Rebirth 2014: I, the King of Criminal Investigation

Chapter 371 We Have No Sea Here

How did he laugh? Yu Dazhang simply couldn't imagine it.

The two were childhood sweethearts and already have a child together.

Logically speaking, when two people are together, they should be like the left hand touching the right hand, and they should have lost all feeling for each other by now.

Are these two both romantics?
This possibility cannot be ruled out, after all, there are couples who love each other for a lifetime.

Yu Dazhang then thought about the two sentences Zheng Ting had said.

The first sentence sounds like a joke, even a bit like flirting between a married couple.

"Next time we go out to sea, I'll throw you overboard..." Yu Dazhang repeated this sentence to himself.

The phrase "throw into the sea" in this sentence is most likely a joke.

However, the phrase "next time at sea" reveals that they have been to sea before.

Going out to sea and going to the beach are two different things.

The literal meaning of "going out to sea" is to sail on the sea, and the following phrase "throwing into the sea" also proves that it is the literal meaning.

Yu Dazhang thought about it again and felt that there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the sentence.

It was clearly a joke, so why was Zheng Ting surprised by it?

Is there anything special about the first sentence?

If you don't understand, just ask. Yu Dazhang directly threw the question to Zheng Ting.

Are you from out of town?

Zheng Ting looked at Yu Dazhang and said:
"Although you speak Mandarin very well, you still have a slight accent. Also, if you were a local, you wouldn't ask such a question."

What does this have to do with whether I'm from out of town or not...? Yu Dazhang couldn't help but glance at the provincial police officer next to him who was in charge of taking notes.

This is a local. Seeing Yu Dazhang looking at him, he whispered a reminder:
"We don't have a sea here."

There's no sea in N Province? Yu Dazhang immediately realized where the problem lay.

It does seem strange for someone from an inland province to talk about going to sea, at least in the eyes of the locals.

Unlike coastal provinces, mentioning the sea in N province inevitably evokes a sense of unfamiliarity.

This indicates that the other party went to sea with a specific purpose.

Yu Dazhang silently recited that sentence in his mind again:
If you keep doing things carelessly, I'll throw you overboard next time we go out to sea.

They threw it away...

As for who they threw away, the answer is obvious: those mentally disabled people who have lost their ability to work.

Is this how they all complete the closed loop?
That's too much trouble.

Yu Dazhang mentally rehearsed the entire criminal process.

The first step is to transport the person or body to the designated seaport.

This step alone is very difficult to accomplish.

Transporting the living is easy, but transporting the dead is much more difficult, and once discovered, it will immediately attract the attention of the police.

Even if you successfully board the ship, there are coast guards at sea, and if they find a body, they will investigate thoroughly.

Rather than doing that, it would be better to find a secluded place to bury the body.

The person is dead, yet they're dragging the corpse around showing off. Are they afraid the police won't catch them?
So...

That doesn't make sense.

"We have too little information..." Yu Dazhang sighed.

It is difficult to deduce the other party's true intentions based on just this one sentence.

Can you recall the entire conversation from that day?

Yu Dazhang wanted to obtain more information:
"Say as much as you can remember."

Upon hearing this, Zheng Ting began to recall, but this time she only talked about normal chat content.

In Yu Dazhang's view, there was nothing noteworthy, which explains why Zheng Ting had overlooked these details before.

Overall, the call went smoothly, and only those two sentences were truly suspicious.

The reason Zhang Chao's wife dared to answer the phone in front of Zheng Ting was probably because she thought Zheng Ting wouldn't understand the specific meaning behind her words.

This is an example of how even the most meticulous plans can have a flaw.

No one can be completely error-free, nor can anyone maintain perfect precision all the time. It's normal to be careless once in a while.

Moreover, Zhang Chao's wife did not see this as a loophole.

After asking a few more questions about the organization and confirming that Zheng Ting had told them everything she knew, the interrogation temporarily came to an end.

After leaving the interrogation room, Yu Dazhang went to the office that the Municipal Public Security Bureau had arranged for the special task force.

After sitting down, he immediately took out his notebook and wrote down the two sentences Zheng Ting had told him.

Then, he focused his attention on the second sentence.

Don't trust the people on the mountain too much; you need to change your perspective occasionally.

On the mountain?

Yu Dazhang quickly found the key point.

Could this "mountain" be a veiled reference to that underground prison?

Is this a pseudonym, or is the underground prison actually built on a mountain?
His brain was racing, and all sorts of hypotheses were popping into his head.

Both possibilities exist.

It's only called that when it's built on a mountain.

If they wanted to mislead people, they should have used a word like "nautical mile".

"Don't trust the people on the mountain too much..." Yu Dazhang pondered this half-sentence in his heart.

If "mountain" is a euphemism for underground prison, then "people on the mountain" refers to the prison guards.

Just like sentries and foot guards, there must be a manager among those prison guards.

Following this line of thought, Zhang Chao's wife's words become much easier to understand.

Just as they were wary of Wang Hao and Zheng Ting, they were also suspicious of the prison guards' administrators.

The second half of the sentence is easier to explain.

"Replacing the blood" means replacing the personnel, implying that they plan to replace some disloyal prison guards or even replace the administrator.

If this hypothesis is true, we can pinpoint the approximate location of that underground prison.

"Go find a map of Province N and bring it over," Yu Dazhang ordered the provincial police officer in the office.

This is the municipal bureau, and many offices have maps of the province hanging on them. He had seen one before on the wall of the conference room.

The officer agreed and then went out.

Not long after, he came in with a map and placed it on Yu Dazhang's desk.

Yu Dazhang didn't ask where it came from, but simply opened the map.

“The cheap laborers in Yancheng are transported from the Jianning direction.”

He muttered to himself, then quickly located Yancheng on the map and drew a circle around it.

He then located Jianning and drew an arrow between the two cities.

The arrow points towards Jianning.

"This is the place in the entire N province that uses the most cheap labor."

As he spoke, he drew another circle around Jianning's location.

According to Wang Hao's confession, the cheap laborers in Jianning came from the direction of Liancheng, and Zhang Chao and his wife had also lived in Liancheng.

As he spoke, he located Liancheng on the map and then drew an arrow between the two cities.

The arrow points towards Liancheng.

Finally, he drew a question mark on the Lotus City.

In a short while, he drew a line on the map, and it was a clearly directional route with an arrow.

"The geographical location of this city is quite interesting."

He looked across the entire province of N and found that the question mark was located in the central-eastern part of the province.

The police officer who went out to borrow the map was now sweating profusely.

Why are you even marking it directly on the map?

How can we return it?
(End of this chapter)