Chapter 321 - 319: Why Come Back?
Chapter 321: Chapter 319: Why Come Back?
Coming home from the Sheep Horn Temple in the rain would explain her wet clothes and hair.
"How did you leave the police station?" Su Miaoyi asked Tian Min.
Tian Min gestured with her hands.
The translator relayed, "She said Deputy Director Zhao told her she wasn’t needed anymore and could go home, so she left. After leaving the police station, she planned to go straight home. But since she was already in the area and the Sheep God Temple was close by, she decided to go to North Mountain to pick some flowers, pray to the Sheep God, and help clean up a bit."
Duan Wenrui handed her a few sheets of paper.
Su Miaoyi glanced at them. It was the standard procedural paperwork Tian Min had signed when she left the station that afternoon.
"Can anyone verify that you were at the Sheep Horn Temple the whole time?" Su Miaoyi asked.
Tian Min nodded.
"The caretaker at the Sheep God Temple can prove it," the translator relayed. "I was there the whole time."
Su Miaoyi looked at Duan Wenrui.
Duan Wenrui said, "It’s not the one we met today; it’s the other one. The two of them work in shifts. The one we met was on the night shift yesterday, so he’s resting today. He came to the station from home and went straight back home afterward. He didn’t go to the Sheep God Temple."
Su Miaoyi nodded.
They hadn’t met the other caretaker, so he wouldn’t have known what had happened or that the police were looking for Tian Min.
"That caretaker is in the next room," Duan Wenrui told Su Miaoyi.
Su Miaoyi nodded again, then turned to Tian Min. "Have you ever met Zhao Yongliang before?"
Tian Min shook her head.
"Never?"
Tian Min shook her head again.
Su Miaoyi watched her.
’Just like this. This is how it is.’
She couldn’t see any cracks in her story on her face.
Except for a few moments of fear that seemed a bit rehearsed, everything else seemed perfectly normal.
Looking at Tian Min, Su Miaoyi found herself not suspecting her, but... sympathizing with her. More than that, her heart ached for her.
’She felt for what she’d been through, for the fact she was sitting here at all.’
Su Miaoyi looked away from Tian Min’s face, closed her eyes, and quickly organized her thoughts.
’Her answers were just seamless.’
’But there were still so many suspicious points. Far too many.’
Leaving the interrogation room, Su Miaoyi went next door to meet the other caretaker from the Sheep Horn Temple.
"You’re saying she was at the Sheep Horn Temple all afternoon?" Su Miaoyi asked.
"Yes," the man nodded.
"And when you say ’all afternoon,’ what time frame are we talking about?" Su Miaoyi asked.
The man furrowed his brow in thought. "It must have been a little before 5:30 when I saw her, because my favorite TV show starts at 5:30. After I saw her, I went back to the duty room to make a cup of tea, and the show started right on time."
Su Miaoyi: "..."
"You saw her at 5:30, and you’re saying she was there all afternoon?" Su Miaoyi asked.
"That’s what Xiao Min told me. She said she’d been there for half the day and even said hello to me, but I didn’t hear her," the man said.
"You didn’t see her go in?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
"No," the man shook his head.
"Where was she when you saw her?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
"She was in one of the side rooms, wiping a table."
"Were there a lot of people at the temple this afternoon? How could you have missed her arriving?" Zhuang Yanzheng pressed.
"There weren’t many people this afternoon. I was in the duty room the whole time. After my nap, I was listening to the radio, completely absorbed. Sometimes people talk to me and I don’t even hear them," the man said. "Anyway... the temple is open, all the areas are open. If there’s nothing going on, I don’t really leave the duty room. I only go out if someone needs me. Besides, Tian Min was cleaning in the side room with the door closed. Who could have seen her? She startled me when she came out."
"Alright, we understand. You can go now," Duan Wenrui said.
"I think I’ll just sit here for a bit. It’s pouring out there. I can’t leave in this," the man said.
"Fine."
Leaving the interrogation room, the team returned to their office.
"No one can prove Tian Min was at the temple the whole time," Chu Xingrou said.
Duan Wenrui pulled out a map of the town. "This is North Mountain. According to Tian Min, she went north like this, then straight from North Mountain to the Sheep Horn Temple. Based on the time she left the station... she would have just missed us, which is why we didn’t run into her. That’s assuming everything she said is true."
"Her expression, her eyes, her movements... they really don’t look like she’s lying," Zhuang Yanzheng said.
"That’s the difficult part," Su Miaoyi said.
"Also... if this case has nothing to do with Tian Min, why would Zhao Yongliang try to take her away?" Lu Zhishen said. "There’s no reason."
"To mislead us? To make us think Tian Min is suspicious and divert our manpower?" Chu Xingrou said. "But if Tian Min is innocent, she’ll just come back. So how does that divert our manpower? Diverting our manpower only works if Tian Min is guilty and Zhao Yongliang can successfully make her disappear."
"And if Zhao Yongliang was dead set on taking her, could Tian Min have escaped? Zhao Yongliang knows how to fight. Even if Tian Min is strong, she probably couldn’t overpower him," Su Miaoyi said.
"Tian Min is suspicious," Chu Xingrou concluded.
"But why would she come back?" Su Miaoyi narrowed her eyes.
"Does she have unfinished business?" Duan Wenrui said. "Is there someone else she wants to kill?"
"If it were me, once I’d escaped, I wouldn’t come back and risk being exposed. It’s too dangerous. If there was someone I wanted to kill, I’d take care of them secretly and then disappear again," Su Miaoyi said.
They all fell silent for a moment.
"Did you find anything in that house?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked them.
Lu Zhishen said, "The mask has been sent for analysis. It touched the killer’s face, so we might be able to extract some DNA. We examined the black robe and found a tear in it."
He took out a photo to show Su Miaoyi and the others.
"Is that from the piece of black cloth caught on the pile of branches in Tian Dajiang’s parents’ yard?" Su Miaoyi said.
"Yes," Chu Xingrou said. "I compared them. It’s a perfect match."
"The killer hid there," Su Miaoyi said, puzzled. "But why? Who were they planning to kill?"
"Could it be because the police were patrolling the streets on the night of the first nursery rhyme, and the killer had no choice but to hide there?" Duan Wenrui suggested.
"Why Tian Dajiang’s house, specifically?" Chu Xingrou asked. "A coincidence?"
"Tian Dajiang’s house is very close to where Tian Ming went to play cards," Su Miaoyi mused. "’What if the killer wanted to murder Tian Ming that night? I remember the group that plays cards there doesn’t usually stay all night. It was only because the nursery rhyme was heard that night that the players were too scared to go out, so they didn’t go home."
"That’s very possible," Chu Xingrou said. "Tian Ming didn’t come out, and there were police on the street, so the killer hid there. There weren’t many officers on patrol that night, and the security wasn’t as tight as it is now. It would have been pretty easy to escape."
"There were signs of someone living in that house," Lu Zhishen said. "The outer room has a dirt floor, but in the inner room, the bed was clean. Someone was living there. It was probably a temporary hideout, a place to lie low and sleep. We didn’t find any personal belongings like clothes or dishes."
"Now that this hideout has been found, is our faceless killer still around?" Su Miaoyi asked.
...