Free Web NovelChapter 392: Chapter 373 The Taste on the Phone Watch_2
At this moment, the stepmother Zhu Weihua was brought out.
Zhou Ning glanced at her. The woman was not tall, of average appearance, and did not seem mean or vicious. However, her gaze was indifferent, occasionally glancing in Tao Zhenshan’s direction. She seemed very concerned about the progress of the case.
This discovery made Zhou Ning mentally mark a question mark. However, most of them had gone with the search party, so only he and Sun Gaotie were left to investigate the scene. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
"Director Tao, may I take a look at the children’s room?"
Tao Zhenshan nodded.
"That’s what I had in mind. Let’s go and take a look together. We didn’t find much, but you are the professionals."
Zhou Ning called to Sun Gaotie, and the three of them went to the children’s room. It was a row of six rooms with two doors for entry. From the east side, one could tell that there was a living room, dining area, and the couple’s bedroom upon entering. The west side door led directly to three rooms in a row: the grandmother’s and the two children’s, one for each.
The size of these rooms was unmatched by apartment living; each room was around thirty square meters, with high ceilings and a ridged roof, though with a suspended ceiling. The decor was average, but it all looked very clean.
Zhou Ning didn’t visit the other rooms and went straight to the children’s rooms. In one of them, the bed was without bedding, only covered with a bedsheet—apparently unoccupied. This must be the room of Zhu Weihua’s son, Yu Liang.
The other room was a bit messy. Behind the desk near the window was a chair, the kind specially for kids to study in, with a school uniform hanging on it. There was a backpack on the chair, and the desk was littered with textbooks and various stationery, quite disorganized.
As for the bed, the quilt was neat and tidy, the mosquito net parted to the left and right, as if someone had looked underneath. On the floor, slippers were left in front of the wardrobe to the north side. Zhou Ning put on gloves, motioned for Sun Gaotie to check the desk, and walked over to the wardrobe.
Picking up the slippers, he noticed the soles were very dirty, marked with many traces of black grease mixed with dirt, and the surface was even filthier. It seemed the child was mischievous, running around in shoes everywhere. Considering how tidy the room was, these slippers were quite out of place.
Inside the wardrobe, clothes for all seasons were mostly folded and placed on the shelves, with those hung up covered in plastic bags, usually winter clothing. Seeing the bright reds and greens, it wasn’t difficult to deduce that these were bought by an elderly person.
It was rare for young people to choose such heavy and bright styles. Zhou Ning paused, stepped out of the room, and Tao Zhenshan didn’t ask further but followed Zhou Ning to Yu Liang’s room. Opening the wardrobe in this room, there were many fewer clothes.
However, the winter clothes were still there, probably because they were only intended for a temporary stay at the grandmother’s house. But these clothes were very trendy, including a small trench coat and a leather jacket—those fashionable and cool styles.
At that moment, Sun Gaotie called out to Zhou Ning from the doorway.
"Boss, I checked, and the room hasn’t been cleaned for two days. There’s a lot of food hidden under the bed and in the cabinets, including chips, drinks, spicy strips, and more. Some have even spilled, staining the mattress with chili oil.
As for the desk, judging by the homework sheet with instructions given out, it seems like Chen Xiangyu hardly did any. No need to mention the handwritten newspapers; the papers only have his name and some completed blanks, and it’s clear that the parent signatures were imitated by himself."
Zhou Ning nodded.
"Chen Xiangyu’s clothes were mostly bought by the grandmother—thick and conspicuous, while Yu Liang’s clothes, all trendy, were bought by Zhu Weihua. I wonder if Zhu Weihua took some time off during the National Day holiday. Chen Xiangyu didn’t do his homework, likely because the grandmother couldn’t supervise. Whose signature did he imitate?"
Sun Gaotie glanced at a paper and lifted it up, saying:
"Liu Xiuhua, probably the name of Chen Xiangyu’s grandmother."
On Tao Zhenshan’s side, he had just inquired with an investigator and turned to Zhou Ning, saying:
"Zhu Weihua worked overtime from the 1st to the 6th and rested on the 7th. When I asked her earlier, she said she was at her mother’s house all day on the 7th and only returned home for dinner."
Clearly, Chen Xiaoguang was not at home, and she didn’t want to stay with her mother-in-law and stepson. She came back just to have a bite to eat and then to rest.
"So after dinner, she just rested, correct?"
Tao Zhenshan glanced at his notes, then nodded.
At this moment, Sun Gaotie turned over Chen Xiangyu’s bed and held up a phone watch saying:
"The DECAL MQ998 phone watch is quite high-tech. Are kids allowed to bring this into school?"
Zhou Ning looked at it and passed a evidence bag to Sun Gaotie. Just as Sun Gaotie was about to put it in, Zhou Ning stopped him. He bent down close to the phone watch with his nose and indeed, at such a distance, could smell a faint scent of ammonia.
This discovery made Zhou Ning pause slightly.
Tao Zhenshan noticed Zhou Ning’s reaction and hurried over.
"Director Zhou, have you found a problem?"
Zhou Ning quickly said, ƒrēewebnovel.com
"This phone watch, the plastic strap is torn off, and there’s a smell of ammonia on it. Can you smell it?"
"What does ammonia smell like?"
That question left Zhou Ning at a loss for words.
Sun Gaotie joined them, his face showing shock, as he also took a careful sniff.
"You can definitely smell a faint ammonia scent. Patients with uremia have saliva that produces an ammonia smell when urea breaks down. However, an eight-year-old child is unlikely to have uremia. That leaves accidental ingestion or poisoning. The most likely possibility is Paraquat. This pesticide is colorless and tasteless, but to prevent accidental ingestion, ammonia, which has a strong odor, is added to it. Could it be..."
Tao Zhenshan was startled.
He might not know about other things, but he was familiar with Paraquat.
After all, in the cases he had handled, there had been many poisonings with it, and it was the kind that could not be treated. He had watched helplessly as the poisoned person died, without any other solution.
"It seems we need to hurry and find the child. It’s very likely that the child was fed Paraquat. I’m going to interrogate Zhu Weihua again. After all, there are only three people in this household: one missing, one is the biological grandmother, so the stepmother is the most likely suspect."
As he was speaking, the investigator who had been searching with Mr. Qu entered quickly, excitedly saying to Tao Zhenshan,
"We’ve found it! Just now, on a surveillance camera, we spotted Zhu Weihua riding an electric bike out!"
Before the young man could finish, several people had already rushed out. In the yard, Mr. Qu was standing in front of a notebook, seemingly capturing video segments.
Seeing Zhou Ning and the others come out, he hurriedly said,
"No time for nonsense. At 4:22 a.m., I found a surveillance camera on the road outside the village. It’s across from a small path with an unpaved surface, and the streetlight isn’t very clear.
Look, Zhu Weihua is riding an electric scooter, with a child in front, crouching on the electric bike, and the child’s face isn’t visible. However, the clothes are indeed a red T-shirt and shorts. The direction they’re heading is toward Guojia Village."
Tao Zhenshan was visibly excited, standing up straight.
"Zhu Weihua’s maternal home is in Guojia Village. The two villages are not far apart, only about seven or eight hundred meters. If they went there, indeed the surveillance from the few villages we searched previously wouldn’t have seen it since it’s a small dirt road from the north of the village. I’ll take people to Guojia Village right now."
Zhou Ning stopped him. Catching the person was urgent, but finding the child was most important.
"Don’t rush, Director Tao. Right now, the most important thing is to find the child. They went to the mountains of Yingtaogou Valley, which seems to be a different hill from Guojia Village. Perhaps the direction of the search is wrong.
Mr. Qu, open the map and check if next to Guojia Village there are hills, valleys, caves, or any such places where someone could hide without being easily found?"
Mr. Qu immediately opened the map and zoomed in on the area. Some parts were not viewable, but Mr. Qu did something, and moments later, the entire map was revealed.
Indeed, the two villages were located on the gentle slopes of two ridges. Following the direction southeast of Guojia Village, there was another hill, and on the map, there were several spots in slightly darker shades.
Mr. Qu pointed to these places and quickly said,
"These three spots, from the satellite image, seem to be caves. I think we should take a look. Also, from Guojia Village to the mountains, this cave is most likely the closest."
