much either.

Beside the tree was the entrance to an underground storage room. The door covering the entrance had already been opened.

Ivan and Glenn were sitting off to the side, smoking sullenly, looking as if they were in a bad mood.

Seeing Susan and Brian arrive, Ivan threw away his cigarette butt and said irritably, "Down there is a little privately modified workshop. There are a lot of barrels inside, and the smell is really pungent. There are also some half-finished explosives. Audrin died right on the workbench. That bastard was still secretly making and selling explosives!"

"I'll go down and take a look first."

Brian activated his enhanced sense of smell. After frowning and taking two breaths to adjust, he walked in.

Susan stayed above and spoke with Ivan and Glenn about the process and conclusion of that morning's questioning of the other suspect, Li Sen.

The cellar looked very crude.

In fact, in America, many families with detached houses had a cellar to store appliances and items they did not often use.

But this cellar's function was clearly not that simple.

He went down the stairs.

What entered his sight were some homemade filter barrels.

The liquid inside was turbid, mostly brownish yellow and dark brown overall.

The smell was extremely pungent.

Farther away were some white transparent bags, separated individually and filled with white crystalline powder.

Brian only smelled it from afar and knew what it was.

TATP, also known as Triacetone Triperoxide!

This stuff was a household chemical, often used in furniture-making, coating, and other processes. It had not yet been regulated, was not difficult to obtain, and was the first-choice material for many criminals making homemade explosives.

Clearly, Ivan had been right.

After Audrin was released from prison, for some unknown reason, he had gone back to his old trade. On the surface, he ran a fast-food stall; in secret, he was still making explosives to sell.

Passing these objects and shelves, the body of a Black man slumped over a simple workbench came into view.

On the corpse's left side were several bottles made of unknown material, lying scattered in a mess.

The style of these bottles was exactly the style Old Harden had reconstructed through the technical department's methods—the bottles that had held the explosives in the bombing case!

That settled it!

The explosives that had turned up in the bombing case had, nine times out of ten, been made by Audrin!

This guy might not have been involved, but he definitely knew the killer!

"What a shame. No obsession found."

Brian muttered inwardly, then took a pair of white rubber gloves from his pocket and put them on.

Ever since he had dealt with that detective's corpse, he had carried items like gloves with him at all times.

For an autopsy technician to keep a few gloves on him was perfectly reasonable.

Just as Brian was about to conduct a simple examination of the body, Susan, along with Ivan and Glenn, who had finished smoking, came down as well.

With four people crammed in here, it felt a little crowded.

Covering her nose, Susan immediately noticed the bottles on the workbench and cried out, "Aren't those the explosive bottles Old Harden reconstructed?"

Ivan nodded. "Yes. And those white powdered crystals on the shelves are Triacetone Triperoxide, the substance used to make the explosives in the bombing case. Even if Audrin wasn't the killer involved in the case, he absolutely knew the killer!"

At that, Susan's eyes lit up. "Does that mean there's been a breakthrough in the case?"

Glenn, listless at the side, smiled. "How could it be that simple? If anything, this is where the case starts getting troublesome."

His partner, the burly Ivan, also sighed and nodded.

"Team leader, the easiest cases to solve are single-line cases.

"For example, Audrin hired someone to kill out of a personal grudge, or he killed someone himself.

"For that kind of case, we only have to follow the victim's network of relationships to lock onto a suspect and solve it quickly.

"But once a third party is added, "it means the complexity of the case shoots straight up.

"Especially with someone like Audrin, whose social relationships were complicated.

"Because it becomes very difficult for us to identify the other participant."

While the three of them were talking, Brian had already removed his gloves and quickly completed a preliminary examination of the body.

He interrupted their conversation.

"The victim's preliminary time of death is estimated to be the night of September 29th.

"The cause of death was most likely cardiac arrest caused by inhaling an excessive amount of anesthetic ether. Also, the victim's body probably wasn't moved. Otherwise, the livor mortis formed by his relaxed muscles would be very obvious. That means the killer was confident in their method and may not have been committing a crime for the first time."

Hearing Brian's words, Ivan nodded. "That's about the same as my analysis. But I inferred his cause of death based on the expression on his face before he died. People who die from anesthesia show signs of struggling in their expressions, but because their muscles rapidly lose control, it ultimately turns into a very strange smiling face."

Brian thought of the eerie expression on Audrin's face and nodded.

As expected of an old detective.

He had learned something.

The reason he could analyze all this was entirely because he had smelled it with his nose.

Unfortunately, there were too many chemicals here.

Even with his enhanced Scent, he couldn't pick out the scent left behind by whoever had come three days ago from among the pungent smells of the chemical reagents.

They found nothing useful at the scene of death.

After everyone searched Audrin's home, however, they made an unexpected discovery.

It was two account books.

Audrin's education level was not high.

So the account books he kept were also simple and straightforward.

One of the account books seemed to be a shipping ledger.

Explosives were replaced by X. The number of Xs indicated the number of bottles of explosives.

There was also a string of numbers and a date after each entry.

That likely represented the sale price.

Honestly, they were pretty cheap.

One bottle of explosives cost only fifty dollars.

At such a low price, and with it being an illegal business, there was no need to guess—it was almost certainly all cash transactions.

However, Audrin's shipping frequency was not high.

That made sense too.

Explosives and bullets had completely different effects.

In the land of the free, America could let bullets fly wherever they wanted.

But it could not let explosives blow up indiscriminately.

This was a country with principles!

The other ledger contained donation records.

Yes.

Donations.

Because on the outside of the ledger, there was a heart drawn on it.

Beneath the heart was a pair of hands clasped together.

Audrin had actually been donating to the surrounding homeless shelters and camps every month.

Unfortunately.

Neither of these two ledgers brought Brian and the others any new leads.

With regret, and with Audrin's body, they returned to the police station.

The most likely suspect was dead.

But the leads on this side had gone cold.

Next.

Even Ivan, who had the most experience with cases, was somewhat at a loss.

They had to figure it out.

Audrin, this man who had clashed with the victim yet died the night before the bombing—what role had he played in this bombing, exactly?