PD -Chapter 26 An Old Murder Case

Not long after we arrived, the police cars on the bridge left, and the wrecked vehicle was hauled away by a tow truck. Before long, traffic was flowing normally again.

Liu Xiaopeng and I got back into our car and drove another two kilometers before settling into a small inn in the town.

While eating instant noodles in our room, we opened our laptops and searched for information about Headless Bridge and the fatal accidents that had occurred there over the years.

When we checked in, we had already questioned the innkeeper extensively. According to her, the first accident on Headless Bridge seemed to have happened ten years ago, shortly after she had married into the town.

Since this was a small and remote place, there wasn’t much information available online.

Even so, I managed to dig up reports of traffic accidents from the past five years through various news articles and sensationalist websites.

And I noticed a pattern.

Most of the victims were single men, and many of them were travelers merely passing through the area.

I continued digging through online records while sending Liu Xiaopeng downstairs to chat with the innkeeper and local residents in hopes of uncovering something more useful.

Half an hour later, Liu Xiaopeng finally returned.

He was carrying several large shopping bags, looking as though he had just gone on a major shopping spree.

Closing my laptop, I asked whether he had discovered anything new.

Liu Xiaopeng explained that he had wandered through the supermarket next door and bought all those things purely as an excuse to strike up a conversation with the owner.

The owner was a straightforward old man. Since he spent his days running the store alone, he was probably starved for conversation. Liu Xiaopeng chatted with him while browsing, and the old man seemed to enjoy it.

The supermarket owner was a retired local police officer surnamed Liu. Everyone in town simply called him Old Liu.

After retirement, with little else to do and his son working out of town with his family, Old Liu had used his savings and pension to open the supermarket.

Claiming to be a writer gathering material in the countryside, Liu Xiaopeng first asked about the town in general before steering the conversation toward the bridge.

He mentioned the accident we had witnessed that morning and said he had heard various rumors about Headless Bridge.

Whether they were true or not, he said, they would make excellent material for a novel.

“That bridge…” Old Liu sighed. “It really is strange. Accidents were already happening there long before I retired.”

“Do you remember when the first accident occurred?” Liu Xiaopeng asked.

Old Liu sat behind the cashier’s counter, thinking for quite a while.

“That was a long time ago. About ten years ago, I think, during the summer. It was the first major accident on that bridge. A cargo truck went straight off the bridge and overturned into the river.”

“I was the responding officer at the time. I spent half my life as a policeman and saw my fair share of traffic fatalities, but I’d never seen a body like that one.”

“What was it like?” Liu Xiaopeng immediately asked.

A trace of fear flickered across Old Liu’s eyes.

Even after all these years, the image seemed permanently burned into his memory.

“The man was covered in blood. The entire cab was drenched in it. There was a huge hole in his chest—his heart looked like it had been torn out.”

As he spoke, Old Liu grimaced as if the bloody corpse were right in front of him.

“Later, the medical examiner concluded that after the truck fell into the river, the driver bled heavily and attracted wild animals from nearby. They supposedly attacked him and caused those injuries. But what kind of animal around here could do something like that? Besides, the cab was crushed flat. A person couldn’t even get inside, so how could a wild animal get in?”

“What happened after that?” Liu Xiaopeng asked.

“The possibility of murder was ruled out, and the case was treated as an accident. From then on, similar incidents seemed to happen every year. The victims all died in roughly the same way. A few years ago, the Forestry Bureau and local police conducted a thorough investigation. They searched the surrounding forests and mountains but found no dangerous animals.”

Old Liu lit a cigarette before continuing.

“Later, people started saying they’d seen a woman in red hitchhiking on the bridge. They connected all these deaths to that red-clothed ghost. A lot of drivers became afraid to cross the bridge at night.”

Liu Xiaopeng asked, “Do you know where this ghost in red supposedly came from?”

Old Liu let out another sigh, as though recalling a deeply regrettable past.

“If the woman in red is real, then she’s probably Xiao Chen.”

The Xiao Chen Old Liu spoke of had been an ordinary woman from a village not far from town more than a decade ago.

One summer night about eleven years earlier, Xiao Chen dressed herself in red and jumped from the bridge.

Her head struck the rocks in the riverbed, killing her instantly.

But before taking her own life, she had murdered both of her children—a son and a daughter—in her home.

Old Liu would never forget that tragic summer night.

While on duty, he first received reports that someone had jumped into the river. By the time he arrived beneath the bridge, it was already too late.

After helping recover the body and confirming the woman’s identity, he immediately rushed to Xiao Chen’s home.

What he found there was even more heartbreaking.

Xiao Chen was a “left-behind wife.” Her husband worked away from home while she remained in the village raising their son and daughter.

The two children were only five or six years old.

They were adorable youngsters, and everyone in the village envied the family for having both a son and a daughter.

But when Old Liu forced open the gate and entered the courtyard, he saw a large wooden tub standing in the center.

Floating inside were two tiny bodies.

They were Xiao Chen’s children.

The police investigation later determined that both children had been forcibly drowned in the tub.

And based on all the evidence at the scene, the person responsible was their own mother, Xiao Chen.

“Even a vicious tiger won’t eat its cubs,” Liu Xiaopeng said with a sigh. “Why would she kill her own children and then commit suicide?”

Old Liu released a long, weary breath.

“According to the neighbors, a week before her death, Xiao Chen took the children to visit her husband in the city. But when she got there, she discovered that he’d been having an affair with another woman. He drove her and the children away.”

“After that, her mental state deteriorated. Neighbors often saw her talking to herself, crying and causing scenes at home. She even stopped sending the children to kindergarten in town. No one expected things to end this way.”

Old Liu shook his head sadly.

“What a waste… Those two children were such good kids.”

“What about her husband?” Liu Xiaopeng asked. “Does he still live around here?”

“After the tragedy, he stayed away for a long time. Then, three years later, he came back to sell the family’s homestead. While driving across Headless Bridge at night, he also plunged into the river and died.”

From that point onward, the rumors of a ghostly woman hitchhiker claiming lives spread even further.

Those who knew the details of the old case began linking the incidents to Xiao Chen’s suicide years earlier, speculating that the woman in red haunting the bridge was none other than Xiao Chen herself.