Fake Divorce Turns into Murder Case (8)

Chapter 60

In previous years, guarding the reservoir was always easier in the winter than in the summer, but this year was different.

Old Lady Yuan had a nagging feeling that something was going to happen this winter.

She eventually learned that the person with Yang Laowu that day was Yang Laosan. They were brothers, but in her heart, she still felt she hadn’t been mistaken that day.

Furthermore, Huixiang and Yang Laowu were a married couple, yet Huixiang had come to the reservoir in the middle of the night. That wasn’t right either.

She didn’t know what was going on with that family, but she just felt that something was about to happen.

This premonition that someone might die kept her from relaxing even a little during the winter. She patrolled the edge of the reservoir every day.

At night, these thoughts occupied her mind, often making it impossible to sleep. Fortunately, her goddaughter was resourceful. After thinking it over, the younger woman eventually found a dog and brought it over, tethering it outside the reservoir station.

The dog was very useful. Whether it was day or night, it would bark immediately if a stranger approached.

With the dog there, she was finally able to sleep at night.

Soon after, when her goddaughter came to deliver food, she mentioned something.

“Mom, that thing you were worried about before should be fine now.”

“Huixiang and Yang Laowu got a divorce. She’s already registered her marriage with Yang Laosan now.”

“Before, you said Yang Laosan wanted to kill Yang Laowu; it was probably because of this. Now that the divorce is settled, there shouldn’t be any more trouble.”

“Which one of them wanted the divorce?” Old Lady Yuan asked.

“Both of them. His parents tried to talk them out of it but it didn’t work. Then came the news of the marriage to Yang Laosan. Plenty of people in the village are talking about it.”

Old Lady Yuan naturally assumed that Huixiang’s previous visit to the reservoir was because her life had become unbearable. This wasn’t like the old days; if a couple couldn’t get along now, they could just get a divorce. There was no need to make it a life-or-death struggle.

Sure enough, nothing happened for the next half month, though the weather grew colder and colder.

It was much colder up by the reservoir than in the village below. The dog her goddaughter brought stayed outside to guard the place at night.

She had built a small shed for the dog outside.

But the nights were truly too cold. After dark, as the Old Lady went to close the door, a gust of freezing wind blew in from the direction of the reservoir. The dog, which had been in its shed, immediately poked its head out to see if something was happening. Hit by the head-on blast of icy wind, its teeth began to chatter, and it shivered uncontrollably.

Once it was certain nothing was wrong, it retreated back into the shed.

Old Lady Yuan felt bad watching this. She figured that since the matter had been resolved, nothing was likely to happen.

Besides, dogs were sharp. Perhaps it could sense movement outside even from within the house.

With that thought in mind, she let the dog into the house. The dog circled the room once and then fell straight asleep on the floor.

Seeing this, Old Lady Yuan felt the dog looked quite pitiful. She found some dry straw and made a nest for it.

And so, the dog began sleeping in its nest inside the room at night.

One person and one dog returned to the quiet winter life of years past.

On the tenth day after the dog moved inside, Old Lady Yuan woke up as usual. After washing up, she made herself breakfast and stepped out the door carrying her bowl.

Just as she reached the edge of the reservoir, she sensed something out there. The dog also began barking wildly at the surface of the water.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

It was a bad omen.

She hurried to get the boat and rowed out to the white object.

It was a corpse.

Reporting a crime here didn’t involve a phone call; instead, someone on the mountain started shouting.

“Someone’s dead in the reservoir! Get the police up here, fast!”

Someone at the foot of the mountain heard it and shouted toward the town.

Passed from one person to the next, the news soon reached the middle school.

Yun Song and the other two felt their hearts tighten and hurried up the mountain.

Because the method of reporting the crime involved people running and shouting all the way down, a large crowd had already gathered.

Yun Song and her colleagues had to squeeze their way through.

The three police officers had a clear division of labor. Yun Song performed a brief preliminary examination of the body, while Tong Jin went to question the person who first discovered it.

Tang Chao was responsible for dispersing the rowdy onlookers.

As soon as she approached, she was immediately grabbed by a particularly bold individual.

“Officer, why are you here?”

“Is this murder or suicide?”

Everyone had been to the Mobile Court by now, and they had plenty of opinions.

“If this is murder, it has to be a capital offense, right?”

“But it looks like suicide to us.”

Tang Chao quickly said, “The specific circumstances still need to be investigated. Everyone, please don’t be anxious. Does anyone know the identity of the deceased?”

By the time they arrived, the people there had already seen the body.

“It’s Yang Laosan. He’s from our village.”

Tang Chao spoke to the person who had answered. “Then I’ll have to trouble you to help notify the family.”

“Someone’s already gone to get them.”

Tang Chao nodded and moved on to her next task.

They were short-handed. When they first started handling cases, the presence of onlookers would often interfere with the investigation. Now, Tang Chao skillfully picked out several strong-looking villagers from the crowd and said to them, “We’re investigating a case, and it’s really inconvenient with everyone crowded here. We need people to move back. Can you few give us a hand?”

Having been directly asked for assistance by the police to help with a case, the men immediately embraced their new roles.

Tang Chao led the villagers as they pulled up a cordon and pushed the crowd back, clearing the area.

Meanwhile, Tong Jin was questioning the Old Lady nearby.

“Are you alright?” Tong Jin sensed that the Old Lady seemed a bit uncomfortable. She figured that for someone of her age to have pulled a corpse out of the water, she must be quite shaken.

“I’m fine.” Old Lady Yuan knew her own past was complicated and that she couldn’t be blamed for it, but she still felt unnatural in the presence of the police.

She forced herself to focus on the facts she needed to report.

“When I got up this morning, I saw something out there. One look and I thought it must be a person, so I hurried to row out and get them.”

Sure enough, once she started talking about the business at hand, her tension eased.

“I rowed out and saw it was a person, so I pulled the body in right away.”

“You have been guarding the reservoir this entire time. Has this man ever been here before?” Tong Jin asked.

“He came once. That time, he came up to fish with his brother. I happened to run into them.”

“And his brother is?”

“Yang Laowu.”

Tong Jin said, “Do you know much about the brothers?”

At Old Lady Yuan’s age, she was capable of chasing people away with a bamboo pole, dredging up corpses, and delivering death notices, but the one thing she couldn’t do was lie.

She fell silent for a moment before saying, “Don’t tell anyone I was the one who said this.”

Usually, when someone says those words, the information that follows is very important.

Tong Jin immediately nodded in assurance. “Don’t worry. We are professionals; we have our professional ethics.”

Old Lady Yuan said, “That time, Yang Laowu and Yang Laosan came to fish together. I saw them and thought I’d wait until they caught a few fish before going over to confiscate them. But when I came back, I saw the deceased, Yang Laosan, trying to push Yang Laowu into the water. Because I shouted and stopped them, nothing happened. I’m telling you this now, but I can’t be absolutely certain he actually intended to push him in.”

“Did Yang Laowu know about this?”

“No. I shouted, and they both looked at me. It wasn’t my place to expose it then.”

Tong Jin indicated she understood and asked further, “Has anything else happened recently? Anything you feel is even slightly unusual, you can tell me.”

“No.” Old Lady Yuan was old, after all. At that moment, she really couldn’t recall that there was one other thing.

Tong Jin told the old lady to rest and said the police would handle the rest.

She went outside and found Yun Song, who had already set up a shed and was performing the preliminary examination.

“How is it?”

“No external injuries. The specific cause of death will require an autopsy by a professional forensic doctor from Xiangjin Town. Did you find anything out on your end?”

“The deceased is Yang Laosan, name Yang Xi. He came here to fish with his younger brother before. The old lady said she suspects he tried to push his brother into the water. We’ll need to question the brother for more details.”

Just then, Tang Chao returned. Having been mingling with the crowd, she had gathered even more information. She overheard them mentioning the brother as soon as she arrived.

“Is it the fifth brother of their family?”

“Yes, Yang Laowu.”

“This Yang Laowu divorced his wife a while ago. He insisted on it, and no one could talk him out of it. He wouldn’t say why, either. But not long after, his ex-wife married Yang Laosan.”

The villagers had just told Tang Chao that Yang Laowu’s divorce might have been because he discovered his wife was involved with his older brother; otherwise, there was no reason for such a sudden divorce.

Then, another person who knew even more had immediately chimed in: “You guys know too little. The divorce between Yang Laowu and Huixiang was a fake divorce. They were trying to have a son.”

Tang Chao relayed all these conflicting stories.

Yun Song realized another issue: this family must be very unpopular in the village. Otherwise, given the usual habits of villagers, they wouldn’t have aired all this dirty laundry so easily.

Whether a person fell into the reservoir on their own or was put there by someone else, they couldn’t have appeared there out of thin air.

Yun Song told Tang Chao and Tong Jin to stay on guard while she went to find the reservoir caretaker, intending to search for the point of entry and see if there were any tracks.

Inside the house, Old Lady Yuan was drying off her dog. The dog had also gone into the water when they were retrieving the body earlier.

The police arrived again.

She wasn’t as nervous now, especially since she knew Yun Song’s purpose.

She sent the dog back to its kennel and led Yun Song around the reservoir, explaining the situation as they walked.

“People don’t usually come up to fish in the winter. I keep a close eye during the day, and it’s just too cold at night in the winter.”

Yun Song said directly, “I saw the wire fence outside when I arrived. It’s been patched many times. You’ve done a very good job.”

“Winter is fine. In the summer, I’ll have just finished patching it when someone cuts it open again a few days later. It’s usually the village kids. They don’t know the other paths, so they just cut the wire fence by the main road.”

As she spoke, Old Lady Yuan led her toward the forest.

“A lot of people cut the wire fence over by the forest side.”

Yun Song began searching along the forest fence line. Very quickly, she found a large hole that had been cut open.

Elsewhere, Huixiang sat at home, staring blankly.

She had divorced Yang Laowu a month ago and started a family with Yang Laosan, bringing her daughters with her.

Yang Laowu had promised her faithfully that his third brother was an honest man, and that having the two daughters registered under his third brother’s name would definitely be fine.

In reality, the man had told her privately that since they had already registered the marriage, how could it be a fake marriage? The law recognized them as a couple. He even said his younger brother had been a bad seed since childhood, and that she was better off with him than with his brother.

Huixiang wasn’t surprised. She was already used to this kind of situation.