Jifeng: [Are the cigarette butts on the ground a code? The one I saw earlier is gone, this is a new one he just put down, not sure what it means. Do you think it could be related to the safe?]
Jianjing: [The one for the loot?]
Jifeng: [Yeah]
Jianjing was not surprised that he would make such a conjecture.
Li Li, Qian Tong and Zhou Bing collaborated to rob a safe. It was known that Zhou Bing did not know where the gold was hidden, only that it was in the park somewhere. And Li Li, as the mastermind behind this crime, would not have mutilated himself and broke out of prison if he didn't know the exact location either.
So if Li Li could get his hands on the gold, he would likely need Zhou Bing to help fence it and split the loot. Qian Tong on the other hand would not get a share no matter what. He had no reason to take such a risk passing messages to them.
Besides, according to convention, the spoils of crime cannot be completely controlled by one person, as that might lead to conflicts. It's safer if everyone gets a share — that's why treasure maps in stories are always split into pieces, with each person holding one part.
Since they were pressed for time, making an actual map was not realistic. A more reasonable distribution would be: Li Li knows the exact burial location, Qian Tong has the key or password to the box containing the gold, and only Zhou Bing can physically retrieve it.
In light of this, Jifeng's suspicion about the cigarette butts containing some sort of code was quite normal.
Jianjing: [152 is too few, if I were Zhou Bing I could easily try every combination]
Jifeng: [What if it's not just one? What if it's only half?]
She fell silent.
Jifeng: [Zhou Bing used to be a fisherman, very capable underwater. He later went to jail for illegal poaching of protected animals. I'm guessing the gold must be in the lake.]
Previously he had wondered if the stolen fish bait was a distraction. But now that Zhou Bing was identified, the probability had suddenly increased.
Jianjing did not understand: [What good would it do Qian Tong to give them the password?]
Jifeng: [He has an elderly mother.]
Robbery is a serious crime. By the time Qian Tong got out of jail, it was likely his mother would have passed away already. If Li Li used helping to care for the mother as a bargaining chip in exchange for the password, it wouldn't be impossible.
"Who are you chatting with so intently?"
Jianjing was deep in thought when a voice suddenly came from next to her, startling her so much her phone almost slipped off the artificial hillside. She turned to look, it was Zuo Xin who had come to sit outside with her on the stone bench: "You scared me."
"Guilty conscience?" Zuo Xin glanced at her phone screen, "Military knife avatar, a guy?"
Jianjing: "......Yes."
"You don't seem like someone who would be into fishing." Zuo Xin looked her up and down, hesitant, "Did I get it wrong?"
"Work stuff." She said.
Zuo Xin's eyebrows suddenly relaxed: "Then that's good. But you should still explain it to Cheng Jia You. I saw him glance over at you several times, he's probably a little bothered by it."
"What's there to explain?" Jianjing was puzzled, "We're not in any kind of relationship, why would I need to explain to him who I chat with and why?"
Zuo Xin thought about it and said, "You make a fair point, but it wouldn't take much effort to just give him a quick explanation."
She made a noncommittal sound. Maybe she would remember to bring it up later if she didn't mind, but at that moment, most of her mind was focused on the gold and the fugitives, she had no time to worry about him.
"Zuo Xin, if you conspired with someone to commit a robbery, and they took off with the loot after promising to take care of your mother, and you had to do over a decade in jail, would you be okay with that?" She asked.
"Of course not!" Zuo Xin was also a mystery fan, and immediately cast aside the relationship issue when chatting about a shared interest, "Better dead than red, sometimes people care more about making a point."
Jianjing: "That's what I think too."
Zuo Xin asked: "Why did you bring that up?"
"Just thinking up a plot." Novelist is such a versatile profession, you can use anything as an excuse, Jianjing replied smoothly.
Zuo Xin believed her: "Basing it on a real case? Nice idea, but where's the gold hidden?"
"If you were them, where would you hide it?" She asked curiously.
Zuo Xin answered without hesitation: "In the lake. Tourists might pass by anywhere else, but who would randomly jump into the river? Hidden at the bottom of the lake would be safest."
Jianjing was already leaning towards the lake, but hearing Zuo Xin say that gave her some doubts.
Even a random passerby thought the lake had the highest probability. Zhou Bing was skilled in aquatic abilities, and had been hiding in the park at night for three years, it wouldn't be a problem for him to sneak down and search around. The lake wasn't enormous, with the right equipment, how hard could it be to dredge up some gold?
What if they were thinking about this wrong?
Zhou Bing didn't take the gold, not because he couldn't find it, but because...he couldn't retrieve it?
"Jianjing, Zuo Xin, are you ready to go?" Cheng Jia You called out from the pavilion, asking the two girls who were sightseeing, "It's getting late, we still have two more spots to check off."
"One second." Jianjing quickly asked Jifeng about Qian Tong's location.
He replied: [The office, with 3 officers watching him.]
Jianjing hurriedly checked the map. The park office was in the east area, close to the archery range and stables, and some distance from the wooded hills, far from the tourist hotspots in the southeast, the terrain was simple, not easy to escape from.
"Coming right now." Their next stop was the archery range.
On the way there, Jianjing racked her brains trying to decipher the code on the cigarette.
The cigarette and tissue could be considered two parts. The tooth and fingernail imprints on the cigarette were 1 and 5. The tissue seemed to only have a single 2, but if you separated the tear and crease, it would actually be 2, 2.
1, 5
2, 2
If you ruled out it being an actual password, the limited information conveyed by just the numbers meant some sort of conversion was needed. But just like when she cracked the code at Yiran Pavilion, without a key, the decryption would not be too complicated.
Especially since none of the criminals had high education levels, anything too complex would be hard for even them to solve.
It had to be very simple.
Letter table aebb, I love dad? No way.
Wrong, try again, hmm... cell phone keypad? 9 keys don't match, full keyboard then, ts? They probably wouldn't use English abbreviations, try pinyin.
TS, te shu (special), tong shi (simultaneously), tian sheng (innate), tai shang (on stage), tian shang (in the sky)?
No clues there.
Let's go in reverse, BS? Bi shui (avoid water)? Avoid water, is it communicating with them, telling them the police are already watching this place?
Jianjing quickly passed this on to Jifeng.
He replied: [The cleaner already swept away that cigarette butt, the message probably didn't get out.]
Jianjing asked: [Maybe the gold isn't in the lake, it's too obvious, wouldn't Zhou Bing have thought of that?]
After quite a while, Jifeng finally responded: [Based on current clues, we can only stake out the lake.]
If he had to say, he wasn't completely certain the gold was in the lake either. But police work and detective reasoning were two very different things. A detective could deny a hypothesis based on intuition, but they could not.
Even if everyone suspected the stolen fish bait was a distraction, they still had to dispatch people to keep watch, otherwise if the fugitive got away, no one could bear the consequences.
Jifeng: [Let's coordinate, I'll keep an eye on things here, you keep thinking if there are any other possibilities, stay in touch.]
Jianjing did not expect Jifeng to trust her to this extent. While feeling the weight on her shoulders, she also vaguely understood something — in mystery novels, the trope of the police being inefficient and unable to catch the villain often appeared. But were there really no smart people among the police?
Not necessarily.
Jifeng did not seem foolish or stubborn at all, it was just that the nature of police work meant he could not act rashly. And it was precisely because they were on the job that she could boldly make other assumptions.
Otherwise, if forced to choose, she would probably also have a hard time completely abandoning the lake option.
Was it really not the lake? Looking at it from another angle, Zuo Xin thought it was the lake, didn't that prove others would similarly arrange it that way?
Jianjing: [Okay, I'll do my best.]
Jifeng: [Smile.JPG]
Jianjing closed the chat window and tried inputting BS and TS abbreviations into her memo app. Before long, a familiar word jumped out.
BS, office.
Qian Tong was at the office.
Might he be notifying his accomplices of his location?
While the probability was very low, out of due diligence, Jianjing decided to go take a look. She told the others: "I just saw a friend, going to say hi real quick, you guys go first, see you in a bit."
Having said that, she didn't wait for their reaction and jogged briskly in the direction of the office.
Since she had already said and done this, Cheng Jia You had no reason or desire to chase after her. He tensed his face and said: "Then we'll go first."
*
The park office was a very beautiful small building, three stories high, containing the park director's office, administration department, finance department, and several other miscellaneous offices.
The janitor and security break rooms were also located here.
Zhou Bing finished cleaning the area he was responsible for, and as he had done countless times before, he took a shortcut back to the break room.
At this time, the only person in the break room was the security captain. He sat in front of the computer, adeptly operating the mouse to play solitaire noisily, as if someone was forcefully slamming the cards onto the table.
He used his thermos to get some water, and voluntarily left the room to go smoke at the back door.
The cigarette wasn't even lit yet, but he could already smell the smoke.
Zhou Bing lifted his eyelids, and his gaze swept over the third floor. The window of the park director's office was open, and wisps of cigarette smoke continuously floated out.
He had worked at the park for three years, and came here to smoke every day, so no one was more familiar with this place than him.
The cigarette the director smoked wasn't this brand. The smell was very light and not pungent. But the cigarette smoke now was concentrated and sharp, going straight to the lungs with one inhale, and was very stimulating.
This was the kind of cigarette the police watching over Qian Tong smoked. They couldn't afford expensive cigarettes, and often needed to stay up all night, so they frequently smoked this kind to keep themselves alert.
It looked like Qian Tong really was being held in the director's office.
He lowered his head to hide the flickering look in his eyes, stamped out the cigarette butt, grabbed his thermos, and slowly walked away like an ordinary old man.
Upstairs on the third floor, a young policeman turned his head and slightly shook his head at the others.
The other two policemen discreetly observed Qian Tong on the sofa. He kept his head down while smoking, and occasionally glanced out the window, but didn't go near the window. The cigarette was just casually bummed from someone else. There was clearly a lack of decisive evidence that he was sending secret signals.
"Cough," Qian Tong cleared his throat, and forcibly coughed up thick phlegm. He wrapped it in a tissue, then wrapped the cigarette butt too, and threw it all into the trash can, extremely naturally, as if it was just his personal habit. "Officer, when can we eat?"
The middle-aged officer spoke gently, "Hungry?"
"I'm old. Don't eat much but get hungry fast," Qian Tong said with an apologetic smile.
The young officer handed over a pack of crackers, "This can tide you over for now."
"Thanks, young man," Qian Tong accepted it and wolfed down big mouthfuls. "Aren't you guys eating?"
The middle-aged officer smiled, "We can't relax and eat until we're off work."
"I understand, I understand," Qian Tong said as he gnawed on the crackers. He spoke wistfully, "That Li Li really knows how to make trouble for me. I'm properly serving my sentence, yet he still won't leave me in peace."
The middle-aged officer chatted casually, "You still have over ten years left right?"
"Got my sentence reduced. Eight years, eight years," Qian Tong said. "Eight years and five months."
"Have you thought about what you want to do after getting out?"
"Haven't thought that far yet. Still trying to get my sentence reduced a bit more," Qian Tong said. "Officer, how much can you reduce my sentence if I cooperate with you guys this time? Can I get a year off?"
The middle-aged officer said, "That depends on your performance. The more valuable information you provide, the more we can help you get a bigger reduction."
Qian Tong furrowed his brows. After a long hesitation, he spoke uncertainly, "There's one thing, I'm not sure if it'll be useful to you guys."
