Chapter 302: Chapter 296: The Gold Bar is Found_1
Zhou Ning nodded his head, circling the time of the Wang Family parents’ deaths on the whiteboard, as well as the time Ho Dongmei discovered she was pregnant. These two events were nearly simultaneous, though there was indeed a sequence to them.
"His parents died in an accident, leaving just this one son. There was no need for a last will and testament. How could he possibly be unaware of the situation at home? After his parents’ demise, before he even had a chance to do anything, the news of Ho Dongmei’s pregnancy came to light. Could he really not harbor any resentment?
We have looked at Wang Hongzhan’s medical records; he had lost his ability to procreate by 2008. He did not tell his family, but upon learning that his wife of many years had given him such a surprise, what would he do?"
Xu Dayuan, leaning on the back of his chair, stood up decidedly, his expression firmer and no longer impatient as before.
"It wouldn’t be hard for Wang Hongzhan to find out who was involved with Ho Dongmei. Perhaps Ho Dongmei didn’t know about the Wang Family’s past, but Wang Hongwen certainly did. Their names differ by just one character. With Wang Hongzhan’s intelligence, making the connection to the past wouldn’t be hard.
With new grudges and old ones accumulating, he wouldn’t let Wang Hongwen off the hook. Of course, the involvement of Wang Chaozu in the house construction back then is also not hard to investigate. If Wang Hongzhan wanted to set a trap for Wang Hongwen, it would be too easy. Hand the passcodes and keys to Ho Dongmei, even let her see the gold bars.
Ho Dongmei and Wang Hongwen spent their days together, and with Wang Hongwen keen on prying, he would eventually reveal something. With the village relocation imminent, it would be easy for Wang Hongzhan to persuade Ho Dongmei to return to Jiaotuan Village to live with her child. However, there was one major variable in this plan."
At this point, Xu Dayuan paused, and Zhou Ning looked towards him.
"Are you talking about the deaths of Ho Dongmei and Wang Jiahan?"
Xu Dayuan nodded.
"Greed, this is the most core motive in the case. As for the process, I’m not going to dwell on it anymore. Initially, I was fixated on how Wang Hongzhan could travel between two places quickly without leaving behind any evidence.
But now, it seems he could have arranged everything in advance. However, we don’t know who made the bloodstains on the partition. If it was Wang Hongzhan, then this person is terrifying. Could he have anticipated Ho Dongmei’s murder?"
A moment of silence filled the room; the QQ icon on the laptop began to flash incessantly, signaling a video call invitation.
Mr. Zhao rushed forward, clicked the connection button, and at that moment, Zhang Chunbo walked in. Seeing that the call was connected, he also moved closer. Xu Dayuan glanced at Zhang Chunbo disdainfully, not bothering to exchange words with him.
Mr. Zhao greeted the person on the other side, also introducing Xu Dayuan and Zhou Ning. The few people on the screen waved back, one of them dressed in an inspection uniform with an advanced camera mounted on his head. This person was a forensic investigator surnamed Huang, and his equipment caught Mr. Zhao’s eye.
"Buddy, you’re really prepared with all this equipment to help us inspect the scene. That head-mounted camera is definitely foreign, much appreciated!"
The man waved his hand, speaking with not very fluent Mandarin, introducing the gear.
"Got it from Pumen, it’s my personal equipment; I didn’t expect I could use it this time. Later, when I turn on the video, I’ll use this as my perspective. You can talk to me at any time. Should we start with the office or the car?"
Mr. Zhao looked towards Zhou Ning, thinking it was better to rely on Zhou Ning’s judgment for this matter.
"Let’s start with the office, but have someone guard the garage below and ask his company’s other employees to stay away for a while. Please make sure to inquire about Wang Hongzhan’s access, where he could store things. We don’t want anything overlooked, even the ceiling of the restroom needs to be checked."
Mr. Huang’s eyes widened with interest.
"So, this suspect is very intelligent, isn’t he?"
Zhou Ning nodded.
"Currently, we don’t have any solid evidence, but in this case, everything is connected to him. We want to find the gold, of course, better if there are residues on it, blood, fingerprints, etc., so I ask Mr. Huang to examine carefully."
Mr. Huang nodded vigorously.
"Rest assured Director Zhou, Mr. Zhao. Just keep an eye on the camera; I’ll start inspecting the scene now."
After a round of directives, the team began to venture inside the company, being taken to a room—a separate office with a huge floor-to-ceiling window, filled with green plants, and a U-shaped desk hosting three monitors in the middle, one of which had an articulated arm below it.
A manager-like person kept on describing; this office was manager Wang Hongzhan’s working area. Under the observation of that manager, each drawer was opened one by one and Mr. Huang inspected them thoroughly.
There were many personal items, but no gold bars. The room’s cupboards were also searched one by one; even inside shoes were not spared, but still, there were no results, which made Mr. Huang a bit anxious.
Mr. Zhao approached the microphone to calm Mr. Huang.
"Buddy, no rush. This guy is extremely smart; he wouldn’t hide something so simply. Stand by the floor-to-ceiling window, and let me have a look at the entire room, okay?"
Mr. Huang nodded, found a chair, put some newspapers on it for padding, and positioned himself in a corner, slowly moving his head. On the third turn, Mr. Zhao pointed at a spot above the cupboard and said:
"Buddy, dim the lights in the room a bit and take a look at the ceiling above the second cabinet on the right to see if you can find any fingerprints there?"
Mr. Huang adjusted the blinds, which dimmed the light in the room. He moved a chair to the position Mr. Zhao mentioned and lifted a black light to inspect. As expected, on top of the cupboard, two ceiling tiles showed a plethora of fingerprints.
"Wow, there really are fingerprints here, let me take a look by opening it up."
As the ceiling was dismantled, Mr. Huang looked into it. A bag appeared at the cross junction, and Mr. Huang quickly took it down, but its weight was light and the bag was very thin.
"Buddy, how heavy are the gold bars?"
"If he didn’t dispose of a single bar, then there should be at least twenty kilograms. This thickness doesn’t look right, can you open it up and see what it is?"
Mr. Huang hopped off the chair and opened the bag, which contained items wrapped in newspaper. When unwrapped, they found two picture frames; one was a photo of Wang Hongzhan and Ho Dongmei on a trip, and the other was a hundred-day snapshot of Wang Jiahan, with all three smiling radiantly.
"I say, is this guy deliberately mocking the police?"
Mr. Zhao turned to see Zhou Ning shaking his head.
"The photos capture their happiest moments. His wife of many years being unfaithful, his child not related by blood—it must be agonizing to look at, yet he can’t bear to throw them away. It’s not strange for these to be left here. Check the ceilings of the utility room and the bathroom, I have a feeling Wang Hongzhan didn’t hide anything in the office area."
Mr. Huang, on the video side, obviously heard what Zhou Ning said, and without questioning, started checking the bathroom, pantry, storage room, and conference room with Mr. Zhao—every place where they could access—and indeed, as Zhou Ning had said, they found nothing.
Mr. Zhao wasn’t the least bit worried, still comforting Mr. Huang.
"Not finding anything is a sort of gain too; at least we’ve ruled out this area. Buddy, let’s check the garage next. You have Wang Hongzhan’s car keys, right?"
The camera shook, clearly Mr. Huang was nodding.
"When he was taken away yesterday, it was inside his car. The keys were left at our station. Just wait, I’ll go down now."
The video cut out for a while and then reconnected. All the car doors and the trunk were opened. The car interior was very tidy. When illuminated with a UV lamp, fingerprints showed only around the driver’s seat area. The level of cleanliness pressed Mr. Zhao’s lips together.
"Does this guy have a fetish for cleanliness? We didn’t find anything particularly odd in the office, did we? Or could it be that his car has just been thoroughly cleaned? What a coincidence, right?"
Mr. Huang clicked his tongue.
"Here, we usually enter the rainy season starting in April. However, it’s strange this year—since March 6th right up until today, this bout of rain hasn’t stopped. In this kind of weather, car washes don’t do any business. Even if one wanted to clean the interior, they’d rarely choose this time. Otherwise, after cleaning, it’d be easy for the car to start smelling musty."
No sooner had he said this, Mr. Huang had people start dismantling the seats. Shortly, the car’s seats and the trunk’s partition boards were all removed, and all hidden parts turned out empty—no trace of the gold bars.
At this point, Mr. Zhao was unsettled.
"Zhou Xiaozhou, could it be that our approach is wrong?"
Zhou Ning shook his head and closed his eyes to calm down.
In the residential houses and old homes in the city of Hai’an, Wang Hongzhan couldn’t hide them; both places bore traces of Ho Dongmei’s life. He wanted to avoid them, so the gold bars must be hidden in Shen City, and surely with their value, they wouldn’t be hidden carelessly.
At Wang Hongzhan’s home, according to Xu Dayuan, it had been searched with a metal detector inch by inch, almost going as far as to lift the tiles. They had toiled all night and ended up with nothing. And now, the car had been dismantled to this state.
As Zhou Ning stared at the car, suddenly, from a book that Professor Li Chengbin had given him flashed through his mind—an example where a corpse transported from abroad to Mi Country was found to have been hollowed and stuffed with drugs. Yet, when it was time for release, the drug-detection dogs still kept barking incessantly, prompting the police to inspect the vehicles.
They discovered the dogs focused on the bottom of the car. After taking the car apart, they found a large amount of drugs in a hidden compartment between the skid plates under the chassis. Zhou Ning stood up abruptly, eyes glued to the screen.
"Do you have a jack? Lift the car up and take a look at the chassis guard. Check if it’s original and if there are any welding points."
"What?"
Obviously puzzled by Zhou Ning’s words, Mr. Huang nevertheless quickly found some men. There was no shortage of equipment in the garage, and while the jack lifted up the right side of the rear car, Mr. Huang laid down a piece of cardboard on the ground and lay upon it.
Before he had even looked closely, Mr. Zhao was already yelling at the screen:
"Don’t rush to move anything, Mr. Huang, look at the position above your head at eleven o’clock, clean the mud off it. Doesn’t it look like a welding spot?"
Mr. Huang did as he was told, grabbing a cloth and wiping it down, but as debris flew and dust filled the air, Mr. Huang coughed over the earpiece. Mr. Zhao didn’t dare rush him, bouncing anxiously instead.
"Are you alright, Mr. Huang? If not, let’s have someone else take a look. Go wash your face!"
Mr. Huang swore a national treasure of a curse and spat the dirt from his mouth. Aligning the camera on the spot he had just wiped, a rectangular series of continuous weld points was glaringly obvious, about the size of a magazine. Mr. Huang was also delighted by the find.
"I’ll tell you, buddy, if you want to rush me, just say it outright. Looks like we’ve found it. That’s quite a deep hiding spot. Director Zhou, I suspect you’ve been peeking at where the gold bars are hidden. Come on, confess!"
