Chapter 818: Late Night Investigation

Kao Wei felt he was evading the question and asked again, “Why weren’t you in the attic this morning? The only possibility is that you went out while I was asleep!”

The Bandage Man couldn’t be bothered to explain. He stood up, went to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic bag and rubber gloves. He put on the gloves and wrapped his shoes in the plastic bag. At first, Kao Wei was puzzled, but suddenly she thought he might be planning to silence her, which scared her into standing up and trying to escape to the door.

“Stop!” The Bandage Man said coldly. “Come with me to investigate.”

“Investigate? Now?” Kao Wei doubted she had heard correctly.

Without further explanation, the Bandage Man opened the door to the next room. When the underworld walked away, he closed the door. He took out two iron wires from his pocket and listened to the lock, using the iron wires to manipulate the lock bolt inside. With a click, he managed to pry open the door.

This was definitely not a skill ordinary people possessed. Kao Wei suspected him even more, thinking that his talk of investigating the scene was just a ploy to lure her here and kill her!

So she stood at the doorway, afraid to step inside. The Bandage Man stood inside and turned around, his gaze commanding, “Come in!”

Kao Wei shook her head vigorously.

“Do you know who I am?”

Kao Wei shook her head again.

“Does Zhang Dama know who I am?”

Kao Wei thought about it and shook her head.

“No one here knows who I am. If I were afraid of the underworld coming after me, I could just run away or hide. Killing someone would only make things worse for me. A corpse would attract the police, and the evidence left behind would expose my identity. So, from the perspective of criminal gain, I have no reason to kill her… Do you think my suspicion of murder comes from confidence in evidence and reasoning, or simply because I seem scary?”

Kao Wei was speechless at his words. She timidly asked, “Who exactly are you?”

“…”

“I guess you’re probably a fugitive!”

The Bandage Man glanced at the wanted poster on the telephone pole and replied, “I’m not.”

With trembling courage, Kao Wei walked into the pitch-black room. The Bandage Man lit a flashlight, opened the bedroom door, and as Kao Wei thought about how someone had died here, she shivered, feeling like there were eyes staring at her from behind, perhaps the ghost of Zhang Dama.

It wasn’t superstition on her part; staying in such a place would naturally lead to such associations. Fantasies about ghosts stem from mankind’s deep-seated fear of death.

The Bandage Man, however, showed no fear at all. He knelt down to inspect the traces, glanced at the bed, sniffed at the pillow, and said, “The deceased fell off the bed… It wasn’t suffocation, there’s almost no blood at the scene. It was some kind of efficient and rapid killing method!”

He suddenly stood up and ran to the kitchen. Kao Wei exclaimed, “Wait for me!” and hurried to catch up. She saw him sniffing unwashed cups and bowls. Then his gaze fell on the windowsill and he said, “Male, 185 cm tall, strong build.”

“How can you tell?” Kao Wei was astonished.

He pointed to a footprint on the windowsill. The window was open, but outside was the road with a significant drop, making it difficult to climb in.

“Just from a footprint?” Kao Wei couldn’t believe it. “Who are you, and how do you know these things?”

“Go outside and take some pictures near the window, see if there are any tire tracks or footprints,” the Bandage Man said.

Although reluctant to be ordered around by him, Kao Wei went. She didn’t want to stay in a house where someone had died.

She took a few photos with her phone and came back. The Bandage Man took them and examined them with an intense, serious expression. Kao Wei suddenly thought, Could this person be a policeman?

The Bandage Man silently shook his head. Kao Wei asked, “What’s wrong? Did I take bad pictures?”

“We’re going to find the body,” he suddenly declared.

“What?” Kao Wei was shocked.

“How can we reconstruct the case without seeing the body?”

“Do… do we really need to? Can’t we just trust that you didn’t kill the person? I have work tomorrow, and besides, shouldn’t the police handle this?”

“How long do you think it will take for the police to find her body? Even if they can identify her by then, will the scene still be intact? Will there be any witnesses?”

“I… I just don’t think we need to investigate. Even if we figure it out, can you really catch the murderer?”

The Bandage Man stared at her sharply. “If we’re going to investigate, we investigate thoroughly.”

Kao Wei sighed and gave in. “The body was transported by a loan shark firm, but I don’t know where they dumped it.”

“Find the vehicle!”

“Does it have to be at night?”

“Can I go out during the day?”

So Kao Wei went back to change into clothes suitable for going out. The Bandage Man raised the collar of his windbreaker. The alley was pitch black, and an old man tied up at the end of the alley curled up like a dog. His sparse hair was blown by the night wind, like withered grass. When they passed by him, Kao Wei quietly placed a piece of bread and a bottle of water next to him.

The loan shark firm was just across two streets. The Bandage Man strode ahead, and Kao Wei followed closely behind, saying, “Actually, other people have disappeared here before. There was a girl, thin, very pale, looked malnourished. Whenever she saw me, she smiled. One night, three men entered her house, and the next day, she was gone.”

“Did the police come?”

“They did. They said the girl was a drug addict who stole someone’s money. They didn’t investigate anything else… Here, when people disappear, they just disappear. Soon someone else moves in. They say all lives are equal, but people like us, our lives are worth less than rich people’s lives. Even if we die or disappear, the police just go through the motions. The sensational big cases in the newspapers, those happen to rich people.”

“Prejudice,” the Bandage Man said succinctly.

Kao Wei chuckled, “Do you always have to speak so concisely? It’s always been like that.”

“My throat,” the Bandage Man pointed to his bandaged throat.

“Oh! Then why do you smoke so much? I think you smoke too much. Someone like you will probably get lung cancer before fifty.”

“What does that matter?”

By now, the loan shark firm had closed. The car was parked right in front. Kao Wei was about to move forward when the Bandage Man grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind an electric pole, scaring her heart to pound. The Bandage Man simply gestured for her to stay there and not move.

He cautiously approached the front of the car, used an iron wire to pry open the door, triggering the car’s theft alarm. This terrified Kao Wei, but the Bandage Man got into the car and fiddled with something, and the alarm stopped.

In the late evening, a brief car theft alarm would not arouse suspicion among the residents, as everyone was used to the device going off if someone just touched the car.

He was inspecting something in the car, apparently some kind of GPS or similar device. About ten minutes later, the Bandage Man got out of the car and made a “follow me” gesture. Kao Wei obediently followed, feeling surreal that she was doing this!