The Longest night

冬至 [11] / [16]

That was a grotesque place for kids to save objects. But Alexander still remembered from his own childhood that something like trash in an adult’s eyes could sometimes be treasure for kids.

“This is a place where people don’t pass by very often,” Ed said.

“People don’t often pass through the district itself. Even residents avoid these alleys. Some children who are born and raised here might wander around more freely,”

Alexander answered.

Someone who is born and raised here, someone who might be very acquainted to this district. Otherwise how could that person know that children played and hid their treasures here?

Alexander and Ed tried to search any CCTV nearby, including in the building itself. But no CCTV was available at all, nor any other such cameras. Alexander identified a camera which seemed to cover the direction of the alley, and boldly made a call to the owner of the house (it was almost 3 a.m.), asking her whether or not he could see the recorded video. The owner answered that it was a fake security camera to keep criminals away, and said no more. She probably went back to sleep.

The roads connected to the deserted building formed a 3-way fork, and from there you had to walk a good distance to get to the side of the main road. The CCTV camera on the roadside was mainly facing toward that big road. You could see only one entrance of the alley dimly, leading to the place where the crime occurred, through that CCTV.

"All we know is the appearance of the victim. We haven't even heard what the suspect looks like," Ed said.

"I know. But how many cars and people go in and out of that alley at 6 p.m. in the evening?"

"What if the suspect is a resident, living in that alley?"

"That might be so. I even thought about comparing every resident who lives there one by one, once we get DNA results. But that should be done much later, the least that we can do now is check who went in or out of the alley."

They went to the control center, and checked the CCTV video. They went back to look at the real-time footage, and no matter if it took them one or 2 days to get through it, they had to keep watching. Even if he watched 48 hours of video at 8 times the speed.

That meant he had to subject his own eyeballs to major punishment. Not very long after, he got too drowsy to keep going on. He and Ed consulted, deciding to check the video in shifts, and he took a little nap while sitting back in the rigid chair.