chapter 3
Master enlarged the size 42 shoe print on the screen and asked everyone to look for anything unusual.
No one thought there was anything unusual.
Master said in a low voice, “Look closely at the shoe print.”
“It was left on relatively soft ground, but it’s completely flat.”
“That means every point bears the same amount of force.”
“A normal person’s shoe print on soft soil wouldn’t be perfectly flat.”
“Because the pressure points and force of the foot can’t be distributed perfectly evenly.”
We couldn’t help but nod after hearing this.
He continued to analyze, “There’s only one possibility: the person wearing the shoe put a hard, flat object inside as an insole, something like a wooden board.”
“This way, he wouldn’t leave the actual size of his foot, so the person wearing the shoe doesn’t have size 42 feet.”
“The shoe print has no fuzzy edges, which means this person’s foot is smaller than size 42.”
Old Liu’s voice was low as he analyzed, but since no one spoke, it sounded especially clear.
Then he took out a Candy Wrapper: “This was found near the scene.”
“But this Candy Wrapper is from a type of candy popular decades ago. It’s no longer available on the market.”
“The paper has become brittle, which means it wasn’t produced recently.”
“Who would bring such an old Candy Wrapper to the scene?”
“That’s the second suspicious point.”
With Master’s analysis, it was obvious that Zhao Dahong’s death was not an accident.
Captain Jiang personally led the formation of an Investigation Team, with Master as the main force.
Early the next morning, Master took me back to Zhao Village.
On the way to the village, I asked Master, “Since what I said was wrong, why did you say I have observational skills?”
Master said, “Because you noticed suspicious points.”
“But the biggest taboo for an investigator is to ‘rationalize’ suspicious points on their own.”
“Every suspicious point must be ruled out based on evidence, not imagination.”
“What about logical reasoning?” I thought of countless detective novels solved by logical deduction.
“For an investigator, the most rigorous logical reasoning is a complete chain of evidence.” He answered simply and decisively.
At the time, I never imagined that such an ordinary-looking case would eventually shock the whole country.