SFTD -Chapter 85 Don’t Insult Beasts (Part 6)

Zhou Hai was also a little surprised. He picked up the package and looked at it.

“Hmm. It’s tetramine (rat poison). Although it says ‘smell and die,’ the main ingredients are roughly the same. We’ll need to take this back for toxicology testing and compare it with the toxins found in the two victims to see if it’s the same type.”

Captain Huang was now somewhat confused. What did finding tetramine in the victim’s home mean?

Did the killer know this house very well?

Or did the killer frequently move in the same circles as the victims, making it possible to obtain such a “hard-to-get” substance?

Zhou Hai scanned the entire dark room and walked toward the children’s bedroom.

A torn cotton blanket and a table lay scattered to one side. An empty large water bucket had toppled beside the bed, and faint marks on it were where Xu Biao had collected fingerprints.

On the iron bunk bed, the straw mat had been lifted. On the upper bunk, there was a white rabbit candy, now melted and stuck to the metal frame.

He walked to the window. It was wide open. Among all the windows in the house, only this one’s glass had not shattered. If there had been an explosion, the boy would have been in even greater danger, since he had been sitting just outside on a metal storage rack.

Near the bedside cabinet, there were scattered bed sheets and knitted fabrics. Some had been torn into pieces, turned into strips and tied into knots.

Thinking of the girl’s fractured radius and ulna, these strips must have been torn apart in a desperate attempt to survive.

Such self-rescue measures were truly commendable—blocking the door with a wet blanket, propping it with a table, tearing sheets into ropes. Every step had been done correctly. It seemed she had received relevant training at school.

He picked up a schoolbag from the ground—though “schoolbag” was a generous term; it was actually just a cloth shopping bag, its corners heavily worn.

He took out the exercise books inside and looked at the name “Zhang Chunyan,” written stroke by stroke.

The sky gradually darkened. It was November, and daylight was getting shorter.

Zhou Hai turned on a flashlight with one hand and flipped through the books with the other. The math homework was done carefully, but there were many mistakes—seven or eight red crosses on a single page.

He took out another book. The Chinese homework was fairly decent, with no major errors.

Then he opened the English exercise book. It was truly so bad it was almost unbearable to look at. The teacher had stopped marking crosses and instead used wavy lines, large question marks, and scattered red dots, showing both confusion and urgency.

Only Chinese was barely passing. So how did she know so much about fire safety knowledge?

Zhou Hai closed the notebooks, his doubts deepening, and walked out of the room. Captain Huang was speaking with an officer guarding the scene.

Seeing Zhou Hai come out, he took the forensic kit from him.

“Done?”

Zhou Hai nodded. Captain Huang tilted his chin.

“Come on, report the results from the neighbors you just interviewed.”

The young officer quickly straightened up.

“Good day, Dr. Zhou!”

“I just asked residents from the third floor and four households on the first floor. They said Zhao Baogui was a loner—no relatives, no friends, lived shut-in, never interacted with others.”

“Oh? What about Xu Caiyu? Did she have any close contacts?”

The officer shook his head, thinking for a moment before replying: “Only an elderly woman in the first-floor east unit knew something about Xu Caiyu. When Xu Caiyu moved to Dongnan City with her child, they rented a side room in the old lady’s house. The old lady often helped them out. She also said Zhao Baogui took a liking to Xu Caiyu around that time. She even tried to discourage it, but Xu Caiyu was really struggling financially back then, so she didn’t press the matter further.”

“A side room?”

Zhou Hai recalled the area downstairs—he hadn’t seen any low-rise auxiliary buildings.

“Those side rooms had no property registration. They used to be built in the sandy area north of the building. Last year, they were demolished for new construction, and compensation was already distributed.”

Both of them suddenly understood.

The officer continued:

“As for dinner, their family usually ate around eight in the evening.”

Captain Huang waved his hand. Zhou Hai glanced back at the scene. Any clues they found seemed to be blocked off again, and he was starting to feel uncertain.

No outsiders at the scene?

Could it be family members who administered the poison?

But the tetramine was found in the couple’s bedroom—could they have taken poison and then set the fire themselves?

That didn’t make sense. Self-immolation can happen in many ways, but people would not arrange themselves as if they were doing chores. Even in death, would they still want to work?

That leaves only the two children.

The older girl was only eleven or twelve. Even protecting her younger brother would already be extremely difficult—could she have started the fire?

The younger boy made even less sense.

The more he thought, the more confused he became.

Zhou Hai followed Captain Huang downstairs. When they reached the fourth floor, the lock of the west unit door clicked open, and a small head peeked out—a seven- or eight-year-old boy with a gap-toothed smile.

Seeing the police uniforms, he stuck out his tongue but wasn’t afraid at all. Instead, his eyes were full of admiration.

“Wow! Police uncles!”

“Are you here to catch the bad guys?”

Captain Huang immediately broke into a warm smile. “Haha, yes—we’re here to catch bad guys!”

The boy nodded vigorously.

“Good! Catch the bad old man upstairs. He always bullies Sister Yan. He beats her at night, and even when she begs for mercy, he still hits her. Arrest him and beat him up properly!”

After speaking, he was about to pull his head back inside. Before he could close the door, Zhou Hai reached out and stopped it.

“Can you tell uncle how that bad old man hits people?”

The boy frowned. “You’re not a police officer. I won’t tell you.”

Zhou Hai stepped aside and pulled Captain Huang forward by the sleeve.

“He is a police officer. We’re colleagues. Do you know what colleagues are?”

The boy suddenly understood.

“Oh! So you’re colleagues! Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

He looked a little disdainful, like a tiny adult, which left Zhou Hai speechless as he opened the door.

“Are you home alone?”

The boy shook his head.

“My mom is sick. She’s sleeping in the room. I’m taking care of her.”

Captain Huang was deeply moved. People always say poor kids grow up early—clearly true. Look at this child; his own son still needed to be chased to eat. He should really set some rules tonight.

“What a good kid!”

The boy seemed pleased at the praise. He let go of the door handle and ran into the room.

Zhou Hai and Captain Huang followed him inside. A woman inside called out: “Xiao Lele, close the door and come in! Who are you talking to?”

Both of them tensed.

Apparently, she still didn’t know she had let two police officers into the house.

Captain Huang peeked into the room following the voice and saw a woman with a plaster cast on her left leg, struggling to climb down from the bed.

Her crutch had already fallen to the floor. Captain Huang quickly walked over, picked it up, and handed it back to her while showing his police badge.

“Don’t worry. We’re from the Dongcheng Criminal Investigation Brigade. We’re here to investigate the cause of the fire upstairs.”