Chapter 139: The Three Major Poisoning Cases (2/2)

“Can you please bring us along?” begged Bingxin. “It’s on the way back to my dorm anyway.”

Xiaotao thought about it for a while and reluctantly agreed. She knew that Bingxin was smart, and she was the director’s daughter after all, so it wasn’t worth the effort to try to keep Bingxin out of the investigation.

So, the four of us got into Xiaotao’s car and drove to the university hospital. It was in a relatively quiet part of town, about three blocks away from the medical school itself. It was not a well-known hospital in Nanjiang City. Bingxin remarked that it was actually an internship hospital for the medical students in her college, and most of the staff in the hospital specialized in research rather than medical practice. Generally, major surgeries were not performed in this hospital.

It was the weekend that day, yet there were very few patients in the hospital. The first thing we did upon arrival was to investigate the hospital inventory. We went to the hospital storeroom where all the drugs were kept and Xiaotao asked for the records and the list of medicines as well as access to the storeroom. In the face of the sheer variety and volume of medicines on the shelf, Xiaotao was overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. Luckily, Bingxin was there to help us. She clarified that everything checked out according to the inventory.

Upon hearing this, it was an implicit agreement between all of us that this hospital had nothing to do with the murders.

At that moment, Dali gasped out of a sudden and shouted, “A ghost!”

I was startled and turned towards the direction that he was pointing at. It turned out just to be a nurse who was taking medicine from the shelf. She had a large black birthmark that almost covered half of the right side of her face.

The nurse probably already suffered from low self-esteem due to the birthmark, and she quickly covered her face with her hands when she saw us. I scolded Dali for being so crude and apologized to the nurse profusely for Dali’s reaction earlier.

“It’s all my fault,” the nurse said timidly. “I must’ve startled you because I didn’t make any noise when I came in…. You don’t look like you work here.”

“No,” Xiaotao explained. “We’re the police. We’re investigating a case.”

“What case is it?” the nurse asked.

Xiaotao showed her the photos of the victims and asked, “Have you ever seen these women before?”

The nurse glanced at the pictures and answered, “No, I’m afraid not. Please excuse me. I’ve got to rush back to work.”

We then left the storeroom as well. Everyone wondered aloud about what we should do next, but I was silent and deep in thought.

“What’s wrong, Song Yang?” asked Xiaotao.

“That nurse,” I explained. “When she said she’d never seen the victims before, it looked like she was probably lying.”

“Probably? What do you mean?”

“Well… I couldn’t tell if she was lying or if she was just nervous.”

“We should investigate it nevertheless,” Xiaotao insisted. “Let’s go check out her department.”

We asked the storeroom administrator about the nurse. He informed us that her name was Qu Tingting. She worked in the gynecology department and everyone called her the blue-faced beast behind her back. He seemed to find this funny and burst out laughing when he talked about it, but I saw that Xiaotao and Bingxin were both glaring at him.

“Okay,” said Bingxin. “Thanks for the information, Mr. Barcode!”

The administrator was a middle-aged man whose comb-over hairstyle looked like a barcode. The nickname Bingxin gave him was just so apt and funny that Dali and I both couldn’t hold in our laughter. The administrator’s face was flushed with anger, and he spat, “How can the police speak like that?”

Bingxin grimaced and retorted, “If you can belittle other people, then why is it not acceptable for others to make fun of you? Isn’t that a double standard?”

“You… you… I’m going to lodge a complaint about you!”

“I’m sorry,” Xiaotao interrupted, trying to defuse the situation. “She’s new and inexperienced. I’ll definitely give her a good talking to later.”

We then excused ourselves and left the room. Once we were out, Xiaotao suddenly turned to Bingxin with a smile and praised her.

“I hate those men who make fun of girls for their physical defects!” Bingxin proudly proclaimed. Then she turned to me and said, “But you’re not like that at all, are you, Song Yang-gege?”

“Uh… you’re right!” I stuttered awkwardly in reply. “I always respect women!”

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