Soul Patch

Chapter 24 Sixth Middle School

In the office, Officer Cao led Wenjie to the sofa opposite his desk and poured him a glass of water from a disposable cup provided by the police station.

Officer Cao placed the paper cup on the coffee table in front of Wenjie. He pointed to the water glass, indicating that Wenjie should relax and drink some water.

He moved a chair and sat opposite Wenjie, looking him up and down with a sharp gaze, as if he could see through a person's appearance to see what was hidden inside.

It was initially thought that his involvement in the investigation of the young man's lost computer was purely accidental.

With the notebook returned to its rightful owner, there will be no more contact between him and the young man named Wenjie.

Unexpectedly, he met Wenjie again just after taking on a drowning case.

Because this drowning case involves officials from the Ministry of Education, and under pressure from public opinion, the police department hopes to quickly define the nature of the incident and make it public.

The autopsy confirmed that she died by drowning. More than one person at the scene saw Qin Fen jump into the lake by herself. Based on these two points, Officer Cao classified the case as a suicide.

He confirmed that Qin Fen committed suicide by drowning herself in the lake, but he is still investigating why she committed suicide.

Just then, a young man named Wenjie emerged and unearthed the case of people who had drowned in the artificial lake over the past few years.

In fact, when I received Wenjie's text message last night, he was out on fieldwork, coming out of Professor Liang Bin's office at M University.

After this incident, the leaders of the Business School at M University gave Liang Bin a leave of absence to handle his family matters, and the school will make proper arrangements for his classes.

Professor Liang only rested for one day before returning to the podium. When Officer Cao contacted Liang Bin, he was quite surprised to learn that Liang was in the school's teaching and research group.

Taking a statement from Liang Bin yielded no results; Professor Liang Bin seemed completely unprepared for Qin Fen's suicide.

He kept saying that Qin Fen had a good job, the children's studies were not a problem, and there were no conflicts between the couple, so how could she have committed suicide?

Ask him to recall if Qin Fen had done anything unusual recently.

This question was just a routine inquiry, but it was incomprehensible to an intellectual like Liang Bin.

He repeatedly emphasized that his wife, Qin Fen, was perfectly normal—mentally and physically, eating and sleeping normally—and couldn't understand why the police would ask such a strange question.

Officer Cao chuckled and shook his head. Communicating with academics really doesn't require conventional thinking.

After saying goodbye to Professor Liang, he sat in the police car and lit a cigarette.

While pondering this, he wondered: Was his approach wrong? Was he focusing too much on one point and neglecting the case's potential for expansion?

It seemed that the truth was hidden in some inconspicuous corner, yet it slipped away from his sight time and time again.

Just when he had been rebuffed by Liang Bin and was at his wit's end, Wenjie sent him a text message.

He read the text message, and it was as if a beam of light had pierced the night sky in the darkness, illuminating all the previously overlooked details.

Yes! That's the right way of thinking.

He rushed back to the station and spent the night reviewing files on several drowning cases.

Upon investigation, a problem was indeed discovered.

These case files are very simple, based on autopsy reports, eyewitness testimonies, and testimonies from the deceased's relatives, classifying all cases of drowning as suicides.

Neither the identity of the drowning victims nor the cause of suicide has been investigated.

Turning to the back of the case file, the signature column is the signature of Huang Yi, the police officer in charge of the case, and the review column is the signature of Guo Changlin, the captain of the second team.

Huang Yi? Old Huang from Criminal Investigation Team Two?

Officer Cao was in charge of the Criminal Investigation Team One of the Criminal Investigation Department. Since Lao Huang wasn't in their team, Officer Cao didn't have much of an impression of Huang Yi.

It just felt like while other members of the Criminal Investigation Team were on duty, he was always at the bureau doing clerical work.

He's getting older, so he's generally not assigned to dangerous cases anymore. Therefore, it's not unusual for Captain Guo from the second team to assign him the drowning suicide case.

Officer Cao glanced at Wenjie sitting opposite him and said politely, "We meet again, Wenjie."

"Yes, Officer Cao, hello!"

Wenjie greeted Officer Cao politely, but his heart was pounding. Officer Cao seemed easy to get along with, but in reality he was strict and gave people an invisible sense of pressure.

For example, right now, Officer Cao's smile has faded, and he's looking at him with a serious expression, making him inexplicably nervous.

"I'm a little curious... what's the reason you need to investigate the people who have drowned in the artificial lake in recent years?"

As expected, the police's characteristic intimidating presence immediately followed the formal questioning.

Even though Wenjie was mentally prepared for this question, his mind still paused for a moment when he heard it come from Officer Cao's mouth.

"Uh... Officer Cao, it's like this, I was passing by the Canal Wetland Park, quite far away, and I only saw a crowd gathering. I thought it was some kind of entertainment activity in the park, so I didn't pay any attention to it."

I... I just started my internship at the *** General Administration. Work is quite busy, and I don't have the time or inclination to watch the elderly folks dancing in the park or anything like that.

Wenjie smiled apologetically as he spoke.

That smile gave the impression of someone without guile, and Officer Cao couldn't help but scrutinize Wenjie more closely.

He noticed that Wenjie's eyes were clear and bright, like gems moistened by morning dew. A warm light shone through them, instantly winning one's favor.

"I only found out the next day from the news that something had happened at the artificial lake and someone had drowned. Maybe out of curiosity, I casually looked up the words 'drowning in artificial lake'."

I do social research, so I probably have a professional sensitivity to data.

The moment the search results popped up, I noticed that the ages of several drowning girls seemed to be related to the years they drowned.

It turns out there really was a connection; they were both 14 years old in 2017, the same age as the eldest daughter of the leader who drowned the day before yesterday.

As Wenjie said this, his eyes gleamed as he stared at Officer Cao.

He hoped Officer Cao would think he had only stumbled upon the clue by chance, that he was simply interested in sequences and had done some basic deductions...

Officer Cao fell into deep thought after hearing this and remained silent for a long time.

He was pondering Wenjie's words: from seeing people watching to discovering that several drowning girls were the same age as Qin Fen's daughter.

Everything sounds reasonable, but when you put the events together, it all seems a bit far-fetched.

One can't help but wonder: Isn't this too much of a coincidence?

Keep in mind that there were a lot of people in the park at the time, dozens or even hundreds of people ran over to watch, but no one found any pattern to drowning suicides.

He was just passing by and didn't even go to watch. Yet he made such a significant discovery, which seems a bit unbelievable.

Officer Cao found it unbelievable. Besides the reasons mentioned above, the more important reason was that Wenjie's guess was completely correct.

After reviewing the case file, he discovered that it did not record the identities of the girls, but only noted the kinship of their parents, relatives, and other personnel who collected their statements.

This is problematic. Generally, the police conduct investigations based on the suspect's natural and social identities, gradually tracing their network of relationships to find possible motives for suicide or homicide.

Regardless of who is in charge of the case, they wouldn't make such a basic mistake.

What's more, the person in charge of this case was a veteran detective from the bureau.

Officer Cao quickly searched the public security system for basic information on several girls who had committed suicide by drowning.

The search results made Officer Cao gasp: Guan Xiaonan, Xu Mo, and Lin Yufei were all students at the Sixth Middle School in M ​​City.

M City No. 6 Middle School was the school Qin Fen was assigned to after graduating from Normal University.

So, what exactly happened at the Sixth Middle School in M ​​City?

(End of this chapter)