Chapter 848: Chapter 848: Walnut Forest_1
Officer Silas Jaxon on the witness stand laughed, his expression disdainful.
“The head was buried in the soil of the flower bed, sticking to so insect eggs; I don’t think it’s anything special,” he said mockingly. “Miss Lawyer, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen bodies rotten with maggots, or those pulled from the water covered with snails and clams. Are maggots, snails, and clams also key pieces of evidence?”
Muffled laughter ca from the gallery.
“…” Purple Sumrs’ expression stiffened.
She wanted to say: Of course, I have seen them.
Purple Sumrs turned, silently returned to the defense bench, picked up another stack of docunts, and redistributed them to the witness, prosecutor, judge, and the twelve jurors.
The first page of the docunt was a photo of a rotten skull, magnified so that a few egg masses attached to the skull were visible.
The second page was an identification report from the National Entomology Research Institute.
“These are eggs of the ginkgo silkworm moth, a species of Walnuts silk moth family within the order Lepidoptera, also a common pest of economic forest fruits. The eggs are laid either in clusters or single-layered. They choose the trunks of old ginkgo trees sheltered from wind and facing the sun, or walnut trees, to lay their eggs,” she explained before emphasizing again, “They only lay eggs on ginkgo or walnut trees. As far as I know, the villa where the head was dug up did not have these kinds of trees! Not only that, but no ginkgo or walnut trees were found within several miles.”
“Maybe it was an accidental fly-in,” the officer countered. “It’s like when we open our doors and windows in the sumr, and a few moths always fly in.”
“Have they laid eggs in your house after flying in?” Purple Sumrs smiled. “Perhaps they wanted to, but before that could happen, they were flattened by the formidable Officer of the Law.”
“Objection! The defense lawyer is oppressing the witness!” the prosecutor rose again, his brows filled with agitation.
Purple Sumrs looked innocent as she turned towards the judge, “I rely think the witness is not sufficiently familiar with the habits of this moth. The identification report clearly states that these moths only lay their eggs on their host plants. For instance, many swallowtail butterflies use Aristolochia as their host plants. Would they lay eggs on other plants if Aristolochia wasn’t available? No, they wouldn’t; they would just die.”
The prosecutor, with a dark face, retorted: “Even so, it doesn’t absolve the defendant of suspicion! Perhaps he originally buried it in a place with walnut trees but moved it to that villa because he felt unsafe. Then, rembering his high-ranking brother-in-law, he sought protection by quickly relocating there! These insect eggs don’t prove anything!”
Unmoved, Purple Sumrs pointed to the docunt in his hand and said, “Please take a look at the back, thank you.”
The prosecutor was slightly stunned, his face montarily blank.
“To save paper and protect the environnt, I printed the rest of the content on the back,” Purple Sumrs said with a smile. “This way, it’s also lighter to pick up.”
Nobody appreciated her humor; the prosecutor’s face was as dark as the bottom of a pot.
The reverse side of the docunt was a map of Kingsley City, with one area circled in red.
The jurors looked at one another, not understanding why the last piece of evidence was a map.
“To the southwest of Kingsley City, there’s a place called York Town, which has large plantations of walnut trees. Walnuts are also the town’s main economic source,” said Purple Sumrs. “To control the ginkgo silkworm moth, the townspeople spray a hypertonic fenoxycarb EC dicine on the walnut plantations every year—a compound that was also found in the autopsy. But—” Purple Sumrs looked toward Officer Silas Jaxon in the witness stand.
“But Officer Silas Jaxon, in an effort to reduce the prosecutor’s burden and relying on his so-called experience, filtered out this crucial clue from the autopsy report!”
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