LIGHTNOVELONLINE
Chapter 29
9 o'clock sharp, with 1 hour left before the signing event starts.
All the staff at the bookstore, over 10 people in total, have arrived at their posts. Questioning each one would waste too much time. Jian Jing used a crude and simple approach - she added them all to a work group chat and directly solicited information about Lv Xue.
Ordinary information - 200 RMB. Important information - 500 RMB. Crucial information - 800 RMB.
The management at Tianbu Bookstore are not lowly paid, but ordinary staff only earn around 3000 RMB per month. They have no reason to pass up this business opportunity.
Jian Jing received a flood of private messages, with a lot of duplicate information, but each person focused on different details, which actually supplemented the fragmented insights into a more complete picture.
Lv Xue is a pretty young woman, open and warm-hearted. She works diligently and many people like her. However, contrary to what the event manager speculated, some people dislike her - not because she is too pretty or popular.
Rather, she is quite cunning and calculating in the workplace. Those who dislike her all used to work in the same department as her.
When Lv Xue first joined the bookstore, she applied to be a book specialist. Her daily tasks were to shelve books and tidy up the shelves by returning books customers had left lying around.
You could say this job was manual labor, constantly walking around and extremely tiring.
While others in the same role obediently shelved books, climbed up and down ladders, worked themselves to exhaustion, Lv Xue did not.
She slacked off and chatted with customers, getting a sense of which books were more popular with customers, and what kind of promotions would be most effective in attracting customers.
Then, at weekly meetings, while others only knew where certain books were located and how much time it took to organize them, she was able to hold forth with targeted suggestions and insights.
Naturally, leadership appreciated an employee like this, and those in other departments just thought she was capable.
Only her colleagues had a "WTF" reaction - you're making us do your job, you don't do anything yourself, just keep busy with things that aren't your responsibility, how is that fair?
Even worse, when leaders assigned tasks, others stayed silent while Lv Xue readily volunteered, "No problem, I'm sure Brother X and Sister X will be fine with it too. If it gets too busy, I can help out."
Brother X and Sister X: "......" Piss off.
Six months later, Lv Xue got promoted to Books Manager. Her daily tasks were to assist the purchasing department in selecting new books, cataloging and shelving the new arrivals, and managing regular activities in the book area.
She worked very diligently and was also extremely picky.
The time she broke her arm - that was because she found fault with how a certain book specialist had shelved books, the series were not in sequence. She publicly criticized her in front of everyone, then climbed up the ladder herself to rearrange the books.
Right after that, someone bumped the ladder and Lv Xue lost her balance and fell off. She tried to break her fall with her right arm and unfortunately broke it.
"She didn't do her job when she should have. Now that she doesn't need to do it anymore, she starts interfering again. No wonder she fell. Not surprising, right?" said the employee who leaked this information, clearly implying that Lv Xue's accident was no accident.
Jian Jing just smiled back.
It seems many people believed Lv Xue's broken arm was intentional, that a dissatisfied colleague caused it on purpose.
"Is that person still here?" she asked.
A certain employee: "Quit long ago. Did she kill Lv Xue?"
Jian Jing: "There is no evidence of a connection between them."
Aside from lack of evidence, there was insufficient motive. Lv Xue's conflict with her was not that severe. Simply changing jobs is much simpler than murder. Even if we assume the worst about office politics, the lesson of a broken arm should have been enough, there was no need to go so far as killing someone.
"I heard Lv Xue later went to the purchasing department?"
"Yes, the store manager clearly favored her, no wonder there were unsavory rumors."
With the store manager himself present, Jian Jing directly asked him to verify this.
He denied it. "I have a wife and kids. Little Lv also has a boyfriend. I really don't know why some people are so bored they have to cook up nonsense. If they put that energy into their work like Little Lv does, why would I not promote them? When they don't do their own jobs well, they assume everyone else is the same as them."
Jian Jing did not comment, only asking, "Why did you transfer Lv Xue to the purchasing department?"
"Little Lv was reliable in her work. Even when she was managing the books, she didn't forget to improve herself. She gave me a lot of good suggestions privately. I had wanted to move her to purchasing for a long time. It just so happened that she broke her arm and couldn't do her original job anymore, so I took the chance to transfer her over."
The store manager was extremely regretful. "She really did well. With a couple more years of training, it wouldn't have been difficult for her to get promoted again. To be honest, when she suddenly quit, I thought she had changed jobs. Who would've known..." He shook his head. "Could that really be Little Lv?"
"Most likely, but we'll have to wait for the police to confirm with DNA testing." Jian Jing changed the subject. "Do you know if Lv Xue had any enemies here? I mean rivals and competitors and the like."
The store manager hesitated. "You could say the workplace is like a battlefield, there's definitely competition. But I wouldn't go so far as to say she had enemies."
He seemed to have someone in mind but was reluctant to speak up, wary of sullying the store's reputation. Jian Jing understood and didn't push him. "Do you have any other materials on Lv Xue?"
"Yes." The store manager quickly agreed, clearly relieved. "I'll have HR send them to you."
"Thank you for your trouble."
Jian Jing glanced at her watch - 9:20am.
She called Ji Feng.
He picked up quite fast, but his voice was muffled. "What's up?"
He sounded like she had woken him up from catching up on sleep after staying up late. Jian Jing felt a little apologetic. "Did I wake you?"
"It's fine, what is it?" Ji Feng was long used to this.
"Something came up on my end." She explained the situation concisely, ending with a request. "Lv Xue disappeared without a trace a year ago. I'd like you to check if there were any relevant missing person reports."
"Hmm." Rustling sounds of changing clothes could be heard over the phone. "Got it, hang on."
The police had an internal database. Depending on clearance levels, they could access case files of different classifications. Most missing person cases had unrestricted access that regular officers could look up.
Using the ID number Jian Jing provided, Ji Feng quickly found relevant information on Lv Xue.
"Her father reported her missing to the police a year ago. April 18th, 2019. He said his daughter had been out of contact for 3 straight days. Her phone couldn't get through, and when he called her company he was told she had quit. But the old man didn't believe it and insisted something must have happened to his daughter."
"Did they officially investigate?"
"Of course, or there wouldn't be a case file. But for cases like this, usually the person chose to disappear themselves. Especially with Lv Xue's mother seriously ill and her father just a janitor. The family was under a lot of stress..." Ji Feng had seen all sorts of twists and turns in life and human nature. It wasn't hard to guess what the local police would have thought.
But if the skeletal remains did turn out to be Lv Xue, clearly there were hidden circumstances. "I'll get over there as soon as I can. Anything else?"
Jian Jing said, "Could you send me the information on her parents?"
"Can't do that." Ji Feng rejected her flat out. "We can't disseminate personal information externally."
"Just a quick look."
"No can do."
"I'm helping the police investigate, not personal business." Jian Jing insisted reasonably.
Ji Feng: "Rules are rules."
Jian Jing: "Really not possible?"
"What do you need her parents' information for?" Ji Feng shot back.
Jian Jing shot back: "What do you think the odds are that someone sneaked into the bookstore before 7am, stashed a corpse, and slipped away evading all cameras perfectly?"
"Very low." Ji Feng responded objectively. "Most criminals are ordinary people. Most police are ordinary people too."
Jian Jing agreed with this view - even if deep down she still had lingering doubts - and so said: "I'm inclined to think the phone call was just a distraction. The person who left the remains was one of those nine people. But we saw footage of everyone coming in, no one carried large objects."
"Oh, so you think the remains were in the store the whole time." Ji Feng grew interested. "Go on."
"The employees agreed to arrive at 7am. The later they came, the less opportunity they had to move around and the greater the risk the body would be discovered. So the later they arrived, the lower the suspicion. The planning, copywriting, and operations people came in practically back to back. No matter who it was, they would have had a hard time acting alone."
As Jian Jing spoke, she also organized her thoughts: "The manager and janitor had the most available time. Although it's possible the manager lied about getting a call, the police can check call records and he'd be found out quickly."
"I understand." Ji Feng completely followed her train of thought. "Lv Xue's father is called Lv Weiguo."
The other end of the phone abruptly fell silent.
Jian Jing stood by the restroom entrance, looking up at the display board. It had two names - Janitor Jiang Hong, Janitor Lv Weiguo - each with a headshot beside it.
"Today's janitor is Lv Weiguo." She said softly. "Let me go talk to him."
Lv Weiguo was cleaning.
Seeing her come look for him, his aged and stolid face betrayed little emotion as he dully said, "Miss, did you need something?"
"You were the one who left Lv Xue's remains in the reading room, right? You're Lv Xue's father, correct?" Jian Jing cut right to the chase.
Lv Weiguo was silent.
She said, "You hoped to lure the killer out this way?"
This finally got Lv Weiguo to speak, his accent thick. "I don't understand anything, no schooling, and the police didn't believe me either. I had no choice."
"Uncle, I can help you." With the time pressure, Jian Jing had neither the opportunity nor need to comfort him, simply saying directly: "Where did you find Lv Xue?"
Just as she expected, Lv Weiguo didn't need comfort, he needed vengeance: "In the flowerbed."
"On the 3rd floor rooftop garden?" Jian Jing was shocked.
The dark and gaunt old man slowly nodded. "That day it rained. The dog kept barking over there. I just had a feeling something was off. You may not believe it, but I always knew my daughter was here."
In his eyes, his daughter was the most filial child under heaven.
They were poor, his wife was ill, and his meager wages alone couldn't support a family. His daughter had been clever and capable since she was little. After going out to work, she mailed home 2000 RMB every month without fail.
"Dad, my supervisor thinks highly of me. I'm getting a raise soon."
"Dad, I got promoted again. I'll send 3000 RMB next month for Mom to get some tasty food."
"Dad, I have an office job now with AC every day. Don't worry about me."
Every night, the daughter would call home to ask about the family's meals for the day and remind her mother to take medicine on time, come rain or shine.
Until April 15 last year, the family stopped receiving any of her calls.
He knew something must have happened to his daughter. He immediately went to the police station to file a report.
However, no matter how much he emphasized that his daughter was very filial and would never abandon her aging parents, the police said there was nothing they could do since she was already an adult and could go anywhere.
He refused to believe it.
After his wife passed away, he sold everything in the house and traced his daughter's workplace. The people there said she had resigned and left. Again, he did not believe it. Something in his gut told him that his child had not gone far and was still here.
Uneducated and clueless about finding people, he resorted to the most foolish method - using his own two feet to comb every corner.
For a whole year, he was the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. He worked diligently and left no stone unturned, traversing every inch of the building.
Finally, heaven took pity. A month ago during the rainy season, a guest on the third floor brought a puppy. As the puppy ran around the balcony, it suddenly barked at the flower bed.
He happened to be cleaning up the dog's pee then. Hearing the barks, his heart skipped a beat - he had searched everywhere except the flower bed. Could his daughter be...there?
After work at night, he stayed behind and sneaked up to the third floor. Using his hands, he rummaged through the flower bed.
The soil in the flower bed was half a meter high. After digging for half a day, he found a hand bone.
The yellowed hand bone lay in his chapped palm, as if his daughter had broken out of her grave to grasp her father's hand once more.