Chapter 241: Blood in the Mall

Chen Shi returned home, called Tao Yueyue to the living room, and opened his laptop. He plugged in a USB drive and ran a piece of software.

He said, “Come on, let’s make a sketch of the suspect.”

Tao Yueyue asked, “Isn’t this the face composite software used by the police? Where did you get it?”

“I borrowed it.”

“Borrowed?”

“The person wasn’t at their computer when I borrowed it. Don’t worry about the details. I’ll delete it once we’re done.”

They spent a long time using the software’s nose, eyes, and ears to piece together a face. Tao Yueyue frowned the entire time. After an hour, they finally produced a face. Chen Shi asked, “Is this Zhou Xiao?”

“Uh, it doesn’t really look like him… Uncle Chen, I can’t remember clearly.”

“Alright,” Chen Shi sighed and deleted the software.

“But if I see him again, I think I could recognize him.”

The next day, Lin Dongxue went to the police station in charge of Jiang Hui and Jiang Ming’s disappearance case. Since the recent crackdown on human trafficking, the station was paying special attention to the disappearance of the two minors and had visited many places in the past few days.

They had a small breakthrough: surveillance footage from a hotel captured a figure in an Experimental Middle School uniform the day after the children went missing.

The figure briefly appeared in an alley.

The camera was originally aimed at the corridor but partially caught the alley through the glass. The image wasn’t very clear. The police showed the footage to Lin Dongxue, who said, “This is a girl’s uniform.”

“Judging by the height and build, it resembles Jiang Hui,” said an officer.

“Did you check the area?”

“We received this surveillance footage as a result of an online reward for information. We were planning to go there now. Would you like to join us, Officer Lin?”

“Sure, let’s go together.”

Lin Dongxue rode with the officers to the site. The alley was narrow, with a road on one side and the hotel on the other. The officers found a button that seemed to come from a school uniform.

They also found a dead cat, a small multicolored female cat with very cloudy eyes.

While comparing the surveillance footage screenshots on their phones, they stopped at a door. Lin Dongxue pushed it open and found it led to an emergency passage in an appliance store. She went inside to check, while the officers went to find the manager.

The manager stated that the store closed at 6 PM every night, and this door would be locked.

An officer asked, “Are you sure it was locked on the evening of April 2nd at 8 PM?”

“Absolutely.”

Lin Dongxue came out of the door and said, “I just spoke with the employees. They said that although the store closes at 6 PM, they have to work overtime if there are customers, sometimes until 8 or 9 PM.”

“Who said that!?” The manager looked nervous.

“Relax, we’re not from the labor department. We’re the police. A child entered here on the evening of April 2nd. Do you have surveillance footage?”

“The surveillance cameras are inside the mall.”

The police checked the footage and indeed found images of Jiang Hui and Jiang Ming entering the mall at 6 PM on April 2nd. Lin Dongxue questioned the staff who were working at the time, but they couldn’t recall anything, as they saw many customers every day.

Lin Dongxue thought, why did two kids go in but only one came out? Could it be…

Lin Dongxue entered the emergency passage from inside the mall. There were four emergency exits on each floor. The passage wrapped around the outside of the mall, with exits in the alleys on both sides. The passage had stairs going up and down.

It was daytime, and the passage was mostly empty, except for a cleaner sweeping the floor.

Lin Dongxue checked the emergency exits and found that they needed keys to be locked. She asked the manager if the keys were standardized and who had them.

The manager said, “Each key can open every door. There are three keys in total: one with me, a spare in the security room, and one that the employees take turns using to lock up.”

“Who locked up that day?”

“I’ll find out.”

They found the employee, who said he locked up at 7 PM that evening. Lin Dongxue asked, “Did you check inside?”

“What’s there to check? It’s just cleaning supplies, nothing worth stealing.”

“How is the outside door on the first floor locked?”

“From the outside!”

Lin Dongxue recorded his name and ID number and took a photo of him. She planned to verify his story later, as the hotel’s surveillance cameras would have caught him if he locked up at 7 PM.

She also took pictures of the lock and key and sent them to Lin Qiupu, asking, “Are these locks easy to pick?”

Lin Qiupu replied, “Very easy. Anyone with basic lock-picking skills can open them.”

She then found the cleaner who cleaned the passage on the morning of April 3rd. The cleaner said, “I didn’t notice anything unusual, just a dead cat on the top floor’s stairs. I threw it out.”

“Anything else besides the cat?”

“Oh, and a few flowers wrapped in plastic. I wondered who would hold a funeral for a cat there.”

“Wait a moment.”

Lin Dongxue took the cleaner to the alley and asked if it was the same dead cat. The cleaner immediately said, “Yes, that’s the one… Why are you investigating this?”

“I can’t disclose that for now. Can I have your contact information?”

She bagged the dead cat and said goodbye to the police officers before returning to the station.

Peng Sijue conducted a test, and soon the results were out. He said, “The cat was injected with dimethyl sulfoxide and died from poisoning.”

“Jiang Hui stole the dimethyl sulfoxide from school. She didn’t want to kill her brother. Judging by the flowers at the scene, it seems she euthanized the cat.”

“I’m not a vet. You might want to check with a pet hospital to see if the cat was ill.”

“No need. The missing children are the priority.” Investigations must be focused and efficient, a lesson Lin Dongxue learned from Chen Shi.

“Where did the cat come from?”

“An emergency passage in a mall. The missing kids went there. When I went in, it felt eerie—empty and silent, with no surveillance cameras. Except for occasional employee smoke breaks, hardly anyone goes there. If someone locked the door, with the mall’s noise, no one outside would hear what happened inside.”

“Alright, I’ll assign some people to take samples at the scene.”

“Thank you, Captain Peng!”

In the afternoon, Lin Dongxue brought several forensic officers to collect evidence. Each officer was assigned a floor. Lin Dongxue paced back and forth on the first floor, feeling anxious. She hoped for progress but feared it might turn into a criminal case.

Her phone rang. An officer reported, “Blood found on the third floor!”

They immediately rushed over. The floor had been sprayed with luminol reagent, and under UV light, the bloodstains and signs of cleaning were clearly visible.

Feeling dizzy, Lin Dongxue said, “Collect the evidence and take it back for testing!”