FBH Chapter 26

Wu Zhi drove Wu Shuqi and a video investigator to the entrance of the Xinxin Decoration Material Store, where the roller shutter door was tightly closed. A phone number was printed on the store’s signboard, and the contact person was Mr. Xu. Wu Shuqi dialed the number, and a computer voice prompt said: “Hello, the user you dialed has been turned off…”

In fact, Wu Shuqi and her colleagues had already noticed that the store was closed when they came to this section of the road to find surveillance cameras this morning. However, since they didn’t know that Xiong Zhiyang had been here at the time, they naturally didn’t take it to heart.

There was a hardware store next to the store. Wu Shuqi walked in and saw a middle-aged woman sitting on a swivel chair behind the glass counter, looking down at her phone and scrolling through videos. Her puffy curly hair covered half of her cheek.

The woman didn’t dare to be negligent, put away her phone, stood up and said, “I don’t know.”

Wu Shuqi frowned and asked, “Who were the people who beat him? Why did those people beat him?”

An ominous premonition immediately Flow out in Wu Shuqi’s heart. She turned her head and instructed Wu Zhi, “Call the local police station and ask if anyone named Xu Tao has reported the case.”

Wu Zhi responded and walked out.

Wu Shuqi retrieved the video screenshots of Xiong Zhiyang and Zhu Houshi from her phone’s album and handed them to the woman, saying, “These two people appeared at the entrance of Xu Tao’s store on the evening of September 13th. Have you seen them?”

The woman looked at them carefully and nodded, “I have no impression. I only remember that I went out of the house that day and saw them arguing about something.”

“Did you see any witnesses near them that day?”

“No.”

“Where is Xu Tao’s hometown?”

“Kunming.”

Wu Shuqi thought that Kunming was thousands of miles away from here. If Xu Tao really ran back to his hometown, it would be troublesome, which would affect the police’s investigation of the Zhu Houshi case.

At this time, Wu Zhi came back and said to Wu Shuqi, “I asked, the police station did not receive Xu Tao’s report, nor did they receive a report that Xu Tao was illegally harmed.”

“I know.”

“Is it far from here?”

“Not far, a ten-minute walk.”

“Then please take us there.”

“Okay, no problem.”

The woman greeted the owner of the grocery store next door, asking him to help take care of the store, and then led Wu Shuqi, Wu Zhi and others towards their destination.

On the third floor, the woman pointed to a dark red wooden door and said to Wu Shuqi, “Xu Tao lives here.”

Wu Shuqi raised her hand and knocked on the door, and shouted, “Is anyone home?” But after knocking for a long time, no one opened the door.

“We are the police.” After Wu Zhi explained their identities, he pointed to the house where Xu Tao lived and asked the woman, “From last night to today, have you seen anyone enter or leave this house?”

“I don’t know.” The man said coldly, and then retracted his head, and then slammed the door shut.

Wu Zhi said unhappily, “Does this woman have a feud with the police? Did she lose her love or what?”

Wu Shuqi also shook her head with dissatisfaction.

Wu Zhi and Wu Shuqi both thought: Xu Tao was beaten, his phone was turned off, and the police station did not receive his report. Could it be that he was forcibly taken away and imprisoned by the assailants? Could this be what Xiong Zhiyang ordered someone to do? If it was done by Xiong Zhiyang, could it be related to Xu Tao’s suspicion that he poisoned Zhu Houshi? Of course, the premise is that Xiong Zhiyang did poison Zhu Houshi.

Wu Shuqi said, “When we came, I saw surveillance cameras installed at the entrance of the district and next to the main road of the district; let’s go to the property management to retrieve the surveillance video now to see if Xu Tao was taken away.”

Arriving at the property management office, Wu Shuqi told the property manager the purpose of their visit. The property manager cooperated very well and immediately retrieved the surveillance video on the computer. Wu Shuqi called the woman who brought her and her colleagues over to the computer to identify Xu Tao.

The woman sat next to the property manager, staring intently at the gray and black video that had been sped up.

Suddenly, four men appeared in the surveillance footage. A short, fat man was being held from behind and from both sides by three men of similar height. The woman pointed to the fat man who was being held and said, “He is Xu Tao!”

Wu Shuqi saw that Xu Tao was wearing a black short-sleeved T-shirt, with his head lowered, looking scared and uneasy. She looked at the timestamp on the surveillance video, 23:27.

The three men held Xu Tao and walked towards the outside of the residential district, and then got into a black car parked in the shade of a tree on the roadside.

After Xu Tao was forced into the car, the car immediately drove away and quickly disappeared from the surveillance video.

Wu Shuqi decided to follow the clues to track down the vehicle involved, lock down the suspect’s foothold, formulate a detailed arrest plan, capture the suspects in one fell swoop, and rescue the hostage Xu Tao.

Unfortunately, because this residential district is not connected to the Skynet system, the police cannot currently know the exact location of the suspects and the hostages.

More than ten minutes later, the roller shutter door of the shop where Xu Tao was being held was pulled open, and one of the suspects went out, walked around for almost three minutes, and then sneaked into a unit building. The other two suspects remained in the shop.

The police continued to check the surveillance video.

It is not difficult to guess that the three suspects were taking turns guarding the hostage.

It can be seen from the video that the shop where the hostage was being held is located at the back of the district, and its location is the most remote in the district. The roller shutter doors of the shops next to it are tightly closed, which seems very deserted.

Wu Shuqi thought to herself, if the police break into the house to arrest people, the suspects may become desperate and harm the hostages, and the consequences would be disastrous. It is better to stay put for the time being and wait for the suspects to come out of the unit building, then control the suspects, and then find a way to make them cooperate with the police’s arrest work to pull open the roller shutter door, so that the police can enter the house to control the suspects and rescue the hostages.

Therefore, she told her thoughts to the team members, and the team members all expressed their approval.

At a little after five o’clock in the morning, two suspects suddenly came out of the unit building. Both of them were smoking cigarettes, looking around as they walked, seeming a little vigilant.

Wu Shuqi and her colleagues tacitly got out of the car, quietly and slowly approached the suspects, forming an encirclement with the personnel deployed on the ground.

The arrest work went very smoothly. Before the two suspects could react, they were knocked to the ground by the police.

Wu Shuqi severely criticized the suspects for the unacceptable and illegal act of violent debt collection, and said that the correct way was to solve the problem through legal channels. Then Wu Shuqi patiently did ideological work on the suspects, asking them to cooperate with the police work so that the police could control the other suspect and rescue the hostages. The suspects said they would cooperate unconditionally.

After the roller shutter door was opened from the outside, the police rushed in and controlled the suspect who had not yet reacted.

The three suspects and the victim Xu Tao were taken to the Public Security Bureau.

After careful questioning of Xu Tao by the police, it was confirmed that Yuan Zhouze was not lying. Xu Tao was indeed imprisoned because he owed someone money.

Regarding why Xiong Zhiyang appeared outside Xu Tao’s decoration material store on the evening of September 13, Xu Tao explained to the police that Xiong Zhiyang was passing by his door, and he saw Xiong Zhiyang and called him into the house for tea. As for what Xiong Zhiyang and Zhu Houshi said and what happened between the two, Xu Tao said that he was completely unaware. He claimed that he was in the bathroom at the time, and he did not see Zhu Houshi, nor did he know Zhu Houshi. He suggested that the police come to his store to retrieve the surveillance video for investigation.

Wu Shuqi, Wu Zhi and others went to Xu Tao’s store, retrieved the surveillance video from the computer, and found that the video had no sound at all, and only showed that Xiong Zhiyang and Zhu Houshi were arguing fiercely about something; as for the police’s suspicion that Zhu Houshi kindly gave Xiong Zhiyang bread to eat, and Xiong Zhiyang took advantage of his unpreparedness to poison the bread, there was no such scene in the video.

One by one, the suspects were ruled out. Who is the murderer who poisoned Zhu Houshi? And how did the murderer commit the crime?

The investigating police were puzzled and could not help but exclaim “It’s really a ghost!”

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