Perhaps Mu Mian's gaze was too intense, as Fang Rui turned his head to look at her. "This is a tradition in our City Police Bureau. All new employees have to take a psychological test. It's not targeting anyone specifically."
"May I ask if I passed your psychological test?" Mu Mian inquired.
"What do you think?" Fang Rui countered.
"I should have passed," Mu Mian replied confidently. She had read all the psychology books on her sister's bookshelf by the time she was 12, and since then, she could pass any psychological test.
"You're quite confident," Fang Rui remarked.
Although Mu Mian's ability to read facial expressions was rather weak, she had a feeling that Fang Rui's smile hinted that he already knew she was an autistic patient. Otherwise, there would have been no need to specifically have her take such a psychological test.
Mu Mian quickly regained her composure. She took out a bank card she had prepared earlier from her pocket and handed it to Fang Rui.
Fang Rui looked at her in surprise. Every action of this forensic pathologist Mu was unexpected.
"This is all the money I have. It's yours," she said.
"Why are you giving this to me?" Fang Rui asked, puzzled.
"You should know why," Mu Mian replied, mindful of Zhang's presence in the car and not wanting to make her "bribery" attempt too obvious.
Fang Rui frowned, his expression stiffening. "You're not planning to buy my corpse with money, are you?"
Fang Rui wanted to kick Mu Mian out of the car immediately, but considering she was an autistic patient, he could only suppress his anger.
Mu Mian's eyes widened, her tone somewhat excited, "Oh, so it's possible to buy it with money?"
A moment later, she lowered her head dejectedly and said, "But I'm very poor now, I only have this much money."
More than Fang Rui's corpse, she now wanted to protect her secret—she didn't want others to know she was an autistic patient because that would mean she'd be fired. She really needed this job right now.
"Absolutely not!" Fang Rui snapped, "Don't even think about it! From now on, you're not allowed to mention the word 'corpse' in front of me!"
Fang Rui was a staunch materialist, but nobody would like the feeling of having someone covet their corpse while they were still alive.
"Alright," Mu Mian conceded. Having been interrupted like this, she didn't know how to steer the conversation back to asking Fang Rui to keep her secret. She'd have to find another opportunity to "bribe" him in private.
After dropping Mu Mian off at home, Fang Rui and Zhang first questioned Old Chen, the security guard of the residential complex.
Zhang handed Ms. Li's photo to Old Chen. "Uncle, do you recognize this person?"
"Of course," Old Chen glanced at the photo, "Isn't this Ms. Li from Building 8, Unit 3? How could I not know her!"
"Has she made any enemies recently?"
"This Ms. Li is a notorious shrew in our complex! She has an extremely bad temper, and there are countless people who've had conflicts with her. Put it this way, delivery men would rather pay compensation or get fired than deliver packages or takeout to her home. Oh, and she's also a mistress. Her boyfriend's wife even posted notices at the entrance of our complex... Wait, the person you carried away this morning wasn't her, was it?"
Fang Rui interrupted him, "Don't make baseless accusations."
Old Chen suddenly seemed possessed by the spirit of a detective, excitedly saying, "Officer, you don't need to investigate this case. The killer must be that young lady from Room 542, Unit 3, Building 8. Her name is Mu... Mu something."
"Mu Mian," Zhang said with a start. "Why do you think she's the killer?"
"Everyone in the complex knows. This young lady isn't right in the head."
"Why do you say that?"
"She moved in three months ago. She's very strange. At first, she didn't speak, but she smiled at everyone. However, her smile was extremely stiff, as if someone was forcing her to smile. We thought she was mute and tried to take care of her, but when it came to Ms. Li, she spoke more sharply than anyone else."
Fang Rui seemed to understand what Mu Mian was doing. She was trying hard to disguise herself as a normal person, but this only made her appear stranger.
Realizing this, Fang Rui felt guilty for arbitrarily refusing to let Mu Mian join the Special Crime Unit earlier.
"Later, Old Liu from our property management went to fix the plumbing in her apartment and saw a wall full of bones hanging there, all sorts of shapes... She even threatened to turn Ms. Li into a specimen and hang her on her wall as a mural."
Fang Rui was speechless. This indeed sounded like something Mu Mian would do, considering she asked him about donating his body the first time they met.
His fleeting sense of guilt vanished instantly.
Fang Rui then showed Old Chen the photo of the cat.
"Uncle, do you recognize this cat?"
"How could I possibly recognize it?" Old Chen glanced at it, immediately stating he hadn't seen it before.
But then he looked more closely, muttering, "This cat is so skinny, it must be a stray, right? There are plenty of stray cats around our complex, they all look the same. But this one is a bit too thin. In theory, we have several cat lovers in our complex who feed them cat food every day, it shouldn't be this skinny!"
Fang Rui immediately seized on the key point in his words: "Where do these stray cats mainly gather?"
"In the small park next to our complex," Old Chen pointed to a nearby square. "There are quite a few stray cats and dogs lurking in the bushes over there. We can't drive them away, and we can't kill them, so we just let them stay there."
"When do these cat lovers usually feed the cats?"
"Generally early in the morning or at dusk, mainly because that's when they have free time. You know what, the cat food those strays eat is even better than what some pets get. No wonder they refuse to leave."
"Alright, if you remember any clues, please contact us immediately."
"Ah, I remember now, this Ms. Li once beat a cat to death, it looked a bit like this one..."
Zhang and Fang Rui exchanged a glance. This Ms. Li had a history of animal cruelty?
Fang Rui and Zhang grabbed a quick bite for dinner and then went to investigate around the park.
It was unseasonably cold for spring, and the park was nearly empty at night. They asked several people, but no one had seen this cat or encountered any of the people who feed the strays. They decided they would have to come back another day to continue their investigation.
