Chapter 367 The Corpse in Nansha River
One day in December, 2023.
Provincial capital, municipal bureau.
A young policeman knocked on the door and asked, "Old Zhou, are you there?"
The sign hanging on the door read "Third Archives Room".
The door was opened from the inside, and the room was filled with filing cabinets, with only a table in the corner.
Zhou Yi, with graying temples, glanced at the visitor through his reading glasses and said, "Xiao Jiang, which file are you looking for this time?"
"May 6, 1997."
As soon as the words fell, Zhou Yi was stunned. "Five or six? A grand case?"
Xiao Jiang said, "Didn't the Ministry announce in 2017 that grand cases, as special cases, wouldn't be subject to statutes of limitations? So at the end of the year, as is customary, we should review those major backlogs and see if there are any new leads."
Zhou Yi sighed deeply and turned to walk towards the filing cabinet. "What clues can we have? It's been 26 years, and we don't have the murderer's fingerprints or DNA. It's useless even if you tear through the files."
Xiao Jiang didn't say anything, just made a helpless expression.
"Old Zhou, I heard you're from Hongcheng? Were you involved in this case back then?"
Zhou Yi smiled helplessly: "I was younger than you at that time, and I was still working as a patrol officer at the police station. How could I be qualified to participate in this case?"
"They say you were quite capable back then. If you had been involved in this case, perhaps the outcome would have been different."
Zhou Yi stuffed a pile of case files into Xiao Jiang's arms. "Great? Great! I can read the files here?"
Xiao Jiang looked at the case files in his arms and was shocked: "So many?"
"That's only a third, there's more!" Zhou Yi turned around and continued taking files from the filing cabinet, complaining, "So why are you guys engaging in this formalism? The files are already in the computer, so why bother looking at the screen? Why do you have to retrieve the original case files?"
"Sign it later. I'm telling you, Xiao Jiang, you're responsible for returning the original files you took. I have a list here, and if even one piece of paper is missing, I'll hold you accountable."
Xiao Jiang said awkwardly, "How about I put it on the table first? I'll go find a box. This is too much."
"Go ahead." Zhou Yi waved his hand.
He moved another pile of information onto the table and then patted his old waist.
Suddenly, he saw a corner sticking out of the file.
He pinched the corner and tried to push it back in, but there were a lot of files pressing on top of it and he couldn't push it in.
They could only pull out the file and found that it was the personal information of Lu Xiaoshuang, the victim of the Hongda case.
The paper with a corner poking out was a yellowed photo.
Zhou Yi stared at the photo in his hand, a little dazed.
This photo was taken at an event held at the school after Lu Xiaoshuang graduated from high school and received the admission letter from Hongda. In the photo, Lu Xiaoshuang's smile is as bright as the sun.
This was not the first time Zhou Yi had seen this photo. Every piece of information and every important piece of information in the grand case was deeply engraved in his mind.
But every time he saw the photo of the victim, who was actually about the same age as himself, he had an inexplicable feeling.
It was as if Lu Xiaoshuang in the photo was asking for help and shouting to herself!
He looked at the photo and smiled helplessly and sadly: "If I participate... hehe... what can I change..."
Suddenly, he seemed to hear a long whistle.
…
"Captain Shi, what did you say? The train just blew its whistle over here, so I can't hear clearly."
The sound of a whistle faded away, and Zhou Yi, who was sitting in the middle bunk of the train, was so nervous that his palms were sweating.
He actually heard it clearly, but he couldn't believe what he heard, so he could only ask again.
"You are on the train? So you are on your way back?" Shi Tao asked on the other end of the phone.
"Well, Sister Qiao and Xu Nian and I are on the train back to Hongcheng and will arrive early tomorrow morning."
Zhou Yi's voice trembled slightly, which made Qiao Jiali and Xu Nian, who were sitting below, stand up involuntarily.
Qiao Jiali mouthed, "What's wrong?"
Zhou Yi waved his hands in panic, his facial muscles twitching unconsciously.
This made Qiao Jiali's heart tremble, because in all the time they had been together, except for the time when he almost beat up Xu Jiaguang in anger because of Xu Xinxin, she had never seen Zhou Yi so nervous.
"Where is Old Wu?" Shi Tao asked on the phone.
Zhou Yi felt like he was about to explode, but his mind told him to calm down! Calm down!
"Captain Wu and the others are in Lujiang. Captain Shi, please repeat what you just said. What happened?"
Shi Tao also heard that something was wrong with Zhou Yi's voice, so he quickly said, "Oh, it's like this. A few minutes ago, the command center received a report that someone found a gray travel bag containing chopped human tissue in the eastern section of Nansha River in Nanming District."
After confirming this from Shi Tao again, Zhou Yi's mind exploded.
He just felt his eyes go dark and he felt like there was a breath stuck in his chest that couldn't come up.
He suddenly put his hand on the bed to steady himself.
"When Director Wang heard it was a dismemberment case, he immediately called your Third Brigade office, but no one answered. He went to your office and saw no one. He happened to run into me, and I said it looked like you were out on a business trip because of some case. So I thought I'd give you a call. You can just call me if you're on your way back."
Zhou Yi closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
"Captain Shi...are you going to the scene now?" Zhou Yi asked.
"No, you guys weren't here, right? So Captain Ni personally led people to the scene. I think they just left."
"Thank you..." Zhou Yi was about to say thank you, but the anger in his chest and the narrow space in the middle bunk where he had to bend down made him feel like he was about to explode.
He suddenly started coughing violently, and the coughing became more and more severe, until his whole back arched.
He felt as if he were suffocating, like a drowning man with no air left in his lungs.
He threw down the phone, jumped off the bed, rushed to the corridor outside, opened the upper window, and desperately breathed in the cold air outside.
Because he rushed out of bed with too much movement and too much force, his head hit the edge of the upper bunk directly, making a loud noise that scared everyone.
The train sped along the tracks, and outside the window was the endless night. The cold air filled his lungs, making him feel alive again.
But his mind was in great confusion and he couldn't calm down and think properly.
Isn't today only April 30th? Why, why were body parts found?
Why is it suddenly so early?
Or maybe it's not the body parts from the Hongda case? Is it from another case?
But in the previous life, during this period of time, apart from the Hongda case, there were no other cases in Hongcheng?
Why on earth? Why is this happening?
And... who is the owner of that bag of body parts?
He didn't even dare to think about that name, for fear that if he thought about it, everything would come true.
He was extremely scared. He was afraid that everything would be the same as in his previous life, when that independent, kind-hearted girl who was full of hope for life and the future was murdered by the murderer and cut into more than three hundred pieces.
If the result of this life was to repeat the same mistakes, then what was the point of his rebirth? He might as well stay in that filing room, hunched over like a turtle, waiting for retirement, and then live out this failed life.
Cold wind blew into the carriage through the window. A burly man with a face full of flesh stuck his head out from the next door, pointed at Zhou Yi and cursed, "Are you sick? Close the window right now!"
When Zhou Yi heard the scolding, he looked back, but the big man was so scared that he dared not speak immediately.
Because Zhou Yi's eyes were wide open, as if they were about to spit fire, and more importantly, the right side of his face was covered in blood.
When the big man saw this, he quickly shrank back and dared not say a word.
Qiao Jiali and Xu Nian were terrified. Blood was flowing from Zhou Yi's head. It was obviously broken by the collision when he rushed out of the bed just now.
"Zhou Yi, you're bleeding." At Qiao Jiali's reminder, Zhou Yi touched his face and found that it was covered in blood.
Xu Nian quickly took out a simple first aid kit from his backpack, asked Zhou Yi to sit down, wiped the blood and treated his wound.
Shi Tao was still calling on the cell phone on the bed. Qiao Jiali picked it up and said, "Captain Shi, this is Qiao Jiali. What's going on?"
A few minutes later, Qiao Jiali hung up the phone and walked over to Zhou Yi.
Shi Tao's words really shocked her. Such a vicious dismemberment case had occurred again. The two cases in Donghai Community were solved not long ago. Why was Hongcheng so unstable recently?
But even so, Zhou Yi's unusually intense reaction still made her feel confused.
"Zhou Yi, are you okay?" Qiao Jiali asked.
Zhou Yi didn't say anything, but Xu Nian said, "It was just a scratch on the scalp, no bone damage. The wound isn't deep, and it's been disinfected. It shouldn't be a big problem."
She also felt very strange. When she used iodine to disinfect the wound on Zhou Yi's head, Zhou Yi seemed to be unaware of it and could not even feel the pain.
They didn't know that in these few short minutes, Zhou Yi's mind was like a raging storm.
But at this moment, he forcibly suppressed the huge panic, tension and confusion in his heart.
He is a policeman, a criminal policeman. He knows that he must calm himself down and think calmly at this time.
He sat in the corridor of the carriage, thinking about the information provided by Shi Tao.
The location where the first bag of body parts appeared was basically the same as in the previous life.
The rough features of the two elements, the travel bag and the body parts, are also consistent.
It can be concluded that this is a grand case.
But the time is different now. This life is a whole week earlier!
If there is no problem with my rebirth, then the trajectories of various cases in this life should be the same as in the previous life.
If there is a change, there is only one possibility, that is, the existence of myself, the reborn person, has caused the direction of the whole case to change!
Suddenly, he felt hopeful again.
If the time is different, the victim may also be different!
That’s right, until there is evidence, it doesn’t mean that the person whose body was dismembered was Lu Xiaoshuang!
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