The 80s Female Detective's Guide to Self-Preservation [Criminal Investigation] - Chapter 19

Chapter 19

“Auntie, there’s been a new development in the case, so we wanted to come by and update you.” Hou Ming spoke with a smile, but his hand gripped the doorframe firmly, making it clear he wasn’t going to let the old woman shut them out.

The grandmother huffed. “She’s been dead long enough to be reincarnated, and now you say there’s progress. What progress? Is she coming back to life?” Despite her grumbling, she stepped back and let the three officers in.

Xia Qiuyuan followed last. As she entered, she nearly tripped over a pair of toddler’s shoes left in the middle of the floor. She stepped over them and looked up at the family portrait on the wall.

She remembered Liang Xiangxue’s photo from the school files—a cute girl with dimples in a standard student skirt. Usually, under the one-child policy, a girl like her would be the apple of her parents’ eye, especially given how much they spent on her schooling.

However, in this house, there wasn’t a single trace of Liang Xiangxue left. The family portrait had been replaced by a new one: a happy family cuddling a baby boy. Baby gear was scattered everywhere—on the table, the sofa, the coffee table.

“Good baby, Grandma’s going to take you inside for a nap, then we’ll go for a stroll later.” The grandmother emerged, carrying a small child who stared curiously at the three strangers.

Once the child was tucked away, Hou Ming tried to ask if Liang Xiangxue had acted strangely before her suicide.

“I don’t know,” the grandmother snapped. “She was always strange. Who knows what was in her head? She’d go on and on about how her parents didn’t love her. If they didn’t love her, why would they have given birth to her? Does that make sense?”

She gripped Hou Ming’s arm. “Officer, you look like a father. Tell me, what parents don’t love their child? If they didn’t love her, would they have stayed with just one child for all those years? She was making up stories. If you ask me, she just had bad luck. To listen to a few outsiders and come home to threaten us with death… what kind of behavior is that?”

Hou Ming felt a chill. He couldn’t empathize with this at all.

Xia Qiuyuan interrupted. “I think I hear the baby crying.”

The old woman scrambled inside and came back out with the child, smiling broadly. “I really don’t have time to chat. In the future, don’t bother telling us about ‘progress.’ It’s over. Staying stuck in the past won’t do anyone any good.”

The three officers stood there, stunned. Xia Sui spoke first. “Are there any of her belongings left? We need to look for evidence.”

“That unlucky junk was sent back to the old village long ago. If you want it, go to her paternal grandmother’s house.”

The officers walked out into the bright morning sun, their green uniforms absorbing the heat.

“She was her own granddaughter,” Xia Sui muttered as they reached the landing. “Why talk about her like she was an enemy?”

Hou Ming sighed. “Because of the one-child policy. Her parents are state employees. As long as they wanted to keep their jobs, they could only have one child. Looking at that house… it’s not hard to imagine that her death was more of a ‘relief’ than a tragedy for them.”

He told the girls to wait in the car while he grabbed drinks. “Yogurt!” Xia Sui called out, holding up two fingers.

Xia Qiuyuan sat in the passenger seat, yawning. While glancing at the side mirror, she saw a girl standing behind the car. She looked about eighteen. At first, Qiuyuan didn’t think much of it—people always stared at police cars. But when she looked again, the girl was gone, and a book was lying on the pavement.

Qiuyuan jumped out and picked it up. It was a textbook, dusty but intact. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She opened the cover. Written on the first page was the name: Liang Xiangxue.

Back at the bureau, they sat in the office. Xia Sui was sipping her yogurt. “Where’d you find that? Kids these days are throwing away their books already?”

“It’s Liang Xiangxue’s,” Qiuyuan said.

Hou Ming snatched the book. “Let me see. Physics? Sui, you couldn’t even get a 60 on a weekly quiz back then. You think you can read this?”

“I’m just checking for notes!” Xia Sui retorted.

Hou Ming looked at the pages. “Momentum? Impulse? Do they teach this so early now? Calculating satellite launches? Wait… let me study this…”

“Forget it, Captain,” Xia Sui laughed. “Let’s just go to the old village and get the rest of the stuff.”

They spent the afternoon hauling boxes of belongings back to the station. Meanwhile, Zhuo Yuanqing had brought in the corrupt cop, Zhao Guoying. “He tried to hide behind a curtain in his upstairs room to smoke. Caught him red-handed.”

The team began sifting through the boxes. Textbooks, notebooks, scraps of paper. They found nothing.

“I didn’t study this hard in school,” Liang Guangqi groaned, tossing a book aside. “She wasn’t even a top student. Why are we staring at these textbooks?”

“Because that girl didn’t give Qiuyuan that physics book for no reason,” Hou Ming said.

Xia Qiuyuan held a textbook, her brow furrowed. It wasn’t just the lack of visible evidence—it was the smell. Her heightened sense of smell was being tortured. The books smelled… sour. Rotting. Like they had been dipped in food scraps or slop.

“Don’t you guys smell that?” she asked. “It’s a putrid, fermented smell.”

Xia Sui sniffed a page. “It’s a bit sweet and sour, but not that bad. Just faint.”

“The blank pages are all wrinkled, like they were wet,” Qin Yi noted. “Maybe she was out in the rain with Zhao Yuanming.”

Qiuyuan walked to the window to breathe the fresh air. She watched the searchlight from the guard tower sweeping across the dark yard, illuminating everything in its path. Light revealing the hidden.

Suddenly, it clicked.

She ran back to the desk and grabbed several books—science from third grade, math from fifth, physics from high school. She flipped to the back. In every single one, the final two blank pages were wrinkled and warped.

“I know how to see the message,” Xia Qiuyuan said, her eyes bright. “It’s not food or rain. It’s rice water.”