The police were under immense pressure. The American public—kept in the dark about how society really worked and softened up by years of anti-intellectualism, convinced they were living in paradise—also fell into a panic.
"This guy specifically targets women! You two need to be careful recently," Charlie said with a face full of worry, unaware of his two daughters' capabilities.
A murderer?
Bella's mind was full of figures like Metatron and Samael. She didn't take Charlie's warning seriously at all. Are my Javelin missiles rusty, or has the Gatling gun lost its charm?
Don't let me see him. If I see him, I'll kill him! I won't even give him the chance to get a sentence out!
"Call me when it's time to eat; I'm going back to my room to sleep." She turned to leave.
Natasha lazily handed her a newspaper. It featured the cipher text that the Zodiac Killer used to provoke the police.
Bella glanced at it casually and handed it back. Right now, she didn't have the slightest interest in this so-called serial killer.
"That Tony Stark on TV earlier offered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars to anyone who can decipher this code." Natasha dropped this sentence lightly, causing Bella, who was ready to return to her bedroom, to freeze in her tracks.
It couldn't be helped—poverty stifles ambition!
Bella was currently employing Max and Heather as her staff. Just the monthly salaries alone cost one thousand six hundred dollars. Coupled with her purchases of large amounts of cosmetics, clothes, jewelry, bags, luxury goods, and the cost of treating classmates to meals, her monthly expenses were enormous.
Plus, she didn't work and had zero income. It was pure expenditure every day. Her savings were decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Right now, she was poor—very poor...
"Uh, what was that? I didn't see clearly just now... give it here, let me look again!" Ignoring Natasha's teasing smile, she snatched the newspaper from the little beauty's hand and examined it carefully.
The cipher was divided into three parts, totaling eight lines, with seventeen characters per line. There were common letters like A, B, C, D, but also symbols like hollow squares, solid squares, hollow triangles, and solid triangles.
These triangles and squares definitely had special meanings. The letters A, B, C, D might not represent their original meanings either. A solid square might represent F, and a B in the cipher might represent Y. There were many possibilities. But ultimately, once deciphered, this text would definitely be a paragraph representing the Zodiac Killer's next target. If it could be deciphered in advance, perhaps someone could be saved.
Bella thought while reading: This killer probably hasn't received higher education. In other words, it's not French, Spanish, Latin, or Hebrew. The probability of the opponent using English is very high. If it's English... then it shouldn't be hard...
Semiotics and linguistics had always been her study focus. When learning a new language, one couldn't just learn by rote; spelling had rules, and sentence structures had rules too.
By drawing analogies and using what you already know to understand a new language—that's the fastest way to learn.
For every additional foreign language mastered, the speed of learning a new language would be ten or twenty percent faster than before. This wasn't magic or psychic power; it was the foundation Bella had built up through years of study.
The process of deciphering the code before her eyes was about the same as analyzing a new language for her. In fact, because she knew the opponent's general intent and spelling habits, the decoding speed would be much faster.
After just one night, by the next morning while Natasha was drinking milk, Bella had completely deciphered the content of the Zodiac Killer's cipher.
"Let me see!" Charlie was a detective in the Homicide Division himself. The Zodiac Killer wasn't his case, but it was closely related to Homicide and the LAPD.
This serial killer was provoking the entire police system. As leaders, the LAPD Board of Commissioners had issued a death order to all officers below: No matter how many personal conflicts you have, which big shot stands behind you, or whose interests you represent—at this moment, you must unite and crack this case for me!
Browsing through it quickly, Charlie asked two more questions, grabbed a sandwich, and dragged Bella out the door.
"Go, come to the station with me quickly!"
Riding in the police car, Bella and Charlie rushed to the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department—Parker Center, only three hundred meters from City Hall.
The Zodiac Killer case was the number one priority case right now; nothing was more important.
Before long, several captains and lieutenants entered the conference room. Elites from the Data Group, Analysis Section, and Investigation Section also arrived. There were two lieutenants from the California Naval Intelligence Center responsible for serial killers, three agents from the San Francisco branch of the FBI, and even an agent directly affiliated with the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Technically, none of them reported to one another, but the FBI and CIA naturally outranked the local police. And as part of the U.S. intelligence community, the CIA sat a notch above the FBI, which was 'just' under the Department of Justice. The three FBI agents were from the San Francisco branch, while the CIA one was from headquarters, so the text deciphered by Bella was handed to the CIA agent.
This CIA agent looked ordinary: square face, collapsed nose bridge, dull skin—the type you couldn't find if you threw him into a crowd.
He read Bella's translation in a flat tone: "I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL... I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADISE AND ALL I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES... I AM WAITING FOR A GOOD TIME TO SHOOT THE FRONT TIRE OF A SCHOOL BUS AND THEN PICK OFF THE KIDDIES AS THEY COME BOUNCING OUT?!"
Reading up to this point, the CIA agent immediately turned to look at the LAPD side. The captain in charge of the case nodded. "We have already made deployments, but if this guy goes to commit crimes in other places, then..."
Then what? He didn't say, but everyone in the room understood.
The police force in Los Angeles had never been sufficient. In the past, when encountering such difficult-to-solve cases, they might have just found a suspect to pin it on randomly—this was nothing new. But now, with the eyes of the whole society on California, they dared not do so.
They had to solve the case, and there could be no slip-ups.
The murderer wanted to attack a school bus. The LAPD could send all police officers out for protection, but what about other cities? Would the murderer go to other cities to attack school buses? Even if all of California was mobilized, would the murderer go to other states?
With the current political system in the United States, response to such sudden events was always sluggish. Many times, it would cause outsiders to misunderstand, thinking that those sitting in leadership positions weren't humans, but a herd of pigs!
Furthermore, you can be a thief for a thousand days, but you can't guard against a thief for a thousand days. If the opponent hid for three or four months and then came out to commit crimes, it would be impossible to defend against.