Piranha Plant (1)

At noon, when Meng Siqi and Zhao Leiting went to the cafeteria to eat, they occasionally heard someone mention that incident, but no details were mentioned. It was probably about a boy of 17 or 18 years old who disappeared shortly after the Spring Festival this year and has not been found yet.

She was a little absent-minded while eating, and Zhao Leiting seemed to notice it, but when she looked up at him, Zhao Leiting's eyes avoided her again.

Meng Siqi didn't ask, she knew Zhao Lei Ting had something on his mind but might not tell her.

In the afternoon, after finishing the work at hand, Zhao Leiting suddenly leaned over the pile of books that blocked her view and asked, "Let's go to the community together. Are you free?"

Meng Siqi seemed to understand what Zhao Leiting meant and nodded.

The two got in the car together. After driving for a while, Zhao Leiting slowed down the car significantly and stopped on a relatively quiet dirt road. There was a pond next to it. The willow trees had withered, leaving only bare trunks. The water in the pond was very calm and lifeless.

Zhao Leiting put his hands on the steering wheel, looked ahead and said, "At the beginning of this year, probably in February, after returning from the Spring Festival, we received a case of a senior high school student named Sun Beizhe who was kidnapped. The kidnapping must have lasted for more than 24 hours before his parents reported the case."

Zhao Lei Ting slowly tilted his head, as if to confirm whether Meng Siqi was listening.

In fact, Meng Siqi has been preparing to listen to the cause and effect of this matter since she got on the car. She returned Zhao Leiting's gaze very seriously.

Zhao Leiting said: "The Korean army ordered the entire team to go out and wait for the victim's phone at home. I was there at the time, and the family also described the whole incident. Son Beizhe was supposed to go back to school for evening self-study, but that night he received a call from the kidnappers. It was a woman's voice, saying that Son Beizhe was in her hands, and asked them to prepare 100,000 yuan, wait for news at home, and not call the police, otherwise they would kill him."

Meng Siqi listened carefully, and at the same time she was guessing what would happen next in the story. Maybe something went wrong at the last link, causing Sun Beizhe to never come back.

Zhao Leiting said that his family initially thought it was someone else's prank because their family was not rich, but they had relatively respectable jobs. But that night they went to the school but did not find Sun Beizhe, and until the next day, Sun Beizhe did not show up. They knew that Sun Beizhe was really in trouble, so they went to raise money that day. They used the family savings and borrowed money from relatives and friends, and finally managed to raise 100,000 yuan.

The money was collected, but the kidnappers never called. The couple was worried that something had happened to their son, so they called the police at the urging of their relatives. By then, a day had passed since Sun Beizhe was kidnapped.

After the second team staked out Sun's home, the kidnappers never called again. Han Changlin decided to create a false impression of withdrawing the case, and the entire team left Sun's home. An hour later, the kidnappers made a second call, demanding that they go to the pedestrian street and put 100,000 yuan in cash into a designated trash can. After that, they would leave immediately and not be bothered anymore.

This time, the Korean team arranged a telephone monitor at Sun's house, who listened to the location of the phone. Han Changlin immediately rushed there and found that it was a public phone.

Unable to find any clues about the suspect, they had to take direct action. Han Changlin arranged for the Sun family to send money to a designated location, and they lay in ambush and wait for an opportunity to arrest them.

The weather was bad that day and it rained heavily. Grandfather wrapped the money tightly in a plastic bag and put it into the trash can under an umbrella.

After more than ten minutes, a man in a black raincoat finally appeared. He walked slowly towards the trash can and reached into the trash can to search.

Han Changlin issued an arrest order, and the second team and the police officers who assisted in the arrest swarmed forward and captured the man in the raincoat.

While holding down the man in the raincoat, Han Changlin took a breath, but when he raised his head, his blurry vision froze in the heavy rain. He saw a woman in a dark green raincoat standing in the rain mist and looking at them from a distance. It was not until he took a step forward to confirm that the other party seemed to notice something and turned into the alley in an instant.

As Han Changlin had worried, the man in the raincoat was a scavenger. He came here every day to scavenge, and even if it rained that day, he did not give up.

The matter suddenly came to a stalemate, and the kidnappers never called Sun's family again, and the matter seemed to be completely over.

However, Sun Beizhe also disappeared completely. Sun's family went to the police station again and again to ask for an investigation, saying that it was the police's mistake that led to the kidnappers' killing.

At that time, Han Changlin faced the double pressure of failed arrests and accusations from his family, and he felt that his career had suffered a serious setback.

Originally, the second team had a mediocre rate in solving cases. After this incident, they encountered difficulties in solving two cases in succession. At that time, Director Liu convened an internal discussion meeting and intended to abolish the second team and merge it into Lu He's first team.

Han Changlin was silent and depressed during that period, as if he had lost the fighting spirit of an old policeman. That was probably the darkest time for the second team. Zhao Leiting felt a little uncomfortable when describing it.

Later, Han Changlin made up his mind and went to Director Liu with an attitude of resigning and apologizing, and signed the military warrant. Meng Siqi knew something about what happened afterwards.

The case of Son Buk-chul remains an unsolved case to this day. With his family members coming to visit again this time, Han Chang-lin and the entire second team are naturally not in a very good mood. Perhaps they are feeling a mixture of guilt, regret, and unwillingness.

Sometimes there may only be one chance. If Han Changlin had made the right judgment at that time, perhaps the outcome would not be like this. But all this happened, and he is left with only guilt and resentment about it.

Zhao Leiting understood the Korean team's mood. After he said all this, Meng Siqi's mood was also shrouded in a thin layer of haze.

In the first half of this year, she had not yet joined the second team, but now she is a member of the second team, and she has the same responsibilities. She said slowly: "Zhao Leiting, is there no more clue about this matter?"

"No, we went to the place where she used the pay phone and checked the area within a few miles of where she disappeared on a rainy day. We found no clues at all. Sun Beizhe's body was not found either. It has been almost a year. Even if there was any evidence left behind, it must have disappeared now."

"Where did Sun Beizhe disappear at that time? Weren't there any witnesses?" Meng Siqi always felt that everything that happened would leave traces.

"You're right. Sun Beizhe didn't go to school that night. He went to a karaoke bar. He did chat up a long-haired woman that day, but no one paid attention to them."

"That woman? No one noticed?"

"The nightclub was too dark, and someone did see her. The police later hired someone to draw her portrait, but the portraits were all different. We even checked all the residential areas near the nightclub, but we didn't find any similar woman. In other words, we couldn't get in touch with the real her."

Meng Siqi also understood in his heart that since the portrait was blurry and there was no more psychological profile, it would be very difficult to grasp the key characteristics of the suspect.

Presumably, after this, Team Two had no way to investigate further, so the case ended like this.

"Zhao Leiting, can you take me to see the file and the suspect's portrait?"

"Of course you can, but since the police have not reopened the case, let's not make it public for now."

Meng Siqi nodded. There was still no clue about this matter, and Team Two had suffered trauma in the past. She would never rub salt into Team Two's old wounds before there was any progress.

Meng Siqi and Zhao Leiting returned to the police station's file room. When they saw the custodian Uncle Hu at the door, Zhao Leiting deliberately lied: "Uncle Hu, we want to review the 11.16 case file again."

The November 16 case was the tragic case that wiped out an entire family. Generally, such major cases will be subject to subsequent review.

Uncle Hu glanced at the two of them and didn't answer immediately, as if he was thinking about what they said. Then he nodded slowly. Unlike the previous time he came to pick up the files, Uncle Hu didn't show an obvious smile this time. Instead, he smiled faintly and said, "It's the first one this year."

It turned out that Uncle Hu was just wondering about the location of the file. Meng Siqi hurriedly thanked him, "Thank you, Uncle Hu."

Uncle Hu smiled and nodded, then looked at Meng Siqi again.

The two walked into the filing room, and Zhao Leiting whispered, "Did you know that Uncle Hu is Brother Feng's master?"

"Ah?" Meng Siqi was slightly surprised. It turned out that Uncle Hu would look at her every time, and he even mentioned Feng Shaomin when he saw her for the first time.

It's just that Uncle Hu and Feng Shaomin do have very different personalities, and I don't know how they communicated back then. However, although Uncle Hu is old, it can be seen that he is very familiar with every case and even remembers the location of the files. This shows that he and Feng Shaomin are both the type who delve into details, which is a common thread.

On the shelf of 1993, Meng Siqi turned to the first file, which was not the November 16th murder case. She remembered that the cases should be arranged by month. Zhao Leiting had already walked to the other end of the file shelf, picked up the first case file, and called to her: "Found it, this is it."

Meng Siqi suddenly remembered the first case file Uncle Hu mentioned. She seemed to understand what he meant. Uncle Hu seemed to know that they were looking for this case file.

She hurried over and found Zhao Leiting had already pulled out the files. She took the file bag and saw the words "February 13 Kidnapping Case" written on it and the case was marked as "unsolved".

Zhao Lei Ting pulled out three sheets of drawing paper from the file and handed them to her. She picked them up and took a look. One of them was a pencil sketch, probably drawn by a portrait artist. It was a woman with long hair, a face with heavy ink, and dark eye sockets. She looked like a very mean woman, but also had some color.

The second painting was exactly as Zhao Leiting said, it was completely different. It was a side profile portrait, with a face shape and facial features that were different from the first one, and the eye sockets and nose wings were deeper.

The third photo showed different facial features again. The facial features were still three-dimensional and the color was darker. However, this time she felt that the eyes were familiar for a moment, but that familiarity was soon replaced by the sharpness between the eyebrows.

Meng Siqi asked: "Why are the portraits all different?"

Zhao Leiting explained: "The singing hall was very dark at the time, so naturally, the people who saw it were just these fragmentary information."

"But these are obviously not the same person?" Meng Siqi thought, even if the information is fragmentary, there is always a connection.

Zhao Leiting said: "So we guessed that Sun Beizhe had contact with different women that night, but because the information was too vague, we were unable to find it in the end."

Meng Siqi roughly understood what Zhao Leiting meant. Sun Beizhe went to the nightclub to have fun that night, so he chatted with people everywhere. In the end, no one cared who he left the nightclub with because the environment was too dark and noisy, and no one cared about what Sun Beizhe did.

Meng Siqi had the habit of carrying a small notebook with her. She picked up the pen and wrote down some key information in the file. Since the case had not been reopened, it was not easy for her to take the file back, not to mention it was not convenient to take it back.

Zhao Leiting watched her copying and looked at the details in the file from time to time.

He pointed to a certain part of the file and said, "At that time, we called Sun Beizhe's roommates, and they said that Sun Beizhe had the habit of going to karaoke bars, but he would not mess around, he just went there to seek excitement, after all, his family was quite wealthy. That day he went to the karaoke bar alone, and ended up being kidnapped."

Meng Siqi also noticed Sun Beizhe's family background. Both of his parents had decent jobs. One held an important position in a factory and the other was a head nurse, both of which were enviable jobs.

The only possible problem is that both of them are very busy, so they have no time to accompany their child. Usually they use material things to satisfy his life. Over time, the child has become a little rebellious since high school.

Sun Beizhe was handsome. From the photos in the file, Meng Siqi could tell that he was very good-looking. According to his classmates, he had several girlfriends at school, but he didn't have a steady relationship. Most of these girls took the initiative to write love letters to him, and Sun Beizhe didn't take them seriously.

This is probably all there is to Sun Beizhe. Apart from being a bit rebellious and not taking relationships seriously, there is really no one or anything against him that he has any grudges against. Therefore, this kidnapping case was judged to be a random kidnapping for money.

This is also a very difficult type of kidnapping to detect. The suspect's information is vague, and the suspect is a young woman, which makes people have many irrelevant associations.