Two Cases

Chapter 43

Yun Song had business to attend to here as well, so she first took the old lady and Sister An to the hotel she had booked.

Yun Song opened the car door and gestured for An Youzhi to get in first. An Youzhi felt a bit embarrassed, but refusing seemed even worse, so she quickly scrambled inside.

At that moment, Yun Song noticed a thin scar on the back of An Youzhi’s head.

No hair grew there. Because the scar was not wide, it was hard to notice without looking closely, but it was clearly a surgical scar from a brain operation.

Yun Song suppressed the emotions swelling in her heart and helped her grandmother inside as well. On the way, the grandmother quickly fell asleep due to exhaustion.

This left only Yun Song in the front seat and Sister An in the back, whose eyes didn’t know where to look.

It wasn’t that An Youzhi didn’t know where to look; it was that she kept wanting to look at the old lady’s granddaughter.

The old lady had said her granddaughter was an immortal who had descended to the mortal world to undergo tribulation. When she first heard it, she hadn’t believed it at all.

Sister An didn’t believe in gods, a trait inherited from her mother, An Wen.

Her mother, An Wen, believed in gods far too much. Almost every other day, she would mention how lucky they were to have the protection of an immortal and that they had nothing to fear.

Occasionally, people would come to their area to read tea leaves, and her mother would get swindled out of her money every single time.

Having seen it so often, Sister An had stopped believing in gods entirely.

Later, as the old lady spoke of it more frequently, An Youzhi couldn’t help but imagine what the person looked like.

In her imagination, the woman surely looked like the Bodhisattvas seen on television.

But now, looking at her, even though her logic told her this was just a highly capable police officer, she couldn’t help the feeling rising in her heart.

The feeling was strange yet inexplicably familiar. Looking at this woman who was roughly her own age, she felt as if she had returned to her mother’s side.

Her nose began to sting and she felt an urge to cry. A thought popped into her mind for no reason: she… she felt this was the Immortal Lady.

She didn’t understand why she had such a thought, so she interpreted it as having heard the old lady talk about it for too long.

Wasn’t there a saying that if you tell a lie a hundred times, it becomes the truth? That must be it.

As for why she felt such a sense of security, she figured it was because she was a good person, a law-abiding citizen, and the other woman was a good police officer. There should naturally be such a sense of security between a good citizen and a good cop.

This sense of security made her feel talkative, unable to hold her tongue.

“My mother actually told me that the old lady might have been mistaken, that it was all my fault.”

“Don’t blame yourself. I called her twice a day and didn’t notice anything wrong either.” The other woman was indeed a good police officer, not blaming her at all.

Sister An couldn’t help her curiosity. “Teacher Yang is a natural actress. When she spoke to you on the phone, her tone was incredibly loving, even though her face was full of hatred. Was she really scammed by a swindler before?”

Yun Song said, “I was kidnapped when I was young. She was locked up by the kidnappers for a period of time back then.”

“No wonder.” When Sister An said this, her fondness for this city policewoman grew even more. The woman was willing to tell her even such personal things, clearly not treating her like an outsider.

A strong desire welled up in Sister An’s heart not to let this woman suffer any disadvantage.

So, she began to share her own private matters.

“Heh, when I was young… actually, I don’t have a ‘when I was young.’ My memories only start from when I was twenty-three.”

Yun Song had actually guessed as much.

Sister An opened the floodgates of conversation. “My mom said my dad was fighting with her over a divorce. I went to break it up, and my dad cracked my head open. He went to prison, and my mom took me back to her hometown.”

“The doctors originally said I couldn’t be cured, that I’d have the IQ of a two-year-old for the rest of my life. But heaven does not seal off all paths,” An Youzhi said cheerfully, even using an idiom she had heard in a story.

Yun Song looked at An Youzhi occasionally. She had grown taller and sturdier. It was difficult to see the shadow of that silly young girl in the body of this middle-aged woman.

Her face held more of her mother’s features, that honest and dutiful look. However, she didn’t carry her mother’s air of sorrow and despair. Instead, she radiated kindness and simple honesty. Every inch of her was filled with friendliness toward the world.

Yun Song had seen many people in her life. Looking at the woman’s current state, she could guess that their lives after they parted had not been bad.

Five minutes later, An Youzhi had unknowingly revealed everything: where her hometown was, how many people were in her family, how many acres of land they had, and even how many cows were in the fields.

Seeing her like this, Yun Song felt very happy. she knew the other woman didn’t remember her; with the head injury back then, her memories were likely lost.

Yun Song didn’t force her to remember. She was simply happy for her; she was living well now.

She thought that once this case was over, she could go find An Youzhi’s mother. They could have a reunion and talk about how things had been over the years.

Yun Song didn’t have time right now. She hadn’t come here just to pick up her grandmother; that had been a coincidence. She was here for a case.

The initial case involved a female corpse found in an abandoned building. The victim’s face and fingerprints had been destroyed by fire.

But the victim had secretly swallowed something.

Something that could prove her identity.

The forensic examiner had found a fragment of an ID card inside her body.

The name on the ID was Ming Qingfu.

Upon verification, it was found that Ming Qingfu had said she was going to check on some goods a while ago and had never returned.

Her daughter had also gone missing in the last two days. Consequently, the Hongshi Road Police Station entered Ming Qingfu’s home. DNA extracted from toothbrushes and pillows matched the DNA of the corpse. The body was confirmed to be Ming Qingfu, and the case was transferred to Yun Song.

Yun Song had interviewed everyone in her social network, and the conclusion was unanimous.

“A truly good person. I really can’t imagine who she could have offended,” a business partner said while wiping away tears. “She didn’t care much about money, truly. She was a believer in the divine and often said that having as much as she did was already a blessing.”

The others said the same thing. Regarding her employees, she never delayed a paycheck, and she came up with all sorts of creative ways to provide annual benefits.

Ming Qingfu had her own chain of restaurants. She originally had a chef with excellent culinary skills and provided him with a very high salary. One year, the chef wanted to resign to start his own business, but he didn’t give any prior notice.

“An average boss might have had a problem with that. Qingfu didn’t. Not only did she hold no grudge, but when that employee’s first shop failed and Qingfu heard about it, she came to find me.”

“Guess what Qingfu said? She said, ‘Give her a call and ask how they’re doing. Tell her I’ve been thinking about her, and if she’s willing to come back, she’s certainly welcome.'”

“She knew the other party wanted to return but was too embarrassed to say so, so she took the initiative to offer a way out.”

As Yun Song listened to her, the image of a very wise and tolerant woman formed in her mind.

“Every year, she spends a fortune just on charity. Elderly people in the mountains, children in the mountains, women in the mountains, she sends money and supplies. She does it in the city too. Every year, she even donates money to the elderly who scavenge for trash.”

“How could someone be so cruel as to kill a person like that?”

Yun Song made a note of the donations mentioned, though the account for “scavenging trash” seemed a bit strange.

When Yun Song went back to investigate, she discovered the other person had misunderstood. It wasn’t for elderly scavengers; Ming Qingfu had a fixed donation set up for a Scrap Recycling Station.

Others might not understand, but Yun Song did. A Scrap Recycling Station was hardly in a position where it would need donations.

When she went to look into the family running it, they were away on a trip.

Unexpectedly, only two days later, the elderly couple was found murdered in their home, their bodies hidden in a freezer. They also had a daughter, a middle-aged woman, who was missing.

The reason Yun Song came to Guangcheng this time was because the elderly couple’s registered permanent residence was in Guangcheng. She found the location of their old family home, where the couple’s older brother and sister-in-law still lived.

Hearing that Yun Song had come to ask about the two of them, the brother and sister-in-law only shook their heads.

“That couple used to cheat people out of money all the time back then. Once or twice, we might not have noticed, but after so many times, how could we not know? But we figured we were all relatives, so it wasn’t right to say much. We just gave them a beating. Every time they cheated someone, we beat them. Eventually, they couldn’t stay here anymore, so they moved away.”

Now they were dead?

The relatives weren’t sad to hear the news. They simply said, “Maybe one of the people they cheated came looking for them.”

“We said it long ago. People like them are bound to get what’s coming to them sooner or later.” Even though they were relatives, they didn’t hold back their words.

A good person with almost no negative reviews, and a couple described as swindlers.

If there was a connection between them, it was highly probable that Ming Qingfu had been cheated.

But if that was the case, why were the swindlers and the victim both dead now?