Netherworld Investigator

At noon, Xiaotao bought everyone a box lunch. Dali, who had been watching surveillance videos all morning, got up and excitedly shouted, “Food!”

I glared at him. The idiot was totally clueless about manners.

There was rice with pork chop curry or rice with teriyaki chicken. It was all very delicious. Each box cost about 20 yuan. I thought Xiaotao was really generous.

After the meal, the policeman who had just sent the investigation license plate came back and said that the owner was a self-employed wholesale towel distributor.

Upon hearing this news, everyone’s eyes gleamed with excitement. This was the first new clue we discovered after a dead end. It excited everyone. 

As soon as I heard of the area in which this self-employed person lived, I felt as if it was very familiar. It turned out to be the area where Shopkeeper Tang sold his buns!

Xiaotao warned us, “Don't be too happy too early. The man is only the owner of the car. He’s not necessarily related to the case. Song Yang, let’s go check it out.”

“Xiaotao-jiejie, I want to go too!” Dali eagerly volunteered.

“There is no need for three people to go,” replied Xiaotao. “You stay here and continue watching the surveillance videos.”

Dali pouted and insisted he wanted to go, but it was Xiaotao’s command, so he had to obey. Once we got out of the police station, Xiaotao stretched out her body and sighed.

“I’ve been staring at a monitor this whole morning and my neck is stiff!” she exclaimed. “It feels so nice to get outside and breathe some fresh air.”

I laughed. “This sounds like you’re abusing your authority.”

“So what? Am I not bringing you along with me? You should be thanking me!”

We drove to the residential area and asked around for the van owner’s address. He finally found him. The van owner turned out to be a middle-aged man. Xiaotao asked him if anyone had borrowed his car before. He answered that no one ever did. She then asked him if he’d been to this address on this certain date in the middle of the night. He said no.

I observed him all the time and found that he was not lying.

Xiaotao paused for a while before asking again, “Has your car been stolen?”

“No,” answered the van owner. “It’s in the parking lot. What are you investigating here, Officer? I’m busy here and I need to deliver some goods in the afternoon.”

“What is your license plate number?” I asked.

He answered, and we found out it was not the same the license plate number we were looking for. It turned out that he had two cars. The van was just too old and it had all kinds of problems, so he just left it at a parking lot near the residential area. He hadn’t checked it for a long time.

Xiaotao asked him to take us there, and we ended up in the innermost part of the big parking lot, but the van was not there. The van owner scratched his head and cried, “Where’s my van? I know I parked it here!”

“Looks like someone stole it.” Xiaotao sighed.

“Ah, never mind then!” exclaimed the owner. “I bought the van twenty years ago, and it’s past its prime now. The thief saved me some trouble I’d say! I won’t be reporting this, officers.”

Xiaotao gave him a look. “Fine. You can go back now.”

Once he left, Xiaotao smiled wryly and lamented, “Ah, I knew this case was not going to be that easy!”

“Why did the murderer steal a car here?” I wondered.

“Ma Jinhuo probably comes here often,” Xiaotao replied. “He probably noticed the abandoned van. Judging by how old it is, he probably knew there’d be no alarm for this car. Right! He must’ve taken the van to some repair shop since it’s so old! Should we go down this line of inquiries?”

“Good idea!”

I said that, but my eyes were fixed on Shopkeeper Tang’s bun shop. I noticed that it was closed.

Xiaotao asked me what I was thinking. I told her, “Why does everything always connect back to Shopkeeper Tang? In contrast, suspect Ma Jinhuo seems just like a mysterious shadow that might not even exist.”

“Are you saying he lied to us? Could you be wrong about that?”

“My eyes work like a lie detector that senses the microexpressions of a lying person down to the pores and blood vessels on their face. But it doesn’t rule out special circumstances where someone who might be a psychopath could lie without any emotional fluctuations at all. It is said that some trained agents in the special forces can deceive a lie detector or even resist the power of truth serums.”

“Can Shopkeeper Tang be such a person? He looks like a normal citizen who is timid and afraid.”

“Actually, I think so too...” I replied.

Xiaotao looked over my shoulder in the direction of the bun shop.

“Well, since we’re here anyway, why not go see him again? Let’s just ask him more questions and see what’s not making sense.”

“Sure!”

We went over and knocked on the closed shop door. No one answered. Xiaotao called the police officers who were on stakeout nearby and asked them if Shopkeeper Tang had gone out. They told her that he’d always been inside.

But no matter how many times we knocked, no one answered the door. Xiaotao pulled two of her hairpins and gave them to me. 

“Come on, Detective Song. It’s time to show off your special talent!”

“Wait,” I stopped her. “This is private property. Is it really a good idea?”

“Don’t worry,” insisted Xiaotao. She put her hand on her chest. “I’ll answer for it if we get into trouble.”

It didn’t take me more than ten seconds to unlock the door. But when we went into the shop, we found no one there. Xiaotao exploded in anger and dialed the same number. She reprimanded them for not being able to notice a grown man leaving the shop.

The voice in the phone replied, “We’ll search for him immediately!”

Then I saw two people coming out of the black car across the street.

I surveyed the shop carefully with my Cave Vision. There was a pile of flour on the chopping board with a fresh dough beside it. There was also a big bowl of minced meat nearby. The lights were all on.

It clearly seemed like Shopkeeper Tang was in the process of preparing buns. How did he disappear? There were no other entrances in the shop. He’d have to teleport if he wanted to get out of the shop without the policemen outside noticing.

“It looks like he’s not here. We shouldn’t wait for him here either. Let’s go back for now!”

“Wait!” I stopped her.

My eyes fell to the ground next to the chopping board. Some flour was sprinkled on the ground, and it showed two distinct lines. Xiaotao followed my gaze with curiosity. 

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I looked up and saw a big freezer next to the kitchen counter. I immediately understood everything. “Someone has just dragged this freezer.”

“There’s a hidden door below it,” Xiaotao cried excitedly.

“Come on, let’s check it out.”

Xiaotao and I pushed the freezer aside, and there really was a large iron gate beneath it. We exchanged glances. I pulled open the iron gate, and found a ladder leading underground. Cold air rushed out of the darkness.

“It's a bomb shelter!” I exclaimed.

“But why is there a bomb shelter underneath a bun shop?”

I looked around and noticed that there were some faded slogans on the mottled limestone wall. They looked like they were made in the 1970s.

“There was probably a warehouse here,” I explained. “Relations between China and the Soviet Union were tense in the 1970s, and there was the very clear threat of atomic bombs, so the government responded with a policy that encouraged people to dig bomb shelters and store food in there in case of emergencies. Many bomb shelters were built, and most of them have been abandoned today.”

“Shall we go down and look around?”

“Absolutely!”

My senses tingled inexplicably. I had a feeling that the truth of the case was hiding below.