This trip to Old Hu’s villa was hugely important.
First, they had found the likely crime scene where Old Hu may have died. The forensic team had already come from the police bureau, hoping to recover any remaining evidence at the scene.
Second, from Granny Mei they had learned about the “woodworking place.” Combining Hu and Luo Sui’s usual routes, they quickly identified it as a woodworking shop on Xinghe Road called Hailan Woodworking Shop, very close to the abandoned harbor.
When the police entered the shop and mentioned Hu Kun, everyone there knew him.
“The oldest owner of this woodworking shop was Old Hu himself. Even the shop name was specially chosen by him, and he always had a dedicated work spot here — right over there.” The person providing the information was the shop keeper. He nodded toward the back of the store, near the workshop garden. There was a bright window, a clean work surface, and a white lily standing in a glass bottle.
“What’s with the flower?” Ji Xun asked. Today really was strange; wherever he went, he seemed to see flowers.
“That was done by Old Hu.”
“Old Hu did it?”
“Yeah. Probably for his god-granddaughter Luo Sui,” the shop keeper said. He even knew Luo Sui, and seeing the police’s attention drawn in, he grinned. “That old man was a pretty flirtatious sort of old fellow — neatly dressed, elegant, and he often came here with Luo Sui. He introduced her to us as his god-granddaughter, but to be honest, I didn’t think it looked quite like that. What god-granddaughter is always holding hands with an old man?”
While the shop keeper was talking, Ji Xun hadn’t been idle either.
He went to Old Hu’s usual workbench and spotted a locked cabinet, then turned and asked, “What’s this cabinet for?”
“It’s where Old Hu kept his woodworking pieces. Some unfinished ones would be stored here,” the shop keeper answered.
“The key?”
“I don’t have it. Old Hu kept it himself…”
So Ji Xun took out a wire and opened the cabinet.
Everyone looked blank.
The shop keeper glanced sideways at the police. I didn’t expect police to be like this.
Zhao Wu and the others: “…”
No, we’re not.
Zhao Wu coughed. “Um, Specialist Ji…”
He was still trying to think of a tactful way to say it when Ji Xun, after opening the cabinet and looking inside for a moment, shifted slightly to the side and gave up half a step, his gaze sliding past Zhao Wu and landing on Huo Ranyin, who was standing nearby.
Huo Ranyin raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
He stepped forward and looked inside.
Inside the cabinet was a wooden carving of Mazu.
Mazu sat on a wooden boat inlaid with blue crystals — a boat Ji Xun had seen before. In front of her knelt a doll with both hands stretched forward and its head lowered, like a devoted believer asking for a blessing or offering something.
Mazu, the goddess who protects sea travel in the south, was someone Ji Xun had seen before at Sun Fujing’s house. Hu Yan had said that Old Hu had once suffered a maritime disaster when he was young and had even lost his memory, ending up with a different family. It wasn’t strange for him to believe in Mazu, but—
“Captain Zhao, what province were Lu Song’s parents originally from?” Ji Xun asked.
Zhao Wu didn’t understand why Ji Xun was suddenly asking such an unrelated question, but he still checked. “They’re from Fujian Province.”
Fujian…
“What, is there some major clue?” Zhao Wu asked with concern. The case developments these past two days had been so sudden that he was already ready to accept even more sudden developments.
“Not really,” Ji Xun said with a laugh. “Just asking. Boss, keep talking about Old Hu and Luo Sui.”
The shop keeper scratched his head. “As for Old Hu and Luo Sui, apart from doing woodworking, they didn’t really do much else. They didn’t come that often either, and when they did, I wasn’t always here…”
“You decided their relationship was suspicious just because you saw them holding hands?” Ji Xun interjected, giving the shop keeper a thread to follow.
“Of course it wasn’t just holding hands!” The shop keeper perked up immediately. Gossip always energized people. “A while ago — well, within the past half month — the old man was still carving those wooden dolls, a pair, one male and one female. It was obvious he was carving himself and Luo Sui. The paint on those dolls’ clothes was bright red, and he even used a brush to draw delicate patterns on them. They were drying on the windowsill by Old Hu’s workstation. If that were all, it would still be fine, since they just looked like wedding dolls. It didn’t actually say ‘wedding dolls’ on them. But do you know what? You’d never guess…”
The shop keeper lowered his voice and, in the softest possible tone, delivered the juiciest line:
“Old Hu made a stand for those dolls! Aren’t you curious what kind of stand it was? How are you all not excited by this?”
The police looked at him coldly.
They had no idea why this sort of romantic male-female gossip should be exciting.
The shop keeper’s enthusiasm took a hit, and the rest of his spiel became more concise: “Old Hu made a wooden base that looked like an open book. On it he carved lots of tiny words with carving tools — it was a traditional-style marriage contract. I saw him place the male and female dolls on top of it. That’s proof enough, right? Old Hu and that little girl were a pair — grandfather and granddaughter, you know?”
As he listened, Ji Xun’s heart stirred.
“That old man was actually pretty romantic.”
“Exactly!” The shop keeper slapped his thigh when he heard agreement. “I thought so too. After Old Hu finished carving it, he showed it to Luo Sui, and I swear Luo Sui looked like she was about to cry.”
“Then how long would it take to learn carving?” Ji Xun glanced at Huo Ranyin, then at his own remaining arm, and decided to start copying the homework of excellent examples. “Could one hand work? Does a decent painting background help? And woodworking tools…”
He was about to walk over to the tool bench to take a look.
But a hand from beside him reached over first and covered his eyes.
Huo Ranyin said flatly, “Don’t look. They’re sharp.”
Damn.
Ji Xun instantly wilted like a punctured balloon. “…Wood won’t do, then? Clay should be fine, right?”
“Probably the tools for clay sculpting are sharp too,” Huo Ranyin poured cold water on that idea too.
“…” So aggrieved.
“You really want to do it?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“It’s not about whether I really want to do it. It’s the regret of having a great example right in front of me and not being able to learn from it because of personal limitations,” Ji Xun corrected.
He still hadn’t understood what Huo Ranyin meant.
Huo Ranyin rolled the tip of his tongue lightly and lowered his voice. “Do you have to be the one doing it?”
— Don’t I have a hand?
Ji Xun’s eyes lit up instantly.
The private conversation between the two of them didn’t affect Zhao Wu’s continuing investigation at all.
After these few days of working together, Zhao Wu had already gotten used to it. These two would always drift off to the side while talking, whispering privately. That was understandable enough — they had different relationships, after all, and needed to exchange their own internal clues.
On the surface Zhao Wu was generous, but inwardly he still wanted to hear it.
Not to mention, their ability to find clues was really good.
Unfortunately, he was too embarrassed to walk over and listen himself, and there was no teammate nearby who understood what he wanted. Everyone else was still hard at work on the shop keeper. For example, the deputy captain kept asking, “And those two dolls? Weren’t they on the windowsill? Where are they now?”
Zhao Wu followed his gaze and saw that the windowsill behind Old Hu’s workstation really was empty. Nothing was there, only a large tree visible through the glass window, with rugged branches and thick green leaves.
“Where are the dolls you mentioned?” Zhao Wu asked.
“Luo Sui took them away,” the shop keeper replied.
That answer immediately stirred everyone’s nerves.
Zhao Wu’s expression sharpened. “Luo Sui came here? When did she come? Did she say where she was going?”
The police’s seriousness startled the shop keeper. “Luo Sui didn’t come… No, I mean, Luo Sui didn’t come in person to pick them up. She left me a WeChat message and asked me to mail the dolls for her.”
“When were they mailed, and where to?” Zhao Wu asked in a low voice.
“Mailed last night. It was local delivery… some kind of residential complex, I think?” The shop keeper opened WeChat and showed them the address Luo Sui had sent.
Everyone looked and found that the delivery address was exactly the residential complex where they had searched Luo Sui’s home during the day!
Luo Sui’s residential complex was a mid-tier complex in Qin City. Its property management was quite strict, and couriers and delivery workers were not allowed inside the residential buildings. Items had to be left at the complex’s parcel station or takeaway lockers for residents to pick up themselves.
The police had already checked the tracking number at the woodworking shop.
The tracking record showed that the parcel had been delivered to the complex’s parcel station at 4:00 p.m., and no one had picked it up yet.
Since Luo Sui, while on the run, still chose to take the risk of contacting the woodworking shop to mail the dolls, it was obvious that these dolls were extremely important to her. She would definitely find a way to retrieve the package.
From here on, the next step was clear: they just needed to wait by the parcel station and catch her.
Considering that Luo Sui was familiar with the complex, bringing in too many unfamiliar faces too quickly might alert her. Zhao Wu didn’t arrange many people. He took himself, the deputy captain, and two teammates. They first went in to talk to the parcel-station owner and told him to pay special attention to whoever came to collect package number ending in 6689. Once someone showed up, he was to send them the signal at once. Then, since the parcel station had front and back exits, the four of them split into two groups — two hiding behind the back exit and two waiting near the front, lying in wait for the target.
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin were also there, but since Zhao Wu had arranged everything in an orderly way, they didn’t interfere. They stood farther away and waited quietly for what would happen next.
Around 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., children got out of school and adults got off work. The residential complex was at its busiest, and even the parcel station was crowded. Just as Zhao Wu outside was being pushed farther away by the crowd, the parcel-station owner suddenly signaled: someone had come to pick up package 6689!
The police were instantly alert.
But the only one alert wasn’t the police. The person picking up the parcel saw the owner’s unnatural expression and immediately realized something was wrong. He turned and ran!
He was a man about 185 cm tall, wearing a baseball cap, black coat, black sneakers, and a black mask. Black from head to toe, wrapped up tightly — obviously, he was not Luo Sui. He was just someone Luo Sui had found to pick up the parcel!
Someone connected to Luo Sui…
The person Luo Sui would first go to when she was in danger…
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin both remembered the testimony from Hu Zheng’s wife. Luo Sui had someone she chatted with very passionately online.
Was it “K”?
That thought had only just formed when the situation in front changed again.
The parcel collector had already broken through the crowd, the package tucked under his arm, and rushed to the parcel station entrance. Zhao Wu was coming up to meet him, but the man shoved aside a woman standing at the door, pushing her directly in front of Zhao Wu to block him, then took off running.
“Stop!” Zhao Wu roared, biting hard on the man ahead of him as he chased after him.
But the man ran unexpectedly fast, and with so many people inside the complex, Zhao Wu, who had started a step late, kept falling behind and couldn’t catch him. The other police officers were even farther behind Zhao Wu.
In a very short time, they had already run close to the complex gate.
At this point, the people walking in the complex seemed to realize something was wrong and naturally spread to both sides. A vacuum formed around the man and Zhao Wu’s group… and beyond that was outside the complex, where there was even more traffic and foot flow.
If the man got out of the complex, things would become even more complicated.
Huo Ranyin did not give chase.
He couldn’t catch up.
He calmly assessed his own body.
Tearing open the wound wouldn’t matter much — but even if the wound split open, he still couldn’t catch up.
If he wanted to catch the person, he would need another method.
His gaze moved over the scene like a scalpel, precisely dissecting the complicated layout and identifying the key to breaking the deadlock…
Suddenly, his eyes stopped, fixed on the water pipe watering the grass in the residential area. The grass patch was right next to the complex gate, just diagonally ahead of the man, and the pipe was naturally also in his diagonal front.
No hesitation.
He raised his arm, grabbed the gun, switched off the safety, and pulled the trigger.
Bang—
The bullet pierced the water pipe, and a stream of water shot out instantly, splashing all over the running man!
The sudden accident made the man’s sprinting steps falter.
That was the chance. Zhao Wu, who had been two steps behind him, did not miss it. He lunged forward and slammed the man to the ground, pinning him down hard!
