Seeing Crime Scenes in My Sleep

Furious, Xu Yong slammed his fist against the wall. "Animals!"

"Please, Doctor, I’ll leave the child in your hands." After speaking, Xu Yong picked up his phone, stepped aside, and called the station.

Zhao Shuo took Xu Yong’s call, his eyes on the two unrepentant women before him.

Wang Yunxia flinched. "Officer, we didn’t do it on purpose."

"If it wasn’t for my sister and me, that little... that child would’ve died long ago. His maternal grandmother didn’t want him. We were the only ones who took pity on him and took him in."

Zhao Shuo slammed his hand on the table repeatedly. "You took pity on him? Took him in?"

"Wang Yunxia, the only thing you two cared about was the five-thousand-yuan stipend, wasn’t it!"

"And as for the official who placed him in your care, don’t you worry. She’ll be held responsible too!"

"Spit it out! What else did you do to that child?!"

Wang Yunxia shut her mouth, not daring to speak. She was incredibly annoyed. ’He was going to die anyway since nobody wanted him,’ she thought. ’We at least let him live for another three months.’

Zhao Shuo stared at their fearless expressions and let out a laugh of pure exasperation. ’Who the hell gave them this much audacity?’

"Not talking, huh? Fine. You just sit tight."

Zhao Shuo stood up and left the room. A moment later, a bright interrogation lamp switched on, so dazzling that Wang Yunxia and her sister couldn’t open their eyes, which began to feel sore and dry.

After coming out, Zhao Shuo chugged two glasses of water.

"Brother Zhao, what’s wrong?" Lu Xingye had just arrived at the station to see Zhao Shuo looking absolutely livid.

Zhao Shuo waved his hand dismissively, handing Lu Xingye the case file from the desk. Then he passed over his phone, which displayed the photos Xu Yong had sent.

A chill ran down Lu Xingye’s spine as he saw the images. ’To harm a child with such cruel methods...’

Lu Xingye walked to the window of the interrogation room and glanced inside.

The harsh light made their tears stream uncontrollably.

"Sis, what is this light? I think I’m going blind." Wang Yunxia kept squeezing her eyes shut, but they only grew more and more painful.

"How should I know!" Wang Yunhua couldn’t stop herself from yelling at her. "This is all your fault! You must have made too much noise last night. Why else would the police have shown up?"

"I... I don’t know either," Wang Yunxia shouted toward the door. "Is anyone there? I’m thirsty! I need water! And I have to use the restroom!"

"Are you deaf? I said I need some water!"

Wang Yunxia started screaming and shouting wildly, but after more than ten minutes, no one had paid her any mind, let alone come in to check on her.

After a while, Wang Yunxia’s throat was parched from shouting. Being ignored only made her more and more agitated.

Half an hour passed. Wang Yunxia couldn’t take it anymore.

"Give me some water... I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything..."

Only then did Zhao Shuo walk in carrying a glass of water. He didn’t rush to give it to them, however, instead placing it on the table in front of himself.

"Talk."

Wang Yunxia and Wang Yunhua stared longingly at the water before him.

Wang Yunxia licked her chapped lips. "We didn’t do much to him."

Zhao Shuo gave Wang Yunxia a cold stare. "What did you normally feed him?"

Wang Yunxia lowered her head and mumbled, "Leftovers."

Zhao Shuo slapped a photo taken by his colleague at the scene onto the table. "You call this leftovers?" ’This is fucking kitchen garbage!’

"And this medical report. Forty-two separate injuries all over his body. You have anything else you want to say?"

The more Zhao Shuo looked at the injuries listed on the report, the angrier he became. Depressed skull fracture, cerebral hemorrhage.

A grown adult couldn’t have endured that, yet the boy suffered for over three months.

"Well, that’s because he had no parents to give us gifts, and his grandma didn’t give us any perks. We... we were just teaching him a few small lessons."

"Just you wait to face the judgment of the law!"

Zhao Shuo was so furious he needed to step out for some air. ’Abusing a child for such a pathetic excuse of a reason... they’re completely insane.’

After coming out and sitting down, Zhao Shuo had his colleagues send the two women, along with the evidence, to the prosecutor’s office.

Then he looked at Zhou Tiancheng and the others. "They confessed. They were feeding him garbage. All because the kid has no parents and his grandma won’t look after him, so they took all their resentment out on him."

After finishing, Zhao Shuo looked at Zhou Tiancheng. "By the way, Captain Zhou, what’s the status on unit 14-3?"

Lu Xingye brought up the surveillance footage from the building’s ground floor. "The homeowners are a newlywed couple. It looks like they left for their honeymoon a month ago. They haven’t appeared on camera in the whole month."

"They probably haven’t returned. We tried calling them, as a neighbor suggested, but the calls won’t go through. Even their parents don’t know where the two of them went for their honeymoon."

"That is indeed suspicious."

Ji Qinghe stared at the surveillance screen. ’A month with not a single call home, and their phones are unreachable,’ she thought. ’There’s only one possibility: they’ve met with foul play.’

"Trace the last known location of their cell phones. See if we can find any useful leads."

Ji Qinghe looked at the surveillance footage from around the Garden District.

"By the way, didn’t Jiang Li say she heard a door locking when she came out? Have our people been inside to check?"

Zhou Tiancheng looked at another officer, the one who was assigned to unit 14-3 today.

"We had the property manager for the complex open the door. We searched the apartment but didn’t find anyone. We only found a single cigarette butt near the door, which has been sent to the forensics lab."

"As for the hallway camera, Ms. Han, who filed the report, said it broke a month ago and property management never fixed it. So we can only rely on footage from the elevator and other floors."

"But we’ve reviewed it, and there’s too much foot traffic. Right now, we can’t tell who might have been hiding in there."

Lu Xingye listened while watching the surveillance feed. "Brother Zhao and his team made a lot of noise when they went over. It’s possible the person was already hiding in the apartment and then stayed hidden afterward."

"There were no suspicious faces in the elevator when it stopped on the fourteenth floor, which just means this person is smart. They either took the stairs or got on the elevator from a different floor."

Lu Xingye checked the parking garage surveillance again. "Question the parents of the couple from 14-3. Their friends, their relatives. Question them all carefully. The suspect is clearly familiar with the area. I suspect it was someone they know."

Zhao Shuo nodded. "The husband’s name is He Ming, twenty-seven years old, a painter. His wife, Kong Zhen, is a blogger. This is her account; it’s cooking-themed."

"It documents her entire relationship with He Ming, from when they started dating to their marriage."

The team looked up at the information displayed on the screen.

"A million followers, that’s quite a lot. Could she have had a wealthy patron?" Zhao Shuo said, looking at Kong Zhen’s video account. It had a very wholesome vibe, and the food looked delicious.

Lu Xingye shook his head. "Look, her account shows she hasn’t done any live streams in a long time. We can probably rule that out. Let’s start by checking with her family for any leads."

While the team was still discussing the case, Jiang Li was at the hospital. The child had not yet passed the critical period, so she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

"Miss Jiang, I can stay here. If you have other things to do, please go ahead," Xu Yong said to Jiang Li. He felt bad making her wait around with him.

Jiang Li glanced at the time. "Alright. Keep in touch with Officer Ji and the others."

Jiang Li went to the payment counter to settle the fees before she left.

"Wow, is this the famous painter Tis’s work? ’The Meaning of Life.’ It’s so beautiful, but it also feels so oppressive. It’s like... like being trapped in an invisible spiderweb you can’t escape."

Having been a painter herself, Jiang Li was intrigued by the comment. She reflexively took out her phone to look up the painting.