I smiled at her. "Even the most loyal of men can turn their back when money is involved, but I agree with you. The driver couldn't have done anything to him. The dashcam would have captured it. I still think he should be looked at. He's not completely innocent."
Danielle shrugged. "How about we look at the autopsy result? Food and gas poisoning has been ruled out, so how did he die? Did he just slump and die? And why are we so convinced this isn't a medical issue but a murder?"
I clicked on the result. Since this was just a game, it was definitely not as long as a normal autopsy, thankfully. "Perhaps his insulin shot. The man was diabetic."
Danielle pursed her lips. "That's too typical. That means the fact that he was diabetic was a huge hint, and I doubt they would have wanted that."
I nodded, agreeing with her. Plus, we had been given forty minutes, so I was sure they intended for us to work. "Okay. Then let's start by ruling out the least possible suspect and the way he died."
She grabbed a notepad and bent over the table. "Let's take them one by one. His brother first." She zoomed in on his profile. "Thankfully, I'm an only child. Are we sure he wasn't adopted?" She smiled at me and I forced my lips to rise.
That was a very probable assumption, one I could relate to. "That's a possibility. It's also possible their relationship was strained because of envy. It's very common." His brother's profile screamed murderer. They'd separated ways after high school until he had gone to his brother begging for a job. He had been given the job but fired in less than a year because of fraud. That had further strained their relationship since he had left in a rage and the next time they had communicated was the day he had died.
"Are siblings really like that?" Danielle asked, her hands under her chin. "I can't imagine not having a good relationship with my sibling if I had one."
I shrugged. "Different families have different ways. Whatever works for them."
She turned to me. "How about you? Do you think the brother could have done it? Killed his own brother? What could be the motive?"
I smiled. "Jealousy. Envy. An urge to have what belonged to his brother. It varies. He was also the one that took out the death insurance in his name. Getting the signature wouldn't have been difficult."
She shook her head. "But it's his parents that the money was paid to. That means it was probably something that was planned together with the deceased. Maybe he signed it out of assurance that if something was going to happen to him, his parents and family will be well provided for."
I glanced at her. In my own opinion, his parents preferred the brother because he had been able to warp their opinion of their other son. That storyline was, in fact, much common in the business world, but if she wanted to remain ignorant, so be it. I wasn't going to shatter her innocent view of the world.
"What are the possible ways the murder could have taken place?" I asked, drawing a mental image. "He had dinner with some associates, then had a meeting with his directors. How long did that last? How long was the period between the end of the meeting and his brother calling him? What could have happened in the car?" I asked.
Danielle picked the voice recorder and we both went silent as it played. There were two distinct voices, one more relaxed and open, the other mean and tense.
"So what happened there?" The person with the relaxed voice asked.
The person with the mean voice laughed. "You still don't know me that well. I think you'd better leave now. There's someone here to say hi."
There was a sound of a chair falling. "If anything happens to him. I'll kill you as well. And I will derive joy in doing it again."
I frowned and saw that Danielle was doing the same as she dropped the recorder. I looked into the notepad she had been writing in. "Can I write something here as well?"
She nodded and pushed the book closer to me, and I wrote 'someone else' and 'as well' in addition to the 'invisible substance (not gas)' that Danielle had noted down.
"Which voice is our suspect?" Danielle asked, looking at me.
"From the conversation, it sounds like… wait a minute…" I zoomed in on the profile of the brother again and whistled. Our suspect was older and hadn't made much of his life, that was a good motive. It was even worse when it felt like the younger one was making progress. "…that means our Mr. Houston was the one that said he would kill his brother as well." I said the 'as well' with an air quote.
Danielle groaned. "This is getting more complicated. The brother threatened him with someone else, but nobody else is mentioned in his profile. Not a child or a partner, so who is the 'him' that made him stand up fast enough, his chair was knocked down?"
I tilted my head. They had done a good job with this mystery case. What else was going to be uncovered before the case would be solved? This was getting more and more interesting. And we had already used seven minutes.
"I think his brother was involved, but we need to find out what he meant by 'as well'. Also, among the things that were found at the scene, why is there a pack of soda with him? He's diabetic." She asked, pointing at the picture of the soda can that was on the screen.
I nodded. "I thought about that as well. But it could have been a gift that was going to someone else. He's been a diabetic for over ten years, he won't have taken it. He also didn't die as a result of hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia according to the autopsy, so we could just be backing up the wrong tree."
She sighed. "Let's start from his business associates. Maybe we'll discover the person he wanted to protect."
I pulled up the profiles of the people he'd had dinner with, checking their alibis. They all checked out, or maybe not. "Isn't this man also a director? Why wasn't he at the meeting, and what happened that he was in the hospital for over two hours?"
Danielle pulled up the list of the directors and sure enough, he was there. She narrowed my eyes at the picture of him leaving the hospital. "Wouldn't it have been a serious illness if it took that long? Does that look like the face of someone that just got treated?"
I stared at the picture. He was smiling, and his phone was on his ear. "Do we know who he was on the phone with?"
I asked Danielle, who was going through the records we'd been given. There was something else that was weird. Even though this was actually a game, the pictures, records, and reports all looked real. If I didn't know any better, I would assume this was a real case. I'd thought others would have used a contorted image or something that wasn't obviously a person.
She smiled. "You will not believe it."
I cocked my head. "His brother?" and she nodded.
"You got that right. According to the CCTV and autopsy result, barely three minutes after it was calculated that he had died."
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