There was no evidence linking Chen Ge to the memorial archway case. He had merely appeared on surveillance footage, and the police had come to conduct a routine inquiry more out of hopeful instinct than anything else. But none of them expected things to unfold the way they did.
"Mr. Chen, you're saying you went to those locations because you were investigating Doctor Fang's disappearance?"
"Yes."
"Let's put that aside for now. Did you enter the memorial archway the night before last?" Captain Cai was far more concerned with the archway case. When the archway had collapsed two nights ago, it had exposed a cache of bodies buried underground.
Some of the corpses had died a long time ago, but two of them had been killed within just the past few months.
The police investigation revealed that all the victims were homeless vagrants who had likely been murdered while resting near the archway at night.
According to the police analysis, there was no conflict or profit motive linking the killer to any of the victims — which meant the murderer was a psychopath who killed for pleasure!
A person this dangerous had to be caught as soon as possible, or they would undoubtedly strike again.
"I did enter the archway the night before last, and I saw some things. If you want to crack the archway case, you can't ignore Doctor Fang's disappearance." Chen Ge leaned back against the police car's rear seat. "Before he disappeared, Doctor Fang's mental state seemed to have been disturbed by something. He was in a daze all day, and he kept bringing up some disturbing urban legends."
Chen Ge pulled out the notebook he used for his records. "Over two nights, I investigated more than twenty urban legends across Xinhai, trying to find the cause of Doctor Fang's disappearance. And I actually found something."
From a hidden compartment in his backpack, Chen Ge produced several slips of paper and showed them to Captain Cai. "I found these at some of the sites where the urban legends took place."
The young officer beside Chen Ge looked confused at the eerie words on the slips, but Captain Cai's reaction was peculiar. Almost involuntarily, he muttered, "This sentence again?"
"You've seen it too?!" Chen Ge had been hoping to leverage the police's resources, but winning them over was no easy feat. This wasn't Hanjiang — the two sides had never cooperated before, and neither trusted the other.
But Chen Ge hadn't expected Captain Cai to have seen the same words on the slips. This gave them common ground to work from.
"A year ago, two murders occurred in Xinhai. The victims' deaths were extremely bizarre, and we saw similar words at the crime scenes." Captain Cai put on a pair of gloves and took the slips from Chen Ge's hand. "The case was eventually solved, but — how should I put this? — by the time we found the killer, he had already gone mad. All the evidence pointed to the lunatic being the culprit, so we didn't dig any deeper."
"A year ago those words already appeared?" Chen Ge did the mental math — that was right around the time his parents had gone missing. "Now the words are appearing again. Does that mean there was more than one killer back then?"
Chen Ge was being generous with the Xinhai police. He didn't come right out and say they had missed the real killer — he merely suggested, tactfully, that there might have been more than one.
"In terms of motive and method, that's certainly possible." Captain Cai grew more serious than Chen Ge had ever seen him. "Mr. Chen, you've given us a very important lead!"
About ten minutes later, three officers escorted Chen Ge into the Xinhai Municipal Branch.
Because the case involved multiple homicides, Captain Cai treated Chen Ge with the utmost importance and brought him straight to the internal conference room.
When Captain Cai pushed the door open, he didn't expect to find other people already inside.
A middle-aged officer sat at the table with a stern expression, and across from him stood a male teacher with the refined air of an ancient Confucian scholar. The two were in the middle of a heated argument, faces flushed.
"Captain Yang?"
"Teacher Wang?"
Captain Cai and Chen Ge spoke at the same time, and everyone exchanged bewildered glances.
"Who's he?" The middle-aged officer designated Captain Yang turned his gaze to Chen Ge. "Old Cai, how could you bring an outsider into the internal conference room?"
"The night before last, the memorial archway collapsed and we discovered two homeless vagrants' bodies. The cause of death was determined to be cardiac arrest caused by severe shock — clearly homicide. During our investigation, we encountered Mr. Chen, who provided us with a very important lead." Captain Cai produced the slip of paper. "Those two vicious murders from a year ago — there was more than one killer! The recent homeless murders and the earlier cases were very likely committed by the same group!"
"The people who killed the vagrants at the archway and the brutal murderers from half a year ago are the same group?" Captain Yang fell into thought. After a moment, he turned to Teacher Wang. "Old Wang, it's not that I don't want to help you. You can see for yourself — Xinhai has been anything but peaceful lately, with all sorts of cases popping up. We simply can't dedicate manpower to a case from twenty years ago where the killer is already dead. I hope you understand."
Teacher Wang seemed to have anticipated this outcome. His expression didn't change much. "You two go ahead. I'll be leaving."
His mood was clearly not good. As he passed by Chen Ge, he said quietly, "Boss Chen, when you're done at the station, remember to get in touch with me."
"Me?" Chen Ge didn't understand why Teacher Wang had suddenly singled him out, but he nodded anyway. They were all from Hanjiang, and they ought to help each other.
After Teacher Wang left, Captain Cai shut the conference room door and began to question Chen Ge in detail.
Back at the Hanjiang Municipal Branch, Chen Ge had accumulated extensive experience with case work. He knew the investigative team's entire operating system inside and out. At first, two officers had been questioning him, but Chen Ge gradually took control of the conversation. He picked up a marker pen and began listing all the clues on the whiteboard — anyone who didn't know better might have mistaken him for a senior lecturer hired by the department.
His thinking was clear, his logic sharp. In the simplest, most accessible language, Chen Ge thoroughly cleared himself of suspicion, then organized all the information from the two murder cases.
Cases spanning more than a year were strung together, connected by a single thread — that sentence on the slip of paper.
"The real killer didn't go mad. Or rather, they're a team. Knowing they couldn't escape your pursuit, they sacrificed a pawn to save the king — threw forward a lunatic as a scapegoat." As Chen Ge spoke, he kept watching the expressions of both officers shift.
Where there was light, there was shadow. Restarting a case from a year ago was not a result everyone could accept. Some people might deliberately obstruct the investigation to avoid responsibility.
But fortunately, neither Captain Yang nor Captain Cai was that kind of person.
Once they confirmed that the two cases were connected and that the real killer was still at large, they immediately activated their emergency protocols and called in the Xinhai Municipal Branch's investigative team right in front of Chen Ge.
A police meeting was underway, but there was a stranger in the room. The young officers who filed in each looked puzzled, while Chen Ge was unfazed — he even helpfully found himself a seat and sat down.
"Mr. Chen, we need to discuss some internal case details. By regulation, this information cannot be leaked, so I'll have to ask you to wait outside for a while." Captain Cai noticed Chen Ge settling in to observe and could only manage a helpless smile. "Yueji, take Mr. Chen to the break room to wait."