Chapter 16 (1/2)

I Didn’t Think You Were So Mean

The windows had a view of a corner of the neighbourhood and some streets in the distance. The streets were busy with vehicles and people zipping along them. Men had built the city but become lost in their creation.

“Lei, have you discovered something?” Jiang Ru-Yi was losing a little steam.

Xia Lei shook his head. “No, but I still feel like something’s off.”

“What’s off?”

“This place is too clean. There isn’t any extra dust in the floorboard gaps; it’s as if the floor had been vacuumed,” said Xia Lei.

“Didn’t Professor Zhang’s maid say she hadn’t cleaned yet?”

“She didn’t but who’s to say the murderer didn’t either? The murderer could have been worried about leaving evidence behind and cleaned up the areas he’d been in after killing Professor Zhang. That may explain why your technicians didn’t find anything with their equipment,” said Xia Lei.

“There is this possibility, but…” Jiang Ru-Yi looked at Xia Lei strangely. “The gaps between the floorboards were so small – can you really see how much dust was in there?”

Xia Lei avoided her question and said, “Where’s the vacuum cleaner? Take me there.”

“It’s in the utility room. I’ll take you there.” Jiang Ru-Yi did not press the issue of how Xia Lei was able to see the dust and brought him to a storeroom in the villa.

The storeroom had cleaning supplies, a mop, a vacuum cleaner, pails and the like, as well as some bits and bobs, all neatly placed.

“Did your police technicians check this place?” asked Xia Lei.

Jiang Ru-Yi thought for a bit, “A colleague came to take a look but not very thoroughly.”

Xia Lei walked to the mop and his eye twitched. The wooden handle of the mop was suddenly enlarged and every detail, every grain of wood was crystal clear to Xia Lei. He did not have a magnifying glass but his eye more than made up for that.

The mop handle was very clean – so clean it had no fingerprints or watermarks.

Xia Lei grew more convinced of his suspicion that the murderer had cleaned up the crime scene and wiped every single one of the cleaning supplies used for the coverup. This was the only explanation, because if it were Professor Zhang’s maid, she would have wanted to rest after cleaning, not wipe the mop handle.

“Lei, you’re acting weirdly today. You lay flat on the floor earlier and now you’re observing a mop here… Are you really helping me crack the case?” Jiang Ru-Yi’s curiosity grew.

“Shush.” Xia Lei went to the vacuum cleaner.

Jiang Ru-Yi made a moue of dissatisfaction. “You look like you’re investigating it but you’ve never done this before, right? Can you really do it? If you didn’t find anything, let’s just go out for a walk. We may get lucky and run into those two suspects. Hey! I’m talking to you… Do you hear me?”

She wouldn’t shut up but Xia Lei held his tongue. He finished inspecting the vacuum cleaner handle while Jiang Ru-Yi was still nagging him and the result was the same – it had been wiped as clean as the day it was shipped from the factory. His gaze alighted on the internal vacuum storage and the black plastic disappeared under his gaze. The contents of the vacuum cleaner were laid bare to his eyes.

The vacuum cleaner had not been emptied out and still had garbage in it like dust and carpet fibers. A small piece of fingernail with a hair embedded in it suddenly entered Xia Lei’s sight. Not just that – he could even see a trace of dried blood on the fingernail!

The murderer was sly and meticulous but he had still left evidence!

Who else but Xia Lei, with the power of X-ray vision, could have found evidence like this?

Xia Lei could not stop a smile from forming on his lips. He was not a detective and had no experience investigating but he was a natural-born Sherlock with the power of his left eye!

“What are you smiling about?” asked Jiang Ru-Yi curiously.

Xia Lei said nothing. He removed the dust collector from the vacuum cleaner and walked out of the utility room.