S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 4 Chapter 2

A Requiem for a Murderer 02 – Substitution and Filling

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The clock pointed to 9pm.

Zhan Zhao was holding a cold strawberry ice cream sundae in one hand and a spoon in the other, and was squinting straight at the door directly in front of him.

Behind him, the crowd was having a party.

Luo Yang had won the tennis tournament, and the SCI crowd was throwing him a big party before they left because they were getting ready to go away.

The crowd was having quite a good time, but Zhan Zhao was the only one sitting at the other end of the sofa with his eyes squinted, staring at the door and counting the time.

Half an hour ago, after having a snack, Zhao Jue suddenly tugged on Bai Yutang, asking him to do him a favour.

When Zhan Zhao wanted to go with him, Zhao Jue played a trick to distract him, and when Zhan Zhao returned, the two had already gone far away.

When Zhan Zhao called Bai Yutang's mobile phone, Bai Yutang answered and said that Zhao Jue wanted him to help him with something and told Zhan Zhao not to worry and that he would be back soon.

Zhan Zhao therefore waited patiently in the room, checking the clock every thirty seconds - so slow!

And at that moment, Bai Yutang drove Zhao Jue to the front of a particular building - the old police station in S City. The police station where SCI was located now was newly built, and there was an old one that had been abandoned for a long time, part of which had been demolished in preparation for the construction of a police officer training school, which had recently started construction. At night, the construction site was dark, Bai Yutang parked his car at the gate and looked at Zhao Jue in confusion, "What's the point of coming here?"

Zhao Jue smiled faintly, "Looking for a treasure."

Bai Yutang was confused by what he heard, but he still got out of the car with Zhao Jue. He took a flashlight and walked with him into the building that had been prepared for demolition.

Zhao Jue found the stairs, the elevators had all been removed, and all the way down the hallway to the underground was a dark, cavernous entrance.

Zhao Jue stepped on the clattering steel stairs and walked down to the second floor below ground, which was once the morgue of the old police station.

Bai Yutang looked at the rusty sign - the three words ‘morgue’ were really a ’ghosty sight' in this dark hallway.

After taking a few steps, Zhao Jue looked back and saw Bai Yutang walking calmly beside him, looking around with a flashlight in his hand, "It's all almost dismantled."

"Don't you find it eerie and scary?" Zhao Jue asked him with narrowed eyes.

Bai Yutang looked at him, "What's so scary about it? It's not like I haven't been here before."

Zhao Jue bristled and reached out to point at Bai Yutang, "Your kind of mentality is classified as lacking a sense of fear."

Bai Yutang looked at the sky and looked up... and saw the peeling paint on the ceiling, and asked Zhao Jue, "You came here in the middle of the night, what kind of treasure are you looking for?"

"Shhhhh." Zhao Jue narrowed his eyes and said to Bai Yutang, "You have to promise not to tell that cat of yours, ah, I worked so hard to get rid of him to come here."

Bai Yutang frowned slightly, "That's not a promise I can make."

"That scared of him, huh?" Zhao Jue provoked.

Bai Yutang was thick-skinned and said indifferently, "Of course."

"You admit that you are afraid of him?" Zhao Jue was surprised, "Are you a member of the Bai family?"

Bai Yutang felt amused and didn't answer. He saw Zhao Jue stop at the door of a storage room next to the forensic room and reach out as if to open the iron door.

Turning the lock, Zhao Jue tutted, "I can't open it! It's locked." With that, he looked at Bai Yutang, "Kick it open!"

Bai Yutang looked at him with admiration, "You brought me here to kick down the door? Then it would have been cheaper for you to bring Luo Tian." After he finished, he handed the flashlight to Zhao Jue and took out his keys from his pocket, which had two metal strips hanging from the key ring.

Zhao Jue took the flashlight and shone the light on his face as he asked him in an eerie tone, "The police actually know how to pick locks?"

Bai Yutang opened the door and reached for his flashlight, "The police know how to pick locks harder than that."

"No fun.” When Zhao Jue entered the storage room, he stepped into it and stirred up a layer of dust, causing him to cough, "Cough, cough, cough" and frown at the dust, "No one cleans it up, really."

"Speaking of which," Bai Yutang was curious, “it seems that no one has ever come into this storage room. It used to be locked, so I thought it was abandoned."

"Because someone died here twenty years ago." Zhao Jue replied indifferently.

Bai Yutang frowned slightly, "Twenty years ago? Who died?"

Zhao Jue narrowed his eyes and looked at Bai Yutang, then reached out and pointed to the ceiling.

Bai Yutang didn't quite understand and looked up… stunned. In that instant, he was indeed taken aback.

He saw that the ceiling of this storage room was fitted with a distorting mirror. In the middle of the night, with a flashlight, looking up to see a distorting mirror overhead. The point is that the person looking at it had to reflect on it for a moment to realise that it was a distorting mirror. The first sensation was simply that a distorted face appeared overhead, or their own face...

"Hehe!" Zhao Jue smothered a laugh, "Fun, right?"

Bai Yutang looked at him, "This mirror is strange."

"When you see it, will you think that... the human heart has a twisted side?" Zhao Jue's voice rang in his ears.

Bai Yutang turned his face and locked eyes with him, “Zhan Zhao has tried countless times to hypnotise me without success, so don’t waste your time."

Zhao Jue was slightly stunned.

Bai Yutang pointed to the mirror, "That's the implied password, isn't it?"

After a long time, Zhao Jue grunted and twisted his face, "It's not cute at all!"

Bai Yutang asked him, "What exactly are you looking for?"

"Behind the mirror." Zhao Jue reached out and pointed, taking a stool and placing it in front of him, "You climb up there and open the mirror, there's a roll of information inside, take it out."

Bai Yutang gave him the flashlight, climbed onto the stool and unscrewed the screws holding the distorting mirror in place. Sure enough, a square hole was seen at the back of the mirror. From inside, a roll of information packs secured with plastic bags, tape and quite a few other things was pulled out.

"What is it?" Bai Yutang was curious.

"Take it on the plane and look at it." Zhao Jue reached out and gently patted the fallen dust on the bag, "Important information!"

Bai Yutang saw him selling it, so he didn't say anything more. The two of them left the police station and got into the car, to drive home.

Halfway there, they received a call from Zhan Zhao, saying that they were already at the private tarmac at the airport, telling them to go there directly to board their flight to T City.

Bai Yutang hung up the phone and noticed that Zhao Jue kept looking at him, so he asked, "What are you looking at?"

"Well... do you remember that guy from last time?" Zhao Jue asked.

"Who do you mean?"

"The person who resembles you."

Bai Yutang couldn't help but frown, "Who is he?"

"Someone very much like you."

"The two statements are the same."

"He can't be hypnotised either." Zhao Jue crossed his legs, "Actually, have you ever thought of a question?"

"You have so many questions." Bai Yutang's car made a turn, the airport was ahead.

"If a person wants to rule the world, would it be better to train offensive warriors with weapons all over their body, or defensive warriors who are invulnerable to swords and guns?"

"With the spear of the son, attack the shield of the son, what’s the difference?" Bai Yutang brought the car to a halt, "If it were me, half offensive and half defensive."

"There's a spear and a shield." Zhao Jue smiled, the meaning still unclear.

As soon as he got out of the car, Zhan Zhao came running over, pulling Bai Yutang over and examining him up and down, looking at Zhao Jue intently.

Zhao Jue held up the plastic bag in his hand and shook it around, "Do you want to see something?"

Zhan Zhao was stunned and looked at Bai Yutang, "What is it?"

Bai Yutang shrugged, "It was hidden in a storage room in the basement of the old police station that had never been opened!"

With Bai Yutang's description, Zhan Zhao's eyes lit up a little and he chased after Zhao Jue, "Show me."

The crowd successfully boarded the plane and Zhan Zhao successfully grabbed Zhao Jue's information. After cutting the plastic bag open, he saw that it was the records of the case file.

"What case is so mysterious?" Zhan Zhao wondered.

"A blue file bag, huh?" Gongsun seemed to look a little disappointed, "A black file bag is a top secret file by, a red file bag is an extraordinarily important case, a yellow file bag is a case with a dead person, a blue file bag is only a minor criminal case, a green is a civil case, and a white is a drug-related case."

"Several of them are ordinary criminal cases with no deaths, when did you hide the information?" Zhan Zhao took the bag and looked at it, finding that it was not an old file from twenty years ago, but one that happened three years ago.

"Where did you get the information!” Zhan Zhao asked him.

Zhao Jue raised an eyebrow slightly and reached out to press his lips, "Secret!"

When Zhan Zhao looked closely at the written records within the folder, he saw that they were kidnapping cases that had occurred in various places, three in total.

"Ordinary kidnapping cases." Zhan Zhao flipped through them and frowned, "This kidnapper is so strange, kidnapping the children of ordinary families, even those with poor family conditions, but the extortion is millions?"

Zhao Jue smiled faintly and nodded.

"Why?" Bai Yutang couldn't figure it out, "Insurance or some kind of social security fund or something?"

Zhao Jue shook his head, "Seems like neither."

"What?"

Seeing the end, Zhan Zhao let out a low cry of surprise, "The kidnapper made a phone call and then never followed up? Then neither did they show up to tear the ticket nor come for the money, and just disappeared like this?” (Angel: Torn ticket is an internet buzzword that means to kill a hostage if they can’t meet the demands.)

Zhao Jue pointed down and gestured for him to read on.

Everyone came over to look at the information - the students who had been kidnapped have not been seen since, and the parents had endured great pain. Three cases, all three were young girls aged 6-10, the same modus operandi, and the same disappearing end.

"If there was only one, then it's possible that the wrong person was kidnapped, right?" Bai Jintang, who was looking at the newspaper, turned back and asked.

"But three cases..." Bai Yutang shook his head slightly, "would be fishy!"

"All three cases happened three years ago." Gongsun flipped through the information, "Did the information get stored away at that time when the police station relocated?"

Zhao Jue was holding the chocolate cake that Bai Chi had just taken out of the fridge, and was nodding his head as he remarked that the cake was delicious.

"These three cases, what's so special about them?" Zhan Zhao asked him.

Zhao Jue smiled faintly and crooked his finger at Bai Jintang, “Hey, rich man, let me ask you a question."

Bai Jintang turned back.

“Say, if someone kidnapped your brother and extorted ten million from you, would you call the police?"

The corners of Bai Jintang's mouth twitched, "Just do away with them."

Zhao Jue looked at the sky, "Hypothetically speaking, if you were multi-millionaires or even billionaires, ordinary businessmen with their only child being kidnapped, and the kidnappers demanded ransom, would you be quick to pay it? Would you call the police, or would you think of some countermeasures? Would you retaliate if you were being torn apart?"

The crowd looked at each other, and Zhan Zhao raised an eyebrow, "I see, these missing children, they are substitutes."

Zhao Jue nibbled on the cake, “Sure enough, smart people aren't fun at all!"

Zhan Zhao understood, but the others hadn’t. Zhao Zhen asked, "What substitutes?"

"For example, those wealthy families whose own children were not kidnapped, but a certain child who was often with their own child was kidnapped. The kidnapper sends the process to that wealthy family, warning them that if they don't want the same thing to happen to their child, they will send the money wherever and whenever."

Bai Yutang frowned, "Those little kids are really substitutes, but will anyone actually comply?"

"From a psychological point of view, it's avoiding harm, it's part of human instinct, and there's a higher chance of being chosen." Zhan Zhao analysed it for the crowd, "If a normal kidnapping is used, then the harm has already happened and many people will choose to face it, accept it, or resist. The kidnapping of a substitute, on the other hand, is a warning and a demonstration, and most people would choose to avoid harm at this point and give some money to settle the matter, as long as their own children will be fine in the future. In addition, it can serve as a deterrent by creating tragic outcomes in cases of non-compliance. Let the other side know what will happen if they don't comply!"

"That's too much." Bai Chi was unhappy, "How pitiful are those children who are being used as substitutes? What about the ransom money? Why didn't they get released after the ransom was paid? And disappearing along with them is too easy, isn't it?"

"Is this what you want to investigate?" Zhan Zhao asked Zhao Jue.

Zhao Jue smiled faintly, "It's been a bit nostalgic lately."

"What do you mean?"

"There are quite a few people in this world who like to collect second-hand old dolls, do you know what's so fun about second-hand dolls?" Zhao Jue began to question again.

But the one listening to his nonsense was Zhan Zhao, who also had an odd thought pattern and immediately understood, "Got it, ending a first life and restarting with a second one, playing with someone is more fun than shaping them."

"Bingo." Zhao Jue stuffed the last bite of cake into his mouth, "One more thing."

The crowd looked at him.

They saw him reach into his left and right trouser pockets and fumble around, pulling out a photo and handing it to Zhan Zhao.

There was a cute boy in the photo.

"Who is this?" Bai Yutang wondered.

"His name is Chen Xin." Zhao Jue said, "He's seven years old."

"What's happened to this child?" Luo Tian was a father after all, and was particularly concerned about cases involving small children.

"Two days ago, he was kidnapped." Zhao Jue said, not forgetting to add, "His father passed away when he was a child, and his mother relies on social security and welfare payments, as well as helping people with casual jobs to take care of him, so his family's conditions can be rather tight."

"How much did the kidnappers demand?"

"Five million." Zhao Jue held his chin, "The problem is, in his class, more than half of the kids have family assets of ten million or more."

Bai Yutang frowned, "What kind of school is that?"

"A privately owned aristocratic school."

Zhan Zhao couldn't understand, "You said before that Chen Xin's family was struggling, so how come he entered such a good school?"

"Filler and experiments." Zhao Jue crossed his legs, “Recruiting students with special hardship as fillers is a new concept in the recent aristocratic private schools, in order to make those proud sons of the sky feel more superior. Of course, it's advertised externally as a way for kids from different walks of life to learn how to get along."

“Were they already divided into classes before they even grew up?" Zhan Zhao threw the information away angrily, "Bastard."

Bai Yutang asked Zhao Jue, "Didn't you say before that you were catching ghosts, what does this kidnapping case have to do with ghosts?"

"Nothing." Zhao Jue shrugged.

"What?" Everyone looked at him.

"Catching the ghost is your mission this time, yes." Zhao Jue replied with a straight face, "This one is in passing." Saying that, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers, "Helping people is my hobby!" After saying that, he pestered Xiao Bai Chi to make milk tea and went to drink it.

Bai Yutang did not understand what exactly was in Zhao Jue's mind.

What Zhan Zhao was concerned about at the moment was - Zhao Jue had just snapped his fingers twice, similar to but not quite the same as the first time he saw it at the tennis court... What was the meaning?

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: November 23, 2022 by Angel

Edited: December 19, 2022 by Angel