Dangerous Personality

Chi Qing could definitely confirm one thing.

That was— one hour ago, he really was insane enough to touch Xie Lin’s hand under the dining table.

“Just kidding,” Xie Lin saw the eagerness to leave the police station right then in his expression, taking his hand back, opening the information packet with the other hand in front of him, “I won’t tease you, take a look at the information?”

Chi Qing hadn’t in fact seen all of the on-site information. The number of photos of the scene Ji Mingrui left at his home was limited. He had only seen a few scattered photos, the stray cats in the photos nearly identical in death.

Su Xiaolan was in charge of recording notes. Ji Mingrui’s interrogation of Li Guangfu had reached a stalemate, so she also had nothing to do.

So her attention was quickly attracted by the two people who were “gathered together” on the opposite side looking through the materials.

To say that they were gathered together was not quite appropriate, since even though they were looking at the same document together, there was a substantially safe distance between the two people. The creator of this distance, this Mr. Chi Qing, had his hands in his jacket pockets. The mild cold made him seem sluggish, his eyelids drooping, yet even so, he did his best to draw a 38th parallel with the person next to him.

Xie Lin: “You’re sitting so far away, can you see clearly?”

Chi Qing: “My eyesight is good.”

“……”

Only when the two were discussing the case did they show that rare harmony.

The topic was approached gradually, sounding like they were in agreement…… but the contents of the conversation weren’t quite right.

Xie Lin: “Serrated knives are actually very good for dismembering corpses.”

Chi Qing agreed, lightly saying: “If you want to dispose of a corpse and wipe away any trace of a crime, dismembering the corpse is a much better method than leaving it in the garden.”

Xie Lin placed his fingers on the paper: “It just takes a bit of effort.”

Chi Qing: “It also gets your hands dirty easily.”

Xie Lin: “If it were you, where would you choose to leave them?”

“A nearby raw meat shop,” Chi Qing said without hesitating, “In a raw meat shop, animal carcasses attract a lot less attention.”

Su Xiaolan: “……”

……What did she hear.

Su Xiaolan’s current mood was hard to express. Clearly Li Guangfu was the suspect according to the clues, but she strangely felt that compared to Xie Lin and Chi Qing, suspect Li Guangfu seemed more like an innocent civilian.

Xie Lin: “Exactly, so the murderer chose to leave them in the garden, thus giving the notion that they wanted people to notice. They want to kill people but don’t care to, forced to find satisfaction through other methods— such as the crowd’s panic, the speculation of the people around them.”

Chi Qing didn’t assess the murderer’s thought process, because it’s difficult for him to understand what other people are thinking, along with what they’re feeling.

But Xie Lin seemed to be very good at this.

The information was quickly flipped through. On the last page were several newly added shoe print pictures, the blood-stained shoe prints discovered by technicians at the initial crime scene a few days ago. The size of the shoe was approximated using methods of measurement. It was a pair of 42 size shoes, consistent with the size of the shoes at the corpse dumping site.

Once Su Xiaolan felt that their topic had been pulled back from “crime,” she noticed that Xie Lin suddenly stopped talking, his eyes lingering on the shoe print for a while, frowning suddenly.

And Chi Qing, who rarely took his hand out from his coat pocket, pulled out a photo of the scene from the file with his pale thin fingers.

The photo was of the silver-white Highland Scottish Fold from Grandma Wang’s home. The photographer purposefully focused on the cat’s feature when taking it, the lens focused on the unique black spot on the cat’s ear.

Xie Lin: “What are you looking at?”

Chi Qing: “Cat ear.”

Ji Mingrui repeatedly confirmed the key information, asking Li Guangfu “did you really not steal that knife.” Before Li Guangfu could answer, he heard Xie Lin, who had walked up to him at some unknown time, speak: “He most likely isn’t a suspect.”

“?”

Xie Lin: “There’s an issue with the shoe print.”

It was too dark that night, he didn’t notice shoe prints on the ground at the scene, finding that there was something wrong after looking at the information.

“The crime scene had been washed over by rain, so there’s no way to tell, but the heel of the shoe prints left accidentally at the initial scene had a heavy heel, clearly the shoe that the murderer wore wasn’t their own. If this is the case, then the conclusion that ‘his body is weak’ is justified, ‘he’ is very likely not a man, the possibility of it being a woman is higher…… Indeed, it may even just be an underaged child.”

Guessing that it’s a woman is fine, but……

“……Child?”

“If it’s a child, he should be between 12 to 15 years old,” Xie Lin propped his hands on the table while speaking, leaning toward Li Guangfu who was sitting very naturally on the opposite side for an interrogation, his eyes clearly smiling, yet there was a natural oppressive nature behind his words, “Mr. Li, you said that your machine at home broke, did you go to buy the screwdriver on your own?”

Li Guangfu didn’t speak.

Following Xie Lin’s line of questioning, his memory drifted back to that rainy night.

He left at 11:18, it was raining very heavily outside. The road was muddy, making it difficult to walk, his feet covered in mud.

He rubbed his arms, braving the cold and wet weather, gripping an umbrella in his hand, picking up his pace, hoping to buy everything and go home quickly.

11:30.

Bianmin Groceries was about to close.

Li Guangfu was about to push open the door of the grocery store with his frozen hands.

“Ding dong—” The doorbell rang.

The young boy was packing away his pencil case. He lifted his head, calling out crisply: “Uncle Li.”

Li Guangfu smiled at him, however didn’t put away the umbrella, instead urging his son behind him to quickly enter: “Xiao Kang, hurry up, don’t get drenched.”

After he finished speaking, the person outside the door slowly walked in.

The boy was much taller than his peers, his entire body wrapped in a thick school uniform jacket.

“Did you go out buy the screwdriver on your own?” Xie Lin asked again.

“I……” Li Guangfu actually didn’t fully understand what just happened, but under Xie Lin’s gaze, he muttered, “I…… I was alone……”

“You should know, with a single phone call to Bianmin to ask clearly, we can quickly find out whether you were alone or with another person.”

“……”

“Do you need me to ask one last time.”

“……My son was there,” Li Guangfu said, “I went with my son.”

“I don’t know what you guys are investigating, but it definitely has nothing to do with my son.”

Ji Mingrui also really wanted to say: What does this have to do with his son?

Just because the murderer wore shoes that were too big for his feet, there can’t be a way to confirm that his son is a suspect. Moreover he’s a child, they previously speculated that it’s possible that killing the cats was for practice, who would he want to kill?

Although his son is suspected of stealing a knife, snuck into Grandma Wang’s house…… Wait!

Ji Mingrui seemed to have caught a thread.

This thread started that night of continuous heavy rain, starting from that small, unremarkable wood carving. He grasped one end of the thread, but couldn’t find the other end for a while. Until Xie Lin brought up the wood carving case: “You found an old phone at Grandma Wang’s house at that time, is that phone still there?”

“The two parties successfully reconciled, it was returned a while ago.”

Ji Mingrui asked: “Is there an issue with the phone?”

Xie Lin only said two words: “Photo album.”

Ji Mingrui was the one who looked through the photo album on the phone, he had followed Chi Qing’s trail of browsing at the time, looking at everything Chi Qing opened. Since it was an old phone, there weren’t a lot of photos left in the photo album. There were some old photos taken by Li Guangfu while traveling, not so many new photos…… But he recalled one of the latest photos.

The time it was taken was the same day as the wood carving case. The photo was very blurry, a mix of black and white, like a black and white thing flashed in front of the camera lens. The photo didn’t look like a regular photo, seeming like it was taken by accident when the wrong button was pressed.

Thinking back on it carefully, the thing seemed to be a little fluffy.

……

Xie Lin asked: “The first photo in the album, did it look like the ear of the silver-white highland cat?”

“It did,” Ji Mingrui almost immediately figured out the logic behind this, the two of them already moving away from the other party while talking, walking to the corridor, “So Li Guangfu’s son might not have gone to steal the woodcarving that day, but actually to kidnap the cat. That would also explain why the phone fell on the ground, and why such a picture was taken. When Grandma Wang came back, he had no time to pick up his phone, so he had to think fast and grab something random…… But how did you know?”

Xie Lin pointed through the glass door.

His fingertip pointed directly towards Chi Qing, who was sitting there reluctantly.

Chi Qing waited impatiently, sitting on the couch, looking a bit sleepy, glancing at the clock on the wall from time to time, calculating how much unnecessary time he was wasting by sitting there.

Ten minutes earlier.

After Chi Qing replied with the two words “cat ear,” he looked at the photo in his hand for a long time: “……This black spot, I seem to have seen it somewhere before.”

After experiencing the incident in which his friend and Xie Lin sent each other to the police station, Ji Mingrui was amazed that the two had the ability to calmly sit together and reason through the case.

Ji Mingrui said to himself: “Is this the legendary two negatives make a positive rule.”

Ji Mingrui recalled the most important thing, also the thing that everyone was currently the most worried about: “If this Xiao Kang really is a suspect, what motive does he have for killing?”

In other words, who might be the victim?

“I have to go, Xiao Kang and Mingming are still waiting for me at home……” Li Guangfu suddenly stood up, trying to go out despite Jiang Yu blocking him, “What are you doing?! This matter has nothing to do with me or Xiao Kang, I don’t know what you guys want to investigate. You guys, one, have no evidence and, two, have no right. For what reason should you detain me here?!”

After Ji Mingrui went into the corridor, Jiang Yu took over Ji Mingrui’s position. Since he was sitting, it wasn’t easy to use his strength, so he couldn’t grab him the first time.

Li Guangfu walked in a hurry. Seeing two people standing at the door, he knew that it wouldn’t be easy for him to leave, so before rushing out, he looked around for something to defend himself with, so he can easily block when someone came to arrest him—

He picked the chair that Xie Lin had been sitting on earlier. When he picked it up, he disturbed the man next to it who was already not in a good mood.

Chi Qing’s sleepy eyelids, which were almost closed, opened a little once again: “……”

Li Guangfu approached suddenly, and since the corner of the chair could easily stab someone, Chi Qing lifted his hand to block the foot of the chair. This one move, the back of his hand coincidentally touched the back of Li Guangfu’s waving right hand.

[I need to hurry back, I don’t know if Xiao Kang is still angry at me. My temper, I shouldn’t have scolded him.]

[After his mother died, he couldn’t accept that I would marry again, and he didn’t want another half-brother. But I really didn’t expect that he would actually say……]

All sounds disappeared in that instant.

The sound of Jiang Yu’s voice stopping Li Guangfu, the chatter in the office, the sound of Ji Mingrui’s scolding— all of these were far away in an instant.

Only the distorted voice continued to grow louder in his ear, as if someone was whispering in his ear.

[He would actually say…… If he didn’t have a younger brother, it would be better.]

The voice lingered by his ear and emphasized: […… If he didn’t have a younger brother, it would be better.]

……

However the distorted voice suddenly stopped.

Chi Qing blinked slowly, realizing half a beat later that Xie Lin pulled Li Guangfu’s hand away in the midst of the clamor.

But the reason the sound stopped abruptly was obviously not just because Li Guangfu had been torn away by another person, it was also because the person with one hand on Li Guangfu’s hand was also holding his hand with the other.

Chi Qing lowered his gaze, seeing how his knuckles were resting gently on Xie Lin’s palm at the moment.

“This Mr. Li,” Xie Lin looked at Li Guangfu as he spoke, “Speak nicely if you have something to say, don’t randomly touch if there’s nothing.”

The author has something to say:

I’ll do it myself

I really am just a waste!

Reflect, me!