Chapter 55: The Golden Beckoning Ca (1/2)

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I signaled for them not to make too much noise and we quietly went downstairs.

We hid in the stairs and saw a thin, tall man entering the house, wearing a cap on his head, sneaking and snooping around. We knew at first glance that this was a suspicious person and should be apprehended.

“Don’t move, police!” Huang Xiaotao shouted.

The man looked up and saw us. He was visibly scared and shocked. He turned around and took off, but we rushed after him. Wang Yuanchao was as fast as a cheetah. He quickly caught up with the man, threw him to the ground, took his handcuffs from his waist and caught him— it was all done in clean, neat movements.

The residents along the street heard the commotion and came out to watch.

“Please, officer, I just saw the door open, so I went in just to take a look! I haven’t done anything! Please...” the man implored.

Huang Xiaotao crossed his arms and roared, “Just to take a look? Don’t you know that this is a crime scene? Or are you connected to the murders somehow?”

The man turned deathly pale and profusely waved his hands.

“No, officer! I… Actually… I was just checking to see if there was anything I could steal…”

Huang Xiaotao laughed.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “We caught a thief!”

The man’s face almost turned blue now. Someone in the crowd suddenly recognized him.

“Hey! It’s the guy who stole a dress that I hung outside last month!”

“He’s definitely the guy who stole my family’s precious vase then!”

“Yeah! He must’ve taken my son’s bicycle too! I put it outside for a second and it was gone!”

More and more people began to shout. The thief lowered his head timidly and desperately begged for help. Huang Xiaotao showed her badge to the crowd and said, “Everyone, calm down. We are the police. This thief will be taken into custody and questioned. After that, we will recover all the stolen goods.”

The noise from the crowd instantly died down, and they soon dispersed.

“Those were some bold promises, weren’t they?” I asked Huang Xiaotao.

“Why should I care?” she shrugged. “This isn’t my territory anyway. Once we’re done with this case, we’ll be gone from here. Let the local police deal with this.”

I sighed. “You really are something…”

Huang Xiaotao picked up the thief and asked him what he was called and what exactly was he doing here.

The thief was called Zhang Liuer. He insisted that he was not a professional thief, but was just out of work at the moment. He noticed that there wasn’t much security in the area, so he looked around for anything to snatch. Sometimes he’d take the jars of pickles or pots that the residents left on their window sills, and sometimes he’d even take a pot of chicken stew left on the charcoal fire outside—in short, if it was something that he could lift up and run, there was nothing that he wouldn’t take!

“I’ve never met such a pathetic thief!” Huang Xiaotao said with contempt.

Zhang Liuer smiled awkwardly.

“You’ve been in this area a lot,” I said. “Surely you’d know that there was a murder case here in the last two days? Didn’t you see the police investigating this place? Why would you enter the house?”

“I didn’t have any other intentions, mister!” he insisted. “I just wanted to go in and look around…”

“Are you sure there was nothing in there that you were aiming to steal?” I asked

Zhang Liuer quickly denied, “What could I be aiming to steal in a dead person’s house? That’s just absurd!”

Okay, I thought, if you wouldn’t admit it yourself, then I’ll make you cough it up!