The Wanping County Husband-Murder Case, Part Two

Zhang Dalong hurriedly rushed out the gate, intending to intercept Li Shi just as he had last time. But when he looked up, he saw sixty or seventy people packed together in a dark mass at the end of the alley. Yet the stretch between Zhang Erhu's house next door and his own was utterly empty—not a single person in sight!

Zhang Dalong was instantly dumbfounded. He and the neighbors across the way stared at one another, wide-eyed, neither knowing what to do for a long while.

"She's behind you!"

In the end, his wife could not bear to watch any longer and called out a reminder.

Hearing this, Zhang Dalong hurriedly turned around, only to see Li Shi staggering along. She had somehow already run close to the mouth of the alley!

"Fine, bring Li Shi back."

Sun Shaozong gestured to the constables stationed at the alley entrance, signaling for them to bring Li Shi back to the end of the alley.

Then he spread his hands at the helpless Zhang Dalong. "Li Shi is injured now, so she is probably even slower than before. Yet by the time you came out, she had already fled nearly thirty zhang away—so your own testimony proves that Li Shi was not the one who crashed open the courtyard gate and escaped."

By now, Zhang Dalong had also sensed that something was wrong. But he could not quite bring himself to back down, so after hemming and hawing for a while, he finally forced out, "But the knife... that kitchen knife was one she used all the time!"

"As for that..."

Sun Shaozong turned and pointed at Zhang Erhu's courtyard. "There is a whetstone beneath that old locust tree. I checked it earlier, and the fresh grinding marks on it were quite obvious—it should have been used not long ago. Most likely, Zhang Erhu had been sharpening a knife in the courtyard when he suddenly got into a conflict with someone. The murderer then grabbed the kitchen knife at hand and stabbed him to death."

By then, Li Shi had also been brought back by the constables.

Sun Shaozong stopped paying attention to Zhang Dalong and instead called Li Shi back into Zhang Erhu's courtyard. He instructed her to follow her testimony: first return to the Inner Room and wait there, then, after hearing someone scream outside, reenact what had happened.

Once Li Shi acknowledged the order and went back inside, Sun Shaozong selected the fleetest-footed of the constables to play the murderer.

"Begin!"

Once everything was ready, the constable stood before the corpse, pretended to grip a branch and thrust it forward, then let out a shrill cry. He tossed aside the branch and bolted!

Bang~

Almost the instant the constable disappeared through the gate, Li Shi charged out of the house as well, shouting, "Husband!" She first threw herself onto the corpse and shoved it twice, then immediately sprang up and chased out through the gate.

"Stop!"

The moment Li Shi crossed the threshold, Sun Shaozong shouted. Li Shi instinctively stopped in her tracks, but the constable playing the murderer could not brake in time. He ran another seven or eight steps before barely coming to a halt outside someone's home, still roughly thirty zhang from the alley entrance.

"Done!"

Sun Shaozong snapped his fingers and grinned smugly. "Just as I thought! This alley is about 260 meters long in total. Zhang Erhu's gate is roughly 45 meters from the eastern end, leaving at least 215 meters to the exit. Yet fewer than twenty seconds passed from the murderer rushing out of the courtyard to Li Shi chasing after him. To run out of the alley in that little time, even Bolt himself would have no chance!"

"But neither Li Shi nor Zhang Dalong saw so much as the murderer's shadow." Ruan Rong suddenly understood as well. "So either Li Shi and Zhang Dalong's wife were both lying, or the murderer hid in a neighbor's house immediately after rushing out!"

"Exactly!"

Sun Shaozong pointed at the neighbors huddled together at the end of the alley. "That is why I insisted on bringing them all back together—if my guess is correct, the murderer should be among these people!"

Seeing that he had deduced so many clues merely from the testimonies of Li Shi and Zhang Dalong, even identifying the suspects in advance, Ruan Rong's eyes were full of admiration and pride. Then she suddenly asked curiously, "By the way, what does 260 meters mean? And who is this Bolt?"

"Er..."

Only then did Sun Shaozong realize he had gotten a little carried away. He hurriedly covered, "Those things are not important. We need to quickly separate the suspects from their families for questioning, lest they get their stories straight!"

As he spoke, he ordered the constables to temporarily isolate the two households at the end of the alley and the six households west of Zhang Erhu's home, separating them by gender and age—including Zhang Dalong's family.

Though the odds were low, they still could not rule out the possibility that Zhang Dalong had committed the crime, then put on an astonishing performance of innocence.

The interrogation itself was simple. The constables merely questioned the suspects and their family members separately about what they had been doing at the time.

They first eliminated those with clear alibis, then continued pressing for details—for instance, if someone claimed to have been resting at home, they would ask both the suspect and his family whether he had been lying down or sitting, where exactly he had rested, what posture he had used, and so on.

After checking through them one by one, two suspects gradually emerged: Liu Jinbao, who lived at the end of the alley, and Xu Gengsheng, who lived next door to Zhang Dalong.

One claimed that he had been squatting in the latrine when the crime occurred; the other said he had been in the courtyard repairing the fence around his vegetable patch. But neither of their families could provide corroboration.

However, it was still difficult to determine which of the two was the true murderer.

Thus, following Sun Shaozong's instructions, the constables brought them to Zhang Erhu's courtyard.

Seeing that everyone else had already been released and that only the pair of fellow sufferers remained, Liu Jinbao and Xu Gengsheng both panicked. Forgetting that Divine Detective Sun Judicial Assistant Magistrate stood right before them, they immediately began tearing into each other.

"Liu Jinbao, you must be the one who killed him, right?! Just two days ago, I saw you arguing with Zhang Erhu!"

"Bullshit! Everyone in this alley knows Zhang Erhu and I have been fighting since we were kids. If I had wanted to kill him, I'd have done it long ago!"

"Look, look! You admit you wanted to kill Zhang Erhu!"

"You motherfu—"

"Shut up, both of you!"

Jiang Laoqi, the lead constable of Wanping County, bellowed, suppressing their war of words. Then he sidled up to Sun Shaozong with a fawning smile. "My lord, how should we question them now?"

"This..."

Sun Shaozong was about to speak when his expression suddenly changed. He thrust out a finger at the space behind the two suspects and cried in panic, "Zhang Erhu, y-you... how did you come back to life?!"

Upon hearing this, Liu Jinbao and Xu Gengsheng hurriedly turned around together. There stood a man stiffly behind them, his eyes wide, his face ash-gray, and a blood hole three fingers wide gaping in his chest. Who else could it be but Zhang Erhu?!

"Give me back my life! Give me back my life!"

At that very moment, a wail like a ghost's cry and a wolf's howl rang out. Liu Jinbao was so terrified that he scrambled and crawled straight between Sun Shaozong's legs, while Xu Gengsheng collapsed limply to the ground, crying out in a broken voice, "Second Brother, spare me! Second Brother, spare me! I didn't mean to kill you! I just... I just couldn't bear seeing you torment Little Miss Li in every possible way, so I..."

Thud~

Before he could finish, Zhang Erhu toppled face-first to the ground, revealing the constable behind him who had been propping up the corpse with a wooden pole.

Thanks to reader "Wan Xiaobao" for the reward.

PS: For the sake of bookmarks and recommendation votes, I shamelessly went to advertise in two wildly popular books next door, and then... the posts got deleted.