Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 190 The Murderer Tan Jia 9
The dead were members of the Criminal Investigation Team One.

Captain Qiu of the first team, wearing a raincoat, squatted next to the corpse for a long time before looking up at the opposite side.

Tan Jia stood under a black umbrella, which was low enough to only reveal half of her chin and the eye-catching green ends of her hair.

The tall, thin boy next to her held an umbrella, shielding her from the slanting rain. Then she seemed to grasp the boy's wrist and gesture upwards, raising the umbrella slightly and revealing her pale, sleepless face. The two people looked at each other in the rain.

"Was it really a dream she had?" Captain Qiu withdrew his gaze, his voice heavy, as if dampened by the rain. "She dreamt that the murderer killed Xiao Qian?"

Zheng Yan squatted down next to him, put on gloves, and roughly examined the body before grunting in response.

"We speculate that when the emotions of the murderer and the victim are relatively extreme, she may have a certain probability of dreaming from the perspective of the murderer, but only in fragments."

Captain Qiu murmured, "That's enough footage. Xiao Qian's wound is still bleeding."

"Because the time of death was very short. It's just a coincidence that yesterday, the people who went to the hospital for questioning were Xiao Qian and Lü Haiyan. She had seen them before and called me as soon as she woke up from her dream... The murderer used a very heavy weapon to strike Xiao Qian hard on the back of the head, hitting a vital spot. The weapon was probably a large wrench, a golf club, or a hammer. After the murder, the perpetrator took something from Xiao Qian. What could it be that would make the perpetrator dare to attack the police?"

"I've arranged for Xiao Qian to investigate Wenwu's matter," Captain Qiu said.

Zheng Yan pondered, "It seems that Wenwu's death hides a big secret. Xiao Qian must have found out something."

Unfortunately, the murderer took the items.

What could it be?

They searched Xiao Qian's body but found nothing else or any documents. Instead, the rainwater from the brim of his raincoat gathered and flowed down Xiao Qian's face, sliding down his pale, cold skin. His wide eyes lost their focus.

Captain Qiu closed his eyes, stood up, and silently allowed the forensic doctor to take the body away.

"Dare to kill a policeman? There must be something big going on behind this murderer. But what could be so suspicious about Wenwu's death? A teenager beaten to death in the street by thugs—are those thugs the sons of officials or high-ranking officials?"

“Wenwu died in town, which is not a place that the sons of officials like to go,” Zheng Yan said.

Captain Qiu looked at him: "You suspect that the murderer specifically hired people to pretend to be thugs and cause trouble, and killed Wenwu? Why would he kill a child from a poor mountain village? Did he accidentally stumble upon something?"

"Who knows? There are only endless evils in the world, and no evils that haven't been committed."

The rain continued to fall, fine and dense, weaving a vast, all-encompassing net that obscured visibility. After Zheng Yan finished speaking, both of them fell silent, gazing in the direction the murderer might have fled, lost in thought accompanied by the patter of the rain.

A moment later, Zheng Yan turned around and waved to the opposite side, but said to Captain Qiu: "When you have a headache, listen to the opinions of young people. It's very useful. Her brain was a great help in the previous child murder case."

His words conveyed a smug sense of pride, as if to say, "My little green wolf isn't just a dreamer."

Tan Jia approached.

Xiao Qian's body was moved away, leaving only a pool of diluted blood in front of them. And because it was still raining, it was estimated that the blood would be washed away in a few minutes.

If they hadn't discovered Xiao Qian's murder soon enough, and the killer had returned to the scene to dispose of the body, plus the rain washing it away, then even God wouldn't have been on the side of justice. Over time, who would know where Xiao Qian would have rotted beyond recognition?

Whenever Captain Qiu thought about it this way, his gaze towards Tan Jia became complicated.

"Could you describe the dream again?" Tan Jia nodded and briefly recounted it—after having so many nightmares, the initial fear and trepidation had subsided considerably, and she could now calmly add an adjective when recalling the details of her dream.

As she spoke, Lin Zhiyue stood silently beside her, acting as her dedicated umbrella holder. All attention was on her, and his presence was minimal. In the four-person setting, there was only interaction between three people.

After saying that, Zheng Yan asked, "What do you think?"

"He discovered some secret and was silenced by someone he didn't expect," Tan Jia said with certainty.

Captain Qiu: "It should be about Wenwu's death. You said the murderer took something from Xiao Qian? Could you describe it in detail?"

"It's a cell phone, and something that looks like a business card. And..."

She opened her hand, revealing a small, irregularly shaped black ball in her palm: "And this one rolled into a puddle and wasn't discovered by the murderer."

It was a very small thing, about the size of a cufflink.

“This isn’t a small amount of money,” Captain Qiu said, frowning. “It must be something he took from the scene or from the murderer. If he brought it back specifically, it must be useful.”

But what use is a small ball?
Tan Jia couldn't figure it out either, but she had something else to say: "I think it's a bit strange."

Zheng Yan immediately asked, "What's strange?"

"Judging from the current situation, the Wen family's secret should be the murderer's ultimate goal, and I am just a tool to fill in the gaps. According to our profile, the murderer is a self-important, meticulous, and confident master, but he seemed to be in a hurry to kill Xiao Qian. It is also strange that Xiao Qian found out the secret he wanted to cover up in just half a day."

"If I were the murderer—" She paused when she said this catchphrase, glancing at Captain Qiu. If it weren't for this dream that cleared her name, she really would be a reserve murderer.

“If I were the murderer, the secret that Xiao Qian discovered would have been deliberately leaked to him by me. I wouldn’t have killed Xiao Qian myself. I would have developed a safe network of contacts, just like the boss in a money laundering gang.”

Zheng Yan: "Do you think those who slipped through the net can develop new gangs so quickly?"

She shrugged: "It's like a chain store. After all, there's a ready-made 'store opening' model. He just needs to copy it and expand quickly."

"So the person who killed the guesthouse, the person who killed Xiaoqian, might not be the mastermind behind it all. We're looking for more than one killer," Captain Qiu said, frowning.

Thinking about it carefully, it makes a lot of sense.

Seeing their thoughtful expressions, Tan Jia suddenly added, "Furthermore, I suspect that the murderer knows the secret of my dreams."

This is serious; the furrows between Zheng Yan's eyebrows are deep enough to trap mosquitoes.

"Why do you say that?"

"I felt that he wasn't surprised that I escaped Wen Jinbing's knife, nor was he surprised that we found Xiao Qian's body. It even seemed like they were doing the killing of Xiao Qian specifically for us. He was leading us step by step to investigate the Wen family's affairs."

"He wants us to uncover the Wen family's secrets? That doesn't make sense," Captain Qiu said. "Using murder to get our attention and investigate past events usually means that the case was a wrongful conviction, the murderer is usually a good person in the conventional sense, and the victim is a bad person. Could it be that Wen Jinbing and Wen Wu are actually unjust people whom the murderer wants to use to their advantage, bad people who have done evil deeds, and the murderer wants to punish them?"

(End of this chapter)