When the police car was parked in the parking lot of the Metropolitan Police Department, Takagi and Chiba who came out of the car saw a somewhat abrupt figure who appeared here at this time.

"What about the finger that was found?" Grigory held out his hand to Takagi. "Don't waste time, I need to get checked as soon as possible."

“？” Qian Yu was a little stunned, because the Metropolitan Police Department's autopsy center had theoretically been transferred to the Mihua Central Hospital, where Gregory was located, how could he be here?

"Don't be idle, you kid, come up with me." Gregory, who had taken the evidence bag from Takagi's hand, glanced at Chiha. "Takagi, you take the little girl here for a while, we have to go out in a while."

……

"4.25*0.97, looks like a man's ring finger." In an office hastily equipped with rudimentary equipment such as a microscope, Gregory holds a vernier caliper and measures the size of his fingers. "At this size, there is indeed a corpse in the inventory here that is missing the size of the missing ring finger that matches this size."

"There's a missing ring finger from a corpse?" Thousand Feathers raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Yes," Gregory folded a sketch on the table into a paper airplane and flew it in front of Chiba. "See for yourself, there are five in total."

"All five are missing ring fingers?" Chiba asked as she unfolded the paper airplane. "Didn't you cut it down before you were attacked?"

"The stubble is fresh, and I don't believe that in the small prefecture of Tokyo and Kanagawa, you can find five people whose ring fingers were cut off at the same time, and there is no overlap that was killed at the same time." Grigory replied. "See for yourself the rest."

"Forehead ......" Chiba fully unfolded the paper airplane, and then saw the contents of the sketch.

Over the course of two days on July 2 and 3, five bodies with one ring finger missing had been found, and the cause of death was that they were stabbed from behind with a dagger by their right hand after being knocked unconscious with a stun gun, and each of the five bodies was arranged in different shapes after being assassinated. According to the results of the investigation so far, there is no known relationship between these people, and if there is, it must be quite secret, almost impossible to detect - and the finger that Chiba found is the missing finger that belonged to the first body found on the morning of July 2nd.

"This is almost incomprehensible......" Qian Yu sighed. Finding the next victim is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack......"

"But there's something relevant," said Gregory, spreading a map on the table. "Look at the place where they were dumped."

“？” Qian Yu walked over to the table, looked at the map, and immediately became suspicious. "Wait a minute, what is this?"

On the map, the locations where three bodies in Tokyo and two bodies in Kanagawa Prefecture were found are presented with a standard cross, and the order in which the bodies appear follows the order of strokes – first in Hachioji City, then in Machida City, then in Machida City, and then in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The fourth body appears on the vertical bisector where the first and third bodies were found, while the second body is almost exactly the same distance from all three. As for the fifth body...... This corpse and the fourth corpse are symmetrical exactly with respect to the second, and the five corpses perfectly form a standard cross.

"It is foreseeable that if a sixth corpse appears, it will definitely continue in the direction of the fourth and fifth corpses, and considering the ratio of the cross - 3.5:3.5:5, the sixth corpse should be on the extension line in this direction, probably in the territory of Odawara." Grigory put his finger in the refrigerator next to him, and waved the cane in his hand. "Ready, let's go right away."

…………

"But if their bodies are placed as crosses, what does the murderer mean?" Sitting in the police car that was driving on the toll road in Odawara, Chiba looked at the information and muttered. "Expressing your worship of Catholicism? Intend to use this incident to discredit Catholicism? Or do you want to use allusions to redeem the dead who the murderer thinks are sinking in sin? (In the Christian doctrine, the cross represents God's love and redemption for the world)"

"Maybe it's something else," Gray Plains sat beside her, looking up from some of the other sources. After all, you have to consider that the cross became the emblem of the clergy later, and that before that, the Roman Empire had used the cross as an instrument of sanction. By the way, the cross represented sun worship in early religions, and both the Chaldeans and Gauls regarded it as sacred. (The symbol of the ancient Babylonian sun god was the T, which the Chaldeans worshipped when they lowered the bar into an asymmetrical cross up and down; And the Gauls already carved crosses on precious stones, pots and coins in the Bronze Age)"

"It's better not to be like that, in that case we'll run in vain. (The Gallic cross is a standard cross, not a longer cross on one side of the Catholic and ancient Babylonian god Tammuz, so previous predictions about the location of the next dead were wrong.) Grigory, who was sitting in the passenger seat, said. And if we analyze it from these less common directions, it may mean more meanings, the cross entered the Catholic system when Constantine saw a cross in heaven during a war; In Judaism, the cross represents the tree of life, and the horizontal and vertical crosses represent men and women. There are too many religions and cultures around the world that regard the cross as an important thing. ”

At this moment, Takagi suddenly slammed the steering wheel, causing the entire police car to suddenly turn to the right - it was a two-lane two-way road, and Takagi's actions brought the entire police car into a wrong-way state!

“！！！” Chiha, who was held in place by the seat belt, reacted immediately, and then looked at Takagi to confirm what was happening, only to find that Takagi was looking in the rearview mirror.

Before Chiba could turn his head to see what was happening behind the car, everyone in the car saw a car drive past their left side at an almost frantic speed.

The car was a red imported sedan (this is possible because the driver was the only one in the car, and the driver sat in the front left side of the car, where only foreign imported cars would have the driver's seat) and the male who was the driver of the car seemed to be in a state of panic.

Chiba noticed that although the rear of the car had turned on with a red signal light to slow down, the whole car showed no signs of slowing down, and continued to accelerate along the downhill road.

There is no doubt that there was a problem with the car's braking system, which resulted in the brake pedal not successfully activating the brake system when the brake signal system had already been activated.