6
However, it is just unfounded speculation after all.
I sat by the bed and waited until late at night, then stopped my father from working overtime and told him everything I had discovered. It turned out to be of no help in solving the case. He completely refuted my reasoning in just two sentences, leaving me speechless.
After every murder that makes headlines, the police are flooded with calls offering tips, suggestions, and hypotheses. These people claim to have seen, heard, or heard something that ties into the case, and they complain that the police won't take the time to listen. The calls are usually filled with familiar voices, but occasionally there's a new, less intelligent chatterbox. For my father, I was one of them.
Forget it. I had to face reality. After all, I was just an ordinary high school student, with no ability to solve murders. There was no such thing as a famous high school detective in reality.
I recalled my original purpose—to visit Li Zitong, who had lost a loved one. But the store had changed hands, and I had no idea where she lived. I had no choice but to wait until Monday to go to school and look for an opportunity.
During Monday morning self-study, the homeroom teacher arrived earlier than everyone else. He specifically warned, "According to the school's latest notice, for the sake of caution, if any strangers appear near campus and ask you about other students, tell them to come to the teacher. Oh, I'm not telling you this because there's something troubling, I'm just worried you might misunderstand me."
As soon as the bell rang, the classroom bubbled up like boiling porridge. How could anyone remain still? Speculations, imaginations, and gossip immediately erupted, overwhelmed by my forced composure.
After school, I was the first one to rush out of the classroom, but I slowed down in the corridor on the first floor and pretended to be passing by by chance. This pretense was all for the chance to run into Li Zitong.
After graduating from elementary school, Li Zitong and I went to different junior high schools, but we attended the same high school again. It wasn't that we had deliberately planned to take the same entrance exam together; there weren't many high schools in our small area, and even fewer that could maintain such a high acceptance rate for a sample subject like ours. I was lucky; my high school entrance exam score was right on the admission line. Li Zitong's grades were much better, and he was assigned to the experimental class.
Class 1 had just finished school, and as I passed the entrance, I could see their teacher packing up his handouts. Students filed out of the classroom in twos and threes. I stopped behind the flower bed and peered into the crowd, searching for Li Zitong.
"Why are you hiding here?" Suddenly someone patted my shoulder from behind. It turned out to be my childhood friend Gao Yang.
I'm not a social person, but I do have close friends, albeit a few. Gao Yang is one of them. He's always been a model student with excellent grades. When he entered high school, he was assigned to the experimental class, just like Li Zitong.
"I just happened to be passing by."
"Stop pretending, you're here to see her, right?"
"Who is it?" I pretended to be stupid.
"Your ex-girlfriend."
"I've told you so many times, she and I are just friends," I explained helplessly. I don't know why, but people around me always have this strange misunderstanding.
"I'm just kidding. Look at you, you're already so angry. But then again, there's no point in you waiting here. She hasn't been to school for a week."
"Is this true...is it related to the case in the videotape?"
"You heard about it too..."
Before I could finish my sentence, a passing girl called Gao Yang's name. He gestured for me to wait, and we exchanged a few words in low voices. The girl looked quite cute.
I can't help but feel a little jealous. This guy is still as popular with the opposite sex as ever.
Gao Yang and I have similar interests and are about the same height. His grades are better, but I have the upper hand in athleticism; I'm always more likely to win at any ball game. Yet, he's far more popular with girls than I am. I can only attribute this to his looks. With a high nose bridge and long arms, he's not the traditionally pale, delicately handsome type. But a girl once commented that he had celebrity looks, resembling Nicky Wu from the Little Tigers.
After the girl left, he looked around cautiously and said, "Let's talk somewhere else."
There's a wonton stand near the school gate. It's packed at noon, filled with students who want to avoid the cafeteria's awful food. After school, the place becomes noticeably quieter. We each order a small bowl of wontons and find a quiet spot in the back.
"The head teacher said she took leave because of a cold and fever. But we all knew there was something wrong. The timing was too coincidental, just around the time when the case was reported in the newspaper." He whispered.
"Is that really the case... Are there any other students in the class who know the details?"
"No. You know, she never takes the initiative to make friends. When the homeroom teacher asked someone to deliver the notes, she still asked me to go. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's just because my house is close."
I nodded briefly. "How is she doing?"
He shrugged slightly and spread his hands on the table. "I didn't get to see her. When I called, her father opened the door and said she'd been shutting herself in her room and didn't want to see anyone."
"It seems that this incident has hit her hard."
"Of course, no one can accept the news of their mother's sudden death." He rubbed his eyes. "It would be great if the case could be solved as soon as possible and the murderer caught."
"Speaking of this, I found a clue."
I explained how I met Zheng Kun in the video store and noticed something unusual.
"Doesn't that mean we can solve the case right away?" Gao Yang said excitedly, his discarded spoon sliding into the wonton soup. "Have you called the police? Oh, yes, your dad is the police, just tell him."
"Why wouldn't I tell you about this? The problem is he doesn't believe it at all."
"How is that possible? If what you said is true, I think we can arrest that guy named Zheng Kun directly without any investigation or interrogation."
"But the problem is, if high school students can think of this possibility, the police certainly can think of it too." I sighed. "As early as two weeks ago, they closed the video store and conducted a thorough search. They didn't find any clues related to the case, and no blood was found on the shelves."
"It's possible we were negligent during the investigation. Bloodstains hidden in crevices are difficult to find."
"That's impossible. You don't know how rigorously the detectives investigate, especially homicides," I explained. "And according to my dad, the victim's head wound was quite large, and his skull was fractured. If the video store was truly the primary crime scene, there would undoubtedly be a large amount of blood, but the floor inside was actually spotless."
"The murderer is not stupid. He will definitely clean up the blood after committing the crime."
I shook my head flatly. "No murderer can completely hide bloodstains. The police have specialized detection methods. They use a special reagent, I think it's called luminol. Even if you scrub it to the point where it's completely invisible to the naked eye, spraying it with the reagent will cause the bloodstain to fluoresce."
"Well, that doesn't really explain it..." His face drooped like a deflated swimming ring.
The wontons were a bit cold. We ate in silence for a while, then he raised his head as if realizing something. "Even so, you still think that man named Zheng Kun is suspicious, right? Otherwise, there's no need to bring this up specifically."
I swallowed the dough, which had only a tiny bit of meat mixed in, and nodded deeply. "I barely paid attention to what was said in class today. I've been thinking about it over and over again, and the more I think about it, the more suspicious I feel. I checked Zheng Kun's eyes at the music store. Even if he's not the murderer, he must know the truth. Otherwise, he wouldn't be so panicked."
Gao Yang snapped his fingers, as if enjoying the wonderful feeling of his heart beating faster. "That guy might have used some highly intelligent criminal methods. It's like a mystery in a detective novel, waiting to be solved by a famous detective. Let me think... He could re-pave the blood-stained floor with cement. That way, no matter how high-tech the reagents are, they won't be able to detect it."
"Impossible. Doing so will definitely make the ground uneven, and it will be even more obvious."
"Why not just re-pave the entire store floor?"
"A bricklayer's job isn't easy. For a whole shop, how much sand and lime do you need to prepare, and how long does it take to finish it? All in all, the murderer only has one night. And what about the bloodstains on the walls, which have splattered on the shelves?"
We discussed various possibilities enthusiastically for more than half an hour. Gao Yang proposed various bizarre hypotheses, but I rejected them one by one.
Gao Yang lost interest as he spoke, and finally leaned back, complaining, "What's wrong with you? You're the one who pointed out the suspect, and you're the one who tried every possible way to clear him of suspicion."
"Because all your assumptions are fantasy and have no practical possibility."
"Then why don't you come up with a possible hypothesis?"
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "If I could have come up with any idea, I would have reported it long ago. Why am I even bothering with you? Honestly, I've already considered most of the hypotheses you've proposed, and I've also come up with many that you haven't mentioned. I've put myself in Zheng Kun's shoes and thought over and over about how to cover up my crime, but I can't come up with a reasonable solution. Even if I could solve the bloodstain problem, I wouldn't be able to move the body."
"Is it difficult?"
"Moving a short distance might not be difficult. But didn't you see the news? The man disappeared on New Year's Day, and his body was found the day after in Wudu, a city in the south. That's over 480 kilometers away from us."
"It doesn't sound like a distance you can walk or bike to."
"Not to mention he was carrying a dead body."
Even the thinnest adult woman weighs around 90 kilograms. And even I'm exhausted just carrying a 30-kilogram bag of rice for my family. "It's obviously impossible to rely on public transportation for something like moving a body. It would be exposed quickly, whether it's on a long-distance bus or a passenger train. Does that guy named Zheng Kun have a car at home?"
"Based on my understanding of his family background, it's impossible."
For Chinese families in the early 2000s, private cars were a rarity. Only the occasional one would pass by on town roads. If it had a rare foreign logo (except for Volkswagen, thanks to the Santana), it would attract admiring glances and amazed discussions.
"The newspaper also said the exact location where the body was dumped is very remote," I added. "It's in an abandoned steel mill on the outskirts of Wudu. It's difficult to find it without a local guide..."
"Wait, you mean the steel plant?" Gao Yang interrupted me.
"Yes, the body was fished out of the steelworks' well. Have you heard about that?"
"I know it's in a well, but I haven't heard where the well is..." He stood up, breathing rapidly, as if the blood flowing through his brain needed more oxygen. "Let's go to the train station."
"Now?"
"Now. If I'm not mistaken, there's something quite interesting to be found there."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
