Joseph told me that Tracy had run into some gangsters while waiting for me outside the station. Thanks to our recent crackdown on illegal activities, I'd arrested their leader.

They wanted to get revenge on me, so they knocked Tracy out and dragged her away. Then, they'd chopped her limbs off and thrown her remains into a nearby drain.

I couldn't believe Tracy was dead. I looked into Joseph's eyes, my disbelief evident.

He lowered his head and sighed. Meanwhile, Ruth slumped onto the desk and burst into tears.

"You're an asshole, Eugene! None of this would've happened if you'd brought my mother into the station sooner!"

She wanted nothing more than to kill me when she thought about Tracy's death being an act of revenge on me. Tracy had only been at the police station to bring me chicken soup.

I had planned to propose to Ruth the following week, but that had to be set aside because of this. She refused to forgive me and even moved out of our shared apartment.

I called and texted her, but she ignored me. She even had people stop me from entering the funeral parlor on the day of Tracy's funeral. "What right do you have to attend my mother's funeral when you're the one who caused her death?"

Ultimately, I could only kneel outside the funeral parlor in the direction of Tracy's coffin.

One aspect of this incident confused me—how had those gangsters known about Tracy's connection to me?

Due to the unique nature of my and Ruth's jobs, we told Tracy not to tell outsiders about her relationship with us. This was a precautionary measure to prevent our enemies from pursuing her.

The surveillance cameras near the police station captured the gangsters who'd murdered Tracy, so I led a team to arrest them. No matter how I questioned them, they just said they'd done it on a whim.

However, all the evidence we'd found pointed to the crime being pre-medicated. After all, no one would be dumb enough to loiter around the police station with blades in the middle of the night.

I traced those blades to a hardware store. To my surprise, Ivan owned the store. I showed him the photos of those gangsters and asked him whether he knew them.

He looked at them seriously before shaking his head. Left with no clues, I turned to leave. Then, I caught sight of a gold earring in the corner. It was from a pair I bought for Tracy's birthday last year.

The day before her death, she'd even called me to apologize for losing the earring. What was it doing in Ivan's store?

I picked it up, wanting to ask him what was up with it. Then, I saw Ivan whip out a metal rod and whack me in the head with it.

Before I lost consciousness, I heard a man's voice ring out behind Ivan. "Do you think the old hag told him about our smuggling, Ivan?"

...

"Dr. Goldman, I've extracted the body's DNA!" Morgan had worked overnight, finally managing to extract a DNA sample from my body. "We'll find out who he is after submitting this to the tech department."

I saw Ruth stare at the container in Morgan's hand. She was debating whether to destroy the sample.

"I've been here the whole night, so I'm heading home to catch up on some sleep, Dr. Goldman. I'll have to trouble you to submit the DNA sample to the tech department later." Morgan left, yawning the whole time.