Chapter 102 has appeared?
Coconut Baby held her mother's photo in both hands and generously lent it to Jinbao.
"My mommy said that when I miss her, I should look at her picture," she said in her childish voice.
This was the solution Coconut Mom came up with last night when her child was crying so loudly. It wasn't the first time she'd used this method; she used it the same way when she first sent her child to kindergarten, during the worst days of separation anxiety.
"I don't want it." Jinbao didn't accept it, waving her little hand and turning her face away sadly.
Seeing this, the other children gathered around, their tearful eyes fixed on the photo, reaching out their little hands. However, when the photo was passed around, each child's lips trembled even more, overwhelmed with sorrow.
This is the mother of the coconut flakes, not their mother!
Jinbao scratched his head: "You guys just realized that?"
With a "waaaah," the children cried so hard their throats were exposed.
Teacher Ji had been comforting them for a long time, wiping away their tears one moment and blowing their noses the next, keeping her extremely busy. Amidst this group of little ones crying their eyes out, Shengchan, spinning freely, appeared remarkably optimistic.
This young master of the Sheng family always does things unpredictably. In the past, he was Teacher Ji's main focus, but unexpectedly, today, this child has become the one who is least troublesome.
During the holidays, Teacher Ji often thought about these children. But now, the crying was like a symphony, with tears on every delicate little face, and her mind was buzzing.
Shengfang encouraged everyone to be strong and cheer up. These words went in one ear and out the other for the children, but Teacher Ji took them to heart.
She also needs to pull herself together and not be defeated by temporary difficulties.
"Come on, everyone—look over here." Teacher Ji took out colorful building blocks, trying to attract everyone's attention.
"Let's have a competition to see who can stack the blocks the tallest first."
Shengfang was already seated, her short legs tapping rhythmically on the floor, and in the blink of an eye, she had stacked the blocks high.
"Watch me!" he said proudly.
He can build a perfect skyscraper in an instant!
"Shall we all learn from Fangfang?" Teacher Ji continued gently.
Everyone looked at Sheng Hua, whose little chest was still trembling and whose tears had not been wiped away, just like the little protagonist in an eight o'clock drama.
The children are still young and their emotions don't regulate themselves as quickly. They're thinking about whether or not to raise their little hands to build with blocks.
Shengfang sighed softly.
The start of school wasn't like this at all. I thought everyone would be playing and having fun, but instead, they're all crying their eyes out. Sheng Fang doesn't like sad atmospheres and casually puts down her building blocks.
He's been trying to soothe the child for a long time; it seems taking care of a child is really not an easy task.
"This is boring." Sheng Fang stood up, patted his pants, and said nonchalantly, "Teacher, I want to go home."
The children stirred up another commotion.
Teacher Ji's eyes widened, but before she could ask the young master to shut up, she heard the other children crying and whimpering.
The sight of the blooming flowers sparked inspiration in the children.
Little hands shot up, timidly echoing his words.
"Can I really go home?"
"Teacher, I want to go home too."
"I want to go home too!"
"Call Mommy and Daddy."
"I want one too..."
Teacher Ji slumped into a small chair, staring at the ceiling with utter despair.
She began to seriously consider what had gotten into her that made her decide to become a kindergarten teacher.
...
Eighteen years later, the same bloody scene has been repeated.
The on-site evidence collection work is proceeding in an intense and orderly manner.
A colleague from the forensic department squatted down next to the sofa, carefully using tweezers to pick up a crumpled candy wrapper and put it into the evidence bag.
"I found the candy wrapper; it looked like it had been squeezed hard." He analyzed it by changing the angle of the light source. "Judging from the creases, it must have been made recently."
"What brand is this? I've never seen it before."
"Do their children eat it?"
Forensic investigator Colmar turned around and said, "Take it back for testing first."
Zhu Qing and Zeng Yongshan went door to door taking statements.
The victims were a middle-aged couple. The wife, Lai Danhe, 41, was known for her good temper, gentle and tolerant nature, and always greeted neighbors with a smile. The husband, Bao Cailiang, 43, was impatient but never careless at work. Their six-year-old daughter was well-behaved and introverted, rarely playing downstairs like other children.
“That Mr. Bao…” the neighbor across the street hesitated, “He’s an impatient man. I often hear him shouting in the hallway, telling Mrs. Bao to do this and that.”
"Is their marriage not going well?"
"They're not newlyweds, so what's all this talk about their relationship? Mrs. Bao is just like that; she's submissive to everyone. But their daughter is very well-behaved, always quietly holding her mother's hand. When she has free time, she practices the piano at home. Back then, they hadn't installed soundproofing yet, and Wenwen's piano playing was beautiful."
"I wonder how that child is doing now..."
Thinking of this, the neighbor across the hall sighed and shook his head.
“Mrs. Bao picks her daughter up from school on time every day and takes good care of her. She never lets her go out alone,” the property manager recalled. “Yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m., I saw Mrs. Bao carrying groceries and picking her daughter up from school. The child definitely came back, but I don’t know if she went out again afterward.”
“We’re not in a high-end building, so there’s no 24-hour security, let alone surveillance.”
"The daytime guard's working hours are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. After 6 p.m., there is no one at the guard post."
"I had just arrived at my post this morning when I heard about this incident."
At first, the residents were only frightened when they heard that Mr. and Mrs. Bao from the building had been murdered. Now, hearing that even their child had been taken away, everyone gasped in horror, and fear spread through the whispers in the hallways. Many parents who were originally going to send their children to school hesitated and ultimately decided to pack a few clothes and send their children to stay with their grandparents temporarily.
Reporters, having caught wind of the news, swarmed the scene, making it impossible to move. When Weng Zhaolin arrived, he had to struggle through the crowd. Microphones were immediately shoved in front of him, and reporters bombarded him with questions.
"I heard the killer even took the little girl with him? Was it a revenge killing?"
"The parents were murdered, but the child is unharmed. Was it an inside job, or was the child the perpetrator's target from the start?"
"Officer, I think I overheard you discussing an old case. Which old case is this case related to?"
"Is the police hiding something?"
Several young police officers stood inside the police cordon, talking in hushed tones.
"How come these reporters are so well-informed? It's only been a short time, and they've all come over at once... Inspector Ong is going to have a headache again this time."
"We're the ones who're in for a headache now!"
"Inspector Ong is under a lot of pressure, but in the end, it's us who suffer..."
Realizing that the discussion might be overheard by reporters, the police stopped talking and simply watched the horrific scene in silence.
The majority of officers in Major Crimes Unit B were young, and they had all heard about the family annihilation case to some extent, knowing it was connected to Dr. Cheng. But this wasn't some casual office gossip; it was a heartbreaking murder case. Normally, everyone tacitly avoided the topic.
Dr. Cheng was always gentle and cheerful, and focused and professional when working. Over time, the police officers even forgot about the past he carried. Until today, standing at this seemingly familiar crime scene, the bloody scene deeply shocked them.
If this case is handled in the same way as back then, then Cheng Xinglang survived such a bloody massacre back then.
"Won't this leave psychological trauma?" Zeng Yongshan said softly, her tone filled with pity. "Dr. Cheng was only eight years old at the time, it's so pitiful."
Zhu Qing's gaze fell on the meticulously tidy children's room.
When she first learned of this tragedy, she could only piece together the details from old newspaper reports because the original case files were inconvenient to access. The reports mentioned that the Cheng family had two children's rooms; Cheng Xinglang's room was stained with blood, while his younger brother's room was so clean it looked as if it had never been broken into.
"Fall back." Mo Zhenbang's words interrupted Zhu Qing's thoughts.
"We'll discuss this in more detail back at the police station."
...
In the CID office of Yau Ma Tei Police Station, all officers were engaged in an intense investigation.
"Investigate the deceased's social relationships, investigate the whereabouts of the children, analyze physical evidence at the scene..." Mo Zhenbang quickly assigned tasks.
The officers began to thoroughly investigate all of the middle-aged couple's social connections, but everyone couldn't help but think about the same question.
Why did the same modus operandi reappear eighteen years after the murderer died in a car accident?
Zhu Qing skillfully filled out the file retrieval application and went to the headquarters archives to retrieve the sealed files from the Cheng family massacre case. She knew this process by heart, but this time, the case file numbers were more than just a string of numbers.
At 11 a.m., the parents of the two deceased came to identify the bodies.
In the makeshift mortuary, Lai Danhe's father and Bao Cailiang's mother wept until they nearly fainted. Their cries ceased abruptly upon learning that their granddaughter was missing.
"No, they didn't come to my house..."
Where did Wenwen go?
When a person is extremely sad, their thoughts become chaotic, and they cannot come up with any useful clues.
"How could you offend someone if you haven't offended anyone?"
"One of them is a nurse, and the other is an ambulance driver. They both work to save lives, so how could they possibly offend anyone..."
Just as the questioning was about to end, Bao Cailiang's mother suddenly grabbed the officer's wrist.
"Is it...is it her ex-husband?"
"The divorce was so ugly; he even cursed them both to die a horrible death back then."
Before she could finish speaking, Bao Cailiang's mother broke down in tears again.
"I told you long ago, you shouldn't marry a woman like that!"
"You wicked devil...you killed my son!"
...
After crying until they were exhausted, the children in the toddler class at Weston Kindergarten finally quieted down.
During the free time before lunch break, everyone strolled to the outdoor activity area. Since the start of her vacation, Shengfang has missed the horizontal bar here the most.
He was the first to get on the horizontal bar, and then Coconut Baby and Jinbao also nimbly hung upside down on the horizontal bar, like three little monkeys, leisurely swinging back and forth, chatting about the interesting things that happened during the New Year.
"I'm going to the zoo to see real monkeys!"
"I also caught Marissa! Marissa couldn't outrun me."
Coconut Baby's eyes sparkled: "I went to a dance competition with Daddy and Mommy!"
She held up one finger: "First place!"
"Wow!" Jinbao exclaimed, "Why didn't you invite us to be in the audience?"
Shengfang nodded vigorously: "Cheerleaders."
The children had just met a few days ago.
They had just shared what happened during their holiday, and now they were sharing it again as if it were the first time they were hearing it, chatting with great interest.
Even the usually serious and reserved little rascal wandered over to them.
Hanging upside down on the horizontal bar is a very dangerous thing to do. In the past, he would have run to tell the teacher long ago. But now he's a child with ideals and doesn't have time to worry about that. His parents told him that when he works at the ICAC in the future, he'll only be responsible for catching bad guys. As for the naughty children in kindergarten, he won't have to get arrested.
"Ah Juan," Jinbao called out to him from upside down, "Come on over!"
After hesitating for a moment, A-Juan finally climbed onto the horizontal bar.
The children were surprised to find that he didn't need to practice at all; he could hang on instantly!
"Ah Juan, you're amazing!" Coconut Baby exclaimed sincerely.
Ah Juan's lips couldn't help but curl up, but before she could say anything, her glasses fell off with a "thud".
The four children hung upside down on the horizontal bar, looking at each other, none of them willing to be the first to come down.
"What should we do?" Shengfang's round little body swayed gently.
The four of them swayed and staggered...
It's like strings of small cured meats hanging in the sun in an old tenement building.
Teacher Ji rushed over from not far away, looking at the group of children with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.
They were comfortably basking in the sun, none of them bothering to come down and pick up their glasses, and instead lazily asked, "What should we do?"
"The glasses aren't going to grow wings and fly back onto A-Juan's nose," Teacher Ji said, unable to hide the smile on her lips.
Each little face, hanging upside down, blinked its big, watery eyes and looked pitifully at the teacher.
The park staff took all necessary precautions, including laying thick, soft mats under the horizontal bar. The children tried to reach it with their little hands, but their arms were too short to reach the glasses on the mats.
"Teacher Ji, please help me."
"Were you waiting for me?"
The children immediately nodded in unison, their rosy little faces hanging upside down, so round and cute.
Teacher Ji finally couldn't help but laugh, shook her head, walked over, picked up the glasses, and put them on baby Ajuan.
The world became clear again, and Baby Ajuan swayed even more vigorously.
"I'm like a little swing—"
"Me too! Me too!"
"Let's swing on the swings..."
...
In the afternoon, the police officers returned from their visits, opened the meeting room door, and took their seats with the clues they had gathered.
The whiteboard was empty except for photos of the two victims pinned to it.
The police officers stood up one after another to report the results of their investigation.
"Preliminary investigations show that the two have no financial disputes and no obvious enemies in their social relationships."
“Bao Cailiang and Lai Danhe are in their second marriage. They registered their marriage eight years ago, but they actually knew each other ten years ago. The reason it took so long was because they both had families at the time.”
"An extramarital affair?" someone asked.
“They both cheated on each other,” Xu Jiale continued. “They worked at the same hospital, and after meeting, they both divorced to be together. The divorce was a difficult and protracted battle. The male victim’s ex-wife even said today, ‘Can a relationship won by such force really bring happiness in the end?’”
“According to the neighbors, they often quarrel after marriage,” Zeng Yongshan said, referring to the transcript. “Lai Danhe’s colleagues also confirmed that the couple quarreled every three days and every five days. These past two days, she has been absent-minded and seems to have had another argument with her husband.”
Uncle Li turned a page of the transcript and thought of his failed marriage.
Arguments between spouses are commonplace; compared to life and death, they are insignificant. Now that both are dead, it's impossible to say who was right and who was wrong.
"The divorce was very unpleasant for both of them. But so many years have passed, surely it's not worth killing them over this..."
"Oh, and another thing worth noting is that both of them have a child from their previous marriages. Bao Cailiang has a son, who is fourteen years old and attends a boarding school. Lai Danhe has a daughter—"
Just then, a knock on the door interrupted the report, and a police officer poked his head in.
"Mr. Mo, the deceased Lai Danhe's daughter with her ex-husband has arrived."
...
The deceased, Lai Danhe, and her ex-husband's daughter, Qiu Xien, were 19 years old this year.
She stood in the police station corridor, insisting on seeing her mother one last time.
“My grandfather called to tell me,” she said. “After identifying the body in the morning, my grandfather felt unwell and only contacted me after he got home. That’s when I found out that something had happened to my mother.”
After obtaining her consent, the police took her to make a brief statement.
“When we were little, they always argued,” Qiu Xien said softly. “My mother is actually very gentle. Even when she argues, she does it quietly. She just hides away and cries alone.”
“When I was about ten years old… she said that she found true love after meeting Uncle Bao, and asked if I could wish her well.” The girl lowered her eyes and gave a forced smile. “What could I say?”
Qiu Xien now lives with her father and stepmother, and also has a half-brother.
Her parents each started new families, so no matter where she went, she was superfluous and out of place in either household.
"Have your father and mother still been in contact after the divorce?"
Qiu Xien shook her head: "When he first got divorced, Dad was really devastated. But he's better now. He remarried and had a child. They often take my younger brother on trips. He dislikes Mom a lot and doesn't even want me to contact her. As for himself, it's even less likely that he'll keep in touch with her."
Police took her to a makeshift morgue.
Standing before her mother's body, Qiu Xien's tears finally fell.
"Who...why did this..."
When talking about her relationship with her mother, she recalled: "My mother was young when she gave birth to me. At that time, the elders introduced us, and she and my father got married after meeting only three times. She had no feelings for my father, and for me, it was probably just a sense of responsibility."
"But it's completely different with my younger sister. She always takes care of everything for her, no matter how small."
"Just like last week..."
Suddenly, as if remembering something, she looked up sharply: "Last week, Mom said that if anything happened to her, I must take good care of my little sister."
Qiu Xien grabbed the officer's sleeve: "Madam, did my mother already have a premonition about something?"
The police took a full statement from Qiu Xien.
According to the pager record, the deceased, Lai Danhe, suddenly contacted her last Saturday, three days ago.
“We don’t contact each other much, but every time, she mentions her younger sister. She always says that the two sisters should take care of each other, but my sister is only six years old. How can she take care of me? She only said these things to me.” Qiu Xien continued, “I thought it was just the same old thing and didn’t pay any attention. But now that I think about it, she never mentioned that something might happen to her before. Only that one time, my mother said that if anything happened to her, I should take my sister and leave immediately.”
Just as the questioning was nearing its end, Haozai walked by carrying a file folder.
"I just picked up the report from the general archives." He waved the document in his hand. "It's rare to see them so efficient."
...
Inside the meeting room, the sounds of files being turned over rose and fell.
“If the deceased had a premonition…” Zhu Qing flipped through the testimonies of Lai Danhe’s daughter and colleagues, “then her depression these past few days was not because of marital quarrels.”
"Did she know she was in danger?"
Mo Zhenbang frowned: "Investigate who the deceased had recently been in contact with."
Uncle Li got up and pinned the old case file photos he had retrieved to the whiteboard.
Back then, he was in the West Kowloon Regional Crime Unit and participated in handling this case.
"The Cheng family case from eighteen years ago... The case report shows that the murderer was a mental patient who escaped from the Saigon branch of the Ming Tak Mental Health Rehabilitation Center. The murderer suddenly went mad and killed indiscriminately. This was not his first case. All the evidence was complete. The fingerprints on the murder weapon and the clothing fibers all matched."
The case file contains comparison photos of the rooms of the Cheng family's two children.
The older brother Cheng Xinglang's room was in a mess, while the younger brother's room was eerily tidy, with clothes and teddy bears taken from the closet.
"According to the records of the mental hospital, the murderer was violent, but he spared Cheng Xinglang's six-year-old brother."
The case file was passed to Zhu Qing.
The shocking photos of the scene show bloodstains and drag marks all over the floor, from the master bedroom to the living room, the last struggles of the two victims.
“Dr. Cheng was in a coma for three days before waking up,” Zeng Yongshan said softly. “He was lucky; he didn’t witness the crime firsthand…”
Zhu Qing's gaze lingered on a photo of Cheng Xinglang as a child.
It's hard to imagine how he went through all that back then and how he recovered from the trauma.
“Xinglang knew nothing about the circumstances of the incident, so we speculated that the murderer targeted him first,” Uncle Li continued. “The fiber composition of Cheng Xinglang’s parents’ clothing showed that they had a violent struggle with the murderer. In other words, after Xinglang was injured, his parents dragged the murderer’s trouser leg and begged him to stop.”
“The parents blocked the murderer with their bodies and diverted his attention. There was a lot of blood in the child’s room at the time. Given the amount of blood loss, the murderer had every reason to believe that he was already dead, which is why he did not inflict further harm on Xinglang.”
Everyone could imagine the scene.
The parents crawled through pools of blood, desperately trying to give their children a chance to live.
Uncle Li explained that both victims in the case were leading figures in the medical field. The father was an internationally renowned neurosurgeon, and the mother was a leading scholar in the field of genetic psychiatry. Despite their busy work schedules, the couple would still make time to take their children out for trips.
Uncle Li posted a group photo of his brothers taken at the beach on the whiteboard.
The two brothers are two years apart in age, and they look somewhat alike. In the photo, the older brother, Cheng Xinglang, has water droplets dripping from his hair and is smiling carefree, while the younger brother stands quietly to the side, holding a water gun in his left hand.
It used to be a happy and fulfilling family.
“The case from back then was closed long ago. Eighteen years later, the same modus operandi…” Liang Qikai pondered. “Actually, the chain of evidence back then was very complete. The only suspicious point is that the mental patient had no relatives or friends and was kept in a mental hospital for many years, yet he took away Dr. Cheng’s younger brother… The child is missing, and there has been no news of him for so long. Judging from his age, he should be twenty-four years old now.”
“Upon careful comparison, the methods of the crimes are actually different.” Zhu Qing flipped through the forensic report from back then. “Although the murderer back then was cruel, he killed the victim with a single blow, leaving clean and neat wounds. This time, the victim, however, was… a bloody mess.”
“I remember Dr. Ye mentioning at the crime scene this morning that it seemed the perpetrator was attacked with his left hand,” Xu Jiale continued.
“The murderer in the case from eighteen years ago wasn’t left-handed,” Uncle Li said. “There’s also a height difference; the murderer in this case wore size 8.5 shoes, which suggests he was at least six feet 1 inch tall. But the murderer from back then—”
“It’s definitely not that high.” Mo Zhenbang frowned. “Could it be a copycat crime? The modus operandi is being replicated… Why would they replicate a case from eighteen years ago?”
"Is it someone directly connected to the case?"
“Two days passed between the incident and the death of the mentally ill patient in the car accident.” Uncle Li suddenly sat up straight. “In those forty-eight hours, a lot could have been done. Could he have settled the children during that time?”
The police officers' eyes were all fixed on the photo.
The younger brother in the photo is holding a water gun with his left hand.
"What if the murderer entrusted the child to someone else before he died..."
"The candy wrappers found at the scene have been confirmed." Xiao Sun walked into the conference room with the evidence bag. "They are imported soft-centered chocolates, a popular imported product from more than ten years ago, which has been rarely seen in recent years."
Uncle Li frowned and stared at the candy wrapper.
He quickly opened the case file and looked for the list of items in the Cheng family case file from that year.
"Back then, each of the two brothers had a box of these soft-core chocolates on their desks."
"Check where you can still buy this kind of candy."
“I saw someone at the Jianuoan Sanatorium a month ago.” Zhu Qing suddenly looked up. “He was wearing a mask and a baseball cap, and he looked a bit like Dr. Cheng.”
The meeting room fell silent, and everyone's eyes lingered between two photos on the whiteboard.
The child from eighteen years ago, and the crime scene today.
"Do you think it's possible that..." Zeng Yongshan asked, "that his brother has appeared?"
“Xinglang has been searching for his younger brother all these years.” Uncle Li frowned. “Has the forensic department notified him?”
Eighteen years later.
If Cheng Xinglang does find his brother, only to discover that he's involved in a new murder case...
This thought silenced everyone.
...
When the school bell rang, Shengfang, carrying her little schoolbag, stood in line among the crowd.
It was his first day of school in the new year, and Fangfang stood on tiptoe expectantly, constantly looking left and right.
Qingzai has been so free lately, I'll definitely come to pick him up!
The school bus remained parked at the school gate, and the children boarded the bus one after another.
The driver leaned out and urged, "Little student, it's time to get on the bus!"
"You go first." Sheng Fang waved her little hand, her eyes still fixed on the road outside the school gate.
The driver sighed and got out of the car.
According to the kindergarten's strict latest regulations, every child riding the school bus must be identified by the driver. If parents need to change their pick-up and drop-off plans, they must register in advance.
“Your parent didn’t come to sign, so according to regulations, I can’t leave you alone.” He pointed to his name tag on his chest. “What if every child says they have someone to pick them up, and something happens?”
Shengfang's little head drooped: "My niece will come to pick me up."
"She made plans with you?"
The children were suddenly stunned.
They, uncle and nephew, actually forgot to make an appointment beforehand for such an important matter!
Just as the school bus driver was about to earnestly persuade the young master—
Suddenly, Shengfang moved her feet and ran towards the school bus with a "tap tap tap" sound.
Qingzai must be busy again, that's why she didn't have time to pick him up.
The little one was flexible and agile, nimbly jumping onto the car by himself.
"Uncle Hu, let's go to Yau Ma Tei!"
The little coconut baby in the back row came over and said, "I want to go too!"
"Where are you going?" Fangfang turned her head.
"Then what did you go to do?" Ye Si puffed out her cheeks, unconvinced.
Officer Shengfang spread out his chubby little hands, looking like he had no choice.
"Qingzai said that the police station can't do without me."
Coconut Baby's little mouth opened wide: "You believe me?"
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