Chapter 1176: Police Officer
She could not imagine, no matter how hard she tried, how these timid, quiet-looking women could have created such a brutal crime scene.
Early the next morning, the police on patrol discovered the third victim.
This time, the victim was the farm's old accountant. He had been hanged beneath a plane tree, but judging by the position of his toes, he had already been strangled to death before being hoisted up. Compared with the first two victims, his death was quite ordinary. The killer had simply ended his life cleanly with a thick hemp rope, with no other signs of torture. Based on the estimated time of death, he had been killed around the same time as the previous victims—at roughly nine o'clock.
The entire farm erupted: three days, three corpses, and the last one had even appeared under police patrol. All the victims had been men from the settlement on the farm's southern side—laborers who could live there all held some standing on the farm, entirely unlike the Shelter Dwellers.
The police began investigating the victim's movements the previous night. After questioning people, several officers could not help cursing that he had brought it upon himself. The old accountant had always lived alone. He had arranged to drink in a nearby town with several friends the night before, but the others had been wary of the recent bloodshed and refused to go with him. He berated them, then left the farm on his bicycle a little after five in the evening... That was the last time anyone saw him.
This dramatic outcome struck every man on the farm like an alarm bell. The police repeatedly ordered everyone in the settlement not to go out at night, especially men. That did not mean women were