Chapter 1823: Puzzling Out

Waveshot froze. His breathing became pulsed, his face rigid in a sense of panic.

"You don’t have to speak," the female lawyer next to him said, but his eyes had already answered everything they could.

Ning took a step back. "This wasn’t about your father," he said. "All of this was... for your mother?"

Mira and Larissa looked at each other, both trying to keep up with the pivot in the interrogation.

Mira quickly searched for something.

"A fire broke out that night when the Gallows were raided," Mira said. "The female Minotaur ended up dying in that fire. She was found dead by the firefighters the next morning."

Ning tapped his foot, trying to think of something. Something didn’t add up. Waveshot clearly didn’t know about his victim’s deal with law enforcement—how he was the one responsible for his father’s downfall. His issue with the Ghoul had been his mother instead.

A mother who died in the fire.

Normally, he would have assumed that Waveshot was angry at the Ghoul for making a deal that led to his mother’s death. But... that couldn’t be the case, given his lack of information about the Ghoul’s betrayal.

In that case...

His eyes slowly narrowed as he realized something. He walked forward and sat down on his chair, looking at Waveshot directly in the eyes.

"You saw it happen, didn’t you?" he asked. "You were there when... when your mother died."

Larissa stepped up, realizing what he meant. "Does that mean our victim was responsible for murder?" she asked. "There was nothing of that sort in his file."

"No, there was not," Ning said. "But then, who knows what sort of information slipped through the cracks that night. One of them sits before us, doesn’t he?"

Larissa nodded. "If you have something to confess, you should do it now," she said. "If you cooperate, we’ll try to get your sentence lowered."

Larissa tried to tackle the interrogation in her own way, trying to force the culprit to confess however she could.

Meanwhile, Ning continued thinking on the subject. Was he still missing something? Or had all the information already been laid out in front of him, and all he was left to do was put it together?

Had their victim killed Waveshot’s mother?

’Did she try to stop him? Did he kill her in retaliation? Was Trunno involved?’ he tried to think through whatever he had learned.

He needed to refresh his memory. He walked over to Mira, asking her to go through the information about the night when Trunno Gallow was caught and convicted. He had her search for any information about Waveshot or his mother, but all of it was severely lacking.

He continued at it for some time while Larissa handled the interrogation in her own way.

Waveshot had already confessed through his expressions at this point, but those wouldn’t hold up in court. They needed a spoken confession.

As Ning searched through the rest, he saw something again that he had learned from the start but had somehow glossed over. He quickly moved back through the rest of the information, landing on the victim’s records that they had accessed through witness protection.

He quickly looked through it. At the same time, the door opened and Jack walked in quietly. He handed a screen to Mira, who quickly took it.

Jack whispered to Ning and her.

"We went through his house, searching for any evidence we could find," Jack said. "We didn’t find anything specific, so we grabbed a few things. The forensic guys are going through it, dusting for the old man’s prints. We’ll know soon if anything belonged to the old man."

Mira quickly put up the screen, showing pictures of what was taken by the forensic team. She swiped through the images, showing a variety of things—medals, money, jewelry, anything that could be taken from the old man’s house.

"Wait!" Ning said. "Go back to that one."

Mira swiped back to a picture of a table full of what looked like newspaper clippings. She zoomed in.

"Yeah, this one was weird," Jack said. "I never pegged him for a narcissist. I mean, who in their right mind has a display of newspaper clippings about themselves spread out on their living room table?"

Ning couldn’t help but smile. "You’re only a narcissist if you made them yourself."

Jack gave a confused look.

Ning took the screen and flipped it. "These were the old man’s, weren’t they?" he asked.

Waveshot’s eyes moved around in a panicked glare.

Ning smiled. "The old man knew who you were. In fact, I would dare say he was proud of you too. He must’ve loved you as a child and was happy to see how much you got out of your father’s shadow."

He handed the screen back to Jack. "Have these dusted for prints. There’s a near-guaranteed chance that these clippings were what was taken from our victim’s house."

Jack didn’t question the request and just left.

Ning’s eyes never left Waveshot’s.

"I think I see the full picture now," Ning said. "The old man went into witness protection, so you never saw him again—until recently. When you did, you decided to attack him."

"You made a deliberate plan to get rid of the cameras pointed at his building the previous week, knowing it would take longer to fix them. Then, you attacked him, trying to kill him as revenge for killing your mother."

"But the plan didn’t work out," Ning said, standing up. "You attacked him, but the old man said something. Did he say he was proud of you? Did he show you the clippings he had gathered? Or maybe you saw them yourself."

"You didn’t smash the cabinet to make it look like a robbery. It was an unintentional robbery. You just did a double bluff in the heat of the moment."

"Then, you went back home and you realized something," Ning said. "Did you realize that the old man was innocent?"