North American Detective: I am Proficient in All Kinds of Gun Quick Draws

For some reason, Dean suddenly felt something was off about the way Nico was looking at him... a certain Kiriki-like quality to it.

He instinctively avoided the other's gaze. "Nico, keep talking!"

Obediently, Nico withdrew his gaze. He walked over to the platform covered with photos, picked up a picture of a male victim, and pointed to the rope on it. "If there were two perpetrators in this familicide, one being the seasoned murderer Xiami, and the other a novice, then this rope was very likely handled by the newcomer."

He paused, lowered his head, and sighed.

"Xiami's exposure was unexpected and sudden. There might be skin tissue accidentally left by the newcomer on the rope. Additionally, if we had noticed this at the time and scrutinized Xiami's social circle, finding a matching suspect would have been easy. However, three years have passed. The clues on the rope may no longer exist, and investigating Xiami's connections now would be much more troublesome.

There's something else I can't figure out!"

"Go ahead."

Nico looked up at Dean. "At the time, the police sealed off the villa. Even if the other person was hiding in the garage, they couldn't have escaped our search. But back then, inside the villa, the police didn't find a second living person!"

Where was the accomplice at that time?

Dean spoke casually, "It's possible he couldn't break through his own psychological defenses and escaped on his own after killing the man of the house. It's also possible that, due to his poor performance, he couldn't bear Xiami's verbal humiliation and ran away, his self-esteem shattered."

Generally speaking, many criminals with antisocial personalities actually carry a bit of an 'inferiority complex' before they taste blood! Yes, you heard right—inferiority! Aside from environmental conditioning and inherent psychopathy, individuals grappling with feelings of inferiority, ordinariness, or inadequacy can, under certain triggers, develop a rebellious mindset. They might attempt to harm others of their kind to assert their own strength or to escape their previously mundane lives.

So, Dean's conjecture was logical and well-founded.

"To determine how the other person left is simple: just take a close look at the ligature marks on the male victim's neck and analyze the direction of the force."

With that, Dean searched through the photos on the platform and found one that showed the male victim's neck. The photos were taken not long after the victim's death, so the marks on his neck were still bruised and not as prominent as they would be after rigor mortis had set in.

But this was no issue for Dean. He had seen too many bodies.

"Bruises indented, tending towards... parallel!" Dean exclaimed with a hint of surprise. "There's something not right about how the man died!"

Under normal circumstances, whether the force was applied from the victim's side or back, the ligature marks would show an upward trajectory. Only if the murderer was directly in front of the victim, with hands around the neck and pulling the rope, would it result in parallel marks. This process would allow the murderer to witness the terrifying changes in the victim before suffocation. A criminal novice wouldn't be able to withstand such an intense and direct assault on their psyche.

Moreover, there was another significant issue. Using a rope to strangle someone not only requires great strength but also inevitably leads to crisscrossed marks due to the force applied.

The ligature marks before them were too clean. So clean it seemed like someone had simply pressed the rope against the man's neck to restrict his body's movement! But the male victim was already bound hand and foot at the time!

There was something fishy going on here.

Thinking of this, Dean pulled out the belt from his waist and motioned to Nico. "Come here, I need to verify an idea!"

Nico, puzzled, walked up to Dean. He had already grown accustomed to obeying Dean's commands without conscious resistance.

"This is just an experiment, don't panic!" Dean whispered softly.

What was he talking about? Nico wondered.

The next moment, Dean slammed the belt in his hand onto Nico's neck. Driven by immense strength, Nico, the pretty boy, didn't even have the power to resist. He stumbled backward as Dean forcibly pressed the belt against his neck, pinning him to the wall of the room. The enormous force and sensation of suffocation instinctively made Nico's body struggle.

Fanny and Carol, who were watching, also let out cries of alarm and sharp intakes of breath. Fanny's initial cry was one of surprise. Then, her pitch rose with a melodious tone. She was first shocked by Dean's sudden action, and then further astonished when Dean's movement caused his trousers to slip, revealing the prominently raised 'Dragon Hillock'!

Carol, on the other hand, had been staring straight at the 'Dragon Hillock' from the moment it appeared, her eyes wide with curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. Why were all the male corpses she dissected so undersized, while Dean, so young, already possessed such a formidable 'asset,' like the 'substantial capital' of the 'Turbulent Elephant Dance' age?

Dean paid no attention to the two inexperienced women. He maintained his posture for a full thirty seconds or so, until Nico's face turned purplish-red. Only then did Dean release the belt, calmly pull up his own trousers, buckle his belt, and walk back to the platform to pick up the close-up photo of the ligature marks on the male victim's neck.

PHEW.

Behind him, Nico knelt limply on the ground, gasping for breath, snot and tears streaming down his face, looking utterly disheveled. Dean's inhuman strength had felt like a mountain pressing down on him, rendering him, a mere ant, completely unable to resist. He had almost believed he was really going to be strangled to death. This near-death experience instilled in Nico, who had just started to feel a sense of kinship with Dean, a deep reverence for him. It completely extinguished any thought of ever opposing him again.

Dean glanced at Nico, who was still kneeling on the ground and visibly shaken, then turned to Fanny, whose eyes now held a lake-like ripple. "Fanny, do we have any equipment here to enlarge photos?"

Fanny responded in a strange, drawn-out tone, "We do~" Then, apparently feeling it was inappropriate, she covered her mouth.

She quickly walked to the back of the room, opened a metal cabinet, revealing equipment that resembled the council's independent media broadcasting devices, and pointed at a camera. "This is the magnifier we usually use to discuss detailed clues. As long as the photo is placed on it, the computer can lock onto the focal point and enlarge it five to ten times! However, the result won't be as good as directly enlarging the photo on the computer; it only magnifies the pixelated outlines within the photograph."

"No problem, I'm looking at the outline!" Dean handed the photo to Fanny.

A moment later, the outline of the ligature marks on the male victim's neck, now magnified to fill half the computer screen, appeared before Dean. He examined it closely, moving the camera around, hoping to find what he was looking for.

After a few seconds, two shadowy bulges, almost imperceptible, appeared on the outside of the ligature marks.

Seeing these two symmetrically separated shadows, Dean's lips curled into a smile.

He knew how to find the other criminal now!