Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

The old lady used corn kernels to spell out the Chinese character "好" (good). The chicks gathered around and pecked at the kernels, scattering the character in just a few bites.

She looked at the chicks, smiled with narrowed eyes, and said to Jiang Ruolan that she had never seen so many officials arrested in her life. She used to think that all officials were in cahoots, but now she knew that the police still spoke up for the people.

She said this in a calm tone, as if she were talking about something perfectly normal—the sun is shining brightly today, and the hen has laid another egg.

Jiang Ruolan returned to the Municipal Bureau in the evening.

The Yian was unusually quiet after the snow. The sycamore trees in the courtyard had lost all their leaves, and a thin layer of snow was piled on the bare branches, which shimmered with a soft silver light under the streetlights.

She walked into the office, took off her coat and hung it behind the door, sat down, opened her notebook, flipped to a blank page behind the densely packed case records, picked up a pen and wrote a line—

"The scope of the special rectification of the mining management system has been expanded from sand and gravel to all types of minerals, including limestone, granite, river sand, and clay. The Shiqiao County Mining Management Section has completed a comprehensive rectification. On his first day in office, the new section chief moved the pothos plant left by Tang Weidong back to his office, saying that plants are innocent."

She stopped writing, picked up her cup and took a sip of the now-cold strong tea. Just as she was about to close her notebook, her gaze inadvertently swept over the landline on the table.

The red dot on the screen, indicating missed calls, flashed on and off like an unblinking eye, quietly awaiting the next call, the next case, the next piece of truth to be written...

The day the investigation report for the last person involved in the case on Cao Weimin's list was delivered to Jiang Ruolan, Yi'an experienced a heavy snowfall, the likes of which hadn't been seen in many years.

Snowflakes began to fall at dawn, and by noon they had accumulated to a depth of half a foot. The branches of the sycamore trees in the city bureau compound were bent low under the weight. Old Sun, the gatekeeper, was sweeping a narrow path at the gate with a broom. After he finished shoveling, the snow would cover it again, and he would have to shovel again and cover it again.

Old Sun simply leaned the broom against the wall and went back to the duty room to warm himself by the fire.

The entire city was completely covered in snow. The sounds of car horns and vendors' shouts on the streets were absorbed by the thick snow, leaving only the very faint rustling sound of snowflakes falling on the windowsill.

Jiang Ruolan sat in her office with the review report spread out in front of her.

On the last page of the report, in the signature section, the handwriting of Sun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, was as steady and forceful as ever: "Upon investigation, all 43 individuals involved in the mining management system as described by Cao Weimin have been verified. Among them, 11 suspected of crimes have been transferred to judicial organs, and 32 have been given Party disciplinary and administrative sanctions for violations of discipline and regulations. The first phase of the special rectification work in the provincial mining management system has basically come to an end."

She read it through from beginning to end and circled the words "Phase One".

Cao Weimin once said in his confession, "The system is rotten, but the roots are still in the soil."

The first stage involves digging out rotten roots, but the improvement of the soil itself has only just begun.

She closed the report, signed it, and put it into the pile of documents awaiting archiving.

The snow outside the window was falling heavier and heavier.

She stood up, walked to the window, opened it, and reached out to catch a snowflake.

The snowflakes landed in her palm and were quickly melted into a small drop of water by her body heat.

She was about to close the window when her phone rang.

The caller ID showed Lu Zheng, but the voice on the other end of the line wasn't Lu Zheng—the background noise was mixed with the static of a walkie-talkie, the low growl of a car engine, and the cacophony of several people talking at the same time.

Lu Zheng shouted "Director Jiang" at the top of his lungs, but his voice was broken by the wind. She could barely make out the last half of his sentence—"There's a case in the east of the city. You might have to come here in person."

When Jiang Ruolan arrived at the east side of the city, the snow had already lessened somewhat.

The crime scene was in an old residential building on the edge of the old city in the east of the city. The building was built in the 1990s. The exterior wall tiles were peeling off and the lights in the corridor had long been broken. The walls were covered with all kinds of small cards for unlocking, unclogging sewers and credit loans, layer upon layer, like a tattered ledger that had been repeatedly rewritten.

A cordon was set up at the entrance of the building, and several police officers from the Chengdong Police Station stood in the snow wearing raincoats, with a thick layer of snow accumulating on their shoulders.

Old Fang was also there. He was squatting at the entrance of the building, smoking. When he saw Jiang Ruolan get out of the car, he pressed his cigarette butt into the snow, stood up and went to greet her. His voice was hoarse when he spoke, and his breath condensed into a cloud of mist in the cold air.

"The deceased was an old man named Feng Dehuai, 68 years old, a retired worker who had lived in this building for over 20 years. This morning, his next-door neighbor smelled a strange odor coming from his door. When no one answered the door or the phone, they called the police. When we broke down the door, he was already dead in the living room—he had injuries, there was blood on the floor, and we initially determined that he had been dead for at least two or three days. The house was ransacked; all the drawers were open, the cabinet doors were wide open, the mattress was overturned, and even the gas stove in the kitchen had been moved. It looked like a burglary, but there was one thing that was wrong—someone had placed a white paper flower on his chest."

Old Fang paused here, reached into his raincoat pocket, took out something from an evidence bag, and handed it to Jiang Ruolan.

Inside the evidence bag was a flower folded from white photocopy paper. It was folded very delicately, with distinct layers of petals. The stamen was a thin strip made from rolled yellow sticky notes, and the stem was a narrow strip torn from a newspaper, rolled tightly, with the end glued on.

The flower was clean and spotless, without any blood or fingerprints, and was placed neatly in the center of the deceased's chest.

Jiang Ruolan held the evidence bag up to the light and examined it carefully. She noticed a line of printed text on the newspaper strip wrapped around the flower stem. The text was rolled up so that only a few incomplete words were visible: "...Urban minimum living allowance...Application conditions...".

The newspaper paper was new, unlike old newspapers, and the torn edges were neat.

She turned the evidence bag over and asked Lao Fang:

"Are there any signs of damage to the doors and windows of Feng Dehuai's house?"

"No. The door was locked from the inside, the windows were closed, and the security bars were intact. Either the murderer opened the door with a key, or Feng Dehuai opened the door himself—he knew the murderer."

Old Fang paused for a moment, then added:

"There's another thing. Before he retired, Feng Dehuai was a civil affairs assistant at the Chengdong Subdistrict Office, where he was in charge of low-income assistance approvals for many years. The most thoroughly searched items in his home were his old work files—there was an old filing cabinet in the corner of the living room, which used to contain all the low-income assistance application files he handled before his retirement. Now it's all over the floor, but the culprit doesn't seem to have taken anything. At least we haven't found anything missing yet."

Jiang Ruolan returned the evidence bag to Lao Fang, bent down, and went into the stairwell.

Feng Dehuai lived on the third floor, and the seal on the door frame was still new.

The room wasn't big, just two bedrooms and a living room. The furniture in the living room was old but very tidy—or rather, it used to be very tidy.

Now all the drawers have been pulled out, the sofa cushions have been overturned, and a piece of the glass on the coffee table has been smashed, with shards scattered everywhere.

The files in the filing cabinet were scattered all over the floor, and some of the papers had half a blurry shoe print on them.

.............