I am a super cop

At that moment, Ms. Zhang in the store was also stunned, or rather, she didn't know what was going on either.

Gu Chen felt increasingly uneasy, so he quickly asked Sister Zhang, "Was there anything unusual in the days before Pan Xu went missing?"

"Unusual situation? Let me think." After a few seconds of brief thought, Sister Zhang shook her head:

"No."

"Not even a little bit?" Lu Weiwei asked, expressing her curiosity.

Sister Zhang nodded silently and said without further ado, "He's usually very normal; there's nothing unusual about him."

After a pause, Sister Zhang added, "Even the day before he went missing, he was in high spirits when he left work."

"Is that so?" Listening to Sister Zhang's analysis, Gu Chen crossed his arms and thought for a moment before asking, "Doesn't Pan Xu have any relatives or friends here?"

"Relatives and friends? Well... I haven't been paying attention to that."

"Yes, there is." As soon as Sister Zhang finished speaking, the saleswoman next to her quickly added, "It seems that Pan Xu lives with his girlfriend."

"His girlfriend?" Upon hearing this, Officer Wang quickly asked the saleswoman, "Does his girlfriend also work here?"

"Yes, she seems to work at a milk tea shop, near our store," the saleswoman said.

"Which milk tea shop is that?" Yuan Shasha quickly asked.

The saleswoman couldn't remember for a moment, and said while thinking, "That milk tea shop isn't a big chain brand. I think it's a brand I've never heard of before. It should be a small privately owned shop."

"Because there are so many milk tea shops around here, I don't really remember them all."

"Think about it carefully. Didn't you drink the milk tea that Pan Xu treated you to last time? Wasn't that milk tea from his girlfriend's shop?" Sister Zhang urged.

The saleswoman suddenly realized and quickly nodded in agreement: "Yes, Pan Xu did treat a few of us to milk tea last time, I think it was the shop where his girlfriend works."

"Then think about it some more," Sister Zhang urged hastily.

The female sales assistant was under a lot of pressure and patted her head, forcing herself to quickly recall.

After a long while, the saleswoman sighed helplessly, "Oh dear, I really can't remember the name right now."

"What's written on the packaging? Or, could there be any patterns?" Seeing this, Gu Chen tried his best to help the saleswoman remember as soon as possible.

After thinking for a few seconds, the female sales assistant suddenly realized what was going on and quickly said:
"Oh right, I remember the bag he used to carry milk tea was also used by our staff to carry other things. It seems to be in that drawer over there. Let me look for it."

Reminded by Gu Chen, the female sales assistant immediately went to the drawer next to her, opened it, and began rummaging through it.

A short while later, the sales assistant happily said, "Found it! This is the bag. It has a few English letters on it, and there are letters on the packaging as well."

Gu Chen took the bag from the saleswoman, glanced at the address, thanked her, and then led everyone out of the store to find the milk tea shop.

……

……

The milk tea shop is located two blocks away from the store, in a prime commercial area.

After Gu Chen and the others finished listening to the car, they quickly went into the store and found the shop assistant.

Lu Weiwei immediately showed Pan Xu's photo and asked, "Excuse me, does this person's girlfriend work here?"

"Oh, right." The saleswoman quickly chimed in after glancing at the photos on Lu Weiwei's phone.
"This person is my colleague's boyfriend."

"Where is your colleague now?" Yuan Shasha asked quickly.

"I don't know, I haven't been to work for several days," the female shop assistant said quickly, her brows slightly furrowed.
"You haven't been to work for quite a few days? How long has it been?" Gu Chen quickly asked upon hearing this.

"Uh, it'll probably take... about five days," the female shop assistant said thoughtfully.

"Did your colleague ask for leave and say where he was going?" Officer Wang continued to press.

"She didn't ask for leave, didn't say anything, and just stopped coming to work. We're also puzzled. We can't get in touch with her. We feel like she might not want to work here anymore?"

"But she was doing well working here. Although she hadn't been working there for very long, we all got along very well. But suddenly she stopped contacting us and stopped coming to work."

"I was so exhausted that day, I don't know why. Later, the store manager called a colleague who was on vacation to take over the shift."

With a heavy sigh, the female shop assistant looked helpless: "I don't know what's wrong with her. She hasn't contacted me at all. The manager said if she doesn't come, that's fine; she still has over ten days' wages to pay anyway."

"Does she live with her boyfriend?" Lu Weiwei quickly asked upon hearing this.

The female shop assistant thought for a moment and nodded silently: "Yes, it seems she lives with her boyfriend, and he often comes to pick her up from get off work."

“Sometimes, her boyfriend would come to the store to buy some milk tea to bring to his colleagues, but I don’t know why my colleagues don’t come to work for no reason, and I can’t get through to them on the phone.”

"Did your colleague exhibit any unusual behavior the day before he went missing?" Officer Wang asked quickly, his brow furrowed.

The female shop assistant thought for a moment: "Unusual situation? No, we're always laughing and joking at work, and we haven't seen her act strangely. Hmm, no."

"OK, thanks."

After receiving a reply from the female shop assistant, everyone immediately left the milk tea shop and got into the car.

As Gu Chen closed the car door, he took a deep breath and said slowly, "Something must have happened to these two, otherwise they wouldn't both be absent from work at the same time, and we can't get through to them on the phone."

"Where will it go?" Lu Weiwei also crossed her arms and sighed.

Gu Chen quickly took out his phone and contacted He Junchao.

Shortly after, the call connected, and Gu Chen quickly said, "Senior Brother He, please help me check Pan Xu's activity range five days ago, mainly the range of his activities after leaving his workplace store."

"Also, Pan Xu lives with his girlfriend, so could you keep an eye on that too? Also, could you find out the landlord's contact information for the rental property and send it to me?"

"Understood." He Junchao readily agreed over the phone.

After hanging up the phone, Gu Chen drove directly to Pan Xu's residence.

Upon arriving at the residential area, Lu Weiwei had already contacted the landlord of the rental property using the phone number sent by He Junchao.

At that moment, the landlord had already arrived at the community and was waiting.

After Gu Chen and his group got out of the car, an old man quickly stepped forward and asked, "Did you call me?"

"Are you the landlord of room 602?" Officer Wang asked.

"Yes." The landlord nodded silently.

Officer Wang then took out his phone and showed two photos of Pan Xu: "Is this person your tenant?"

"Yes." The landlord glanced at him and nodded silently, then said without further ado, "He is my tenant here."

"Did you bring your keys?" Lu Weiwei asked. "Yes," the landlady nodded silently.

So Lu Weiwei said again, "Let's go then, let's go see what's going on."

The landlord seemed to be under a lot of pressure. With so many police officers coming to look for Pan Xu all of a sudden, he didn't seem to know what was going on here.
Accompanied by Gu Chen and the others, they finally arrived at the room door. After knocking on the door without success, the landlord simply took out his key and opened the door.

At that moment, everyone suddenly noticed an unpleasant smell coming from the room.

"Sir, please stand outside and don't go in," Gu Chen reminded him before putting on his shoe covers.

Seeing this, the others followed suit and entered the room with Gu Chen.

But not long after Gu Chen entered the room, he discovered a man and a woman lying in the kitchen.

Upon seeing this, Gu Chen quickly stepped forward to check on the situation.

"Wake up, wake up." Gu Chen patted and called out, but the two seemed to have already lost their vital signs.

Lu Weiwei quickly said, "These are Pan Xu and his girlfriend who have been missing. It turns out they've been at home the whole time."

"What's going on?" Officer Wang was also dumbfounded.

Yuan Shasha quickly checked the two people's condition and reminded them, "It seems like both of them have symptoms of poisoning."

Following Yuan Shasha's reminder, Gu Chen also began to look for the characteristics on the two people, and soon found cherry-colored lividity spots on their bodies.

"Carbon monoxide poisoning?" Gu Chen immediately thought of this, so he checked the surroundings again, but found no unusual smell.

At that moment, Officer Wang quickly pushed the window open to its maximum.

Everyone immediately began to search, but there was only one liquefied gas cylinder in the kitchen.

Gu Chen gently wiped the valve with his hand and found that it was covered with a thick layer of dust.

"This LPG tank has never been used at all, and it's already covered in so much dust."

Gu Chen then wet his hand with water and dripped the water onto the valve of the liquefied gas tank. There was no leakage, and the sealing ring was intact.

“No problem.” Officer Wang was also very curious when he saw this.

The group looked at each other, seemingly finding the situation very strange.

"Senior Brother Gu, the takeout food on the table hasn't been opened yet," Yuan Shasha reminded Gu Chen as he checked.

Upon seeing this, Gu Chen quickly stood up and indeed found two takeout boxes on the table, the plastic bags still tied in knots, seemingly unopened.

Gu Chen put on gloves, held it up with both hands, and found that it was quite substantial.

"This takeout hasn't been touched yet." Gu Chen frowned and continued:

"Check the room."

Then everyone quickly checked every corner of the room. Gu Chen went to the master bedroom and soon found a computer in the room, which seemed to still have its light on.

Gu Chen walked over and touched the computer, and the screen quickly lit up again.

At that moment, a period drama was being displayed on the computer screen.

Clearly, the two of them had turned on their computers and were watching a period drama, without even turning them off.

Moreover, the takeout food on the table hadn't been touched, and the two of them collapsed near the kitchen doorway.

Gu Chen fell into deep thought at this moment.

"Judging from the state of their deaths, the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning were very obvious, and the livor mortis also clearly showed that they died from inhaling an excessive amount of carbon monoxide."

“But they don’t seem to have the habit of cooking. The liquefied gas cylinders are covered in a thick layer of dust, which means they haven’t been used for a long time. And it’s not hard to see from the gas valves that they are all intact,” Yuan Shasha reminded her.

Everyone was puzzled for a moment, seemingly unsure of what was going on.

The landlord, standing at the door, felt as if the sky had fallen upon seeing this scene and quickly asked, "Officer, what happened?"

"Carbon monoxide poisoning," Gu Chen sighed and said slowly.

"How could this happen? How could someone suddenly get carbon monoxide poisoning? Could it be a gas leak?"

“The LPG tank is fine,” Gu Chen said slowly as he walked up to the landlord.

"Carbon monoxide is a gas that is produced when a flame does not burn completely, but these two people obviously do not use liquefied gas cylinders."

"Moreover, the liquefied gas tanks here are perfectly sealed, and there is no leakage problem."

"What's going on? What happened?" The landlord was truly panicked; he hadn't expected the situation to become so complicated.

Lu Weiwei sighed and took the initiative to walk up to the landlord and ask, "Sir, who exactly rented this house?"

"It's a woman, that woman rented it," the landlord quickly said.

"What's the woman's name?" Officer Wang asked.

"No... I don't know, wait a minute, let me check." The landlord was also at a loss and quickly took out his phone to search.

Before long, the landlord found the contact information and quickly showed the name in the phone's address book: "His name is... He Lili."

"When did He Lili rent the house?" Lu Weiwei asked.

"I've been renting it for over three months since after the New Year," the landlord quickly replied.

"So, are only the two of them living in this room?" Yuan Shasha asked again.

"No," the landlord shook his head, speaking without further ado.
"It used to be He Lili, who lived here with another woman. They seemed to be colleagues."

"Colleague relationship? You mean, He Lili and that woman from before were colleagues? Colleagues at the milk tea shop?" Yuan Shasha asked curiously.

But the landlord shook his head and quickly explained, "She's not a colleague from the milk tea shop. I think He Lili used to work at a sales company."

“But He Lili works at a bubble tea shop now,” Lu Weiwei said.

The landlord was also confused and quickly explained, "I don't know now, but when I first rented it to He Lili, she was working at a milk tea shop."

"However, this apartment wasn't rented by her; it was rented by her colleague. Later, her colleague felt the rent was too expensive, so she asked He Lili to move in with her, and the two of them shared the apartment."

"So that means these two girls used to rent this place, right?" Officer Wang said.

The landlord nodded silently: "Yes, they are two girls. They seem to be colleagues."

...(End of chapter)