Chapter 67 Photos
The Donghua Ice Factory has been closed for a long time, but its underground ice storage is very clean, as if someone cleans it regularly.
“You stay up there and guard the entrance to prevent anyone from coming and locking both of us in. I’ve already notified the nearby colleagues, and they should be here soon.”
Li Xue took her cell phone and looked around the ice storage, and soon she made a discovery.
"what is that?"
The light from the mobile phone shone towards the corner of the wall, and Li Xue saw an incense burner. Next to the incense burner was a color photo of Meng Shi.
"Photos of the deceased? Why are there photos of the deceased here? Is someone here to commemorate her?"
The underground ice storage is not large, and the end can be seen at a glance. There are no obstacles blocking the view, so Li Xue gradually became bolder.
She walked to the corner and did not touch the photo on the ground. Instead, she recorded everything with the law enforcement recorder.
"Did you find anything?"
"I found a photo of Meng Shi. Someone came here specifically to pay tribute to her. Judging from the ashes in the incense burner, that person has been here many times."
"Is that all?" Han Fei attached great importance to the clues provided by Meng Shi, but judging from Li Xue's feedback, these clues : "How about you come up? I'll go down and take a look?"
After pulling Li Xue up, Han Fei jumped into the ice storage. Almost the moment he entered the ice storage, he had an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Closed, cold, and boundless darkness continued to surge.
Han Fei's hands and feet felt numb, and he recalled what happened to him at Meng Shi's house. When the old lady lost control, the feeling that Room 1031 gave Han Fei was exactly the same as this underground ice storage.
"So that kind of coldness is what an old man feels before he dies!"
He turned on the lighting function of his mobile phone and walked to the corner, looking at the incense burner and Meng Shi's photo on the ground.
Meng Shi in the photo looks very young, with her hair not yet gray. The people who came here specifically to pay tribute to Meng Shi seemed to only have this photo in their hands.
"The Donghua Ice Factory should be the first scene of the deceased's death. The people who came here to pay tribute to her must know the inside story and have a close relationship with Meng Shi. They are most likely Meng Shi's three children."
"The boss has set up an altar in his own home, so there is no need to go here specially. Apart from him, there are only Meng Changxi and Meng Changan left."
The cold wind blew across Han Fei's face. Although the ice storage of the Donghua Ice Factory was designed to be underground, it had excellent ventilation. This made Han Fei puzzled: "Does the ice storage also need to maintain air circulation?"
He followed the direction of the wind and came to the corner of the ice storage. There was a gap in the drain hole that seemed to be connected to the floor.
Grasping the gap, Han Fei exerted force and found that the drain was just a decoration and there was a passage underneath.
"Can we go further down?"
Looking at the dark underground passage, Han Fei hesitated.
The air became humid and a faint stench filled the passage.
"The drainage hole of the ice storage has been hollowed out and is connected to the city's underground drainage system. Should we go down and take a look?"
"Let's wait for support. Xinhu used to use underground pipe network drainage facilities, but later on, with the city's upgrading and expansion, all of them were changed to underground corridor drainage. It's interconnected and complicated, and it's easy to get lost without a map." Li Xue used to be an officer in the criminal police team. She is experienced and never hesitates when she should rush forward, and rarely acts rashly when she should think calmly.
After waiting for more than ten minutes, two of Li Xue's former colleagues arrived. Unlike ordinary police officers, they were members of the criminal investigation team.
One of the detectives applied for temporary access to the city's sewage system and pulled up a map, and they followed the passage into the underground .
There was a faint strange smell in the air, and the underground artificial river made a rushing sound. They walked in the aisle for maintenance personnel, and above their heads were the water, gas, communication and other pipelines laid more than ten years ago.
"If the Donghua Ice Factory was the first crime scene, then the murderer moved the body through the sewer after killing the person?"
Li Xue was thinking about the case, Han Fei was thinking about every word Meng Shi had said before, and the other police officers around were studying the map.
"Sister Li, the area we are in doesn't appear on the map." A police officer zoomed in on the electronic map and said, "There is a man-made passage under the ice storage."
The map of the city's sewage system did not match the site, so Li Xue and her team entered an area that was not shown on the map, where a hidden "room" had been dug out.
Entering through the cave entrance, Li Xue and Han Fei couldn't believe the scene in front of them.
This dark cave is filled with various drawings, as well as a thick stack of information about the refrigerator body case and human body puzzles.
Some of the information has turned yellow, and you can tell that the time span is extremely long. It should have been collected bit by bit over several years.
"Don't move around! Everyone, put on your gloves!"
What surprised the police even more was what happened next. On the innermost wall of the cave were some cropped photos and pictures involving more than a dozen people. Most of the people in the pictures had a circle drawn on them with a black pen.
There were only three exceptions. The first one was He Shouye, who had a cross drawn on his photo with a red pen.
The second one is Meng Changan. His photo is circled in red and is full of holes made by the pen tip. It can be seen that the owner of the cave seems to hate Meng Changan to the core.
What everyone was most surprised about was actually the third photo. That photo was very new and should have been taken recently, and the person in the photo was Han Fei.
Someone drew a question mark on Han Fei's photo with a black pen.
"The photos circled in black should represent the people who have been ruled out as suspects. The crosses drawn in red represent the people who have been killed. The people circled in red may represent the people to be killed next. As for the question mark at the end..."
All the police looked at Han Fei, who also felt strange: "I felt like I was being followed some time ago. Could it be that the person following me was this guy who lives in the sewer?"
"It's very likely, but why did he draw a question mark on your photo? Did you do anything special when he was following you?" Li Xue focused on the photo of Han Fei.
"The first time I realized I was being followed was on the set of Flower of Evil. I was talking to you on the phone at the time, and I seemed to have said - you should really pay more attention to Meng Changan than Meng Changxi. That guy who looks the most harmless might be the murderer of his mother." Han Fei's eyes suddenly widened: "Yes! It was after I said this that I heard a voice coming from the corner behind me. The other party must have been moved by what I said!"
"From the information the police have now, all the evidence points to Meng Changxi. You are the only one who speaks for him. You think the real murderer is Meng Changan." Li Xue looked at the thick information in the cave and made a bold guess: "Could the person living in the sewer be Meng Changxi who disappeared many years ago?"
