A HINT
"I went back and reviewed the market surveillance footage again, and I found you. I'm guessing you went to buy meat, took the opportunity to slip the butcher a laxative, and stole his bone-cleaver while you were at it," Marcus Shaw said.
Vera Magnus smiled. "You watched all those hours of footage and only just noticed? Are your eyes there for breathing?"
Marcus Shaw rested his chin on his hand, blinked, and said, "At the time, we were only screening for suspicious males. Based on the crime scene, the killer's height and strength all pointed to a man. Not to mention you staged a sexual assault on the body."
Her lips curled upward.
"You'd already studied the victim's routine. You were waiting for the right moment when you overheard her arguing with the butcher—so you seized the opportunity and framed him."
"Heaven helped me."
Marcus Shaw didn't take the bait. "That morning, after stealing the knife, you took a shortcut and staked out Building Five, waiting for Vince Conrad's mother to come home from the market. The stairwell was pitch-black. You were afraid of missing or hitting the wrong spot, so you wore night-vision goggles—we found them in your room at the inn. You've spent years at construction sites. Your upper body strength is far greater than you let on the day we met. As for your height, I'm guessing you jumped when you struck—which explains the angle of the wound on the back of her head."
She said nothing, her expression playing with him.
"There's one thing I'm curious about, though. Weren't you afraid someone might pass by and catch you in the act?"
Vera Magnus gave an exaggerated grin. "I'd rehearsed it in my head a hundred times. She walks in, I jump and strike. One blow doesn't do it, I swing again. After that, drag her aside, pull down her pants, and violate her with a stick I'd already sheathed in a condom—jammed in a few times for good measure, then gone. The whole thing takes under ten seconds. Over in a flash. How unlucky would I have to be for someone to walk in at that exact moment?"
Marcus Shaw went rigid, his face blank. It took a long time before he said, "Cruel. Efficient. And your frame-job was successful. I circled around that butcher for quite a while."
He checked Zack's transcript, pointed out two passages for him to amend, then turned back. "As for Gordon Pike—you also researched his work schedule in advance, knew he always delivered to that address. So you went in the middle of the night and covered the surveillance camera with black tape. Then, while he was upstairs making a delivery, you tampered with his motorcycle. Correct? Workers at your old site confirmed you're good with engines—motorcycles, scooters, that sort of thing."
Vera Magnus ran her tongue across her lips. "You're only half right."
Marcus Shaw's eyes widened. "There's more?"
"Here's a hint: why was it always him delivering to that fat guy?"
Marcus Shaw thought for a moment, then slapped his thigh. "The dispatch system! You had the hacker infiltrate the food delivery platform and manipulated the algorithm?"
Vera Magnus smiled. "Not bad—you're not as dumb as I thought. The platform never noticed because everything else was untouched. I just tied him and the fat man together with a string. No matter how many other riders were in the area, no matter which restaurant the fat man ordered from, the instant he placed an order, the system assigned it to Gordon Pike. He couldn't dodge it if he tried. The camera goes dark, and I have all the time in the world."
Marcus Shaw exhaled. "Even if he was in the wrong back then, he'd turned his life around. He was making an honest living delivering food, hadn't done anything wrong since—in fact, he'd even acted bravely to help someone, looking for a chance to make amends..."
Vera Magnus cut him off: "Turned his life around? Maybe he did. But can Shane and Sean come back to life?"
---
Marcus Shaw was quiet for a long time. He sensed that she'd calmed as well, and only then continued. "So why did you kill Holly Chen? The food company case didn't seem connected to him."
Vera Magnus shifted her posture. It took her a while to answer. "He didn't deserve to be called a teacher."
"You mean his sexual abuse of female students? If you had evidence, you could have reported him directly."
Vera Magnus let out three sharp, forceful laughs—each one like a burst from a heavy machine gun.
"Those girls were none of my business! Sean and I worked ourselves to the bone earning money to put Shane through school, all so he could get a diploma, change his destiny, make the family proud. But that scum treated Shane like dirt from the start. Made him stand for entire class periods guarding the trash can at the back of the room. He saw we were outsiders, uneducated people with nothing to offer him, so he tormented Shane every way he could—destroyed any desire the boy had to study."
Her face was crimson now, a vein bulging at her left temple.
Marcus Shaw hadn't expected this backstory.
"If that scum had just taught Shane properly—I wouldn't even ask him to be kind. If he'd treated him like an ordinary student, Shane wouldn't have given up on school and gone off to sell his life for someone else."
For an instant, Marcus Shaw's mind drifted. He remembered the day Danny was accepted into the provincial teachers' college. His brother had raced all the way home, admission letter in hand, and flung himself into Marcus Shaw's arms like a child. "I got in, I got in! Only three in the whole school made the cut! Not bad, right? Your little brother's all right!"
After his death, Marcus Shaw had checked his college entrance scores: 657—easily enough for admission to Jilin University. But he'd never know. He'd never again run down a street, waving his acceptance letter.
If that accident hadn't happened, he'd have finished his first year by now. His teachers and classmates would surely have liked him...
The scrape of Vera Magnus's chair jolted Marcus Shaw back.
He coughed into his fist, composed himself, and said, "So you used the sex scandal to blackmail him?"
Vera Magnus thrust her chin out. "He was human garbage. I killed him and cleaned up the school. What's wrong with that?"
"We have education authorities, law enforcement, and the courts. No matter how despicable he was, it's not your place to be the executioner."
She shifted in her seat again, the metal legs shrieking against the floor like a whip cracking through the silence.
"Where did you get the video evidence? Did you fabricate it?"
"Shane told me about him abusing the female students. He poked a hole in his book bag and left his phone at school after class, trying to record that scum's crimes. He tried multiple times—wrong angle, wrong timing—but once he finally captured a clip. Unfortunately, the battery died. He only got the beginning, never reaching the, shall we say, exciting part."
"Exciting? You two considered that exciting?"
Vera Magnus didn't respond, just gave him a flat look.
"Shane Mercer recorded this to report him?"
"Report him? We don't believe in that system. Shane wanted leverage—make the man stop harassing him, maybe squeeze out some spending money."
Marcus Shaw gave a cold laugh. "And this video was on your phone?"
"Shane was afraid his phone would get confiscated again, so he sent it to me for safekeeping."
Marcus Shaw opened Vera Magnus's phone and searched. The video was there—barely twenty seconds long.
"That was enough to scare Zhong into submission?"
Vera Magnus smiled. "He's a coward. I played it for him, deliberately only showed the beginning, and his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees, begging—said he'd do anything if I didn't report him."
Marcus Shaw paused. "I see. You used the same technique with Lucas Lutz, and with me. You're good at finding people's weak points. You made him write a statement of contrition, then tore off the beginning and end to forge a suicide note, making everyone believe he'd killed himself out of guilt."
"I learned that from the news. Pretty good, right? You think a rough woman like me doesn't read or understand anything?"
Marcus Shaw leaned back. "The truth is, most people don't look down on you. You project that inferiority onto them. Your own deep-seated insecurity manufactures these slights that don't exist."
Vera Magnus turned her face away. "You think you're so smart. Who do you think you are?"
Marcus Shaw paused, then said, "I have to admit, I didn't expect that beyond joke books, you'd read so widely. It's a shame you didn't channel that diligence toward anything good. Detective novels, true crime—in ordinary hands, they're entertainment, or at best, they uphold the law and warn society. But in your hands, they became a toolkit for murder, a reference manual for killing."
Vera Magnus closed her eyes and sneered.
Marcus Shaw continued, "It's like this: there are knives everywhere in daily life. Everyone's used a knife. But not everyone takes one and kills. Someone like you—who's made up their mind to kill—would find a way even without a knife. You'd kill with an egg. You'd kill with a feather."
Her eyes snapped open. "Is this the hardest case you've ever worked? Catching me—does it make you feel especially proud?"
Marcus Shaw was silent for a moment. "A serial murder case—yes, this is my first. After all, someone as utterly devoid of humanity as you is a rare species."
Vera Magnus kicked the table. "Who the hell are you calling inhuman?"
After a while, when her temper had cooled, Marcus Shaw asked, "Tell me then—how did you get into the parent-teacher meeting?"
Vera Magnus's mouth curled. "Shane told me there were a few problem students in his class whose families never attended meetings. I just gave one of their names, said I was their auntie. Nobody stopped me."
Marcus Shaw glanced at Zack—keep typing.
"And the location of the security camera power supply—did he tell you that too?"
"Actually, no."
Marcus Shaw frowned.
"Don't forget, I had a genius helping me. He found the building's floor plans—every room, every fixture, marked in detail."
Marcus Shaw sighed. "Right, right. You're impressive. Even got yourself a foreign hacker."
She rolled her eyes. "Not just that. Shane also told me there's a low wall at the northwest corner of the athletic field."
Marcus Shaw picked up the thread. "So after you killed him, during the school lockdown, you hid behind that wall?"
She said nothing.
Marcus Shaw visualized it—the edge of the field, the northwest corner, overgrown with weeds, clearly rarely visited. Some construction materials and sandbags were stacked there, making it even more concealed.
"Some students go there to smoke. Anyone not from the school would never think someone could hide there."
Marcus Shaw felt the heat rise in his cheeks. "When the lockdown was lifted, you slipped out among the flood of parents and walked away clean?"
Vera Magnus said nothing. She resumed her pleasant smile, watching Marcus Shaw.
"I'm guessing Shane Mercer also told you about Dominic Hale. So when you committed the murder, you mimicked his clothing. Even if someone spotted you, it would redirect suspicion—a red herring." Marcus Shaw's face was expressionless.
"So someone did see me? And I successfully misled you?"
Marcus Shaw rubbed his face. "A female student—from Holly Chen's class."
Vera Magnus narrowed her eyes. "Oh?"
"Was she also a victim of his abuse?"
The corner of Vera Magnus's mouth curled. "What? Then I was doing her a favor—ending her nightmare. She should have thanked me. Instead of helping me cover my tracks, she gave me away."
Marcus Shaw sighed. "I'm not going to argue with you about whether your methods were just. You killed someone. That's wrong. When others kill or harm, that's wrong too. But the law exists to handle it. No one has the right to fight evil with evil."
Vera Magnus turned her face away and slumped in her chair. Marcus Shaw was about to continue questioning when she announced, "I need to take a piss."
Seeing his hesitation, she thrust her chin out again. "I killed people, so what? Your precious law doesn't allow murderers to use the bathroom?"