I kept staring at Xiao Chen's eyes, then turned to look at Lin Yingxue and said, "It seems that this reason should be closely related to Director Zhao's death. Perhaps someone was dissatisfied with Director Zhao's layoffs, so he designed to kill Director Zhao during the village interview."
Lin Yingxue just nodded without saying anything, and I asked Xiao Chen: "Did you all come to work at the newspaper after Director Zhao died? Did you come within a few days of Director Zhao's death? Can you still remember the order?"
Xiao Chen obviously didn't expect me to ask this question. After thinking for a while, he said, "I was the last one to be recruited. When I came, Xiao Wei and the other two were already working. Seeing that they hadn't been completely familiar with the overall environment of the newspaper at that time, they must have been here not long ago, probably only one or two days earlier than me. If you calculate it this way, when I came, it was about eight days after Director Zhao's death, and they should have been here about six days. As for who came first between the two of them, I really don't know."
I took Xiao Chen's answer to heart. Although this answer seems useless on the surface, it may play a key role in my subsequent investigation.
At this time, Lin Yingxue said, "If Director Zhao really died of homicide rather than an accident, then do you think the murderer is already dead? After all, most of the people who went to the village with Director Zhao are dead, and now only the office director is left alive. Among the three dead, Ma Jie, Li Gang, and Zhou Jingyi, could there be a murderer?"
"This is very likely. After all, they all had time to commit the crime."
"But if that's the case, then what are we investigating? Three people are already dead, and now there's only one office director left. Can we just capture the office director and hand him over to the person who controlled the bomb, and then tell him that he's the murderer, and then calm him down and resolve the crisis in front of us first?"
I had thought about what Lin Yingxue said, but it was not feasible. I explained, "I'm afraid it won't work. First of all, the person who controlled the bomb must have a deep understanding of the case, and he should have investigated it for a while. If we just grab someone to take the blame but can't explain it, we won't be able to deceive him at all. Instead, it will anger him. Who knows, he might do something else. We should investigate first. Maybe we can really solve the case in the last minute."
Lin Yingxue sighed after hearing this and said, "But what if we can't solve the case by then? Judging from the amount of bombs we found when we searched floor by floor just now, if the person controlling the bombs really detonates all of them, I'm afraid none of us will survive."
I smiled and stroked her hair to comfort her, "Don't worry, if we still can't solve the case before one o'clock, I still have a backup plan. I will never let that person detonate this bomb!"
Hearing what I said, the worry in Lin Yingxue's eyes instantly disappeared, and was replaced by immense trust, as if she had completely put her life in my hands at this moment.
Thinking back to when Lin Yingxue and I first met, we were still working in a courier shop. She was extremely disgusted with me at that time. I didn't expect that after a few months of getting along, we had formed such a firm trust between us. Time really flies.
Now is not the time to lament. After I learned the information I needed from Xiao Chen, I said to him, "Do you want to go back to the office director now, or continue the investigation with us?"
Xiao Chen immediately said, "Of course I'll go with you! I think it's safer to be with you. With those two, I always feel like they're secretly watching me from behind, ready to kill me at any time. And if I can resolve the crisis with you, the boss might reward you afterwards."
Since Xiao Chen has expressed his position, we temporarily included him in the team led by Lin Yingxue and I. Perhaps because of the sudden betrayal of the previous two police officers, Lin Yingxue has always been worried about Xiao Chen and said that the three of us should investigate together and no one can leave alone.
In fact, this was also my original intention. Since Xiao Chen is the security guard here, he must have a very clear understanding of the internal situation of this newspaper. With him leading the way, we can get twice the result with half the effort.
I asked Xiao Chen, "What are the rooms on the fifth floor? Tell me roughly, so I can decide whether we need to search here."
Xiao Chen said without thinking: "The fifth floor is the archive room, which contains the files and information of all the employees working here. Although files are generally recorded in computers now, this newspaper is still very traditional. All the files are sealed with kraft paper and placed on the bookshelf. On the other side is the newspaper's prop room, which contains the props needed in the newspaper on a daily basis. Do you need us to check the fifth floor?"
It is more than a need, it is an extreme need! My biggest headache now is that I don’t know Director Zhao at all. If I can find Director Zhao’s files in the archives room, I think there will be many new discoveries!
"Is Director Zhao's file still in the archives room?"
Xiao Chen was stunned and said, "I'm not sure about this. I don't know if they lost it. Let's go look for it now. Maybe we can find it."
I waved my hand and said, "No, let's go this way first. Didn't you just say that you heard footsteps over here? Let's go over and see if there is really someone hiding in the prop room."
If there is someone hiding here, it goes without saying that he must be someone with ulterior motives. It is better to catch him and find out the truth in advance than to be stabbed in the back when we let our guard down. If there is no one hiding here, then Xiao Chen is lying, and then I will ask him why he lied to us about this issue.
Now that we have more people, we don't need to be tiptoe when searching. We first came to the corridor of the prop room and found that the prop room and the conference room on the second floor were very similar. Both rooms were connected to form a larger room. The only difference was that there were only two rooms in the prop room, while there were four rooms in the conference room on the second floor.
Xiao Chen told us that the room on the left has props, and the room on the right has always been empty. It has become an entertainment room for the employees here, which is filled with entertainment facilities such as chess, card, billiard tables and ping-pong tables.
We first opened the door of the room on the right. Sure enough, the room was very empty. We could see everything from the door. There was no place to hide. And in this empty room, just as Xiao Chen said, there were only some entertainment facilities and no other complicated things. We took a rough look and after making sure that there was no one inside, we gently closed the door and walked towards the room on the left.
After I opened the room on the left, the flashlights in the hands of the three of us immediately shone inside, and everything inside was instantly visible.
If I can describe the room on the right as spacious, then the room on the left can only be described as messy. There are all kinds of strange props everywhere, and none of them are neatly arranged. The whole thing looks like a scrap collection station. Fortunately, I am used to this kind of messy environment. If a person with mysophobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder came here, he would definitely not be able to stand it.
Obviously, it is very easy to hide someone in the room on the left. After the three of us walked into the room, we locked the door behind us, and then searched carefully in this garbage-like place bit by bit to see if there was anyone hiding here.
We searched carefully in all the places where people could hide, and soon we found that at the end of the front room, there seemed to be a row of people standing in an orderly manner!
When I suddenly saw this scene, I was so scared that my body trembled immediately. But when I looked carefully, I found that it was not a row of people, but a row of dummies, like the plastic models in a clothing store.
"That's used to decorate the background when we're shooting on location. It's not usually used, so it's always placed at the deepest part." Xiao Chen stared at the row of dummies in front of me and began to explain.
I turned around and gave Lin Yingxue a wink. She immediately understood what I meant and took the lead to walk towards the row of dummies, because if there was someone hiding among them, he could really get away with it if you didn't look carefully.
We followed Lin Yingxue closely and soon arrived in front of the row of dummies. I roughly counted them and found that there were more than 30 dummies in this row. Some were wearing clothes, and some were naked. They all stood in the same posture, like a row of soldiers.
We started from one end of a row of dummies, and walked past them like soldiers, trying to identify whether they were real or fake. I looked at the first five or six carefully, but then I lost my patience and walked faster, because they all had the same posture, and if there was really a person mixed in, it would be easy to identify.
The light from our three flashlights flashed forward as we moved, but when we reached the middle, we all stopped at the same time, took a few steps back at the same time, and pointed our flashlights at one of the dummies.
Because we only realized after we walked over that this dummy seemed a little different from the other dummies, but when we looked back, we were shocked to find that this was not a dummy, but a real person!
He was a man with his back to us, but his head had turned 180 degrees, his face covered in blood and his expression ferocious, he was staring at us motionlessly!