Fan County, Huzhuang, Bijiamei Bathhouse (overnight stay).
"Captain Mei, Captain Mei? Come out, I'll scrub your back for you. How can a bath be comfortable without a scrub?" Outside the only shower cubicle with a door by the bath pool, the pot-bellied Lai Xiang and Da Zhang stifled their laughter as they patted the door.
It turned out that in order to solve the case of the psychiatric ward, Mei Qian led his team to Fan County. To be closer to the crime scene, he decided to stay in Huzhuang. Huzhuang had a coal mine, and there were many hotels in the village. Mei Qian had noticed this and tactfully declined Director Niu's arrangements in the county town. However, when they looked for hotels in the village, they discovered that it was the month for ordering coal and planning, and all the hotels in the village were full. Wang Sanfa, the guardian of the psychiatric ward, kindly found a three-person room in the ward. Although it wasn't as good as a hotel, it was clean and, more importantly, there was food. But Mei Qian refused to stay there, saying it was against regulations to not stay at the crime scene!
Against regulations, was it? Eager to solve the case, was it? Staying in a bathhouse, was it? Carrying a belly full of dissatisfaction, Lai Xiang and Da Zhang entered the bathhouse only to find that their direct superior was actually afraid of bathing with others.
Inside the shower cubicle, Mei Qian had already finished bathing, but the two burly men, Lao Lai and Da Zhang, insisted on blocking the door and scrubbing his back. He couldn't understand why a bath required a large bathhouse where seven or eight, or even ten, big men would strip naked and get into the same pool without any regard for hygiene. It was unhygienic and improper! And what was this scrubbing business? Ever since he was served once by Gao Xiaofei the night before his wedding, he had sworn never to be scrubbed again.
"Captain Mei, hurry up, it's cold outside," Lai Xiang shivered and yelled inside.
"Hold on, I'm coming out!" Mei Qian ultimately couldn't hold his "bottom line" and walked out sheepishly.
"Come on, Lao Lai, I'll personally serve you!" Lai Xiang grabbed Mei Qian's arm and grinned as he led him towards the pool.
Although Mei Qian usually didn't put on airs and treated his subordinates very well, Lai Xiang was thoroughly fed up with his "girly" behavior. Today, he felt a sense of disappointment, believing his leader needed a boost of masculinity with a genuine Northeastern scrubbing.
Biting down on a towel, Mei Qian painfully yet pleasurably accepted Lai Xiang's vigorous scrubbing. In less than ten minutes, he had already figured out how to retaliate – for the next case, he would assign Lai Xiang to administrative work, requiring him to go home on time every day.
If scrubbing was merely physical assault, then lying on the small sofa listening to the snores of a dozen people at different frequencies was a magical attack.
In the early morning, Mei Qian, with dark circles under his eyes, was dragged to a breakfast stall by Da Zhang and Lai Xiang. After slurping down a bowl of mutton soup, he finally felt more alert from the savory smell.
"Da Zhang, you go to the police station later. It's best if you join the county bureau's team to take a look," Mei Qian began to arrange work after breakfast. "Lao Lai, you come with me to the psychiatric ward. We'll take another look at the scene and try to conduct some inquiries."
"Inquire at the psychiatric ward? Inquire with whom? It can't be..." Lai Xiang was a little bewildered.
"Let's try asking. Maybe someone actually saw something," Mei Qian said, without any intention of personal revenge, but genuinely considering it.
The psychiatric ward was still peaceful. Despite a murder case, except for a few medical staff, the actual residents didn't seem to care at all.
"How can they not care? At the very least, the village's safety and environmental awards and spiritual civilization awards are gone. My superiors are complaining that I didn't install surveillance cameras. What the hell? We're almost bankrupt, where would I get the spare money?" Wang Sanfa led Mei Qian to the crime scene, walking and talking. "Outsiders say this place is haunted, bah! This is the cleanest place."
"People have mouths, don't pay attention," Mei Qian said after gathering his thoughts. "Don't pay attention! I have an idea – could it be that a patient, who didn't come down for dinner and was suddenly scared by the iron egg, lost control and..."
"As soon as something happened, I immediately considered what you're saying," Wang Sanfa sighed. "This is also why I regret not borrowing money to install a camera. However, based on my experience, if a patient really acted like you said, their emotions wouldn't be immediately suppressed like a normal person's; they would erupt completely. Do you understand what I mean?"
Wang Sanfa's meaning was very simple: if a patient were the murderer, in such a stimulating environment, they couldn't possibly remain calm or even silent immediately like a normal person.
"As for the medical staff, they all came down for dinner and were under my watch the whole time. Of course, you can investigate this, you're the police." Wang Sanfa led Mei Qian to the fourth floor, refused to go any further, and went downstairs to attend to other matters.
It was clear that everyone on the entire floor had been moved after the incident. The door to the crime scene room was open. At the entrance to the staircase, a auxiliary police officer from the local police station, presumably guarding the scene, was dozing off in the hallway. Sleeping at a crime scene – if this were one of his own men, he would definitely be disciplined. However, Mei Qian didn't disturb the auxiliary police officer because, after all, it was someone else's territory, and there was no need to offend them. So, he walked into the fourth-floor corridor on his own.
This was a modest building, likely of brick and tile construction, a typical old-fashioned dormitory building. There were no balconies, no safety stairs, only one entrance and one exit. Mei Qian didn't rush into the room but paced the corridor with his hands behind his back.
Black Bean was right. Why would the victim be in Chen Fei's room? If this question couldn't be answered, the remaining problems couldn't be clarified.
"Creak—"
In the silent corridor, a sound suddenly came, as if a door was closing.
Someone in the building? Mei Qian, with his sharp senses and agile movements, drew his pistol from behind him and followed the sound.
"Creak—"
Another sound.
This time it was certain, it was opposite the room Cheng Fei had previously lived in.
At some point, the weather suddenly turned overcast, and a chilling wind blew in through the window at one end of the corridor, wild and unpredictable.
"Creak—"
The door opened, and a masked face appeared before Mei Qian.
"Ah Jiao?"
Mei Qian recognized the person in front of him. It was Wang Sanfa's daughter, Ah Jiao.
"Shh!" Ah Jiao didn't speak but placed a finger to her lips.
"What are you doing? Oh, right, this is your room, isn't it?" Mei Qian put his gun away and looked back at the auxiliary police officer dozing at the stairwell, saying helplessly, "This is a restricted area now, you can't come up here. However, are you going back to your room to get something?"
Ah Jiao didn't speak but nodded.
"Got it?" Although she was trespassing, Mei Qian had no intention of pursuing it.
Ah Jiao still didn't say anything, but nodded again.
"Let's go!" Mei Qian called out, signaling Ah Jiao to leave.
Ah Jiao poked her head out, glanced down the corridor, and then sneakily walked out.
"Did you find your things? Did you not find them?" Mei Qian looked at Ah Jiao, who was wearing a patient's gown – the kind worn by psychiatric patients that had no pockets for restraint. She was barefoot and empty-handed, which struck him as strange.
Ah Jiao seemed not to hear Mei Qian and tiptoed away.
"This girl, she doesn't even close the door." Watching Ah Jiao successfully bypass the sleeping auxiliary police officer and quickly go downstairs, Mei Qian looked at the open door of Ah Jiao's room with a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
"Creak!"
Although it was inappropriate to enter a girl's room, for some reason, Mei Qian felt he should take a look as he saw the half-open door.
This was an ordinary room, an ordinary room. He had learned from chatting with Wang Sanfa earlier that patients who lived on this floor were mostly recovering well. From the first to the fourth floor, the sicker the patient, the lower they lived. Those living on the fourth floor were basically normal people preparing for discharge, so compared to rooms on other floors, patients on the fourth floor could have more possessions, such as televisions and small decorations.
Ah Jiao's room was simply furnished but tidy. On a large desk, there was a black toolbox.
"Hey, this girl likes to play with machinery!" Mei Qian opened the toolbox and found various tools. Based on their nature, they seemed to be for repairing cars.
Closing the lid of the toolbox, Mei Qian was attracted by something else. After looking for a long time, he couldn't help but exclaim, "Good handwriting!"
After looking around the room, which had a girlish touch, Mei Qian quietly withdrew. He kindly locked the door and turned to enter the room opposite.
The body had already been removed. On the floor, there was a pile of white lines marking the victim's position.
The room was now empty. What was this iron egg doing here? Stealing things? What could it steal? Looking for something? What could it be looking for? If it were him, what in this room would be useful?
Thinking this, Mei Qian looked at the various "fingerprint" marks indicating positions around the room and studied them one by one.
There were the most by the bed. Could there be something under the bed? But the technical investigation team had checked it several times in the past few days, and there was nothing.
Mei Qian pondered for a moment and pulled the foot of the bed, intending to move it. However, he accidentally pulled off the board at the foot of the bed, and in an instant, a perfectly good bed was divided into two halves.
"How unlucky," Mei Qian frowned as he looked at the broken bed before him and helplessly tried to reassemble it.
"Huh? What's this?"
In order to reassemble the board at the foot of the bed, Mei Qian flipped the bed board over and found a large area on the back of the board covered with ink.
With a new discovery, Mei Qian began to re-examine the bed. It was an old-fashioned wooden plank bed. The bed boards were made of smooth plywood. Because the boards were incredibly smooth, they were almost like a blackboard.
Mei Qian sniffed the area covered with ink and found the smell of ink to be very strong. It seemed to have been applied recently. He roughly measured the area covered, which was about forty centimeters long and twenty centimeters wide.
"Director Niu? I'm at the psychiatric ward and I've made a new discovery. Please arrange for the technical investigation comrades to come over." Mei Qian carefully placed the wooden board down, then called to inform the technical investigation team. He then, in the same manner, found large areas covered with ink on the boards inside the wardrobe and on the back of the desk in this room.
Regardless, a new discovery had been made. These areas covered with ink must contain important content. Perhaps the iron egg came for this content.