Chapter 109
The ants continued to crawl along the road and we followed right behind them. Although they seemed to be crawling as fast as they could, it was still very slow compared to our walking speed. We held our breaths whenever they crossed the street, afraid that they might get squished by the pa.s.sing cars. If they all get killed, then we might as well throw in our towels because the murderer might never be found.
The ants naturally had no notion of traffic rules and what traffic lights were, so we unavoidably violated more than a few traffic laws and jumped a few red lights just by following them. Xiaotao had to stop other cars in their tracks to avoid squis.h.i.+ng the ants. We were even stopped by a few traffic police officers, but Xiaotao merely had to show her badge and explain that we were investigating a murder case and we were let off without any further questions.
Fortunately, the vehicles on the road were few because it was getting late into the night. By then, the ants had been crawling for three hours. It was an arduous process, but we finally reached a residential neighborhood. Xiaotao pointed at a car and shouted, “Look! It’s the car we saw last night!”
It was indeed the black SUV from last night. The license plate had been removed and I didn’t see any bullet holes on the rear end of the car at all. I touched it with my hands and realized that the owner of the car must’ve fixed it up himself.
We followed the ants all the way to the front of an apartment. It was already three in the morning by then, so we couldn’t just knock on the door and use the excuse of needing to check the water meter or anything like that. I also noticed that the door was designed to open outwards, so no matter how much force we used, there was little chance that we could kick it open. I couldn’t pick the locks either, as that would make a noise that would alert the murderer inside.
“Let’s lure him out by taking a leaf out of his own book,” I suggested.
“What do you mean?” asked Xiaotao.
I tore off the water and electricity bills from the wall, asked w.a.n.g Yuanchao for a lighter, and started to burn the bills. I asked Dali to shout out a word.
“Fire! Fire!” Dali shouted at the top of his lungs.
Not long after that, all the nearby residents ran out of their apartments in panic. Xiaotao quickly showed them her police badge and signaled them to stay quiet. The residents crowded around us in curiosity. Someone whispered, “What crimes did the person inside commit, Officer?”
“That is cla.s.sified information!” Xiaotao replied firmly.
“I knew there was something fishy about that man!” said a middle-aged woman among the crowd. “He moved here six months ago but he huddles inside all day and never says h.e.l.lo to any of the neighbors!”
“Do you know his name?” I asked.
“I do!” replied another middle-aged woman. “I’m the one who collects the water and electricity fees for this neighborhood, after all. His name is Jin Baoshan.”
The four of us were shocked. So the murderer turned out to be him! At that moment, the door opened, and Jin Baoshan’s face appeared through the cracks. He took a glance outside and immediately tried to close the door again, but w.a.n.g Yuanchao had already blocked it with his foot.
Jin Baoshan turned around and ran. He was about to jump out of the window, but if he thought that w.a.n.g Yuanchao was going to let him do that, he was sorely mistaken. w.a.n.g Yuanchao effortlessly caught up to him and shoved him down onto the sofa and held him there.
“Why did you try to escape, Jin Baoshan?” asked Xiaotao with her arms crossed. “Was it guilty conscience?”
“I know why you’re here,” he replied with fear in his voice. “I went to the mansion last night. I was just pa.s.sing by and I stopped because I wanted to see my old house. I had no other intentions at all, but when I saw you, I panicked. You even shot my car!”
“Enough with the act,” Xiaotao sneered. “Confess it now—you’re the murderer, aren’t you?”
“What murder?” Jin Baoshan replied with a blank expression. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“Where did the South American bullet ant come from?” I asked him.
He was visibly shocked. I scrutinized his micro-expressions with my Cave Vision and it was clear to me that he was indeed the murderer. Suddenly, Jin Baoshan burst out in laughter.
“Well done!” he exclaimed. “You managed to figure that out in such a short amount of time! It seems that I underestimated you.”
“Are you confessing your crimes now?” yelled Xiaotao.
“Excuse me, Officer,” he said, “but could you tell this brute to take his hand off me? This position is too stifling for me.”
Xiaotao nodded slightly at w.a.n.g Yuanchao, and he released Jin Baoshan.
Jin Baoshan sat up on the sofa and brushed the dust off his clothes. He then languidly lit a cigarette. Police officers were generally more relaxed and forgiving when the suspects were about to make a confession, so Xiaotao and w.a.n.g Yuanchao patiently waited for Jin Baoshan to get ready without interrupting or urging him.
Jin Baoshan blew out a cloud of smoke then began to relate his story. Five years ago, he worked in a small publis.h.i.+ng house in a small city. After many years of hard work, he finally saved up enough money to buy a house and moved into it with his wife. To their horror, they discovered that they could hear an unexplainable noise in the house every night. They grew too scared to keep on staying there, so they tried to rent it out. Alas, rumors that the house was haunted had spread, so no one was willing to rent it either.
And so, the house became a liability. Later on, more misfortune fell on him as his wife fell seriously ill. He had to sell the house in order to raise enough money to pay for his wife’s medical bills. Just at that crucial moment, he was approached by two men who called themselves Haunted House Busters. The uncle and nephew pair claimed that they had the ability to cleanse haunted houses of evil spirits. Jin Baoshan was overjoyed when he heard that and he hired them straight away. Unfortunately, the two men stayed in his house for a few days and declared that it was too haunted. They couldn’t do much to it, but offered to buy the house from him at a low price.
Jin Baoshan didn’t know what to do. The price the two men offered was much too low, but at the same time, he was in dire need of money. In the end, he agreed and sold them the house!
The money he got was not even enough to pay for his wife’s surgery, and in the end, his wife died. Jin Baoshan was distraught, so he went to a bar to get drunk. As luck would have it, he met the two men there. They were both very drunk and were loudly bragging about a recent purchase they made. According to them, they stayed at a house which made weird noises every night. The previous inhabitants were convinced that it was haunted, but guess what? It turned out that it was just a goldfish trapped inside the toilet bowl which would spit out bubbles every night, hence the weird noise. Once they removed the goldfish, they managed to convince the owner of the house to sell it to them at a price that made them roughly three million yuan in profits!
Jin Baoshan was furious. He wanted to beat them up right then and there. But he realized that he was just a physically frail intellectual who had no chance in a brawl. So he gritted his teeth and vowed that he would get his revenge someday.
He secretly investigated the two men’s backgrounds and found out that he was not their first victim. They had scammed many people this way and the worst part of it all was that the victims themselves were none the wiser and actually felt grateful to the two men! Jin Baoshan vowed to give them a taste of their own medicine and see them die in a haunted house!
Jin Baoshan then moved to Nanjiang City where the two men lived and found a job here. Through a loan, he bought the scariest haunted house in the area. He knew that the ghosts in the haunted house wouldn’t kill the men, so he came up with his own plan.
After a long research, he found that the safest murder weapon would be the South American bullet ants! A few years ago, when he was working in a publis.h.i.+ng house, he edited a book ent.i.tled An Encyclopedia of Deadly Animals, and that was where he was introduced to the bullet ants.
But these ants weren’t enough. He wanted the two men to die in agony and in fear. So he did more research and found a kind of hallucination drug used by prost.i.tutes and courtesans in ancient times called Midnight Potion. He even tried it himself to check its efficacy. In the end, he figured out that the best way to expose the men to the drug without leaving suspicious traces of it was to mix it with paint and apply it to the walls of the haunted mansion.
Now everything was ready, so he invited the two men to the haunted house. He even thanked the two men for helping him with the last house and pretended to be very grateful to them. The two men took the bait and unknowing walked into Jin Baoshan’s trap!
What happened after was exactly as I had deduced. While the two men were killed by the swarm of bullet ants, Jin Baoshan was sitting in his car outside the mansion, holding the queen ant in his hands as he enjoyed the sound of the two men’s screams. His heart almost burst with joy as the two men met their ends.
He did not return to the crime scene after that, fearing that he might leave incriminating evidence. He knew that those bullet ants wouldn’t live much longer anyway, and he truly believed that no one in this world would ever be able to figure out his murder scheme!
It was only when we went to question him that he was a little scared because he heard that the police had recently hired a special consultant who was able to break several major cases that befuddled the whole police force.
Since that day, he had been secretly following us. When he found out that we were going to stay in the haunted mansion for a night, he decided that it was his best opportunity to kill us there and get rid of a potential threat!
If we were found dead in the mansion, he knew that the police wouldn’t dare to investigate the case again, so he could just sit back and relax.
But to his surprise, not only did we survive the night, but we had also solved the case in just one day!