Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Jiang Ruolan turned back when she reached the door and added a sentence—

"Cui Mingyuan's mother is still in the hospital. According to policy, her application for subsistence allowance does not meet the requirements, but her son is now in jail, and she can't even afford a caregiver in the hospital. Please contact the Civil Affairs Bureau to see if you can use the temporary assistance channel to help her pay her medical expenses first. Cui Mingyuan broke the law, but his mother should not have to pay his debts."

The young assistant wrote these down in a notebook with a cartoon cat printed on it and nodded vigorously.

On the day the case file of Feng Dehuai's murder was filed, it snowed again in Yi'an.

This time it was light snow. The snowflakes were fine and soft, melting on my face as if brushed by a feather.

Jiang Ruolan locked the files in the filing cabinet, stood by the window looking at the white courtyard outside, and thought about how Feng Dehuai would move a rattan chair to the entrance of the building every evening after his retirement, listen to the news with an old radio in his hand, and help people in need to write their low-income assistance application materials without taking a penny.

His understanding and implementation of the minimum living allowance policy were almost harsh, offending many people but also helping even more.

In the mouths of the low-income households in the old city east of the city, his name is both cursed as "Feng the Skinflint" and grateful as "Feng the Bodhisattva".

A person's life is condensed into these two diametrically opposed nicknames, which may be the most authentic representation of human nature.

She returned to her desk, opened her notebook, and wrote a new note under the line "System Governance - Suggestions for Improving the Approval System for Minimum Living Allowance"—

"Every policy is implemented by a specific person, and people get tired, make mistakes, and offend others. Feng Dehuai worked in the low-income assistance approval position for twenty years, offending countless people, but he left countless home visits and handwritten comments in the files of those approved cases. His conscientiousness protected some people, but also hurt others. A good system cannot rely solely on the morality of individuals to operate; it needs appeal channels, review mechanisms, and the ability to correct errors."

After writing this, she paused, looked at her messy handwriting on the paper, and added four words at the end: "Indispensable".

After the case file of Feng Dehuai was archived, Jiang Ruolan did not take on any new cases for a long time.

It's not that there aren't cases. Yi'an is such a big place, every day there are bound to be a few fights, petty thefts, and telecom frauds. But those are routine cases that the police station and criminal investigation team handle on a daily basis, and she doesn't need to get involved in them personally.

Her daily work consisted of attending meetings, approving documents, coordinating special operations among various departments, occasionally reporting to the municipal party committee, and sometimes receiving inspection teams from the provincial department.

Lu Zheng said that she looked better recently, her eye bags had disappeared, and she seemed to have fewer gray hairs.

She didn't reply, but simply watered the potted green ivy that had been brought back from the Mining Management Department of Shiqiao County.

The pothos is growing very well on the windowsill. The vines have climbed more than half a meter up the curtain rod, and the leaves are a lush green that gleam in the sunlight.

But such peaceful days never last long in Yi'an.

One evening in mid-July, Jiang Ruolan was reviewing the summer security patrol plan submitted by the Chengxi Police Station in her office.

The sycamore trees outside the window were dyed golden red by the setting sun, cicadas chirped tirelessly on the branches, and the aroma of sweet and sour pork ribs wafted from the canteen kitchen.

As she was annotating the plan point by point with her pen, writing "It is recommended that the night patrol period be extended from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.," the landline rang.

She answered the phone, and on the other end was the voice of the police officer on duty at the command center, his tone urgent and tense:

"Director Jiang, we just received a report from Chengxi Police Station that a murder has occurred in a residential building on Chengxi Riverside Road. The victim is a young woman who was found dead in her living room by her neighbors. Officers from Chengxi Police Station have arrived at the scene and the preliminary assessment is that it was a homicide."

"What was the cause of death?"

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone, then the on-duty police officer said in a very low voice:

"The forensic doctor just arrived and the preliminary diagnosis is mechanical asphyxiation. But the deceased's hands were tied behind her back, and something was stuffed in her mouth. The strangest thing is that someone placed a note on her chest with a number written on it. It wasn't printed; it was handwritten."

Jiang Ruolan put down her pen, picked up her police cap, and strode out of the office.

When she arrived at the parking lot, Lu Zheng had already started the car. Zhao Rui opened the car door from the other side and sat in the back seat, holding a newly printed police dispatch record in his hand.

As the car drove out of the municipal bureau compound, the setting sun had just sunk behind the low-rise buildings in the west of the city, leaving a faint, dark red afterglow on the horizon that cast a blurry gray shadow over the old residential buildings on both sides of the riverside road.

The crime scene was in a residential building built in the 1980s on Yanhe Road.

There are many such buildings in the west of Yian City. They have red brick exteriors, are six stories high, have no elevators, and the stairwells are filled with miscellaneous items and bicycles from each household.

A cordon was set up at the entrance of the building, and a few makeshift searchlights cast a stark white light on the mottled walls.

The head of the Chengxi Police Station, surnamed Tian, ​​was a round-faced man in his forties. He stood at the entrance of the building and waited. When he saw Jiang Ruolan get out of the car, he hurriedly came to greet her, reporting as he climbed the stairs.

"The deceased was named Qiao Xiaoyue, 28 years old, a local of Yi'an. She worked as a graphic designer at a GG company in the western part of the city and had been renting in this building for about two years. The landlord said she was usually very quiet, paid her rent on time, and never caused trouble. Around 7 p.m. tonight, an elderly woman living next door smelled a burning smell coming from under her door. She knocked but no one answered, so she called the landlord. When the landlord arrived, she opened the door with a spare key and found that the pot on the gas stove in the kitchen had burned dry, and the whole house smelled burnt. The elderly woman went in to turn off the stove, and when she got to the living room, she saw the deceased lying on the floor and was so frightened that she sat down. The landlord called the police."

Has the site been disturbed?

"The old lady and the landlord both went into the living room, but the old lady said that her legs went weak as soon as she saw the person lying on the ground and she didn't dare to go any further. The landlord didn't dare to move either and retreated outside the door to call 110. Apart from the kitchen stove and a small area of ​​the living room near the door, the rest of the scene didn't seem to have been disturbed. My people sealed it off when they arrived."

Jiang Ruolan went up to the third floor and pushed open the half-closed door.

The room wasn't big, just one bedroom and one living room, about forty square meters, but it was very clean.

A desk sits by the window in the living room, with a laptop and several professional books on design on it, the spines of which bear labels from the Yian City Library.

On the coffee table next to the sofa sat a half-finished cup of instant coffee, with a faint lip print on the rim.

Several pairs of women's leather shoes and canvas shoes were neatly stacked on the shoe rack by the door, and the soles were clean and free of mud.

The room showed no signs of disturbance; the drawers were not opened, the wardrobe doors were closed, and the wallet and phone on the table were still there—it wasn't a robbery.

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