Chapter 65.1: The Footprints Don’t Match
Huang Xueling was just as quick-witted.
She promptly abandoned her mentor and joined Jiang Xia’s side, swiftly retreating to the very back. She even took the mask she had stuffed into her pocket earlier back out and put it on. No matter how hot and sweaty her face became, she absolutely refused to take it off.
The other two technical specialists, however, found it harder to retreat. They could only grit their teeth and stand where they were.
As for the three local police officers who had come along, they were already numb to the experience.
They had known that arresting a suspect who had dug up a corpse would be disgusting, but they had never imagined that reality could be even more brutal than their expectations!
How on earth did this family manage to live in a place with such a powerful stench?
Zeng Jun stood at the front, his back ramrod straight. He remained as still as a mountain, as though he couldn’t smell a thing.
The people around him couldn’t help looking at him with admiration.
Zeng Jun maintained his stern expression, his face utterly impassive.
In truth…
He wanted to cover his nose too!
The courtyard before them was filled with an astonishing number of dung heaps. Zeng Jun could even see half-rotted dead birds and rats in some of them, along with bits of fish bones and other things. These added an even more distinctive twist to an already soul-crushing stench.
As far as concealing their activities and avoiding suspicion went, this family had done an excellent job.
Zeng Jun sincerely hoped they wouldn’t have to dig through any of this filth to look for evidence later.
When he’d previously questioned the surrounding villagers, the residents of Xiaobei Village had immediately thought of this household. After all, within a ten-li radius, their family was simply too memorable.
Not for any other reason. They were just too bizarre.
The head of the household was named Luo Youben. He was thirty-two years old and the eldest son in the family. His parents had died when he was young, leaving behind a younger sister and a younger brother, both of whom he had raised on his own.
Perhaps because they had been poor, Luo Youben had become rather miserly and extremely greedy for money. He was also quite bold. In the past, he’d repeatedly stolen grain from the production brigade. However, since it wasn’t easy for a half-grown teenager to raise two younger children, everyone had turned a blind eye and let him get away with it.
At the end of 1979, the local authorities began implementing the household responsibility system, allowing families to manage their own agricultural production. Private livestock farming was also permitted. However, everyone was afraid the policies might change, so most people limited themselves to raising a few chickens or ducks. Luo Youben, on the other hand, actually dared to bring home three piglets and raise them.
Back then, who knew how many people had waited eagerly to see him get into trouble? To everyone’s surprise, the authorities never came to confiscate the pigs. And as the piglets grew bigger, they produced more and more manure. Luo Youben began selling it in the village.
Of course, officially, it was an exchange rather than a sale.
Quite a few people cursed him for being so obsessed with money, but after finishing their complaints, they still went ahead and traded rice bran for the stuff.
There was no helping it. Chemical fertilizer was both scarce and in short supply. Even when the production brigade took its fertilizer coupons to buy some, it often came back empty-handed. Manure had therefore become an essential substitute. Every household stockpiled it, and whenever people spotted a pile by the roadside that didn’t seem to belong to anyone, they’d find a way to haul it back to their own fields.
For precisely this reason, Luo Youben piled every bit of manure that could be exchanged for grain or bran in his own courtyard. Even if the stench was enough to make the heavens and earth recoil, he wasn’t about to let anyone sneak in and steal so much as a shovelful.
Apparently, during the slack season two years earlier, Luo Youben had gone into the city to look for work. While there, he had met an agricultural professor through a school and learned a technique involving the fermentation of biological fertilizer made from animal waste.
Anyway, ever since returning home, he had frequently taken his brother-in-law and younger brother out to shoot birds, catch fish, and trap field mice. They piled all the carcasses together to make fertilizer. The smell was even more revolting, but the results were genuinely better than those of the manure fertilizer people made themselves. Quite a few villagers were even willing to trade grain for it.
The problem was that this fellow had become even more enthusiastic about piling up fertilizer. In the past, he would exchange it once he’d accumulated enough, so the stench wasn’t quite as bad. Now, however, he left everything piled in his courtyard to ferment and decompose. The smell was so overpowering that nobody wanted to pass anywhere near his house.
People spread fertilizer over their fields because they had no other way to increase their grain yields. They were forced to do it out of sheer necessity. It wasn’t as though they had no noses and couldn’t smell how foul it was! Even the pits of their outdoor latrines had to be covered with soil to keep the stink down.
Fortunately, their house was on the outskirts of the village, downwind, and far from their neighbors. Otherwise, a fight would have broken out long ago.
The arrival of the two motorcycles with sidecars made quite a racket. Hearing the noise, the neighbors immediately came out of their houses with bowls in hand and stood in their own courtyards, peering in this direction. Even the two pigs were startled and began to grunt.
The adults eating inside the house all stood up. Before Zeng Jun could even call for anyone, Luo Youben had already taken the initiative and walked out.
The man was a little short, around 1.7 meters tall, with a lean, wiry build. His face and arms were tanned dark by the sun. Nor did he look as fearful as most farmers tended to be when confronted by the public security police. Instead, he seemed rather composed as he walked up to the gate and asked with mild surprise, “Comrades from the Public Security Bureau, what brings you to my house?”
This man wasn’t going to be easy to deal with.
After just one encounter, Zeng Jun already had a sinking feeling that they were in for trouble.
Well, that made sense. The man had dug up a dead person’s grave. How could anyone do something like that without a fair amount of nerve?
Without changing his expression, Zeng Jun went straight to the point. “I’m Zeng Jun, deputy captain of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Municipal Public Security Bureau. We’re investigating a criminal case and need to ask you a few questions. Come over here and account for your whereabouts over the past month.”
As he spoke, Zeng Jun took several steps backward.
At this point, he genuinely didn’t want to linger by the gate any longer.
“Oh.”
A bewildered look appeared on Luo Youben’s face. He followed Zeng Jun out and asked, seemingly puzzled, “What criminal case?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that. Just tell us what you’ve been doing,” Zeng Jun replied sternly.
Luo Youben let out another “Oh.” He scratched his head, trying to recall as he spoke. “I’ve mostly been staying at home lately. We just finished harvesting the wheat, planting the corn, drying the grain, and handing over the agricultural tax quota. The whole family was exhausted, so we’ve been resting. Oh, right! My brother-in-law and I have also been smoking out field rats at night. During the day, I just cut some pigweed, and every three or four days, I go into the city with my younger brother to sell vegetables. That’s about it.”
Smoking out field rats at night? And he’d been going into the city, too?
That practically gave them both a window of opportunity for the crime and a possible destination for the transaction.
Zeng Jun immediately pressed him for details. “What day did you finish handing over the grain quota? When did you smoke out the field rats? What time did you get back? Did anyone see you?”
Luo Youben thought for a moment before answering. “We handed over the grain at the end of June, on the twenty-ninth, I think. Comrade Public Security Officer, you have no idea how crooked that grain collection station is! They insisted our grain was too damp and that we hadn’t cleaned all the bits of dirt out of it. They said it didn’t meet the standards, so they made us leave it there to dry for half a day and sift it twice before they’d accept it. We were practically worked to death!”
After complaining for a while, he continued, “We rested for two days after getting back. Once we’d recovered a bit, I noticed the fields were empty, so I thought I’d catch some field rats. Otherwise, they’d steal the little grain we had planted. So I took my brother-in-law out to the fields. The sun’s scorching hot these days, so we went in the afternoon. Smoking the rats out with tobacco takes time, too, so we didn’t finish until late. It was completely dark by the time we got home.”
“As for the exact time, I couldn’t tell you. There was no sun, so how would I know? I just remember that quite a few families had already turned off their lights when we got back. There wasn’t anyone outside, either. Oh, right! I remember the youngest grandson of the Wu family was crying when we came back. Their kid was crying, and his dad was standing beside him, cursing him out.”
As he spoke, Luo Youben pointed toward the neighbor who had come out to watch the commotion.
“Oh?”
He’d returned home, but there was no witness to confirm it. Yet he knew what had been happening at his neighbor’s house…
Zeng Jun pondered this for a moment, then turned and called out loudly to the neighbor, “What time do you usually go to bed? In early July, did you see Luo Youben heading into the fields to catch rats that afternoon? And was the child crying when you went to bed that night?”
“Who can afford to keep a kerosene lamp burning at night? We all go to bed as soon as it gets dark!”
The neighbor had already hurriedly finished his meal and told the children in his family to take the bowls back inside. He had walked a few steps toward them, but the moment he caught the smell, he stopped and refused to come any closer.
“I saw him heading out to the fields. That day, the little brat insisted on going down to the river to catch fish with his hands, so I gave him a beating. He cried for half the day.”
The neighbor couldn’t resist pinching his nose shut. He glanced into the courtyard, then added with obvious disgust, “Early the next morning, I saw him with mud all over his trouser legs, smashing field rats and mixing them into the manure. Good grief, that smell! It was enough to kill you!”
At that, a hint of displeasure appeared on Luo Youben’s face. It was hard to tell whether he was annoyed that his neighbor had criticized the smell or that he’d gone and volunteered an extra detail.
Zeng Jun fell into thought.
The neighbor’s statement did provide indirect evidence supporting Luo Youben’s claim that he’d returned home, but as proof of his whereabouts, it was rather weak.
After all, his wife and children had been at home too. They could have heard the same sounds, and it would have been entirely possible for them to coordinate their stories.
Still, there was no way to prove that he was lying at this point. His account of his movements didn’t sound particularly suspicious.
Zeng Jun wasn’t flustered. He glanced at Chen Dong, who was busy taking notes, waited a moment, then continued questioning Luo Youben.
“Then roughly which dates did you go into the city to sell vegetables?”
Luo Youben held up his fingers and counted. “I went on the fifth, ninth, and fifteenth of this month.”
“I remember you said earlier that you went with your brother.”
Zeng Jun’s gaze swept across the courtyard again, settling on the bicycles parked inside.
“Did you both ride bicycles into the city?”
Luo Youben nodded. “Ah, yes.”
“You bought two bicycles at once?”
Zeng Jun raised an eyebrow. “Your family must be pretty well-off, then.”
“Not really, not really.”
Luo Youben’s mouth twitched. He seemed about to smile proudly, but quickly suppressed it, as though afraid the police might try to extort money from him. Instead, he launched into a tale of hardship.
“We earned every penny through hard work! We sold the pigs we’d raised, then added the money I’d earned working in the city over the past two years to buy them. We spent every last bit of money the family had. If it weren’t for needing to go into the city regularly to sell vegetables, why would we have bought them?”
“Is that so?”
Zeng Jun’s tone grew increasingly casual. He continued asking questions as though they were merely chatting.
“That must have been hard work. Where do you and your brother usually set up your stall? Do the local police officers leave you alone? Does anyone demand protection money?”
“How could there not be people collecting protection money?!”
Seeing that the detective was no longer as stern as he’d been at first, Luo Youben gradually relaxed. He began complaining.
“Just setting up a stall costs us half our earnings! It’s practically daylight robbery! Fortunately, my brother and I have bicycles, so we can ride around the streets and sell our vegetables from place to place.”
Hmm?
They didn’t even have a fixed selling spot. How was he supposed to investigate that?
A flicker of disappointment crossed Zeng Jun’s eyes.
On the other hand, that kind of arrangement would make it even easier to conceal any illicit transactions.
If he was wandering from street to street without any witnesses, who could say whether he was actually selling vegetables or selling human bones?
Zeng Jun pondered this for a moment.
Actually, if they searched Luo Youben’s house now, they might be able to find direct evidence in the form of human bones. But those biological weapons of mass destruction…
If they turned the place upside down and found nothing, the consequences would be terrifying.
It was better to finish questioning everyone first. Besides, someone had been keeping watch for them, hadn’t there? They could track that person down and interrogate him, too. It wasn’t as though the evidence would grow legs and run away. They could always search the house if questioning everyone failed to turn up anything.
With that in mind, Zeng Jun asked another question. “Where are your younger brother and brother-in-law now?”
“My younger brother’s right behind the house. Our houses are next to each other.”
Luo Youben paused, then answered somewhat reluctantly, “My brother-in-law is at the eastern end of the village.”
“Go call him over.”
Zeng Jun turned to the neighbor again. “Comrade, could I trouble you to go fetch his brother-in-law for me?”
“Sure thing!”
The neighbor agreed readily.
Standing at the back, Jiang Xia had heard the entire exchange.
She raised an eyebrow.
This man had some skill. His answers were practically watertight, and he’d been very specific about his expenses and whereabouts. His story wasn’t enough to completely clear him of suspicion, but it was certainly convincing enough to fool the villagers.
Then again, if they really were criminal suspects and couldn’t fool the people in their own village, they would have been reported to the police station long ago.
Hmm… Or perhaps the angry villagers would have beaten them half to death first.
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