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墨書 Inktalez
"Did you see it all by yourself?" Old Shao asked.
Shiseidon nodded, a hint of pride in his voice. "Just me. It was a coincidence; if I hadn't seen that guy, we might never have known he was the one who committed the murders. It's terrifying, really. Thankfully, now that he's exposed, if he commits another crime, he’ll be facing the death penalty. I'm not wrong about that, am I?"
Shiseidon looked at Officer Li.
Officer Li shook his head. "It's not quite like that..."
Shiseidon, growing impatient, said, "You guys are just dragging your feet. You know he's the murderer, but you're hesitating because of insufficient evidence to make an arrest. However, I've heard from people in the village that some righteous boss has hired a hitman to kill Wang Liguo and a few others."
"That's why people are getting anxious; you police are too slow," Shiseidon declared firmly.
"Without enough evidence, we can't prove that Wang Liguo killed anyone. Shouldn't we be more cautious when it comes to taking a life?" Old Shao stood up at this moment and turned to Officer Li. "Let's go check out Wang Liguo's house; maybe we can get some new leads from him."
Officer Li nodded and led everyone toward Wang Liguo's home.
As they approached the front gate, Shiseidon could still be heard shouting from behind, "Officer, I'm not just arguing for the sake of it. Everyone in the village knows what kind of person Wang Liguo is; he's just like his father. If you don't believe me, go ask around—everyone will tell you the same thing. I saw clearly that he grabbed that kid by the arm. What were they doing? Taking a bath together?"
When they reached the large iron gate of Wang Liguo's house, it was tightly shut, and no light could be seen through the cracks.
Officer Li pushed against it; the gate wasn't locked and swung open easily. They all filed in and entered the yard. As dusk settled in and with only the last rays of sunlight illuminating their surroundings, they noticed that the walls of the house were covered in red paint with words like "Pay your debts" and "Death" scrawled across them.
Under the crimson glow of the setting sun, those painted words appeared ghastly red, and combined with the dim and quiet environment, it created an unsettling feeling deep within.
The dark room had no lights on; Officer Li called out several times but received no response.
They tried pushing open doors and found three rooms in total within the yard, but each door was unlocked. Standing at the entrance and looking inside, they saw that each room was empty except for some dilapidated furniture and heaps of garbage that hadn't been cleaned for ages—broken plates and glass bottles scattered about, along with a makeshift wooden bed made from planks.
No wonder Wang Liguo's family didn’t even bother locking their doors; even top-tier thieves wouldn't find anything valuable in this house. Wang Chenglong had been a gambler for twenty years; it was a miracle he hadn’t sold off his entire house yet.
But the question was, where had Wang Liguo's family gone? It was normal for Wang Liguo's parents to be out having fun, but since Wang Liguo had been expelled from school, he couldn't possibly continue living in the dormitory. If he hadn't gone home with Wang Chenglong, where could he have gone?
"Don't move," Jiang He said. "You all stay outside while I go in and take a look. This way, we can preserve the scene as much as possible."
Jiang He didn't rush inside; instead, he turned on his phone's flashlight and began to observe the three rooms for any clues. He switched on the lights in several rooms, and after a flicker, they finally illuminated the space. Jiang He paced alone in the room, and five minutes later, he had an answer.
"He hasn't been gone long," Jiang He said as everyone looked at him in confusion.
Jiang He explained, "Almost all the windows in the house have been broken, and the interior is covered in dust. However, the wooden bed positioned under the window has almost no dust on it, indicating that someone lay there not long ago. If you closely examine the dust on the windowsill, you'll see traces of how it has settled; the wind has blown some dust into the room."
"Based on these patterns, it only takes a few hours for the wind to blow dust onto the bed by the window, leaving a thin layer of dust on it. From the footprints on the floor, this person is about one meter sixty-seven tall. From what I've seen of Wang Liguo, he appears to be around one meter seventy."
Officer Li remarked, "But Wang Chenglong is about that height too."
"Then we can't determine based on height," Jiang He replied. "However, I noticed among a pile of trash in the room there was a type of spicy snack with red oil still dripping onto the floor; that oil hasn't completely solidified yet. A nearby green tea bottle also showed no dust; it too was recently used."
Jiang He looked at Old Shao. "I am eighty percent sure that whether it was Wang Liguo or Wang Chenglong, they left around noon today."
Old Shao shook his head and said, "It wasn't Wang Chenglong; it must be Wang Liguo. If Wang Chenglong had any money at all, he would use it for gambling; even if it were just five cents, he wouldn't spend it on green tea or spicy snacks. Besides, adults generally don't choose to eat such snacks."
"But I don't think he'll come back," Old Shao added.
"Why?" Jiang He asked.
Old Shao replied, "Because he left without locking the door. Not locking it means he doesn't feel this is his home; he lacks a sense of ownership. However, there are no surveillance cameras in the village, so where he went remains a mystery."
"These kids really are a handful," Old Shao said helplessly.
"If it were a well-behaved child, they probably wouldn't participate in campus bullying," Xu Yiman shrugged and said. "But isn't this a coincidence? Zhuang Qinyun just ran away from home this morning, and by noon, Wang Liguo left."
Old Shao looked at the yellow light streaming through the broken window, casting a glow on the red paint, blending together to form a faint orange hue.
"That's not true," Old Shao replied. "Zhuang Qinyun exploded due to repression, while Wang Liguo probably wanted to leave long ago."
Just then, Jiang He felt someone tugging at his arm. He turned around to see Guan Deng. At some point, this low-profile project team member had pulled out his laptop from his backpack and was holding it up.
Jiang He leaned in to look; it was a video. The video was clearly playing in slow motion, with the frames barely moving every two seconds. Even so, Jiang He recognized the source of the video immediately. It was the footage of someone leaving a "murder" note, taken outside the police station.
"Is there a lead on that 'murder' note?" Jiang He asked.
Guan Deng nodded vigorously.
"Come look; perhaps we can identify the suspect," Old Shao said.
The group quietly watched the video. It lasted five minutes, but due to the slow motion, there wasn't much content.
In the video, the scene showed the entrance of the police station, with pedestrians constantly passing by. At three minutes and two seconds into the video, that note appeared on the ground. However, the police station's surveillance couldn't capture who dropped the note; the person throwing it was out of view of the cameras.
This was precisely the problem—there were no other cameras nearby, and in the only footage available, there was no sight of who discarded the note. Otherwise, the police wouldn't be so clueless. The entire video played out without revealing anything.
This behavior was uncharacteristic of Guan Deng. If he didn't have complete confidence, he wouldn't draw attention to himself due to his severe Social Anxiety Disorder—especially since he had chosen to tug at Jiang He's arm. Although Guan Deng still hadn't spoken, he had taken his first step.
"What’s different from what we saw before?" Yuan Jun scratched his head and said. "Aside from you deleting large segments of useless footage and slowing down this part."
The others also couldn't discern any differences.
"There is a significant difference," Jiang He spoke up first. "Guan Deng, how did you discover this?"
Guan Deng held a computer in one hand while typing rapidly on the keyboard with the other. "I set the length of the video to the moment before the note appeared and designed a facial recognition program. This program is quite rough; at first, it captured images that resembled faces but weren't actually faces. So, I gradually adjusted the parameters, and the program became more and more accurate."
"Just now, my program ran through the video again. While you were looking at the house, I checked the results." Guan Deng continued typing. "The program captured eight faces, but no matter how I looked at it, there were only seven people. I examined the screenshots, and one face was somewhat blurry, but it turned out to be the key to solving the case."
"Great!" Jiang He praised.
"You two seem to be having quite a discussion. What did you figure out?" Xu Yiman asked.
"Continue playing the video and pause at that spot," Jiang He instructed.
Guan Deng nodded and froze the video at the crucial clue.
"There’s no note on the ground yet, which means this is just before the note appears," Xu Yiman said. "But we've already watched this video several times and can see that it wasn't thrown or dropped by any of those passing pedestrians."
"No," Jiang He shook his head. "The video has already revealed who threw the note."
"Who?" Xu Yiman asked.
Jiang He pointed to a corner of the video where a metallic pillar was visible. In a brief moment—less than half a second—a blurry shadow was cast on the pillar, and in its hand was a note that was about to be released.
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