Chapter 660 - 548: Alibi

Chapter 660: Chapter 548: Alibi

Walnut was feeling insecure that night, so Shen Xin stayed with him the whole time.

He only started feeling a little better the next day.

Shen Xin didn’t go back to his hotel. He found a place in the zoo to catch a quick nap, wanting to stay by Walnut’s side as much as possible.

Over the next few days, while diligently caring for Walnut, Shen Xin didn’t forget to push the case forward, intentionally guiding the conversation.

For example, he’d talk about Walnut’s mother.

Then he would use the panda’s inner voice to confirm his theories.

Without reaching stage three, it was like a game of Pictionary. He could only guess Walnut’s true thoughts and reconstruct what had happened back then through conversation.

Fortunately, Walnut had a very deep memory of the events from that year.

He also trusted Shen Xin, so his reactions to Shen Xin’s probing questions weren’t as strong as they were at first.

This allowed Shen Xin to confirm several things.

First, Walnut remembered Yang Guofa.

And in his inner voice, the evaluation that appeared for Yang Guofa was "bad."

But similar to Liu Baoli, the reaction wasn’t that strong.

The most complicated one was Liu Baoli. It wasn’t all "bad"; there was a "good" evaluation as well.

Shen Xin also noticed something else. During questions related to Liu Baoli, the message "hungry" appeared in Walnut’s inner voice.

He asked carefully and guessed right once.

Shen Xin asked if Liu Baoli had ever fed Walnut.

After Walnut understood the question, he confirmed it was true.

So, Liu Baoli was "bad," but also "good," and had fed Walnut. This fit Yang Zeran’s theory: he did something bad, but his conscience got the better of him. He might have thought about reporting Wang Shulin and ended up getting himself killed for it.

Shen Xin also found a chance to ask about Wang Erpeng.

Similarly, Walnut remembered him.

The reaction was intense.

So to sum it up, Liu Baoli was both good and bad.

Yang Guofa was bad, but not intensely so.

Wang Shulin and Wang Erpeng were both bad, and the reactions to them were strong.

This also fit Yang Zeran’s theory that the four men might have had some internal conflict.

Shen Xin also asked Walnut many roundabout questions about his mother.

He remembered her.

An inner voice is a reflection of the heart’s thoughts, and thoughts are chaotic and complex, a jumble of all sorts of words. It all came down to guesswork.

Shen Xin concluded that Walnut’s mother was definitely dead and had been injured, because Walnut had a strong reaction to the concept of blood.

At the same time, Shen Xin also tried to connect Wang Shulin and the others to Walnut’s mother.

He asked if they were the ones who had killed his mother.

Walnut’s answer was direct: yes.

Wang Shulin was, and so was Liu Baoli.

Shen Xin didn’t hide these discoveries from the special task force; he was in constant communication with them.

Based on this information, it seemed certain that the four men had indeed killed a female giant panda back then, and they did it right in front of Walnut.

However, there was a problem with this.

It was Walnut’s reaction to Liu Baoli.

Liu Baoli had also fed Walnut.

Shen Xin and the task force had discussed this many times and came up with a possibility.

Wang Shulin and Wang Erpeng had prior records for poaching. Could it be that the two of them went up the mountain to poach, got greedy, and tried to hunt Walnut and his mother?

Then, they were accidentally seen by Liu Baoli and Yang Guofa.

Wang Shulin was a thug, a bad guy. Could he have threatened Liu Baoli and the other man?

Then, to hide his crime, he forced Liu Baoli and Yang Guofa to help kill the giant panda.

To cover up a crime, silencing witnesses by killing them is one way, but there’s another: turning them into accomplices.

And after killing Walnut’s mother, Wang Shulin came up with the idea of turning in the panda cub to get credit for it.

So he might have hatched a plan.

During this time, a cub could hardly survive on its own without its mother, so they handed Walnut over to Liu Baoli to feed him.

It was probably during this period that Walnut developed a good feeling towards Liu Baoli, seeing him as someone who fed him.

Because there was another point.

Snow!

Walnut reacted to snow.

The panda was reported on April 13th, and multiple sources confirmed that it wasn’t snowing in Hetaoping at that time.

So, the panda’s killing must have happened earlier, pushed back to March when there was still snow on the ground.

This would provide a reasonable explanation for why Liu Baoli was feeding Walnut.

And during this time, Wang Shulin might have been disposing of the panda’s carcass, trying to sell it.

For instance, if he failed to sell it, he would then turn his attention back to Walnut.

After that, just as Yang Zeran had theorized, Liu Baoli’s conscience acted up. He wanted to report them and was killed by Wang Shulin.

Then Yang Guofa killed Wang Shulin in retaliation.

Interviews and investigations into Yang Guofa revealed that outsiders saw him as an honest and rather timid person.

But even an honest man, when pushed to the brink, can be terrifyingly ruthless.

Unfortunately, as the investigation into Yang Guofa deepened, all these theories were completely overturned.

An ironclad fact emerged.

For the second case, which occurred on April 16, 2011, Yang Guofa had a solid alibi.

That year, Yang Guofa was already 32 years old.

His family was quite poor, and his parents were farmers.

He had an older brother.

His parents had already emptied their savings for his brother’s wedding.

As for Yang Guofa, he was a rather honest guy, not handsome, and certainly not a smooth talker.

He had never been in a relationship before, so he didn’t have the skills to find a wife on his own.

His parents were constantly worried about it.

April 16, 2011, was a Saturday.

At their protection station, they got four days off a month, on a rotating schedule.

On the 16th, Yang Guofa wasn’t originally scheduled to be off, but he had swapped shifts with a coworker.

He didn’t do it to commit a crime; he went on a blind date.

It wasn’t successful. The woman wasn’t interested in him.

Chang Zhigang and his team conducted extensive inquiries and managed to contact this blind date, who had since married and moved to another region.

This woman confirmed that the two of them had indeed gone on a blind date that day.

She still had some impression of Yang Guofa.

She said he was rather stingy.

That day, the two met in Bikou Town, went to Bikou Ancient Town, and had lunch there.

The woman remembered that Yang Guofa spent a long time picking a restaurant.

They also talked about things like owning a house, and Yang Guofa had nothing, so things didn’t work out.

And she recalled that they met a little after ten in the morning and didn’t part ways to go home until after they finished lunch, around one in the afternoon.

During that entire time, the two of them were together.

As for the second case involving Wang Shulin, based on the forensic examiner’s estimate and the distance of the patrol route, the two victims were presumed to have died at around eleven o’clock that morning.

In other words, Yang Guofa had no time to commit the crime.

Bikou Town is east of Yinping County, and the straight-line distance to Tielou Town, where the crime occurred, is a full eighty kilometers.

He couldn’t have flown over even if he had wings.

The third case happened in 2014. By this time, Yang Guofa was already missing, so it was impossible to confirm an alibi for him.

But for the second case, the evidence was ironclad: Yang Guofa was not the killer.

Right now, the task force was, one, continuing to verify Yang Guofa’s alibi for the first case, and two, focusing all their efforts on finding Yang Guofa.

They found out where he went initially.

He disappeared in June. For people from Longzhou, it was common to go north to Lingzhou for work during that month.

Over there, goji berries ripened in large quantities in June, which was the peak harvest season, requiring a lot of manual labor.

Yang Guofa went with some people from his hometown to work in Zhongning County in Lingzhou, the "hometown of goji berries," to pick them.

They found the people he went with, who confirmed that he worked there until late September, when the autumn harvest ended.

After that, he said goodbye to them and headed south.

According to the people from his hometown, he went to Jiaozhou.

Longzhou is an inland province. To find work elsewhere, you could only go to the coastal regions.

Either to the Anjing area, the Ningjiang-Pingzhou area, or Jiaozhou, the southernmost option.

After that, there was no more news of Yang Guofa.

"So you’re saying you’re not coming back to Ningshan for the New Year?"

As the end of the year approached, a heavy snow was falling again in Anjing.

Braving the wind and snow, Shen Xin leaned against Walnut while on a video call with Yang Zeran.

They had gotten the lead on Yang Guofa on January 16th and conducted the test.

After investigating nonstop for half a month, today was already January 31st.

This year, the Spring Festival was on February 5th, which meant today was already the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month.

Shen Xin had already planned to return to Nanjiang for the New Year, while Yang Zeran had followed a deputy detachment leader from Wudu from Jiaozhou all the way to Min’an Province.

Their team had investigated in Jiaozhou for a week before finally finding someone from Yang Guofa’s hometown, who told them that Yang Guofa had gone to work in Feng City, the provincial capital of Min’an, in the summer of 2012.

Now, the group was in Feng City.

But here, the trail had gone cold again.

The key thing was, the New Year was just around the corner. After working hard for a whole year, they should at least get a couple of days off to celebrate the Spring Festival.

After all, it was a cold case; there was no extreme urgency.

Shen Xin added, "Aren’t you afraid your wife will hold it against you?"

On the other end of the video, Yang Zeran retorted stubbornly with a soft snort, "Afraid of her? Please. Besides, she’s even busier than I am."

Song Xiangli worked at the procuratorate and was just as busy.

"Shen Xin, I can feel it. I’m so, so close to this guy. It’s just this last little push. I have to find him in one go," Yang Zeran said, his face full of frustration.

From November until now, he had thrown himself completely into this one case. He didn’t want to waste any time.

Shen Xin turned his head and glanced at Walnut.

His favorability was at nine bars in stage two, and he’d hit a plateau. It felt like he needed some kind of catalyst to break through to stage three.

Shen Xin had an idea, but the zoo management wouldn’t agree to it.

"Alright, it’s your call," Shen Xin said, not pressing the issue, and hung up.

’If I were still at the police station, I’d probably be out patrolling the streets right now.’

’The closer it gets to the New Year, the busier it gets.’

「Meanwhile, far away in Feng City.」

The good thing about this place was that it didn’t snow during the New Year, and the temperature was decent.

When he had been on the video call, Yang Zeran and his partner had just returned to the hotel after a full day of running around.

"Lao Yang, have you made up your mind? You’re really not going back?" Zhao Tianxing asked, turning his head from where he was lying on the bed.

Yang Zeran nodded.

The officers from Wudu weren’t planning on going back, so how could he have the nerve to go back for the New Year?

As for Song Xiangli, if he apologized sincerely, she would probably understand.

Zhao Tianxing sighed and didn’t say any more.

’Besides, back at the sub-bureau, it wasn’t like they ever got real time off for the New Year anyway. It was just as busy.’

Yang Zeran pulled Zhao Tianxing back into the conversation, discussing which village to visit tomorrow.

After tracking the lead to Feng City, they had made numerous inquiries and learned something.

After Yang Guofa came to Feng City, he’d worked at two different electronics factories, but no one knew where he had gone now.

He didn’t have many friends and didn’t know anyone from his hometown here.

Initially, he had followed a coworker who said there were good factories in Feng City.

Turns out, they were all scams.

Then they heard that while working at the second electronics factory, someone mentioned that Yang Guofa had made a friend from somewhere, and they seemed to have a pretty good relationship.

That person had come to the dorm to look for him several times.

All they knew was that Yang Guofa called this person Ah Gui.

He was probably a local, as he spoke with a local dialect.

Now they were looking for this Ah Gui, analyzing that he was likely from one of the villages in the suburbs.