t
I signaled for them not to make too much noise and we quietly went downstairs.
We hid in the stairs and saw a thin, tall man entering the house, wearing a cap on his head, sneaking and snooping around. We knew at first glance that this was a suspicious person and should be apprehended.
“Don’t move, police!” Huang Xiaotao shouted.
The man looked up and saw us. He was visibly scared and shocked. He turned around and took off, but we rushed after him. Wang Yuanchao was as fast as a cheetah. He quickly caught up with the man, threw him to the ground, took his handcuffs from his waist and caught him— it was all done in clean, neat movements.
The residents along the street heard the commotion and came out to watch.
“Please, officer, I just saw the door open, so I went in just to take a look! I haven’t done anything! Please...” the man implored.
Huang Xiaotao crossed his arms and roared, “Just to take a look? Don’t you know that this is a crime scene? Or are you connected to the murders somehow?”
The man turned deathly pale and profusely waved his hands.
“No, officer! I… Actually… I was just checking to see if there was anything I could steal…”
Huang Xiaotao laughed.
“Great!” she exclaimed. “We caught a thief!”
The man’s face almost turned blue now. Someone in the crowd suddenly recognized him.
“Hey! It’s the guy who stole a dress that I hung outside last month!”
“He’s definitely the guy who stole my family’s precious vase then!”
“Yeah! He must’ve taken my son’s bicycle too! I put it outside for a second and it was gone!”
More and more people began to shout. The thief lowered his head timidly and desperately begged for help. Huang Xiaotao showed her badge to the crowd and said, “Everyone, calm down. We are the police. This thief will be taken into custody and questioned. After that, we will recover all the stolen goods.”
The noise from the crowd instantly died down, and they soon dispersed.
“Those were some bold promises, weren’t they?” I asked Huang Xiaotao.
“Why should I care?” she shrugged. “This isn’t my territory anyway. Once we’re done with this case, we’ll be gone from here. Let the local police deal with this.”
I sighed. “You really are something…”
Huang Xiaotao picked up the thief and asked him what he was called and what exactly was he doing here.
The thief was called Zhang Liuer. He insisted that he was not a professional thief, but was just out of work at the moment. He noticed that there wasn’t much security in the area, so he looked around for anything to snatch. Sometimes he’d take the jars of pickles or pots that the residents left on their window sills, and sometimes he’d even take a pot of chicken stew left on the charcoal fire outside—in short, if it was something that he could lift up and run, there was nothing that he wouldn’t take!
“I’ve never met such a pathetic thief!” Huang Xiaotao said with contempt.
Zhang Liuer smiled awkwardly.
“You’ve been in this area a lot,” I said. “Surely you’d know that there was a murder case here in the last two days? Didn’t you see the police investigating this place? Why would you enter the house?”
“I didn’t have any other intentions, mister!” he insisted. “I just wanted to go in and look around…”
“Are you sure there was nothing in there that you were aiming to steal?” I asked
Zhang Liuer quickly denied, “What could I be aiming to steal in a dead person’s house? That’s just absurd!”
Okay, I thought, if you wouldn’t admit it yourself, then I’ll make you cough it up!
I activated my Cave Vision, which shocked Zhang Liuer into a daze. I stared into his eyes, “I will ask you again, is there anything in this house that you want to take?”
I decided to use the Cave Vision to see if Zhang Liuer was lying, because I knew that he was as timid as a mouse. I noticed that his eyes darted around nervously.
“Please don’t kill me, mister!” he pleaded. “Please, I told you the truth!”
“Why would you think that I want to kill you?” I asked, slightly amused.
“Because your eyes are as terrifying as that cat’s…”
My ears pricked up immediately at the mention of a cat. I grabbed his shoulder and asked, “What cat are you talking about?”
It might be that I was so excited that I inadvertently hurt Zhang Liuer. He shrank away and shivered and replied, “Mister, please! Can you turn your eyes back to normal?”
I turned off my Cave Vision and told him to explain it clearly.
Zhang Liuer said that he was in a pinch at the time—stealing the odd pots and pans wouldn’t do any longer. So, he decided that it was time to rob a whole house.
After looking around for some time, his eyes were set on the house where the murders occurred. The reason being that the couple were not at home during the day, so there was only the old lady to deal with. The old lady was suffering from a disease that made her legs and eyes very weak, which was perfect for Zhang Liuer.
He then decided to sneak in to see if there was anything in that home worth stealing, choosing a time when only the old lady was at home. He went around the house and found a cat figurine in the store room on the first floor. The figurine seemed to be gold-plated. It showed fine workmanship, and its two eyes seemed to be made of precious gems—in short, it seemed to cost a lot of money!
Zhang Liuer was about to lift the cat figurine up and take it away, when something out of the ordinary happened—the cat’s eyes suddenly moved!
Zhang Liuer was so startled he knocked something over. The old lady yelled out in shock, so he rushed out of the house in panic without taking anything.
He came back to observe the house for a while. He found that the old lady would go to the neighbors to play mahjong every other day, which meant that the house would be completely empty, so he could easily go in and take as many things as he could.
Before he could do that, the murders occurred. All three of the family members died. The house was sealed off by the police, so he had to give up the whole idea.
He happened to pass by the house today, and saw that the door was open, so he decided to quickly come in and take a look just in case he got lucky and found something to steal.
After Zhang Liuer finished speaking, I thought about it for a while. I didn’t see any cat figurines in the house. Could it be that someone took it away?
Huang Xiaotao asked me, “What should we do with this bastard?”
“I assigned some police officers to ask around about cats in this neighborhood, so some of them should be nearby,” I said. “Just hand this guy over to one of them and take him back to the police station to take his statements.”
“Hey, mister!” said Zhang Liuer. “But I told you everything that I know! Why do I still need to go to the police station? I see you’re all very busy with this case, I really don’t want to bother you. Just let me go, okay?”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “Handing you over to the police will not take up our precious time.”
Zhang Liuer frowned, “But I didn’t take anything!”
“Shut up!” snapped Huang Xiaotao. “You didn’t take anything here yet, but you’ve stolen many things from this neighborhood in the past! You should count yourself lucky if all we wanted you to do was take your statements!”
Just then, we saw a policeman passing by. We handed Zhang Liuer over to him and told him to take him to a nearby police station, and then we returned to the murder scene.
Luo Weiwei had just returned with a bag of flour in her hand.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“We went out and caught a thief,” I replied.
“Caught a thief?” sneered Luo Weiwei. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of free time on your hands. Here you go! Here’s the flour you asked for!”
I thanked her and took the flour from her hand, went into the storeroom on the first floor and searched every inch of it. There was no cat figurine like the one mentioned by Zhang Liuer at all. I then opened the flour and sprinkled a thin layer around the windows, the window sills, and the door.
“Hey, you’re doing the same thing you did during the case of the pianist ghost some time ago,” Huang Xiaotao noticed. “Do you think this house is haunted?”