Chapter 137 If he is the murderer, how would he hide it?
At midday, the sun had already made the capital city unbearably hot and humid. Shen Wen stepped into the house, wiped away his sweat, and went straight to the kettle. Without even saying a word, he poured a large glass of water and drank it all in one gulp.
He sat on the octagonal chair for a long time to recover before taking out an unsealed envelope and pushing it in front of Li Jin.
"It's the same person."
What Shen Wen was talking about was the clue that Li Jin had extracted from the elderly people yesterday.
Li Jin calmly closed the book in her hand, glanced at Shen Wen who was covered in sweat, took the envelope, and poured out the folded paper.
"The son of the family that the aunties were talking about yesterday, who sold his own daughter to pay off debts a few years ago and then moved away, is the same person who works as a porter in the East Market."
Shen Wen pointed to the words on the letter: "Xiao Luo, seventeen years old, just the right age. He doesn't talk much and doesn't usually interact with people. He hasn't been out for half a month. Because of his petty theft habit, he was even chased and beaten in the street."
“I checked the times and places he appeared in the past few days, and coincidentally, only the morning before yesterday, during the time of the incident, no one knew where he was or what he did.”
Inside the room, the smoke from the incense burner, curling like a dragon floating in the air, rose from the mugwort. Li Jin glanced at the letter in his hand and remained silent for a long time.
Time, like a pillar, streamed in through the window beside him. Behind the desk, half of Li Jin's face was in light and shadow, the other half in darkness.
He twirled his fingers slightly and asked casually, "Where did he settle down?"
After speaking, she slightly raised her eyes, which were framed by long eyelashes, and saw Shen Wen's slightly surprised expression.
Could it be that the master of these six doors is going to personally investigate the suspect's courtyard?!
As it turns out, Shen Wen dared to think, and Li Jin dared to act. They took Zhou Zheng with them, leaving only Jin Shu, who couldn't even lift a knife, to stand guard at the door.
Her face was etched with a huge "囧" (a Chinese character meaning awkward or embarrassed).
"Even a prestigious organization like the Six Doors shouldn't be so short-staffed, right?" She stood at the doorway, watching the three people in the shadows of the alley preparing to climb over the wall into the courtyard.
She's a coroner, an autopsy examiner, why shouldn't she be dragged along to keep watch for others?
As soon as Jin Shu finished speaking, Zhou Zheng used the wall beside him as a springboard to leap left and right, vaulting over the courtyard wall and disappearing from sight.
Before him stood Li Jin, dressed in white, his eyes lowered and his hands bound. Seeing Jin Shu's surprised expression, he smiled faintly and said, "Last night, someone nailed the number 'seven' to the black pillar in the sect leader's courtyard." He glanced at Jin Shu and said gently, "Otherwise, he wouldn't have had to do it himself."
"Huh? Seven?" Before Jin Shu could react, the man followed Zhou Zheng's route and stepped onto the courtyard wall. He stood there, looking down at her in the sunlight: "Wait here." Then he leaped.
Seeing him climb inside, Shen Wencai chuckled and whispered, "Thank you for your trouble."
Watching them climb over the wall and enter the courtyard one by one, Jin Shu stood under the gate wall, somewhat dazed.
Li Jin said that someone had nailed words to the pillars in the main courtyard, speaking casually, but actually with a deeper meaning.
In other words, some people can come and go freely right under the noses of the Six Doors (the government).
If the other party is Li Jin's enemy, wouldn't that mean that they could penetrate deep into his territory at any time and even try to take his life?
Thinking of this, Jin Shu's expression turned serious.
Behind her, in the courtyard, Li Jin looked at the scene before her, somewhat at a loss.
The yard was small, dirty, and smelly.
Zhou was on the eaves, and he and Jin Shu were on the same diagonal line. The two of them could see the two roads in front of and behind the courtyard clearly.
The dilapidated bricks and tiles, the moldy walls—Li Jin gently flipped them over, and two rats rushed out and scurried away.
He frowned slightly, looked at the mountain of trash, and took a deep breath.
If he is the murderer, where would he hide the key information?
Is it in the innermost layer of the trash, or in the most hidden place inside the house, or perhaps it's right on the surface and not hidden at all?
“The murderer committed the crime with hatred in his heart.” Shen Wen squatted in the corner, fiddling with a dagger in his hand. “These kinds of people are more or less driven by a sense of injustice in the face of fate. I’ve seen too many of them.”
“But this person might have one more characteristic.” He smiled as he looked at Li Jin, “that feeling of having nothing left to lose, so being fearless.”
After saying that, he leaned forward and pulled a bloodstained dagger from the dirt in the corner: "I'm used to being poor, so I understand the mindset of this kind of person quite well."
He chuckled and plunged the dagger back into the soil.
"He's given up on himself, he's beyond saving." Shen Wen stood up and patted the dust off his hands.
"Not necessarily."
If what Shen Wen said is true, then what is the point of Song Zhen asking him to continue investigating?
He looked at the dilapidated courtyard, his gaze falling on the carrying poles lined up side by side outside the house.
Unlike ordinary bamboo carrying poles, the carrying pole leaning against here is not "flat". It is more like a long bamboo pole split in the middle, retaining the nodes inside the bamboo.
I see.
Li Jin looked at the carrying pole in front of him, stretched out his hand to measure its width, and found it to be about the thickness of a palm.
He picked up the several carrying poles of varying lengths that were leaning against the wall and examined them for a long time. On the longest one, although most of the marks had been wiped away, traces of blood that had seeped into the bamboo were still visible.
These things are irrefutable evidence, proof that he cannot erase.
Li Jin finally came up with a reasonable deduction about how a seventeen-year-old boy could disappear beyond the courtyard wall with his carrying pole, and how he could vanish into thin air without being discovered by anyone.
Just as Jin Shu said.
The killer didn't need to flee cautiously; he didn't even need to make much of a cover-up.
In the sweltering heat of Beijing in July and August, how could a porter, shirtless, drenched in sweat, carrying his own shoulder pole and walking calmly, possibly attract anyone's attention?
Not to mention that ordinary people would hardly notice them, even the soldiers near the gate probably wouldn't give such porters a second glance.
However, bloodstained clothes are easy to throw away, but shoes...
If that shoe with a hole in the middle of the sole had been dealt with at the time, the barefoot porter would have been much more conspicuous.
Li Jin put down the carrying pole, glanced back at Shen Wen behind him, and said, "Looking for shoes." He added, "Shoes with holes in the middle of the sole."
As a result, they didn't find the one with the hole in the sole, but instead found a whole box full of copper coins in the house, by the foot of the bed.
The copper coins contained a few pieces of silver; a rough count revealed about seventy or eighty taels.
Faced with this box of silver, which was an enormous sum for a porter, Li Jin and Shen Wen were quite surprised.
"This is the first time I've ever seen a petty thief actually save money," Shen Wen said with an awkward laugh.
Li Jin bent down and grabbed a handful of copper coins from the box, looking at the "Da Wei Tong Bao" on them with the same puzzlement.
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