TPODN Chapter 50

On the west side of Maoyuan Building stands an old thirteen-story structure named “Diamond Building.” At first glance, Diamond Building doesn’t seem to house any particularly noteworthy companies, except for a large watch sales company on the second floor. It mainly hosts small law firms, small internet companies, and some shell loan companies. The top floor is currently unoccupied.

Wang Linfei, carrying a bag, entered the building.

Although he brushed past several men in suits along the way, no one paid him any attention. After entering the elevator, he didn’t need any tricks to go directly to the top floor. As he exited the elevator, he pressed the button for the first floor to send it back down. Leaving the elevator on the unoccupied top floor would inevitably arouse suspicion.

The stairwell door and the door leading to the roof of the building weren’t locked, allowing anyone to enter and exit freely.

Wang Linfei reached the rooftop. The roar of cars on the highway sounded as if it were right next to him.

Looking towards Maoyuan Building on the east side, Wang Linfei noticed that the curtains in the chairman’s office were drawn. If a BB gun were fired from his current position, the barrel would need to be aimed at a steep upward angle, right?

Wang Linfei took out a laser pointer. Assuming the sniper’s height was approximately 170 centimeters and the point of impact was 15 centimeters below the window, he held the laser pointer in his right hand and operated a full-circle protractor with his left. The angle between the plumb line and the center line of the laser pointer was 107 degrees. This meant the BB gun’s muzzle was at a 70-degree upward angle.

When he had previously entered the chairman’s office, he had used pacing to estimate the size. The distance from the west window to the east door was about nine meters plus a little. He took out a calculator from his pocket and calculated: tan17=0.305730…, therefore 9m × 0.306 = 2.754m. This meant that the point of impact of the bullet, judging from the bullet hole in the window, should be 2.7 meters above. Therefore, it would have hit the ceiling long before that.

Indeed, as Lu Yao had said, the trajectory was parabolic. However, the distance from here to the door was seventeen meters. If the initial velocity of the bullet was calculated at the average speed of an air gun, 170 meters per second, the time from firing to impact would be within 0.1 seconds. The distance fallen during this time would be approximately five centimeters, which could be ignored.

Furthermore, considering the material of the chairman’s office ceiling, it was impossible for there to be no ricochet. If the sniper’s height was lower, and the bullet entered the window right near the top, changing the angle of the laser pointer slightly revealed that the angle only changed by a couple of degrees. Physically calculating it, there was no way the bullet could have hit below the door.

Although Wang Linfei majored in chemistry, he also excelled in physics. It truly proved the saying: “Master mathematics, physics, and chemistry well, and you can go anywhere in the world without fear.”

A gust of hot wind swept through the building, causing him to shiver. Although this side faced the alley, lingering here for too long might attract attention.

If someone wanted to shoot at the chairman’s office, they would definitely choose a late hour when they didn’t have to worry about being seen.

At that moment, Wang Linfei squeezed through the signboard, then examined the steel structure supporting the rooftop signboard from the front. Although it was a two-story tall signboard, there was an iron ladder for maintenance next to it, making it easy to climb.

If the shot was fired from here, the angle would naturally change. The problem was, Wang Linfei couldn’t understand why the culprit had to do it this way.

That being said, if the culprit was afraid of being discovered and didn’t want to come out from the rooftop signboard, it wasn’t impossible for them to snipe from below the signboard.

Wang Linfei climbed up the iron ladder on the west side, careful not to let his head go above the signboard, and moved along the steel structure to the other side.

Upon reaching the west side, he found Maoyuan Building at his feet, with an unobstructed view from the rooftop.

On the rooftop were a small house with a door, a water tower, a lightning rod, a satellite dish, a square box enclosed in wire mesh, and a track that ran around the perimeter of the roof.

Wang Linfei rested his elbows on the steel structure, aimed the laser pointer at the chairman’s office window, and tried again to measure the angle between the center line and the white rough line. This time, it was 71 degrees, looking down 19 degrees.

Without needing to calculate it, he knew that a bullet penetrating the glass with a downward trajectory could indeed hit the floor.

Wang Linfei quickly climbed further up the steel structure. Because he exercised regularly, his fingers were quite strong.

Next, he needed to confirm whether there were small holes in the back of the signboard that could be used for sniping. Unlike the north side facing the road, the east side, which was more than half-covered by buildings, didn’t use any advertising lights. He couldn’t find even a tiny gap on the completely flat steel plate.

The conclusion was now clear. If a shot was fired from the roof of Diamond Building, there was no way it could have created the bullet trajectory that entered the chairman’s office window and impacted the door on the opposite side.

That being said, it didn’t make sense to fire from the buildings behind Diamond Building. Because the range of a typical air gun was only thirty meters, although there were long-range types that could reach over fifty meters, the rooftop signboard would block the view. Therefore, it shouldn’t be possible to aim at the chairman’s office window from any position.

In fact, he had felt something was wrong from the moment he first heard about the sniping. Even without considering the angle, the power of the BB gun used for the shooting was very limited. Furthermore, for a BB to first penetrate the thick glass of the building window and then embed itself in a solid wooden door less than nine meters away was truly unbelievable.

There was no mistake, the culprit was inside the room! And they must have shot the BB gun pellets directly at the door!

Finally, to make it look like it was shot from the outside, they used other methods to create bullet marks on the glass window. Absolutely no mistake!

The problem was the method used. If the bullet hole was made from the inside of the window, the fragments should have fallen on the outside. If no glass fragments were found on the carpet, it would be too unnatural, and passersby might discover the fragments on the road.

The culprit must have made the bullet hole from the inside of the window. If that was the case, then the only place where this could be done was the rooftop of Maoyuan Building.

But, something still felt strange.

Now it was clear that the so-called sniping was just a show. If reasoned with ordinary logic, it should be a preparatory step for the locked-room murder.

However, carefully considering the intention behind these two tricks, they inexplicably diverged in two opposite directions.

Arranging the sniping scene beforehand, the purpose should be to create the impression of an external culprit. Conversely, the locked-room murder clearly wanted everyone to believe that the crime was committed from the inside.

In addition, compared to the ingenious locked-room arrangement, which still had no clues, the sniping incident was full of loopholes and could be easily exposed with a little investigation. The method was too clumsy and couldn’t be believed to be the work of the same person.

Or should the sniping case and the locked-room murder be considered together?

At that moment, the phone in Wang Linfei’s pocket began to vibrate. He looked and saw it was Lu Yao calling.

“Hello.”

“Wang, Captain? Where are you?”

“In a straight line, I’m right in front of you,” Wang Linfei said jokingly.

The conversation suddenly froze, falling into silence for a moment. Lu Yao probably didn’t like playing riddles.

Then, Lu Yao told Wang Linfei about the meeting that had just taken place. When Wang Linfei heard that Liu Zihao had seen him and Lu Yao investigating the Maoyuan Deller Industrial Research Lab, Wang Linfei chose to remain silent for a while.

“Continue,” he said.

“Liu Zihao and the others are gone. I can go to the fifteenth floor right away. I want to talk to you about how to use a caregiving robot to commit murder…” Lu Yao’s voice sounded confident.

“Looks like you’ve made a new discovery,” Wang Linfei said.

“Huh?”

“Did you find new evidence? Or a lead?”

There was another moment of silence.

“…Well, I think I might have a new discovery.”

She seemed to want to leave it at that, but Lu Yao couldn’t help but continue, “I think the mystery of the locked room has been solved, but to be on the safe side, we should still test it. …But, I’ll tell you the details tomorrow. Captain Hu told me to go back immediately to summarize the situation. You still need time to investigate here, right? Captain Hu said you don’t have to return to the bureau; you have the freedom to investigate here.”

“You know it; I’ll be watching. I still have something to do now and do need to investigate freely.”

“Then, please continue to guide me tomorrow.”

“Likewise.”

After ending the call, Wang Linfei peeked out from below the rooftop signboard and looked at the entrance of Maoyuan Building. At that moment, he decided to sneak into the fifteenth floor of Maoyuan Building like a thief…

Lu Yao claimed to have solved the mystery of the locked room, and Wang Linfei was still quite interested. Her confident tone made him a little curious.

…

Two cars drove out of the Maoyuan Building parking lot one after another: a dark brown Mercedes-Benz and a white Toyota sedan. Although he couldn’t see the drivers from below, one of them was probably Liu Zihao’s. The two cars drove together in the direction of Maoyuan Avenue.

Following closely behind was Lu Yao’s Cadillac CT5, which drove away in the direction of Fengyun City Public Security Bureau.

Wang Linfei left the rooftop, carefully and quietly opening the door and locking it properly. He chose not to take the elevator but walked down the stairs to the first floor.

Then, putting on an expression as if nothing had happened, he swaggered in through the front entrance of Maoyuan Building and took the elevator.

He entered the password: “94721.”

Wang Linfei hadn’t asked Minister Xu Hao for the password, because that would arouse suspicion. Although he was from the Fengyun City Public Security Bureau, as a member of the “Special Criminal Investigation Unit,” Wang Linfei still preferred to investigate independently. After analyzing the password numbers beforehand, he finally determined after many tries that the password to the fifteenth floor was “94721.”

Bingo! The button for the fifteenth floor lit up, and the elevator quickly ascended.

The elevator stopped on the fifteenth floor, and the doors opened.

Wang Linfei saw that all the lights on the entire floor were on, which he had anticipated, so he took out a flashlight from his bag. As Wang Linfei exited the elevator, the alarm in the security room went off.

Wang Linfei immediately opened the door to the stairwell, turned around, and hid inside. He hoped that the security guard, seeing that the place was empty, would assume it was a malfunction.

Fortunately, after five minutes, he didn’t hear the sound of the stairwell door being opened. The security guard probably had a preconceived notion that no one could break in to the fifteenth floor under the protection of the password, so he subjectively judged that it was just a momentary malfunction of the motion-activated lights.

If he wanted to leave here, it would be best to wait a while longer. At that moment, Wang Linfei saw that the door leading to the roof was open, so he decided to go up to the roof to take a look.

The sun had completely set. The lights and neon lights all around reflected off the clouds, dyeing them a chaotic gray, with no dark place for the mind to rest. In addition, the rooftop signboard of Diamond Building across the street had lit up at some point, further illuminating the rooftop of Maoyuan Building.

As when he was in the building next door, the roar of cars constantly came from the highway.

He briefly scanned the entire rooftop. Facing the stairwell was the water tower, with the access point locked with a padlock. The center of the roof was occupied by two rows of huge outdoor units, and he could still hear the compressors running at a low hum. On the north side, cleaning gondolas were haphazardly placed, as well as a dangling crane. Almost all the gondolas used by the building were left there to be rained on. Along the outer edge of the building was a track for the gondola to travel on. In addition, there were turntables at the four corners for the gondola to change direction.

Wang Linfei walked along the rooftop track, inspecting the perimeter of the building. He stopped when he reached the west side.

Wang Linfei stepped over the track and walked to the outer edge of the building. Although he didn’t feel afraid of being at such a height, he had to keep his body low to avoid being spotted from below.

Directly below, separated by a rooftop, was Zhou Runming’s chairman’s office.

It was almost impossible to infiltrate Maoyuan Building, where all the windows were securely fitted, without going through the main entrance and side doors. The only possible route was to climb the outer wall of the building or climb from the adjacent building, enter the rooftop first, and then break the door to the stairwell.

However, the outer wall of Maoyuan Building didn’t have any handles like awnings for climbing, and the surroundings were clearly visible. Therefore, climbing was indeed quite difficult. In addition, the height difference with the adjacent building was quite significant, and the distance between them was also too great. Besides, even if he broke the lock to the internal stairwell and successfully infiltrated the fifteenth floor, there were still infrared sensors and surveillance cameras waiting to greet him.

Of course, this hypothesis couldn’t be considered the definitive answer. However, even if it couldn’t be used as an infiltration route, it should be able to function fully in another operation.

Wang Linfei looked down at the outer wall of the building. The west window of the chairman’s office was right in front of him, and the foothold was not a problem. So, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a hole in the glass window at will.

All he needed to do was to choose a very lightweight pointed plumb bob, tie it to a rope of sufficient strength, and use a pendulum motion to strike the glass. Although it wouldn’t be able to deal with the strong double-layered glass currently installed, it shouldn’t be difficult to knock out a small hole resembling a bullet hole if it was ordinary plate glass.

Regarding the sniping case, the method had already been revealed. The question now was, who did this? And what was their purpose?

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