Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 52 The Ungrateful Wolf 9
"No! How could it be me! Fan Yan and I were elementary school classmates for a few years. Half of the people our age in this village were classmates!"

At this critical juncture, getting involved with the murderer would be disastrous.

Fan Zhiquan was sweating profusely and quickly explained loudly.

It was less of an argument for the police and more of a message for the victims' families. The police follow the rules, but those people don't.

Zheng Yan sneered: "You think saying 'no' is enough? Then explain why you instigated your sister-in-law Bai Shuang to kill Fan Yan? Why don't you seem worried about the child going missing?"

Fan Zhiquan opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything. Li Shuangli was anxious and pulled his hand, giving him a meaningful look.

Zheng Yan pulled out silver handcuffs: "If you don't want to talk here, then go back to the station and talk. Your wife has to come with you, and the child will stay with your sister-in-law..."

"I said, I said!"

Brother Liu and Bai Shuang are both watching this side. If the couple goes to the police station, they may not even know if their child will still be alive when they come back. Furthermore, if the murderer sneaks into their house and slips something in, their whole family will be doomed.

As Fan Zhiquan watched Brother Liu approach and saw the gleaming, unidentified knives in their hands, he broke out in a cold sweat and said, holding his breath, "We just wanted to send my sister-in-law to jail."

It's obvious that the explanation is incomplete.

"If you feel you can't say it, come back with us and talk about it slowly."

"No! No, no, no! I'll tell you! It's because, because..." He lowered his voice, "We lost Xiao Er by accident."

Li Shuangli pinched him hard.

Zheng Yan glared angrily, and Fan Zhiquan quickly shook off his wife's hand, continuing to explain in a muffled voice: "We...we have our own children, and we didn't want to raise Xiao Er anymore...around that time, several children in the village went missing. At first, they said they were abducted, but we didn't pay attention. We still took the children out to play, thinking we'd send them back to my older brother's house after this trip. But we didn't expect...but Xiao Er wasn't among those children's bodies, and my wife was showing. Bai Shuang would eventually think we deliberately abandoned Xiao Er...I thought, since they wanted to kill Fan Yan, if Bai Shuang also did it, she would probably be sentenced. I've seen cases like this before..."

He spoke haltingly, but the listener's anger only grew stronger.

"You did this on purpose! If you don't want to raise Xiao Er anymore, can't you just give the child back to your brother and sister-in-law? You just had to kill him!"

"I didn't kill him! I just didn't expect him to get lost outside the province. I was going to look for him! I just wasn't paying attention... No! I was..."

Why don't you look for it!

"Because, because..."

The police officer said sarcastically, "Because your older brother's family can get more compensation if they have another child, you don't want to see your older brother's family living better than yours, right?"

Fan Zhiquan stammered and couldn't refute it; sweat was pouring down his forehead.

Zheng Yan took a deep breath: "Repaying kindness with ingratitude, you really have done right by your elder brother's family!"

Tan Jia looked at them with disgust.

It is said that the system restrains the dark side of people, but the land expropriation compensation dispute in Jiuqu Village has been going on for many years. The interests involved have caused the system to loosen like an expired seal, and disgusting things have flown out from underground in droves.

Fan Zhiquan didn't react much to the insults, but he was startled when he saw Bai Shuang staring at him gloomily from the crowd in the distance.

"Why don't you investigate Bai Shuang? She might be the murderer! Before she had her son, she would roll her eyes at other people's sons. Now she stares at passing children every day. A few times I saw her standing behind children, trying to push them into the water. This kind of person can't stand seeing other people's children doing well because her own child is gone. Those two at the orchard might have been done by her following the murderer's methods!"

"You're really something, even at this point you still want to trick your sister-in-law one more time."

"I...I'm assisting in solving the case and reporting the criminals. You must investigate every suspect; you can't just rely on moral judgment to determine whether someone committed a crime, can you?" "I don't need your reminder. Take him back to the station!"

Seeing them handcuff the man, Liu Maoshui and his men immediately surrounded him: "Is it Fan Zhiquan?"

"It's uncertain. He was arrested on suspicion of intentionally abandoning a child."

Everyone was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized.

"The waiter was..."

Bai Shuang screamed and pounced on Fan Zhiquan and Li Shuangli, desperately punching them.

"What did you say? You beasts! You two beasts! We only gave you our child because we hoped you would be doing well! You heartless bastards! My child! Fan Zhiquan, your whole family will die a horrible death!"

His voice was filled with sorrow, and it was heartbreaking to hear.

After putting the person in the police car, Tan Ming and Officer An returned.

"Is this the suspect?" Officer An stared intently at the person inside the car window, then dismissed the question, "Doesn't seem like it. He's too fat. Even at night, a child who can't see clearly should be able to sense something through contact. The murderer should be a person of average build, neither too fat nor too thin."

Zheng Yan nodded and recounted the story of the Fan brothers, Fan Zhiquan and Fan Zhiquan.

Officer An shook his head: "He's heartless. Is there anything wrong with what he said about Bai Shuang?"

"Uncertain, we need to continue investigating. What about you?"

Tan Ming took out the transcript: "The man sentenced to nine years is named Fan Licheng. His wife ran away when he went to prison, leaving only his youngest son at home. He has a very strange and irritable temper and often beats and scolds his child. He said he was sleeping at home when the incident occurred last night, but no one can testify to that. The nearest neighbor is an elderly person living alone who usually helps cook for Fan Licheng's child. The child slept at the neighbor's house last night, so the child doesn't know when his father came back."

Officer An and Xiao Chen visited several families of victims. One family's wife, Huang Wen, was imprisoned for two years after killing the suspect. Not long after, her husband was also sentenced to six months for gambling. After they were both released from prison, they moved away from Jiuqu Village with the money from the land expropriation compensation and only returned in March of this year.

The timing matches, but they also said they were at home and went to bed early at the time of the incident, but no one can verify that.

"The difference is that Huang Wen killed Fan Yan because the victim's family was watching him and he had no choice but to bite the bullet and stab them a few times. He thought that he could get away with it because of the crowd, but he was still sentenced. They were not very persistent in avenging their son."

In other words, they didn't love their son; they only had the child to get more compensation.

This situation is probably not uncommon among the victims' families.

Zheng Yan pondered: "It sounds like all the suspects are neither quite right nor wrong."

Motive, means, purpose, and timing—these seem to be all present in these individuals, yet also none at all.

Serial killers are indeed more difficult to investigate than ordinary murderers.

Officer An looked up at the sky, watching as night fell and lights came on in every household. The murderer would escape for another night, or perhaps, like eleven years ago, for many years, leaving them helpless and the victims' families to suffer for a lifetime.

“I always feel like we’re still going in circles, like there’s something we’ve overlooked.”

But the more he thought about it, the more confused he became. The case had remained unsolved for so long that it had become an obsession affecting the minds of the investigators from back then.

“Don’t be discouraged. The chances of solving this case are much higher than eleven years ago. It’s only the first day, and the forensic experts and trace evidence specialists must still have a lot of information,” Zheng Yan patted him on the back. “Cheer up, let’s interrogate these people tonight.”

(End of this chapter)