Chapter 65.2: The Footprints Don’t Match
Since the questioning hadn’t cleared Luo Youben of suspicion, Jiang Xia continued to regard him as a suspect. She glanced at Luo Youben’s younger brother and noted his height.
He was also around 1.7 meters tall, which didn’t match the footprints left at the crime scene.
No matter. There was still the brother-in-law.
Jiang Xia turned her gaze toward the courtyard.
Human remains were easy enough to destroy and dispose of, but surely they wouldn’t bury the tools in the fertilizer too, would they?
With that thought, Jiang Xia pinched her nose and moved a little closer to the Luo family’s house, carefully surveying the entire courtyard.
The Luo family’s courtyard was quite large. Jiang Xia had retreated too quickly earlier to examine it closely, but now she noticed that although there was a great deal of fertilizer, it was all arranged very neatly, concentrated on the right-hand side in a series of pits. Each pit had extra soil piled around its edges to contain the contents and prevent them from contaminating the ordinary dirt ground and walkway on the left.
Most of the household’s belongings were piled up on the left side.
Beside the front door stood a bicycle. A stack of straw for kindling was piled against the wall. Farther along stood a large broom, two iron shovels, a hoe, a sickle, a shoulder pole, and several baskets, all lined up in order. They all had a little dirt on them.
That didn’t mean much. Farm tools were bound to get dirty.
Jiang Xia continued looking farther into the courtyard. As her gaze passed over the farming tools that could be found in any rural household, she suddenly noticed that the large broom was positioned somewhat strangely.
It was standing upright, with the sweeping end pointing down.
These large brooms were made primarily of bamboo. Their sweeping ends consisted of thin bamboo branches that fanned out, giving the broom a surface area of roughly half a square meter. Because they could sweep such a large area at once, many families with courtyards kept one on hand.
However, they were bulky and fairly heavy, while the bamboo branches were thin. If the broom was stored upright like this, the delicate branches along the edges would get crushed. Those branches were what actually swept the dirt along the ground, so damaging them would make the broom less effective.
To extend its lifespan, every household stored these brooms upside down, with the bamboo branches propped against the wall and the end of the handle resting on the ground.
So why had this family placed theirs the other way around?
Had they simply put it away incorrectly?
Impossible. It might have made sense for the other tools to be scattered about carelessly, but the tools and the courtyard were so neatly arranged that everything looked as though it were standing at attention. There was no way the broom had been put away by mistake.
It had been positioned that way deliberately.
But why?
Suddenly, a cheerful shout interrupted Jiang Xia’s train of thought.
“Comrades from the Public Security Bureau! I’ve brought the man you wanted!”
The neighbor hurried over, pointing to the man walking silently behind him.
“Here he is. Ren Yongqin!”
Jiang Xia immediately raised her head and looked over.
The newcomer was a young man. He had probably spent so long working in the fields that his face and body were just as dark from the sun. At first glance, he looked to be around thirty. His build was average, and he wasn’t particularly tall either. Compared with Luo Youben, he was only about two knuckles taller, putting him at no more than 1.75 meters at most.
Huh? None of them matched!
Zeng Jun had likewise checked Ren Yongqin’s height at first glance.
Although he didn’t have a measuring tape, he knew how tall Chen Dong was. A quick comparison was enough to tell him that Ren Yongqin couldn’t be as tall as 1.78 meters. He also didn’t seem to weigh as much as the person they were looking for.
So who had gotten it wrong?
Zeng Jun instinctively turned to glance at Jiang Xia. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned back to the neighbor and asked, “You all live in the same village, right, comrade? Does this Ren Yongqin have any brothers? Are they tall? Who else does Old Luo’s family associate with? Are any of them tall?”
“Well…”
With so many police officers bringing someone over and asking so many questions, the neighbor was growing increasingly suspicious. He had a feeling that either Old Luo’s family had gotten themselves into trouble or they’d become acquainted with someone they shouldn’t have.
A certain excitement at the prospect of seeing someone else come to grief rose in his heart, though he also felt a little sympathy for them. He thought it over several times but still couldn’t come up with anyone who fit the description.
“I can’t think of anyone,” the neighbor said, shaking his head. “Their stuff stinks so badly that nobody wants anything to do with them. I’ve never seen any tall people hanging around their house.”
Zeng Jun furrowed his brow slightly.
Now that was strange.
Why didn’t the shoeprints match any of the people in front of them?
He carefully examined Luo Youben’s younger brother and brother-in-law. One stood slightly behind the others, looking somewhat shy, while the other waited in silence. Surprisingly, neither of them showed much fear or nervousness.
Were they simply calm under pressure, or had they… got the wrong people?
“Something doesn’t quite add up here, does it?”
Photographer Zhao also looked the three men up and down. His brows knitted together as he turned to Jiang Xia with some suspicion.
“Jiang Xia, could you have identified the wrong footprints? Is it possible someone left them there during the day?”
Jiang Xia was just as baffled.
Based on Luo Youben’s statement and the neighbor’s testimony, if Luo really was the culprit, then his accomplices were most likely his younger brother and brother-in-law. There shouldn’t have been a fourth person.
That meant none of them matched the footprints Jiang Xia had found.
So which part was wrong?
Jiang Xia was just about to dismiss the possibility when she suddenly realized something.
No. Wait.
She had almost been led astray by Photographer Zhao’s suggestion.
That spot was ideal for keeping watch, and the footprints pointed outward. The grass leaves that had been plucked off were also scattered in front of the person’s toes. Judging by the extent of the disturbance, whoever had been there must have crouched in that spot for at least three hours. Who would spend three hours crouching motionless in the same place in broad daylight for no reason?
The suspicious nature of that behavior was still difficult to explain away.
Jiang Xia believed there was indeed a fourth person who had been keeping watch.
And if that person had been responsible for keeping watch, then someone else must have been doing the digging.
In other words… if he wasn’t part of Luo Youben’s gang, then there must have been another grave-robbing gang!
The images of those eight graves surfaced in Jiang Xia’s mind once more.
Suddenly, she realized she’d overlooked one detail.
Although she couldn’t determine the exact dates of the excavations from the degree of coffin decay or the condition of the surrounding soil, she could be certain that the coffins had been dug up within the past six months. Their smell and appearance were still remarkably fresh. In fact, with the exception of the most recently excavated grave, the other seven had most likely been disturbed sometime between three and six months ago.
There was a simple reason for this. People visited graves to pay their respects during the Qingming Festival in April. If someone dug up a grave then, other people would notice. By May, June, and July, however, the grass would have grown back. Digging through it would destroy the regrowth, making the disturbance even more obvious.
The graves in this batch had been excavated within a relatively short period of one another. Yet the marks left by the digging suddenly changed from holes that reached the coffin lids to holes that precisely reached the side panels. There was no gradual transition between the two techniques, nor any sign of mistakes along the way.
That was clearly abnormal.
It was like making steamed buns. Even a beginner who followed a recipe step by step would inevitably mess up a few batches before finally mastering the technique and producing properly steamed buns consistently.
Earlier, Jiang Xia had assumed that the grave robbers had practiced on graves elsewhere. But now that she thought about it, their improvement had been far too rapid.
They weren’t like her, gaining experience points that multiplied with every job they completed. Without practicing on at least a dozen graves, how could they possibly learn to dig with such precision?!
Jiang Xia spoke up to correct the earlier assumption. “I didn’t misidentify the footprints. I got the situation wrong. We assumed there was only one group, but there could actually be two!”
“Two groups?”
Zeng Jun froze for a moment. “Are you sure?”
“The excavation methods used at those graves were different.”
Jiang Xia briefly explained her reasoning. As she spoke, she glanced at Luo Youben, who had been listening all this time without much change in his expression, and the corners of her lips lifted slightly.
Excellent. A moment ago, she hadn’t dared to be a hundred percent certain. But his reaction now was clearly off.
They were practically accusing him to his face. How could he still be so calm?
No wonder her master had caught her so easily back then. Watching someone else put on an act made everything so much clearer.
Two or three seconds later, Luo Youben finally reacted. Looking stunned and somewhat bewildered, he asked, “Grave robbing… Comrade Public Security Officer, you’re not actually suspecting me of doing that, are you?”
“That’s the kind of thing that brings a curse down on your entire family!”
His face immediately filled with indignation. “My family’s doing so well. Why would I do something so wicked? You can’t just make baseless accusations and ruin my good name!”
Jiang Xia fell silent.
Uh… His acting was pretty much on par with how she’d behaved back in the day.
“What are you shouting for?!”
Zeng Jun immediately barked at him. “If we were certain it wasn’t you, we wouldn’t have brought you in for questioning. Just stay where you are and keep quiet!”
After reprimanding Luo Youben, Zeng Jun felt a headache coming on.
He had thought this case would be fairly straightforward. But the deeper they got into it, the more complicated things became. There was a possible connection to a violent feud involving weapons, and now there might be two separate gangs. The footprints they’d found didn’t match any of the suspects, either. And the man they’d brought in now clearly seemed to have coordinated his story with the others. They might not be able to get anything useful out of him anytime soon.
He summoned up the courage to glance at the piles of fertilizer again.
They weren’t seriously going to dig through that stuff, were they?
Jiang Xia studied the three men once more.
Luo Youben was indignant at this point, his younger brother looked somewhat angry as well, and his brother-in-law remained silent, though his face had darkened further. At the moment, all three looked just like people who had been falsely accused. At first glance, there really didn’t seem to be anything wrong with them.
Jiang Xia pondered this briefly.
It seemed the grave that had been robbed most recently hadn’t been dug up by them. They had most likely already disposed of the remains, leaving nothing behind at home. They might even have heard that someone had discovered the desecrated graves and discussed their stories in advance, which would explain why they were so calm.
They probably all believed there was no evidence left in the house. As long as they stubbornly refused to confess, the police wouldn’t be able to convict them.
A nice little plan.
Unfortunately for them, they’d forgotten about the buyers—and the other fellow grave robber who might be willing to turn them in.
“Captain Zeng.”
Chen Dong was getting a headache, too. He looked at the courtyard, then turned to Zeng Jun and asked, “What should we do now?”
Zeng Jun didn’t have any good ideas at the moment either. He turned to Jiang Xia. “Jiang Xia, what do you think?”
“If there really are two separate gangs, then the other gang must have dug up the most recently robbed grave. This family’s probably got nothing left at home.”
Jiang Xia calmly laid out her analysis. “The other gang should be easier to find, though. They have a grudge against the Luo family, and the person keeping watch was smoking cigarettes. People in the countryside don’t usually have those, so I’d guess he goes into the city fairly often.
That narrows down the possibilities considerably, especially since we also have footprints to work with. Let’s head to the commune and get something to eat first. While we’re there, we can ask the commune officials to make inquiries and help us track them down. As for everything else, we can deal with it after we’ve questioned the people at the school.”
“That’s a great idea!”
The thought of not having to dig through the fertilizer made Zeng Jun instantly happy. He rubbed his nose, which had gradually been losing its sense of smell.
“How about we leave right now?”
As soon as he said that, the three local police officers’ eyes lit up. They looked at Jiang Xia as if she were their savior.
They’d finally escaped this ordeal!
That said, this young female police officer was pretty impressive. Even the deputy captain was taking orders from her, practically handing over the entire direction of the criminal investigation to her. Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought she was the squad leader.
Jiang Xia didn’t see anything wrong with Zeng Jun listening to her. She gave a slight nod, then pointed at Luo Youben and agreed, “Let’s go. Take all three of them with us, too.”
When Luo Youben heard that the stern-faced detective who had been questioning him was about to leave, he was instantly delighted. But his happiness lasted less than a few seconds before he heard the female officer—the one who had just pointed out the possibility of two grave-robbing gangs—say that they were taking the three of them along.
His heart immediately sank.
A sudden premonition that he was about to be arrested washed over him. Luo Youben took a deeply reluctant step backward and shouted, “Wait a minute! Comrades from the Public Security Bureau, we haven’t done anything! What right do you have to take us away?!”
“You’re a suspect now!”
Zeng Jun didn’t even bother asking Jiang Xia for confirmation. She never made suggestions without good reason; if she’d raised the possibility, she was probably already fairly confident about it. He immediately put on a stern expression and addressed Luo Youben sharply.
“We’re summoning you for questioning in accordance with the law. You’re obligated to cooperate with the investigation. Don’t resist law enforcement! Once we’ve established that you’re not involved, we’ll naturally let you go!”
“You… you people are b*llying us!”
Luo Youben stamped his feet in agitation.
Sometimes, people who had genuinely committed crimes and people who had done absolutely nothing wrong but found themselves under suspicion reacted in much the same way. Both could become extremely resistant and agitated.
In rural villages, people were often even bold enough to resist arrest. Their relatives and neighbors lived nearby and would come to their aid. With dozens or even hundreds of people at their backs, it was only natural that they would feel emboldened.
However, Luo Youben’s relationships with the villagers were clearly rather poor. By now, quite a few people had come over to watch after hearing the commotion, but not a single person stepped forward. They merely stood around, whispering among themselves.
“So the police came here to catch grave robbers?”
“Why are they suspecting the Luo family? The graves in Luo Family Village are their own family’s ancestral graves!”
“Who knows? With someone as obsessed with money as Luo Youben, maybe he really did dig up other people’s corpses to arrange ghost marriages!”
“I can actually believe that!”
“Do you think that awful smell from their house could be the stench of corpses?”
“Oh, my goodness! That’s entirely possible!”
“That’s terrifying. I’m definitely going to keep my distance from now on.”
…
Seeing that none of the villagers had stepped forward to interfere, Zeng Jun waved at Chen Jun and the local police officers.
“Arrest them!”
The four men immediately rushed forward and forced the three suspects down.
Luo Youben’s younger brother and brother-in-law struggled a little, but neither put up much resistance. Luo Youben, on the other hand, kept trying to dodge the officers without daring to actually run away. All he could do was repeat over and over that they hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Whether you did anything or not, you know that better than anyone,” Jiang Xia said.
She had no intention of watching him put on any more of an act. She walked straight through the courtyard gate, passed Luo Youben’s wife and two children, and headed directly for the broom that had been placed upside down.
She moved it aside.
A foul stench seeped through her mask. Beneath the straw covering it lay a hand-cranked drill, half a meter long.
It was a long-handled tool with a spiral drill bit about as thick as a thumb at the very tip. Suspicious black stains marked its surface.
Whoa! Jackpot!
Jiang Xia immediately grew excited. She quickly took out a pair of gloves and put them on, then pinched her nose and picked up the tool.
Luo Youben’s wife began to tremble slightly, but she didn’t dare stop the police.
With the woman watching her, Jiang Xia carried the drill to the courtyard gate.
“Master Luo, you’ve got quite a collection of tools at home. You even own something as expensive as a hand-cranked drill.”
Jiang Xia gazed at Luo Youben with a cheerful smile.
“Looks like it fell into the fertilizer pile, though, doesn’t it? But if it fell in there, you should have washed it and left it out in the sun to dry thoroughly. That’s how you’d get rid of the smell. Why put it in the straw pile instead? You must have been too lazy to wash it, right?”
Seeing how stiffly Luo Youben was holding himself, Jiang Xia continued to bluff.
“I heard you went to a school, Master Luo. You must have heard about laboratory testing, then. Tell me, do you think the substances on this tool might turn out to have the same composition as those found on decomposing human corpses?”
Luo Youben’s arms, which he had been holding defensively across his body, suddenly dropped to his sides. Cold sweat gradually began to break out across his face.
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