Chapter 16: I Didn’t Think You Were So Mean
I Didn’t Think You Were So Mean
The windows had a view of a corner of the neighbourhood and some streets in the distance. The streets were busy with vehicles and people zipping along them. Men had built the city but become lost in their creation.
“Lei, have you discovered something?” Jiang Ru-Yi was losing a little steam.
Xia Lei shook his head. “No, but I still feel like something’s off.”
“What’s off?”
“This place is too clean. There isn’t any extra dust in the floorboard gaps; it’s as if the floor had been vacuumed,” said Xia Lei.
“Didn’t Professor Zhang’s maid say she hadn’t cleaned yet?”
“She didn’t but who’s to say the murderer didn’t either? The murderer could have been worried about leaving evidence behind and cleaned up the areas he’d been in after killing Professor Zhang. That may explain why your technicians didn’t find anything with their equipment,” said Xia Lei.
“There is this possibility, but…” Jiang Ru-Yi looked at Xia Lei strangely. “The gaps between the floorboards were so small – can you really see how much dust was in there?”
Xia Lei avoided her question and said, “Where’s the vacuum cleaner? Take me there.”
“It’s in the utility room. I’ll take you there.” Jiang Ru-Yi did not press the issue of how Xia Lei was able to see the dust and brought him to a storeroom in the villa.
The storeroom had cleaning supplies, a mop, a vacuum cleaner, pails and the like, as well as some bits and bobs, all neatly placed.
“Did your police technicians check this place?” asked Xia Lei.
Jiang Ru-Yi thought for a bit, “A colleague came to take a look but not very thoroughly.”
Xia Lei walked to the mop and his eye twitched. The wooden handle of the mop was suddenly enlarged and every detail, every grain of wood was crystal clear to Xia Lei. He did not have a magnifying glass but his eye more than made up for that.
The mop handle was very clean – so clean it had no fingerprints or watermarks.
Xia Lei grew more convinced of his suspicion that the murderer had cleaned up the crime scene and wiped every single one of the cleaning supplies used for the coverup. This was the only explanation, because if it were Professor Zhang’s maid, she would have wanted to rest after cleaning, not wipe the mop handle.
“Lei, you’re acting weirdly today. You lay flat on the floor earlier and now you’re observing a mop here… Are you really helping me crack the case?” Jiang Ru-Yi’s curiosity grew.
“Shush.” Xia Lei went to the vacuum cleaner.
Jiang Ru-Yi made a moue of dissatisfaction. “You look like you’re investigating it but you’ve never done this before, right? Can you really do it? If you didn’t find anything, let’s just go out for a walk. We may get lucky and run into those two suspects. Hey! I’m talking to you… Do you hear me?”
She wouldn’t shut up but Xia Lei held his tongue. He finished inspecting the vacuum cleaner handle while Jiang Ru-Yi was still nagging him and the result was the same – it had been wiped as clean as the day it was shipped from the factory. His gaze alighted on the internal vacuum storage and the black plastic disappeared under his gaze. The contents of the vacuum cleaner were laid bare to his eyes.
The vacuum cleaner had not been emptied out and still had garbage in it like dust and carpet fibers. A small piece of fingernail with a hair embedded in it suddenly entered Xia Lei’s sight. Not just that – he could even see a trace of dried blood on the fingernail!
The murderer was sly and meticulous but he had still left evidence!
Who else but Xia Lei, with the power of X-ray vision, could have found evidence like this?
Xia Lei could not stop a smile from forming on his lips. He was not a detective and had no experience investigating but he was a natural-born Sherlock with the power of his left eye!
“What are you smiling about?” asked Jiang Ru-Yi curiously.
Xia Lei said nothing. He removed the dust collector from the vacuum cleaner and walked out of the utility room.
“What are you doing?” Jiang Ru-Yi followed him out.
Xia Lei went back to the living room, found a newspaper and dumped the garbage out onto it. He then carefully swept away the dust and carpet fibers, revealing the small piece of fingernail.
“Say something!” Jiang Ru-Yi had not yet discovered the fingernail and couldn’t understand what Xia Lei was doing.
Xia Lei used a piece of tissue paper, wrapped the fingernail piece delicately and handed it to Jiang Ru-Yi, smiling as he said, “See this? This is the evidence left by the murderer.”
“This… You?” Jiang Ru-Yi goggled at the fingernail nestled in tissue paper.
“The trace of blood on this fingernail should be from the murderer. There’s a strand of hair there too. You can get the DNA of the murderer from these two things and look for a positive match in your police database to get the murderer’s identity. With evidence like this, you can write a detailed report to the higher-ups. You’ve got both suspects and physical evidence now so the case is cracked for sure,” said Xia Lei.
Jiang Ru-Yi blanked out for a bit, then suddenly hugged Xia Lei and landed a kiss on his cheek with a loud smack. “I knew it, I knew it… Haha, Lei, you are my lucky star!”
Warm yet soft pressure and a hint of sweet perfume assaulted Xia Lei’s senses. He froze like some kung fu master had hit his vital points. It was bad. Jiang Ru-Yi’s sexiness, coupled with her closeness… He was a man who’d never touched a woman but even those with experience would have a reaction. In two seconds, a certain part of him was standing proudly and obviously.
Jiang Ru-Yi, who was half-wrapped around Xia Lei, suddenly felt something strange prodding her below, and it was pressing into her very sensitive part, too. She looked down and quickly pushed Xia Lei away. Her pale face was flushed with red. “You, you.. What are you thinking?”
Xia Lei turned away, embarrassed. “No-nothing,” he said.
“You think I’m blind? You ass! You must be thinking something perverted! Gross!” Jiang Ru-Yi scoffed and her face grew even redder.
Xia Lei hurriedly tried to divert her attention. “Uh. You’d better do what you should be doing.”
Jiang Ru-Yi took out her phone. “I’ll call the technicians. It should be easy to find the identity of the murder with this important piece of evidence.”
Xia Lei suddenly turned back and grabbed her hand, “No, dumbass! If you call them, Huang Chang-Hai will try to hinder you. He can easily tell the technicians to take their time analysing and you’ll be axed after a week. He can then use the evidence we found to crack the case and take credit.”
Jiang Ru-Yi frowned. “What do I do then?”
“Call your boss and ask him to send someone over. You can also complain about what that Huang Chang-Hai was doing. Don’t you want some revenge on him for going against you all the time? This is your chance,” said Xia Lei.
“Heh heh, Lei, I didn’t think you were so mean. I’ll call Director Xu right now.” Jiang Ru-Yi grinned and started to dial another number.
Xia Lei looked at Jiang Ru-Yi on the phone and his left eye twitched on its own. Her clothing faded away and a flowery, snowy landscape met his sight. Her breasts were full yet perky and her measurements were astounding. She was radiating sexiness. Her waist was slender-soft, tummy flat but smooth, with a hint of baby fat. Her lovely legs were long and slender but not lacking in fullness, shaped lovingly like jade. Legs like hers could be played with for a whole year without getting tired of them. Plus, the mysterious electric quality of her perky buttocks and…
Xia Lei’s mouth was as dry as sandpaper in under a minute. A raging fire had been lit in his lower body and his entire body was in yearning agony. If he kept looking he would lose all rationality and do something bad. He pinched his thighs hard in an effort to dispel his burning desire but the effect was minimal.
“I’ll take a look around in the study.” Xia Lei did not dare look at Jiang Ru-Yi again and didn’t want to hang around so he made his way to the study beside the living room.
The study had an ancient-styled desk made of gold-brushed Chinese cedarwood, and two big bookcases of the same material. The wood was glossy with gold and reflected the light smoothly. You could tell that it was a considerably expensive piece of collectors’ furniture at first glance.
“These desk and bookcases must have cost hundreds of thousands. This Professor Zhang was very wealthy” thought Xia Lei. He walked to the bookcases.
There were many books on the shelves. Books specialising in archaeology, well-known classic literature, scientific journals and many other genres.
Xia Lei’s thoughts turned quickly to the case “Professor Zhang died because of a key. How valuable must it be for those two suspects to kill someone for it? The research Ru-Yi let me read said it was possibly used to open a library or warehouse, and the patterns were likely part of a map… Professor Zhang would surely have more information and research on such a complicated thing, wouldn’t he?”
His job was actually done after finding the evidence left by the murderer. However, he had started to gain an interest in the key. He could not help recalling the time when he welded the key and the faces of the suited man and sexy lady. Standing in Professor Zhang’s study, Xia Lei had a strange feeling that Professor Zhang was hiding something – something which neither the police nor the murderer found.
“Since I promised Ru-Yi I would help, I may as well help her to the end. I found the leads so she can catch the culprit. I did see her everything after all, so this can be considered a viewing fee.” Xia Lei laughed at himself, then his eye jumped and everything in the study turned translucent…