S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 31

Witness of the Three Murderers 31 – Eyewitness

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Eyewitness.

This was definitely the word that people who were deeply involved in a mystery would like to hear the most.

Bai Yutang and the others ran back to the office. Jiang Ping had already determined the location through the billboard on the photo, it was near a garbage dump in the southern suburbs of downtown S City. Pulling up the security camera from the same location, it was found that the homeless man had scavenged for things at this garbage dump on several occasions.

Bai Yutang took the car keys and waved his hand to the crowd, and all of them went out to look for the man!

......

Bao Zheng had wanted to come and ask about the progress of the case, but unexpectedly, as soon as he stepped out of the elevator, he saw a group of people swarming out, the elevator door closing and then heading downstairs.

Bao Zheng looked at Jiang Ping in the office in disbelief and asked, "Found something?"

Jiang Ping nodded.

Bao Zheng walked over to look at the surveillance screen on his computer while looking around again with concern.

At this time, there was no one else in the office except Jiang Ping. Zhao Jue and Bai Ye were also not there, but the two of them were not among the people who rushed out just now.

Bao Zheng frowned slightly and walked to the door to look down the corridor in the direction of the lounge. There were a lot of people in the lounge, all of them were small children, and the door to the forensic room was closed.

Bao Zheng turned back and asked Jiang Ping, "Where is Zhao Jue?"

Jiang Ping thought for a moment, "It seems like he left with Bai Ye just now."

Bao Zheng looked around to see that no one was there and went to close the office door behind him.

Jiang Ping narrowed his eyes and picked up the pillow behind him to block himself, "What are you doing, Bao Sir?"

Bao Zheng glared at him and Jiang Ping shoved the pillow back behind him.

Bao Zheng asked in a low voice, "Last time, didn't you have one of those very, very small bugs?"

Jiang Ping narrowed his eyes, "Who do you want to listen to, Bao Sir?"

Bao Zheng looked around again and whispered, "Prepare two for me, I'll use them."

Jiang Ping scratched his head, "Well..."

"I need them tomorrow." Bao Zheng patted him on the shoulder, then stood up, not forgetting to caution, "This matter should be kept secret from everyone, only you should know!"

Jiang Ping nodded repeatedly.

Bao Zheng turned around and went out.

Jiang Ping sat in the swivel chair frowning and thinking, and after a long time, he asked, "Did you hear that?"

At this time, a hand stretched out from the back of the sofa, grasping the backrest of the sofa and standing up.

From behind the sofa, a lazy white lion slipped out.

Zhao Zhen leaned against the back of the sofa and yawned, squinted his eyes and asked Jiang Ping, "Hear what?"

Jiang Ping scratched his head and turned back to continue tapping away on his computer.

Zhao Zhen stuffed the phone back into his pocket and waved to Lisbon, "Let's go get something to eat."

Lisbon shook his mane and stretched out again, flicked his tail and followed Zhao Zhen out the door.

......

Near the garbage dump, Bai Yutang and their car pulled up. Zhan Zhao stared at his phone and stroked his chin, seemingly thinking about something.

Bai Yutang noticed that he had received a text message three minutes ago, and then started to think about it.

They arrived at the dump soon after. The group parked the car and went in through the gate, quickly finding the location of the billboard captured in the photo, but there was no one nearby.

Bai Yutang snapped his fingers at Zhan Zhao, who was still looking at his cell phone.

Zhan Zhao raised his head.

Bai Yutang pointed around and asked him, "Where are they?"

Zhan Zhao narrowed his eyes, "I'm not a puppy..."

"You're a godly stick." Bai Yutang urged him, "Hurry up and look for them!"

Zhan Zhao put away his cell phone and scratched his head, starting to look around.

This garbage dump was quite large, there was also a scrap recycling pile and a scrap car depot at the back, and further away was a large area of landfill. Even from such a distance, one could already smell the garbage, which was why Bai Yutang appeared to be agitated.

Zhan Zhao paced in place with his hands behind his back before eventually stopping.

Everyone turned their faces to look at him.

Zhan Zhao, however, suddenly stretched out his hand and said to them, "Shhh."

For a moment, the crowd couldn't tell if Zhan Zhao was really telling them to be careful or if he was imitating Zhao Jue... Ever since Zhao Jue made that gesture, the crowd all began to be unable to look at this simple action directly.

Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao, "He's nearby?"

Zhan Zhao nodded, "But he's hiding."

Zhao Hu was puzzled, "Why hide?"

"Because someone is chasing him." Zhan Zhao said.

Bai Yutang frowned slightly.

He saw Zhan Zhao point to the garbage dump not far away.

Bai Yutang immediately understood... They had come at the right time. Someone was chasing that "witness", that witness was hiding in fear, and those chasing him were looking for him at that garbage dump.

There was no time to study how Zhan Zhao deduced this situation, but the crowd still unconditionally believed that his deduction must be correct.

At this time, Ma Han gently shook his finger at the crowd and pointed to the ground near his feet.

The crowd followed the direction of his finger and looked over, and saw two shell casings on the ground...

The expressions of the crowd changed slightly.

Bai Yutang reached out and pulled out his gun, while signalling to the crowd... disperse!

The SCI crowd spread out and flanked towards the garbage dump.

The so-called garbage dump was basically piles of used household appliances piled up into cube after cube...

Almost all of the waste household appliances in S City were concentrated here, and the scale was so vast that each cube was piled up to nearly three metres high.

Ma Han climbed up one of the higher piles of home appliances, climbing to the top, then crouched down and observed for a while. Then, he lowered his head to look down at the crowd and stretched four fingers out.

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao nodded – It was indeed four pursuers.

Ma Han made a few hand signals to the crowd, roughly indicating the direction of where those people were.

Bai Yutang told the crowd to split up and work in groups of two to enter the piles to catch those four people.

Zhan Zhao was excited and wanted to follow them in as well but was glared at by Bai Yutang, who signalled for him to wait outside.

Zhan Zhao was dissatisfied and had to stand there and wait.

After Bai Yutang and the others went in, they didn't rush into the staggered piles but first walked along the edges.

Zhan Zhao stood at the entrance for about three seconds before glancing upwards. He saw that Ma Han's place seemed to have a good angle, so he also walked over and reached out to grasp at the pile of appliances, preparing to climb up.

As Ma Han was observing the situation, he suddenly felt the microwave oven he was leaning on shake.

Ma Han froze and looked down, only to see that Zhan Zhao had almost climbed up, stepping on a refrigerator and grabbing an induction cooker.

Ma Han gasped and waved his hand at him.

Zhan Zhao looked up at him as he stepped over the induction oven, and that's when it felt like his centre of gravity was slightly forward.

Zhan Zhao blinked as the two ovens in front of him began to move forward.

Ma Han jumped down violently and yanked him...

When they landed on the ground, they heard a crash...

Zhan Zhao and Ma Han stayed in place... and watched the appliance mountain fall, and then... the domino effect appeared.

Bai Yutang and the others were looking for the "pursuers" when they heard a loud clatter... The entire appliance mountain of the dump started to collapse.

"Fuck..." Zhao Hu was almost hit by a refrigerator, and hurriedly jumped out of the way and stood against the wall...

Bai Yutang breathlessly held his forehead, and Bai Chi and Qin Ou looked at each other.

Ma Han looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao patted him, "You should lose some weight, look, you've crushed one and toppled over so many."

Ma Han rubbed his eyebrows, restraining his urge to punch him.

But at this moment, the crowd heard an "aiya" cry of misery coming from the area.

Bai Yutang raised his head.

Zhao Hu reached out and pointed, "Boss, there are two pinned down over there."

"There's one over there too!" Bai Chi pointed to the other side.

On the opposite side, Luo Tian pulled out a man with a smashed and bloody head from the rubble, picking up the gun he had thrown aside while handcuffing the man.

The SCI crowd went in and dug out the four "pursuers" who were unfortunately caught in the rubble and handcuffed them all.

Bai Yutang froze for a while, then turned his face to look at Zhan Zhao and Ma Han, who were standing at the entrance, and asked, "Who did this?"

Ma Han and Zhan Zhao glanced at each other.

Bai Yutang raised an eyebrow, "Good job!"

Zhan Zhao pointed to himself.

Ma Han held his forehead.

Bai Yutang walked over. At this time, the staff from the dump ran outside, probably startled by the rattling, and at first thought it was an earthquake.

A few staff ran over to take a look, found that the entire pile field had collapsed, and opened their mouths wide, "Who dares ah!"

Zhan Zhao pointed to Ma Han...

Bai Yutang pinched the back of Zhan Zhao's neck and apologised to the dump staff.

The staff heard that it was caused by the police arresting armed criminals, so they didn't blame them and ran back to arrange for people to clean up the piled-up yard.

Bai Yutang helplessly looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao touched his nose. Overall, the result was good...

The "pursuers" are caught. Four men, seemingly in their thirties, all wearing black hoodies, and all armed with guns, no identity documents were found.

Bai Chi took a picture of them and did a comparison search in the wanted criminals application made by Jiang Ping, and found that all of them were professional killers.

Bai Yutang looked speechlessly at these four professional killers who had their heads smashed, unexpectedly being caught in the hands of a cat who couldn't climb up the wall. This was called capsizing in the gutter.

Bai Yutang asked Luo Tian, "Just these few people, not that witness?"

Luo Tian shook his head. They were afraid that person was also buried in the pile of appliances, but they hadn't found them.

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao pointed to the landfill in the distance.

Looking in the direction of Zhan Zhao's finger, Bai Yutang had a look of frustration on his face – Did he have to go to the garbage heap to find that person?

Zhan Zhao narrowed his eyes and watched Bai Yutang mentally struggle for a while, and just as he was about to lead the others there, he tugged at him and pointed to the scrap car pile on the side.

Bai Yutang squinted at him.

Zhan Zhao rubbed the back of his neck and locked eyes with him.

After the rest of the SCI watched the two of them exchange glances for half a minute, they walked over to the scrap car manager together.

There were tens of thousands of scrapped cars parked at the scrap yard, some of them were cars piled on top of each other. Dust piled up and the area was filled with the smell of gasoline and creosote mixed together.

Looking at the yard as big as two football fields, the crowd was a little desperate.

Zhao Hu asked, "He's hiding here?"

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao, who nodded.

Bai Chi took out his cell phone, "Shall I ask the canine team to come over?"

Zhan Zhao waved his hand, "What do you need police dogs for? They're in this vehicle." As he said this, he pointed at a dilapidated pickup truck.

There were a lot of camouflage tarps piled up in the back of that pickup truck.

Ma Han jumped onto the truck, reached out, tugged on the tarp, and found that it was resisting, so he pulled hard to lift it all. Zhao Hu also went up to help.

Finally, the entire piece of camouflage tarp was lifted, only to see that underneath the tarp, there was a pudgy, ragged person huddled up, shivering and looking like he was in shock.

"Don't be afraid." Zhao Hu said, "We're the police."

The man shook for a while before slowly calming down.

Zhao Hu and Ma Han reached out and helped him sit up.

The man raised his head and looked at the crowd.

The crowd locked eyes with him and froze.

When Ma Han and Zhao Hu saw Zhan Zhao and the others looking at the person they were helping with wide eyes, they were also a bit puzzled, and together they turned their faces to look at that person's face.

At a glance, Zhao Hu and Ma Han also froze.

They saw that the man's eyes were greyish-white, and it was almost impossible to distinguish the whites of his eyes from the pupils.

Ma Han reached out and waved his hand in front of his eyes.

The man's eyelids didn't blink at all – Blind!

At this time, a few workers who had come to clean up the piles saw it, so someone ran over and said, "Officer, he's just a garbage collector, he shouldn't have done anything bad."

Bai Yutang and the others came back from their shock.

Luo Tian asked the manager, "Do you know what his name is?"

The manager spread his hands, "I don't know, I heard that he's been around since he was a kid, and the old people at the dump call him A'Mo."

Zhan Zhao asked, "He can't see?"

"Mhmm." The manager nodded, "I heard that he was abandoned in the dump when he was a baby, probably because he was blind. It was some of the old people in the dump that raised him." While saying this, he pointed to his head and lowered his voice, "It's not too clear here either."

Zhan Zhao and the others froze, and together they looked back at the homeless man sitting in the pickup truck with a blank face.

Their only eyewitness, the only eyewitness that Wang Daping had spent more than ten years searching for at the risk of going to jail, was actually blind and crazy...

......

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

I fully relate to Zhan Zhao's clumsiness here, oh my god. Like, just today, I put a full cup of water down on my desk and immediately knocked it right over, spilling the whole thing over everything...

No double upload today, since this is the last chapter of the case.

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

Translated: January 28, 2024 by Angel

Edited: April 23, 2024 by Angel