"Xu A-mei, where did you go after you finished work at 6 pm on the 12th of this month?"
The bundle of thread in Xu Amei's hand fell to the ground with a thud. When she looked up at the police officers, her face was drained of color, and she stammered, "Why...why are you asking this? It happened several days ago, I...how would I remember?"
The police officer took a bag of medicine out of the paper bag he was carrying and showed it to Xu Amei, saying, "Is this yours?"
Xu Amei looked at the familiar bag of medicine and instinctively retorted, "I don't recognize this medicine, and it's not mine!"
"oh?"
Zhou Jiuzhen stared at her coldly, his face filled with suppressed anger, and directly exposed her lie with a single sentence.
"Phenobarbital, also known as sleeping pills, is something your husband has been taking to fall asleep ever since his leg was injured in the explosion. We've investigated the source of this drug, and your family is the only one on the entire island who has it!"
Xu Amei was so frightened that she fell to the ground. When the police took her away, the women in the cooperative who were busy sewing clothes were still confused about what had happened.
In the interrogation room.
Xu Amei tearfully recounted the whole story.
“That day, I met a stranger who gave me a hundred yuan and asked me to find a way to inject Comrade Ling with a certain medicine. When I saw that stranger, I thought of that fake Er Gou from before, that Qin Jinshen!”
"I think this stranger is probably Qin Jinshen in disguise. I guess he wanted to drug Comrade Ling and bully her, but how could I dare? So... so that day I replaced the drug with sleeping pills!"
"I really didn't want to hurt Comrade Ling. That day, I waited at the entrance of the cooperative and saw that Comrade Ling hadn't gone out before I went home. I changed her to sleeping pills because I felt sorry for her because she hadn't slept for several days. Waaah..."
Xu Amei cried with great grievance, looking as if she had been wronged.
The police officers were speechless. "You didn't have a chance to inject her, did you? You didn't want to hurt her, but you still took 100 yuan from someone to give Comrade Ling sleeping pills? Do you know that because of these sleeping pills, you almost caused irreversible consequences? You should just plead guilty, and maybe you'll get a shorter sentence."
Xu Amei was completely terrified and kept crying out that she was innocent, saying that she was telling the truth.
With no other option, the police officers went to the military family compound and found the bottle of medicine that Xu Amei had mentioned, and took it for testing.
When Zhou Jiuzhen heard the interrogation results, he was stunned. "You're saying the person who drugged me was Qin Jinshen, not Zhao Jingxiang? Impossible, absolutely impossible! If it wasn't Zhao Jingxiang who ordered the drugging, how could he have appeared at the cooperative at the exact moment?"
The police officers also agreed with his idea.
Indeed, if it was Qin Jinshen, who had just been released from prison, who drugged Ling Huanwu, how could Zhao Jingxiang have happened to appear at the cooperative, attempting to do something malicious to her?
So they interrogated Zhao Jingxiang, who was being held in the detention center, overnight, deciding to try and trick him.
The kerosene lamp in the interrogation room hissed as it burned.
The dim light shone on the mottled wall, revealing eight large red characters: "Confess and you will be treated leniently; resist and you will be punished severely."
A wooden table with gleaming legs separated the two sides. A police officer in a dark blue uniform took a sip of strong tea from his enamel mug, tapped his knuckles on the table, and stared sharply at Zhao Jingxiang. "Comrade Zhao, Xu Amei has already confessed everything about instructing you to drug Comrade Ling Huanwu. If you confess immediately, you might get a lighter sentence."
Zhao Jingxiang raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair casually. "What are you talking about? I don't understand! I don't even know what that Xu A-mei looks like. You guys have really disappointed me. It seems someone drugged Comrade Ling, but you're trying to pin the blame on me..."
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
The police officer who had just taken the medicine for testing rushed in and whispered in Captain Sun's ear, "The comrades from the city's technical department just sent a telegram with the test results, confirming that the bottle of medicine is just a bottle of cholera vaccine, and it's imported!"
Captain Sun dropped his pen in shock, utterly incredulous at the test results. He hurriedly left the interrogation room to discuss the matter with Zhou Jiuzhen.
In the interrogation room, Zhao Jingxiang watched the group hurriedly leave, his dark eyes narrowing as he curled his lips into a smile. "The story behind this is getting more and more interesting..."
The long corridor winds around.
Inside the office of the island police station.
Zhou Jiuzhen read the telegram sent back by his comrade from the technical department over and over again, but he couldn't figure it out.
"Who exactly is this person? And why does he have imported cholera vaccines?"
Captain Sun had almost shaved off all the hair he had left on his head. "That Zhao Jingxiang seems to really not know what kind of medicine it is. Besides, we can't get this kind of vaccine in China. I heard that this vaccine was just developed last year, and only some people with connections abroad can buy it."
He paused, his expression turning serious. "According to Xu Amei's description, the stranger who gave the medicine is the same height and build as the guard next to Qin Jinshen. Could it be that Qin Jinshen really gave this medicine at his behest?"
"But why did Qin Jinshen go to such great lengths just to get Huanwu vaccinated against cholera? This vaccine only prevents intestinal infectious diseases, but Huanwu wasn't even sick during those days?"
Zhou Jiuzhen tapped the word "cholera" on the telegram with his fingertips, then looked up at Captain Sun with suspicion and confusion. "Could it be that he simply wants to vaccinate Huanwu, or that he can predict that Huanwu will get sick in a few days?"
Captain Sun nodded, amused by his bizarre idea, and jokingly chimed in, "That's possible too. When he was arrested and imprisoned, we interrogated him for a long time, even using psychological experts. In the end, we came to the conclusion that this guy surnamed Qin was indeed just a lovesick fool who had taken a liking to Comrade Ling Huanwu, which is why he did so many things. He probably still..."
The conversation abruptly ended.
Captain Sun realized he had said the wrong thing when he saw Zhou Jiuzhen's increasingly grim expression.
Zhou Jiuzhen hurriedly grabbed his military coat from the back of the chair. He was so rushed that he didn't even feel the pain when his knee hit the table. "Captain Sun, I have urgent business to attend to and must go to the city right away! I'll take the vaccine with me first!"
"What about Zhao Jingxiang? We don't have enough evidence, so we'll have to release him tomorrow morning..."
Captain Sun called from behind, but Zhou Jiuzhen couldn't hear anything anymore; he dashed off like an arrow.
*
The municipal supply and marketing cooperative's retail outlet.
Ling Huanwu, Lin Xiaoqin, and the others handed the packaged goods to the warehouse manager for registration and verification.
The afternoon sun shone on Ling Huanwu's pale face, and she almost fainted.
Lin Xiaoqin quickly caught her, terrified. "You've had diarrhea several times since yesterday! We need to go to the hospital right away!"
"No," Ling Huanwu waved her hand, gritting her teeth and insisting, "This is our first batch of goods. I need to see it put on the shelves before I can feel at ease!"
"I...I want to be the first customer to buy from us..."
Before she could finish speaking, Ling Huanwu couldn't hold on any longer and collapsed.
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