"How did he die?"
Maltz pressed.
"His throat was slit!
He was in a cellar in his own home-it was so well hidden that even the family's butler had no idea when someone had dug it out."
The patrol officer answered immediately.
Arthur and Maltz exchanged a glance. Both thought of Clay, who had died the same way.
"Could this be a serial killer?"
The old chief instinctively asked the young Medium.
"Similar crimes, different motives. Maltz, send more officers to question those thirty-odd young people and find out who's still alive."
Arthur said.
Maltz froze.
"You're saying... they're silencing witnesses?"
The old chief asked tentatively.
"If that's the case, things will be simple."
Arthur spoke softly, secretly directing Muninn to take flight and search for the things she cared about most at that moment.
Beside him, Maltz shouted-
"Dico, get everyone moving!
Hurry, hurry, hurry!"
The old chief urged them on repeatedly.
Apart from Hunter and Newt, who stayed to watch the scene, everyone else from the Shire District Police Department sprang into action.
Squatting outside 17 Xilin Street, the old chief rubbed his aching brow.
The cases lately had left him utterly drained.
After more than thirty years on the force, the old chief felt as though he had spent those decades as a fake policeman. He had caught petty thieves on otherwise uneventful days, arrested a couple of robbers a week, and encountered a murder only once every two weeks or so. A serial murder case might not come along even once a year.
And now?
There was a murder every day.
Serial killings were practically routine.
Were we just too incompetent to encounter them before?
Or...
Have the gears of fate begun to turn?
As these thoughts ran through the old chief's mind, he suddenly said