Forty-eight hours.
That was the statutory limit for police to hold a suspect under a summons.
Interrogation room two. The incandescent light gave off a harsh glare.
Kannazuki sat in the iron interrogation chair, his hands flat on the panel in front of him. He had not slept for two days and two nights.
His eyes were bloodshot. Dark stubble had sprouted along his chin.
His back remained straight. His breathing held steady at sixteen breaths a minute.
Ryuk squatted in the middle of the interrogation table.
He held a Red Fuji apple.
He had stolen it from the officers' break room at the end of the hallway.
He took huge bites of the apple. Juice ran down his jagged fangs and dripped onto the iron tabletop, then passed through the metal and vanished.
The iron door swung open.
Chen Lei strode in. His police uniform was covered in creases, his eyes sunken. He carried a kraft paper document envelope.
Bang.
Chen Lei slammed the envelope onto the table.
The dull impact echoed between the soundproofed walls.
Chen Lei pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.
He reached up and undid the top two buttons of his uniform.
"Let's talk probability." Chen Lei unwound the white string securing the envelope.
He pulled out five sheets of A4 paper, laid them in a row, and pushed them toward Kannazuki.
They were high-resolution surveillance stills. Garish red circles marked each image. Inside every circle was Kannazuki in his yellow outdoor jacket.
Chen Lei tapped the stills.
"Zhao Gang, Splendid Garden. Wang Hu, People's Hospital.
Zhang Wei, Riverside Road. Sun Ming, Grand Hyatt Hotel. Lei Bao, Golden Sand Building." Chen Lei listed the names and locations.
"Five murders. Five victims.
When each crime occurred, you were within three kilometers of the scene."
Chen Lei braced both hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward, closing the distance between himself and Kannazuki.
"Linhai City has eight million permanent residents. Thirty-two thousand delivery riders. Yet it was you. Five times. Every single one."
Kannazuki lowered his gaze to the stills on the table.
"Captain Chen. I'm a full-time delivery rider." Kannazuki's voice was terribly hoarse from dehydration.
"I'm online twelve hours a day.
I travel an average of a hundred and fifty kilometers daily.
Linhai City's central urban area covers only a hundred and twenty square kilometers.
The dispatch system assigns orders based on proximity and routes riders to high-demand areas."
Kannazuki raised his head and looked Chen Lei straight in the eye.
"Hospitals, hotels, upscale residential complexes, office towers. They're all delivery hotspots.
I pass through those areas more than fifty times a day.
Three kilometers takes only six minutes on an electric scooter. That's my working radius."
"You pulled my order records. When the murder at Splendid Garden happened, I was delivering Mala Tang.
When the murder at People's Hospital happened, I was delivering fever medicine. When the murder at Grand Hyatt Hotel happened, I was delivering hangover soup.
Every order has a real customer, a payment record, and recorded calls.
I never strayed from the routes set by the navigation system."
Kannazuki spoke evenly, without the slightest fluctuation in emotion.
"That's survivorship bias. You started with the crime scenes, then cast a big-data net over them.
That net caught more than just me. It caught bus drivers, taxi drivers, and sanitation workers, too.
You simply picked me.
Captain Chen, you're working backward from the outcome.
In criminal investigation, that's called a presumption of guilt."
Chen Lei stared at Kannazuki. He did not argue.
The data and logic Kannazuki had presented were airtight.
Circumstantial evidence and probabilistic inference could not serve as grounds for a conviction.
Chen Lei gathered up the stills. He took out a thick interrogation transcript.
"Let's talk about Golden Sand Building." Chen Lei bent his fingers and rapped on the table. "A presumption of guilt?
In the five minutes before Lei Bao died, you were the only person who entered that room. Tell me the whole sequence again.
Don't change a single word."
Kannazuki leaned back in his chair.
"I accepted the order at two thirty in the morning. Basement level two of Golden Sand Building. Three servings of seafood congee and fifty sets of grilled skewers.
Three knocks, a one-second pause, then two more knocks. Four enforcers opened the door. They confiscated my phone, helmet, and scooter keys.
They searched me with a metal detector."
"I carried the delivery inside. Lei Bao was sitting on the sofa with his back to me, watching the surveillance feeds. I put the food on the coffee table.
The plastic bag slipped out of my hand, and congee spilled onto Lei Bao's trouser leg. He turned around, slapped me, and kicked me in the stomach.
An enforcer gave me five hundred yuan. I took the money and left."
Kannazuki finished and closed his mouth.
Chen Lei leafed through the transcript. This was Kannazuki's sixth account in forty-eight hours. The timing, the sequence of actions, the dialogue-nothing had changed.
"Your on-time delivery rate is a hundred percent. Your positive rating is a hundred percent." Chen Lei closed the transcript. "You're an experienced rider who's been delivering food for three years. Why was that particular night the one time you couldn't even hold on to a plastic bag?"
"An underground casino. Dozens of gamblers. Four enforcers carrying weapons."
Kannazuki answered, "I'm just a delivery rider. I was scared. My palms were sweaty, and the bag slipped. Is that so unreasonable?"
Chen Lei gave a short, cold laugh.
"Lei Bao died of suffocation." Chen Lei fixed his eyes on Kannazuki's face. "He suddenly went berserk and stuffed the chips and cash on the table into his mouth until he suffocated himself.
The forensic finding was an acute myocardial infarction caused by mechanical asphyxia."
Chen Lei leaned forward, pressing both hands against the tabletop.
"What was in the seafood congee? A hallucinogen? A neurotoxin? By spilling the congee, you released the drug into the air, or let it enter his body through skin contact. We checked your purchase history. You bought weed killer and rat poison. Didn't you?"
Kannazuki looked at Chen Lei.
"Captain Chen." Kannazuki leaned forward, closing the distance between them. "Police investigations require evidence.
Lei Bao didn't take a single sip of the seafood congee. If it contained a hallucinogen, why didn't the four enforcers at the scene go berserk?
I live on the ground floor in the old district. The drains back up. There are plenty of rats and weeds.
You searched my rented room. Those chemicals were sitting untouched under the sink. Was there paraquat or bromadiolone in Lei Bao's body?"
Kannazuki raised both hands. The handcuff chain clinked sharply.
"If you had a report proving that, I'd be in the detention center right now, not here assisting your investigation."
Chen Lei leaned back in his chair. He clamped his mouth shut.
Frustration spread through Chen Lei's chest. Lao Liu, the forensic examiner, had dissected Lei Bao's body three times.
Blood, gastric fluid, hair, beneath the fingernails. All clean.
There were no traces of any synthetic chemicals or natural toxins. The test results for the remaining seafood congee had come back, too. Nothing but rice and seafood.
Dead silence settled over the interrogation room.
Ryuk threw the apple core at Chen Lei. It passed through Chen Lei's head and fell to the floor.
"Gah-ha-ha-ha!" Ryuk slapped his thighs and laughed.
Kannazuki turned to look at the digital clock on the wall.
The red digits changed.
15:59.
16:00.
Four o'clock in the afternoon.
Bang.
The interrogation room's heavy iron door burst open under a tremendous force. Its hinges screeched under the strain.
A young officer rushed into the room.
Sweat covered his head, and his face was deathly pale. He clutched a fax sheet in his hand.
"Captain Chen." The young officer's voice trembled. He had completely forgotten interrogation protocol.
Chen Lei sprang to his feet. His chair slid half a meter backward with an earsplitting scrape.
"Where's your discipline?" Chen Lei snapped.
"Something happened at the detention center." The young officer gasped for breath and handed Chen Lei the fax. "Li Jianguo is dead."
Chen Lei snatched the fax from him. His eyes swept over the page.
"Cause of death?" Chen Lei's voice tightened.
"He bashed his head against a wall." The young officer swallowed. "Half an hour ago, at three thirty this afternoon. Li Jianguo suddenly went berserk in the interrogation room and smashed his head against the iron panel. His skull shattered."
Chen Lei's hand clenched around the fax. The paper crackled sharply.
"What did he do before he died?" Chen Lei asked.
"He asked to see the Special Task Force." The young officer's voice grew quieter, carrying a fear he could not conceal.
"He asked for paper and a pen. He wrote for a full twenty-five minutes.
He wrote a suicide note. It was filled with lists of bribe recipients and the Construction Group's money trails.
It implicated the top officials of several districts in the city. As soon as he finished the last word, he smashed his head against the panel and died."
Chen Lei stood frozen.
The Construction Group. A list of bribe recipients. The detention center.
A fully sealed environment. Round-the-clock surveillance with no blind spots. Armed Police guarding it at all hours.
Chen Lei slowly turned his head. His gaze settled on Kannazuki.
Kannazuki sat in the chair, his hands resting flat, his expression calm.
Forty-eight hours.
Kannazuki had been pinned to this interrogation chair the entire time.
There were surveillance cameras in the hallway and guards outside the door. Kannazuki had not touched any communication device or met with anyone.
At the time of Li Jianguo's death, Kannazuki had been sitting across from Chen Lei.
A perfect alibi.
The chain of logic collapsed completely.
Kannazuki looked at Chen Lei.
"Captain Chen." Kannazuki spoke without a ripple in his voice. "My summons period is up.
Can I go back to delivering food now?"
Before you continue