“Chen Jiahe was here this morning.”
In reasoning, stripping away the process and stating the truth directly always produces an unexpected effect of intimidation.
This intimidation works on any suspect; the difference lies only in whether they show the fear they are experiencing.
Mrs. Sun handled it well; she only became slightly stiff.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she rebutted firmly, then clamped her mouth shut like a tightly closed clam.
Ji Xun stared intently at where her gaze had subconsciously drifted to the floor. As far as Ji Xun’s intuition was concerned, the deduction he was making regarding Chen Jiashu’s death was 99% likely nothing more than a branch on the main trunk. Unfortunately, when one is in a fog, it appears so obvious and so thick that it blinds everyone, including himself. Unless he decisively ruled it out, as a police officer, he had to investigate it.
“You’re turning seventy in a few days. Older people always like having their children and grandchildren around, so even at the risk of a severe pollen allergy, you decided to come to this mountain villa. It’s quiet and sparsely populated here, enough to shelter your youngest son who just committed a crime and ran abroad. He didn’t come through the main entrance; the surveillance you provided to the police didn’t have him, but the pharmacy and the small garden gate caught him.”
“But at this very moment, a bolt from the blue occurred… Chen Jiashu died. The nurse’s report of Chen Jiashu’s death scared you even more. You realized that while you had already lost one son and hadn’t yet had the time to extract grief from your shock, you were likely facing the danger of losing a second son. Both palms and the backs of the hands are flesh—but those who are dead are dead. You could only prioritize taking care of the one still living.”
“You had Chen Jiahe dismantle the cameras and escape while the police were processing the crime scene, while you stayed behind to cover for him—using the excuse of acute kidney rejection to stall the police, creating enough time for him…”
“Evidence?” Mrs. Sun suddenly looked up, glaring at Ji Xun. She squinted, like a snake locking onto its prey. “This is all just guesswork. What evidence do you have that my youngest son was here? Fingerprints? This is my family’s property; my youngest son has been here before. Fingerprints and skin cells could have been left behind at any time.”
The hunter easily shook off the entanglements of the prey.
Ji Xun said lightly: “The route you arranged for him, I guess—it’s to walk down from the mountain, then meet an arranged car on a road without surveillance. As long as he stays in the car, the police can’t trace your son. That’s what you thought, right? Perhaps the contact methods were passed through many hands. Don’t worry, this mountain isn’t large. Your son is a pampered person; no matter how he walks on mountain paths, he’s used to taking walkable routes. The footprints he left are very easy to identify. Once he reached the road, he probably didn’t want to walk a single extra step. My colleagues have already gone down; as long as we estimate the rough time he went down the mountain, we can search the surveillance cameras on nearby roads within that timeframe and check them one by one. It’s a bit troublesome, but we’ll get a result eventually.”
“You—” Mrs. Sun’s complexion changed drastically.
However, this unusual expression finally smoothed out under her willpower.
She sneered: “…Is it meaningful?”
“What do you mean?” Ji Xun asked calmly.
Mrs. Sun was sitting on a rose-colored chaise longue under the floor-to-ceiling window. When she leaned back, her whole body almost shrank into the shadows of the light.
When she tilted her face slightly—or perhaps the sun outside shifted slightly—Ji Xun finally saw Mrs. Sun’s face clearly again.
It was still that same face.
It was a face that still retained the outlines of her youthful beauty, but was now old enough for her wrinkles to carry a mockery within them.
Fine dust danced in the light, and Mrs. Sun’s gray hair trembled in the light.
Mrs. Sun asked Ji Xun in return:
“So what if my son came? So what if he didn’t? Does he have anything to do with this case? If you aren’t afraid of trouble and aren’t afraid of letting the real culprit go, then go ahead and look for him. After all, it’s just screening millions of people in a city and watching tens of thousands of cameras along the way. The police can surely solve this kind of small matter, right?”
This paragraph was sufficiently calm—calm enough to bring out an almost malicious mockery.
“Compared to my youngest son, whom I don’t know the whereabouts of, isn’t there a more suspicious person at the scene? Dr. Zheng, right?”
Zheng Xuewang, who had been watching from the sidelines, jumped up: “What does this have to do with me?!”
“On the contrary, you are the person most deeply involved in this matter,” Mrs. Sun said. “When the police arrived, it was you who said definitively that there was no problem with the deceased’s death, that it was acute kidney rejection, and you even produced the medical records of my son to prove your words. What’s the matter? It’s only been a day or so, and you’ve already completely forgotten?”
“This, this is because—”
“Because you are the murderer,” Mrs. Sun said lightly.
“That medical record was indeed fake.” At this point, Zheng Xuewang let go of all pretense. “But it was your son who made me fake it. To make me fake it, he even gave me a large sum of money. I hid it before to avoid having my medical license revoked, but now, it can’t be hidden anyway, so whatever. I didn’t kill the man.”
“Since this one is fake, there must be a real one, right?” Ji Xun interrupted abruptly. “Where is the real one?”
However, when this question was asked, Zheng Xuewang, who had just been ready to tell the whole story, began to stutter: “The real one, I put it in the drawer in my room, but it disappeared…”
“What a coincidence,” Ji Xun evaluated.
“If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have hidden the truth about Chen Jiashu’s death,” Zheng Xuewang said, as if he had reached a dead end, holding his head and crouching down like a trapped beast. “If I had just destroyed the fake one and given you the real medical records, wouldn’t that have been fine? As for how Chen Jiashu died, let the police investigate. I just did a forgery, printed a few A4 sheets; what does the rest have to do with me!”
This guy, although he acted like it was a big deal, he probably still has something hidden…
Ji Xun thought to himself while observing coldly.
Actually, Mrs. Sun was right; Chen Jiahe’s furtive appearance did not mean that Chen Jiahe was the one who did it.
First of all, Chen Jiashu and Chen Jiahe were brothers. So far, no motive for Chen Jiahe to kill Chen Jiashu had been found. Whether Chen Jiahe was the culprit or involved in the case was still a question mark.
Mrs. Sun’s secret had been unearthed… and as for the rest, Zheng Xuewang… the most likely Zheng Xuewang. Maybe we made the mistake of looking far away when the answer was right under our noses… the one who killed Chen Jiashu might be close at hand…
“Where is Cao Zhengbin?” Huo Ranyin’s voice suddenly rang out. With just one question, he caused the arguing Mrs. Sun and Zheng Xuewang to both fall silent. “Where is Cao Zhengbin now?”
The two remained silent.
Mrs. Sun was already too lazy to keep up appearances, displaying a “I know, but I won’t tell you” attitude. She was an elderly woman; the police could not, after all, force an interrogation on a senior citizen.
As for Zheng Xuewang, he had a look of helplessness mixed with a bit of despair. Judging solely by this expression, he probably really didn’t know Cao Zhengbin’s whereabouts.
“Continue the search.” Huo Ranyin didn’t waste time on these two. He instructed the other police officers, “Don’t let any corner go unchecked.”
This was just one direction for the criminal investigation arrangement.
After leaving Mrs. Sun’s room, Huo Ranyin made a phone call to the bureau and then instructed: “Notify the technical department at the bureau to start investigating the surveillance cameras at the foot of the mountain, starting from the time the bureau received the report of Chen Jiashu’s death yesterday. Focus on investigating three people: Chen Jiahe, Cao Zhengbin, and—”
“Hey, hey,” Ji Xun interrupted Huo Ranyin, “checking two is enough; how many more do you want to check? The bureau doesn’t have that much manpower; we have to be tight with what we use. Compared to Chen Jiahe and Cao Zhengbin, I think Zheng Xuewang is still a bit strange. Maybe the crux of the problem lies with him.”
Huo Ranyin glanced at Ji Xun, hung up the phone first, and turned to face him.
“Meng Fushan is a suspect.”
“On the surface, he certainly is.”
“In reality, perhaps he is too.”
“…”
“Ji Xun,” Huo Ranyin said. “With the case investigated to this point, you should face your blind spot.”
“He wouldn’t,” Ji Xun said. “I know him.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I have been through many things with him.”
“And then he went through many things alone again.”
“Meng Fushan is just an undercover agent; he did these things for my sister’s sake.”
“Whether he did it for your sister’s sake does not constitute a causal relationship with whether he would break the law.”
Ji Xun pressed his lips into a straight line.
“Cao Zhengbin followed Chen Jiashu for more than ten years. He was Chen Jiashu’s most trusted right-hand man. He may be a suspect, but the suspicion isn’t great; compared to the suspicion of murder, I’m afraid he’s currently suspected of privately pursuing the killer. And, Ji Xun, why wouldn’t Meng Fushan? Because he is Meng Fushan? Because you believe in him?” Huo Ranyin asked back.
“That’s right, because he is Meng Fushan,” Ji Xun said. “Because he went there to expose the darkness. Investigating him is just wasting time in the wrong direction.”
“Investigating him might be a waste of time,” Huo Ranyin said, “but if you don’t investigate him, you might lose the chance to solve the case.”
“Huo Ranyin!” Ji Xun called out softly.
“Ji Xun,” Huo Ranyin said calmly, “people who walk in the darkness for too long are either assimilated by the darkness or buried by it. As a former criminal police officer, you believe in too many people. You believed in me first, and now you believe in Meng Fushan. But I may not believe in myself, and Meng Fushan probably doesn’t believe in himself either. What you want to believe in…”
He said cruelly.
“Is what you hope to believe in.”
