when the moon whispers

Chapter 458: Accomplice - Enemy (Part )

Six accomplices in the case
Ninety-four encounters with thieves (Part 2)
The temporary awning set up at the foot of the mountain for people to rest and keep warm was shaking violently due to the wind that blew through the forest and around the trees. The two police dogs who were taking turns to rest under the awning raised their ears alertly in the direction of the evil wind, tilted their heads to sniff for a while, and then squatted at the side of the trainer's legs, barking in warning.

"...Dark Cloud? Dark Cloud! Sit down! Take a rest. What's going on? Is there something wrong?"

Jiang Mo looked back at her police dog friend who seemed a little anxious, and subconsciously wrinkled her nose to sniff the mountain wind mixed with the smell of soil. She vaguely felt that the wind direction in this mountain cave was not right, and her drooping eyes collided with the dark clouds's gaze seeking for approval. She frowned and thought for two seconds, then turned back to pick up Deputy Chief Cao's words: "Does this line connect to the village or the top of the mountain?"

"The electricity on this line seems to have always been charged to the village committee. In the early years, the village was planning to grow mushrooms to develop an industry. The old party secretary said that the village and the town didn't contribute much money or effort to attract investment and customers, so they had to share some of the start-up funds for those farmers. When setting up the equipment, the water and electricity were charged to the village committee..."

The elder sister with red armbands stood far away with her hands behind her back, leaning her head and tiptoeing to look into the distribution box. When she saw a few policemen looking back, she cleared her throat and waved her hand awkwardly: "What I meant is that this line...it originally connected the village and the mountain. There is no one in the village committee at the moment. There is a refrigerator, an office computer, and two lights in the room. The electricity can't run at this speed-"

The elder sister blinked her eyes, and in the middle of her words, she frowned as if she remembered something. She moved sideways a few steps, leaned her upper body and shouted in the direction of another red-armbanded person guarding the cordon: "Hey, sister! Who approved the money for the village committee administration? I remember the cashier mentioned that the electricity in the village ran out a lot in the past few months?"

The two women with red armbands gestured against the wind. They were probably from the same place. They shouted back and forth with accents. Jiang Mo couldn't hear what they were saying. She turned her head to look at Deputy Director Cao, who was squinting and trying to get a word in. Before she could ask a question, the woman next to her slapped her thigh.

"That's irrelevant. I guess someone really stole electricity before. The electricity bill of the village committee was indeed a bit high in the past two or three months, but it didn't seem to be particularly high. At that time, we were thinking about which equipment in the house should be replaced at the end of the year. After counting, we just sold the two old-fashioned freezers that we usually used to trade grain, oil, and pork at the beginning of this month and replaced them with new ones. The electricity bill this month is normal - who would have thought that the big freezer was wrongly accused. It turns out that someone really stole the village's electricity meter..."

The elder sister was rambling on, but Deputy Chief Cao looked at Jiang Mo and cut her off, "Didn't they say they took it to the mushroom shed that was converted from an air-raid shelter? Do you know where it is?"

"How would I know where to go?" The elder sister put her hands on her hips and thought for a while, then turned her head to look at the mountain that was half-lit and half-dark. "I don't know where those mushroom-growing test sites are... Hey, sister, can the village committee find the blueprints of the previous renovation? But I guess it's useless to look for them. After the mountain was designated as a development zone, neither our village nor the town has any say in it. There are only a few orchards, and it seems that a lot of mountain cavities have been backfilled to build a resort. Now there is basically nothing to see on the surface—"

The wind blew up again on the mountain. Jiang Mo sniffed and raised his hand to block the endless complaints of the cuff sister. Then he turned his head to look at the police dog, which seemed to be stimulated by the wind and had a harder time sitting and trimming. He thought for a few seconds, waved to the trainer to loosen Wuyun's rope, and looked in the direction where she was sniffing and searching.

"... Wuyun! Let's go!" Wuyun is a star player in the Sheng'an City Police Dog Base. His famous name has been heard of by everyone from the Municipal Bureau of Criminal Investigation to the surrounding police stations. The trainer lowered his head and glanced at Wuyun, who was restless due to the messy mountain wind. He was wondering if Wuyun had smelled some unexpected hidden discovery from the dusty and muddy smell. He raised his head and got Jiang Mo's permission to unbutton Wuyun's back. He drove on, chasing her in the wind, whizzing around the foot of the mountain for nearly a mile, and finally, with a belly full of cool air, he stood in front of an orchard at the foot of the mountain that was demolished and only a temporary dry toilet was left. He propped himself up with his knees to hold back a burp, then shone a high-intensity flashlight twice in the direction indicated by the squatting dark cloud, rubbed his nasal cavity that was filled with a fishy smell, picked up the intercom, turned around and waved hard in the direction he came from.

"Officer Jiang, Wuyun has made a discovery." The trainer suppressed Wuyun's anxious growl, "...something seems to be wrong. There is a clear smell of blood at this location upwind."

------

The small orchard at the foot of the mountain that had been bought out and no one was taking care of it had only about a hundred fruit trees in total, at best the size of a small farmer's own contract, with peach, plum, apple and pear trees, with a few grafted green fruits hanging sporadically. The shed that looked after the orchard had long been dismantled, leaving only four plastic pipes like beams and pillars, two of which were used to support the shaky prefabricated wall of the dry toilet, and the other two were just thrown on the ground, pressing down a straw mat that was used for insulation and wrapped in a bunch of weeds.

Jiang Mo leaned on the wooden board beside the dry toilet, which was soaked with rainwater and had become slippery and mossy, with a bit of disgust. He lowered his head and looked carefully at the messy weeds that had been trampled all over the ground. He glanced at the blurry photo of the recently released and then deleted live broadcast trailer of the murder on his mobile phone, and raised his eyes to look at Xiao Letian, who had searched around the lower edge of the hillside but couldn't find the entrance or exit of the air-raid shelter. He smelled the obvious bloody smell in the air and scratched his head irritably.

"Don't mention the dark clouds, even I can smell the bloody odor here. There shouldn't even be a door..." Xiao Letian stood in front of Jiang Mo with his hands on his hips, feeling a little upset. He turned his head and glanced at the live broadcast preview. He looked at his senior sister with a bitter face, "Is it too late? Maybe he was just bluffing before, but you can't be sure about the live broadcast--"

"I guess there may be some kind of ventilation hole at the foot of the mountain. When the mountain wind blows, the bloody smell in the tunnel will flow out from here..." Jiang Mo muttered slowly for a few words, and then raised his head with a little guess, "The entrance to this tunnel may be inside the mountain. Did you see Deputy Cao when I walked towards the entrance of the mountain? Did they find anything useful when they looked through the blueprints?"

"No, I saw the cuff sister went to ask the old branch secretary, and the old man almost scared them to the point of having high blood pressure - hey, Master's call..." Xiao Letian leaned in front of Jiang Mo's phone screen and tilted his head to look at the flashing reminder call, then watched his senior sister take a deep breath and was about to be criticized for nothing, so he took the initiative to snatch her phone, rubbed his face that was stiffened by the wind, and put the phone to his ear: "Hello, Master? Senior sister -"

Xiao Letian's whispered words were still on his lips when he heard the straightforward statement from the other end of the phone. He was stunned, his lips trembled twice, and he mechanically repeated them to Jiang Mo.

"Song Zhiwen is missing."

Due to work and health reasons, I will be working on another day~
"The world is a big dream, how many times will life be cold and chilly?"