I looked around the room, and the furnishings had barely changed. Everything is so familiar and old.

The ceiling fan hanging from the ceiling, the refrigerator and air conditioner that have been used for many years, and the red-painted kitchen door frame have formed black stains under the influence of oil smoke all year round......

I saw that there was no one in the house, so I walked directly to the balcony. I saw my teacher Fang Jing sitting on his recliner with an old cadre-style enamel cup on the stool next to him, enjoying the warm winter sunshine.

I came up behind him and called out softly, "Teacher." ”

At my voice, he turned his head to look at me, the wrinkles on his brow gradually unraveling.

"It's Xiaofeng, hahaha, what, it's been almost a whole year, and you just remembered to come to see me, an old thing?" His voice sounded much older, but his square face was still so kind.

"Isn't that always busy...... Some time ago, the police station was engaged in ideological construction for almost half a year, and I was busy every day. It's finally the New Year here, and there is another murder case in Chengyang County......" I replied a little embarrassed.

"What, it's going on again?" As soon as he heard the case, he stood up as if reflexively.

"Well, a terrible case of murder and dismemberment. The murderer killed someone, and chopped the corpse into meat sauce and put it in dumplings, causing an old family to eat a human finger. I described it to him.

As soon as I heard about the case, I was excited, this was already the occupational disease of the director of the criminal investigation bureau.

"Hmm...... It's kind of interesting. Come, tell me about it. He took a sip of tea from his enamel cup, and then asked me with interest about the whole case.

I'm used to his reaction. Since my teacher retired, almost every time I visited him at home, he would learn about the recent big cases, and I would patiently tell him about them.

At such times, he would point out some mistakes we had made in the direction of criminal investigation and then come up with some better solutions.

I always learn a lot from him. That's why I keep calling him a teacher.

As usual, I told him about the whole case, how we connected the two cases together, and how we deduced that the killer was trying to send a message through the killing.

He nodded as he asked some questions when appropriate.

"You should actually know from Cai Mingfen who was dismembered from the beginning. Because from the psychological point of view of the murderer, no matter how complex the case he wants to design, but subconsciously, the first person to be killed is usually regarded as a very important person. He proposed.

"That's right, that's exactly what I didn't realize until later, otherwise the whole case would have been misguided."

I then told him about our later thinking on solving the case, and with the help of Ouyang Qian, I discovered the identity of the murderer, and deduced the idea that we must investigate the hidden trafficking case.

But when I mentioned that the murderer's name was Wu Xuesheng, the teacher's face changed slightly.

And when I mentioned that Wu Xuesheng finally chose to shoot himself in front of me, he fell into a long silence.

He asked me for a cigarette, and when I lit it for him, he stood up and looked out at the balcony in a daze.

I looked at him with a little panic in my heart. Because I didn't convey to him what the murderer told me. I didn't tell him all my suspicions about the trafficking case.

"When investigating the trafficking case, please be sure to pay attention to a person named Fang Jing. He was the one who was directly involved in the trafficking case. ”

That phrase still rings in my head.

He had his back to me, and the sun shone right on him, casting a shadow that covered me all over.

After a while, he spoke:

"Xiaofeng, in fact, I won't tell you that the series of large-scale abduction and trafficking cases back then were the responsibility of the team I was in. And that child named Wu Xuesheng was the one I saved from the abductors back then. ”

The teacher's words were like a thunderbolt from the sky, and I was caught off guard. Wu Xuesheng turned out to be one of the people who were abducted and trafficked back then!

He took the last puff of the cigarette in his hand and extinguished it. Then he turned his head and looked straight at me.

"And if my guess is correct, this kid named Wu Xuesheng must have said something to you before committing suicide, otherwise his suicide is meaningless. But if you don't mention it just now, then I can conclude that he said something to you about me. ”

As my teacher, his observation is still so sophisticated. Cold sweat began to break out in my palms.

"Yes, teacher, he did mention you to me before he died. He asked me to pay special attention to a policeman named Fang Jing when I was investigating. "I thought that it was not an outsider standing in front of me anyway, but the person I knew and was closest to me best, so I no longer had any scruples and said these words bluntly.

The teacher looked at me with a cold light in his eyes, but then I saw that the light gradually faltered again.

"This case at that time actually attracted the attention of our police. In fact, in the course of the investigation that year, we found that the main targets of these trafficking cases were not quite the same as we initially thought, we always thought that the target of the trafficking was often boys, but a large number of subsequent reports showed that their main targets were girls. ”

Girl! I forgot about this when I read the dossier.

Gender!

In China at that time, the phenomenon of preference for sons over women was very serious. So many families without children tend to buy a boy from someone else, not a girl. However, in Chengyang County, it shows a characteristic contrary to ordinary trafficking cases, that is, most of the targets of trafficking are girls, not boys.

But why? I asked in my mind.

"Why? We didn't know why. And most of the police officers who accepted this case did not take this detail too seriously, they simply thought that boys and girls were the same, and as long as it was a child, someone would buy it. As if he saw my doubts, the teacher said to me.

The teacher is right, but it's not that big of a problem. And in all likelihood, it's just a coincidence. That's why so many people didn't pay enough attention to this detail at the time.

I looked at the teacher, his brow furrowed, and the sun behind him shone on our faces, but I didn't feel warm at all.

There was something unknown in his eyes.