Chapter 101: The Disappeared Suspect
Changing a person isn’t actually that hard.
They just need to meet someone who can help them do it.
On the way home from school, Lin Yu’an hummed his favorite songs, something he rarely did.
At home, Lin Yu’an’s adorable younger brother, Lin Yuxi, was quick to notice the change in his older brother’s demeanor.
"Brother, did something good happen to you today?" he asked curiously.
Lin Yu’an smiled and nodded. "You could say that."
The flap of a butterfly’s wings can bring about enormous change.
Chen Mo’s action had subtly prevented several tragedies from occurring...
That evening, Chen Mo and Su Yuqing went to Elder Xu’s place again. They had a small portion of fish ball dumplings for a late-night snack before heading home.
Because she hadn’t slept well the previous night, Su Yuqing felt sleepy early that evening, even though she’d taken a nap at noon.
Chen Mo didn’t keep her up. He made her a cup of warm milk and sent her off to bed after she finished it.
After Su Yuqing fell asleep, Chen Mo pulled up the feed from the security camera outside the guest room window on his phone to check the situation.
At this time of night, there was hardly anyone walking around the neighborhood.
He watched for a bit, and once he was sure nothing was out of the ordinary, he turned off the TV and the living room lights and went to his bedroom to wash up.
By the time he had finished washing up and was lying in bed, he checked the camera feed again, but there was still nothing out of the ordinary.
The day passed peacefully.
The next day, the first thing Chen Mo did upon waking was check his phone to see if the camera had recorded anything unusual overnight.
The camera had caught a couple of people passing by, but no one had been seen loitering or looking at Su Yuqing’s window.
So far, there was no sign of the person who had left footprints by the window for two days in a row.
But this lack of activity only made Chen Mo feel more uneasy.
’He showed up two days in a row, but the moment I install a camera, he vanishes.’
’Could he have seen me installing the camera during the day?’
With this suspicion lingering in his mind, Chen Mo spent all of Thursday wondering who could have been at Su Yuqing’s window for two days straight.
As a former detective, Chen Mo was naturally trained in footprint analysis.
He had analyzed the footprints.
The owner of the footprints was likely an adult male, about five-foot-ten, weighing around 165 pounds—a well-built man.
It was precisely because of his ability to analyze footprints that Chen Mo could tell at a glance that it was the same person, even though the shoe prints left on the two different days came from two different pairs of shoes.
’But as far as he could recall, no one he knew fit that description.’
That’s why he grew increasingly curious.
Time flew, and soon it was Thursday night, after their evening self-study session.
Chen Mo and Su Yuqing returned home, and once again, everything was peaceful.
The person who had left the footprints for two days straight still didn’t show up.
This made Chen Mo wonder if he should take down the camera under the eaves and replace it with an inconspicuous pinhole camera to secretly film from the window.
That way, he might have a better chance of catching the suspect on camera.
After all, even though Chen Mo had tried to disguise the camera under the eaves, someone with strong counter-surveillance skills could still easily spot it.
If this person was the one who would murder Su Yuqing...
Based on the clues Chen Mo had from before the time rewind, the culprit definitely had exceptional counter-surveillance skills. There was only one route to the scene that had no cameras at all.
If the killer took that completely unmonitored route to the crime scene, committed the act, and then slipped away unnoticed, it would be incredibly difficult to catch them.
However, there were actually a few cameras on that route. It’s just that they had all been broken for a while.
Since it was an old district, no one bothered to manage or repair them.
Besides, nothing had ever happened in the neighborhood that was important enough to warrant reviewing security footage.
That’s what led to the creation of a complete surveillance blind spot.
But for someone to know that all four cameras on that route were broken, they would have to be incredibly familiar with the old district.
Based on that analysis, the person was either a resident of the old district or someone who was frequently active in the area.
The suspects Chen Mo had previously focused on, Zhou Hao and Li Yan, both lived near the old district.
They had the means to acquire this crucial piece of information.
That’s why Chen Mo couldn’t help but suspect them.
The same went for Lin Yu’an and the three punks Chen Mo suspected.
Although Lin Yu’an didn’t live in the old district, his home wasn’t far, and residents from his area usually shopped at the old district’s wet market.
So it would have been easy for Lin Yu’an to learn things about the area if his mother had asked him to go shopping there.
Especially at a place like the wet market, which was a melting pot of all sorts of people and a hotbed for gossip, where he could easily overhear such information.
The same went for the three young punks. Some of them lived in the old district, so naturally they would have had access to this information as well.
’But that was all old news.’
Now, using the footprints, Chen Mo had analyzed the target’s height and approximate weight.
The height of five-foot-ten alone was enough to rule out the three punks and Lin Yu’an.
Zhou Hao could be ruled out as well; at five-foot-eleven, he was too tall.
Li Yan’s height, however, was a perfect match at five-foot-ten. As for his weight...
You couldn’t tell his weight just by looking at him, but when Chen Mo had been pressed up against him while sharing a raincoat, he could clearly feel that Li Yan was stronger than his gentle, delicate appearance suggested.
’Teacher Li has a very sturdy build.’
Chen Mo recalled the feeling of firm muscles when their bodies had touched.
’Looked at that way, Teacher Li’s height and weight were both a probable match for the owner of the footprints.’
But Chen Mo had ruled Li Yan out as a suspect long ago. Even if his height and weight were a perfect match, Chen Mo wouldn’t suspect him.
Because given the circumstances of that night, he had neither the motive nor the opportunity to commit the crime.
With all of them ruled out, Chen Mo closed his eyes and tried to recall anyone he had seen that night who was about five-foot-ten and weighed around 165 pounds.
After racking his brain, he came up with nothing. Disappointingly, not a single passerby he’d seen that night fit the description.
This only made Chen Mo even more puzzled.
’Could the person who’d been lurking outside the window for two days just be a common thief casing the joint?’
’Just a random person, completely unrelated to Su Yuqing’s case?’
For now, that was the only conclusion Chen Mo could draw.
The midterm exams were tomorrow, Friday, and he didn’t have the spare energy to get distracted.
He had helped the four of them review quite a bit that night, and he’d done a lot of studying himself as well.
He just hoped he could win his bet with their homeroom teacher, He Xiaoyun, in tomorrow’s midterms.