Goodbye, My Brother

When I was tortured and abused to death, my brother was accompanying my cousin to an art exhibition.

The last thing my brother said to me was, "You don't deserve a birthday."

However, I was secretly glad that my brother’s refusal allowed him to escape.

The next day, he was doing a criminal psychological profile at a murder scene.

Based on the scene, he speculated that the murderer had acted out of revenge, that was why his methods were extremely cruel and the victim had suffered a brutal massacre before their death.

But he didn't realize that the person who died was his own sister whom he hated the most.

Part 1

I was dismembered after my death. The murderer dumped my body and deliberately let people discover the murder scene.

After the police department received the report, the police immediately dispatched the detectives to the scene.

The abandoned factory was filled with a pungent smell of blood. If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I would have suspected that someone was using animal blood to create art.

I floated in mid-air, shocked that people could bleed so much. But one thing that I forgot, there were two of us.

The police dog barked as it sniffed the minced meat on the ground.

My brother frowned as he revisited the scene back and forth countless times. He tried to deduce what happened to me before I died by closing his eyes.

My brother was the youngest, but he was the most powerful criminal profiler in the Bureau since he had solved countless difficult criminal cases in his hands.

The other detectives performed their duties, like taking pictures, collecting evidence and looking for clues. They all knew that they must not disturb my brother when he was deducing with his eyes closed.

Time ticked by. Suddenly, my brother's eyelashes trembled and his face gradually turned pale, almost transparent.

His hands holding the pen turned white from the force he exerted, cold sweat dripped from his temples and his breathing became increasingly rapid.

“This is a brutal massacre. According to my profile, the murderer was seeking revenge with ruthless means. The victim was a woman, who was tortured to death and dismembered after her blood was drained."

As expected of my brother, he could make an accurate deduction based on the scene alone.

The detectives stopped what they were doing and looked at him solemnly, "Capital punishment? Are you sure?"

My brother had witnessed so many murders that he should have remained calm even when faced with a catastrophe. But at the moment, he was like a drowning fish and said, "Pretty close."

Capital punishment, the thing that everyone knew what it meant.

Familiar modus operandi.         

My brother raised his hand and tried to trace the white paper, but he was trembling so badly that he couldn't hold the tip of the pen at all.

The detective on the side patted him on the shoulder and said, “Mr. Fuentes, maybe it was a coincidence or a copycat crime."

For some reason, when my brother was trying to profile the murderer, the brushstrokes drew the victim first.

The outline looked very much like me. But when he reached the facial features, he stopped drawing.

I knew he might be thinking that it should not be me. So, he took out his mobile, flipped to my phone number and pressed the dial button after hesitating for a while.

But no one answered.

He waited impatiently for three rings, then hung up the phone before saying in disgust, "What the hell! How dare she not answer my call."

I could not understand why he was annoyed. It could be because I ignored him and did not answer his calls within seconds, or maybe it was because the scene was too bloody and my brother was restless.

"Captain, we have a new discovery. Look here, the bloodstains here look a bit strange."

After hearing the new discovery, Henry, the Captain and my brother walked over to the bloodstain that belonged to me.

I saw him frowning and staring at the bloodstains in a daze.

Unfortunately, the traces I left behind were covered by more blood. So, after the large amount of blood dried, only the grotesque remained.

"Looks like scratches from a death struggle."

The Trace Division Criminalist took photos and speculated. Then, the statement was recognized by everyone.

I was so anxious that I screamed at my brother, "Brother, if you look more carefully, you might be able to discover the secret I left behind."

But he only looked back and left with the detectives.

Back at the police station, my brother stayed up late and worked overtime to profile the murderer based on photos from the scene.

But just like the other unsolved case, he could only draw the outline of the murderer and had no clue about the facial features. As a result, a sheet of drawing paper was crumpled into a ball and thrown all over the floor in annoyance.

I knew he was stuck on it again.

“Mr. Fuentes, why don't you get off work first? There will be more clues when the body is found."

In the end, my brother rubbed his temples and accepted the offer.

He had been drawing for long time but could not draw the murderer after all. So, it might be impossible to solve it in one night.