A Brazen Signature

A Brazen Signature

"Hm? What did you see?" Wang Meng asked in astonishment.

Huang Ji did not answer directly. After a pause, he pointed at the old tree by the roadside and said, "This morning, when I walked this way, I saw Li Fan playing behind that tree from far away."

"If Doctor Liang left, he should have seen her."

Wang Meng exclaimed, "Why didn't you say something so important sooner?"

Huang Ji said blankly, "Sorry, I'm slow to react. I only just remembered."

"Uh..." Wang Meng had nothing to say. What could he do? This was an intellectually disabled child.

Just as he was about to find Li Fan and ask him, the Village Chief came out as well. He had also heard Huang Ji's words and asked curiously, "You mean Little Li's son?"

Huang Ji nodded.

The Village Chief sighed. "I already asked their family. They all said they hadn't seen her."

Seeing the Village Chief's expression, Huang Ji could tell he did not intend to ask again. Wang Meng also stopped in his tracks.

"..." Huang Ji stared at the old roadside tree again. Deep down, he was certain that Doctor Liang had been taken away by four men.

And at the very moment she was taken away, Li Fan had been beside the old tree. He should have seen everything.

Didn't see her? No... he was the witness, Huang Ji thought.

But this was only what Huang Ji felt. There was no way to say it outright.

As someone with an intellectual disability, even if he said it directly, others would only think he was having an episode.

Huang Ji's thoughts shifted. Looking at the Village Chief, he said innocently, "I saw Li Fan at seven o'clock. So Doctor Liang had disappeared that early."

The Village Chief nodded. Since Li Fan said he had not seen her, Doctor Liang must have disappeared before he started playing behind the tree.

But at that thought, Wang Meng froze. That was far too early.

The clinic opened around seven. Doctor Liang had vanished only after opening the door, yet Li Fan had been playing here at seven and still had not seen her?

Wang Meng could not help asking, "Uncle, what exactly did Li Fan say?"

The Village Chief said, "How would I know that many details? I just asked whether he had seen her, and he said no."

"Forget it. I'll ask again. Little Li! Where are you? Bring your son over here!"

Huang Ji's words had reminded them, and the two decided to question him again in more detail.

Before long, Little Li brought over his son, Li Fan. Li Fan was only twelve years old, and seeing so many people surrounding him made him nervous.

"Did you see Doctor Liang this morning?" Wang Meng asked.

Li Fan hurriedly shook his head. "No."

Wang Meng asked, "Were you playing outside the clinic this morning? Was it open then? What time was it?"

Li Fan froze. "How did you know?"

"Huang Ji saw you. Was it seven o'clock?" Wang Meng asked. He did not suspect Li Fan of lying. He only wanted to confirm when Doctor Liang had disappeared.

To his surprise, Li Fan said, "What does that idiot know? It was already seven-thirty when I got there."

"Hm?" Wang Meng raised a brow.

Huang Ji said calmly, "Seven."

Li Fan shouted, "Seven-thirty! You remembered wrong."

Huang Ji gazed steadily into Li Fan's eyes and said calmly, "Seven."

Li Fan pointed at Huang Ji. "See? He only knows how to repeat one sentence. This idiot got it wrong!"

Wang Meng asked, "Huang Ji, how are you sure it was seven?"

"My Grandpa told me to leave at seven to find Doctor Liang. I left early, but I didn't want to see a doctor, so I went home when I was almost there. The time I saw Li Fan must have been seven," Huang Ji lied without changing expression.

Yes, he was lying. He had left home at seven that morning, but instead of going to the clinic, he had wandered around the fields before returning home.

Huang Ji had not actually seen Li Fan. But at this moment, he trusted his feeling completely. He had sensed that when Doctor Liang was taken away, Li Fan had been behind the tree, so he deliberately claimed to have seen him.

After lying once, lying again seemed to come much more naturally... Huang Ji thought. As long as there are no flaws and it cannot be disproven, a lie is the same as the truth.

Wang Meng patted Huang Ji on the shoulder and said to Li Fan, "Huang Ji isn't an idiot. He only has a mild intellectual disability. He can remember something this simple clearly."

"But you, lying at such a young age. Tell the truth, now!"

He was a police officer, after all. Facing Huang Ji's "dull" statement, Li Fan was visibly flustered.

Li Fan was only twelve and could not keep things bottled up. Pressured by Wang Meng's glare, he immediately panicked, his eyes darting away.

The moment his father saw that, he knew Li Fan had lied. Furious, he said, "You little brat, itching for a beating? You'd lie about something like this? Did you see Doctor Liang or not?"

With that, he kicked Li Fan. Tears immediately welled up in Li Fan's eyes.

Under everyone's repeated questioning, Li Fan knew he could not hide it any longer.

After hesitating for a long time, he finally said, "I... I saw her... She was dragged away by some people. They were really vicious, and they had knives. They said they'd kill me if I told anyone. I was scared..."

"What?" Wang Meng was shocked. Everyone realized that Doctor Liang had likely been kidnapped.

Huang Ji was the only one whose expression remained calm, without the slightest surprise. He had known all along.

Fortunately, no one found Huang Ji's "dullness" strange. They were used to seeing him space out and merely assumed he had not yet understood what Li Fan's words meant.

"Useless! They scared you a little and you chickened out? Worthless!" Li Fan's father was furious and kicked him twice more.

Li Fan shrank back and said, "It's true! He definitely wasn't bluffing me. If I tell... Dad! He'll definitely kill me, and he'll kill you too..."

"Worthless brat!" Li Fan's father cursed.

Wang Meng's expression was grave. If they had not even been sure whether she was missing before, then now they could probably treat this as a criminal case.

The fact that Li Fan had been frightened into saying nothing showed that the other man's tone, gaze, and actions had not been playful at all.

Only a genuine threat could scare Li Fan into hiding the truth. After all, Li Fan was already twelve. Ordinary thug-style joking would not have intimidated him like this.

Wang Meng hurriedly called the station and reported the situation.

Now that they had a witness, they could preliminarily classify it as a kidnapping case.

Meanwhile, the Village Chief had already gotten the details.

Just before seven in the morning, Li Fan had been on his way to school. But because he liked to play, he had not gone straight to the township. Instead, he stopped beneath the old tree outside the village clinic and fed steamed buns to ants for quite a while.

At around five past seven, a group of people drove a van into the village. By coincidence, aside from him, a child on his way to school, there had been no one else on the road.

There were four people in the van. They got out, entered the clinic, and dragged Doctor Liang away. The whole thing was clean, efficient, and brazen.

Before leaving, the only man carrying a knife saw Li Fan. But perhaps because he was in a hurry to leave, he merely threatened him once.

Li Fan had obediently agreed out of fear, then gone to school. He had behaved especially well at school all day, repeatedly telling himself, I didn't see anything. I got to school long ago.

After repeating it to himself all day, he was probably starting to believe it himself.

If not for Huang Ji, he might have kept this buried forever and never said a word.

"A kidnapping... But why? For money?" the Village Chief asked in confusion. Could there really be a kidnapping case in their rural area?

Wang Meng carefully recorded everything Li Fan said. Then he received another phone call and said with an equally strange expression, "It's not for money. Her mother hasn't received a ransom call."

"Ah! Could it be revenge?" someone said.

Another person said, "How could it be revenge? Doctor Liang is such a good person."

"Then what else could it be? Maybe they're after Doctor Liang's beauty?" someone else said.

It was worth mentioning that Doctor Liang was beautiful, fair-skinned, and clearly from the city. She stood out greatly in this countryside.

Seeing everyone's speculation drift further and further off course, Wang Meng shouted, "Stop making wild guesses. The police station will handle this. Don't get involved. Everyone, go home."

Twenty minutes after the crowd dispersed, a police car arrived at the scene.

The officer driving got out while talking on the phone. His face turned stunned as he said, "What? They ran?"

Wang Meng froze and asked, "You caught them, and they escaped again?"

The officer shook his head, lowered the phone, and said with an incredulous look, "It wasn't the criminals who ran. It was... it was Liang Yuan's family..."

"Huh?" Wang Meng was truly dumbfounded this time.

Liang Yuan was Doctor Liang's name.

What did it mean for the victim's family to run away?

"What happened? Explain it clearly."

The officer frowned. "Earlier, we contacted the house Liang Yuan's mother rented in the county town. We informed her that her daughter might have been kidnapped and asked whether she had received any ransom calls. She said no."

"Then, very soon afterward, our colleagues in the county arrived at her home. They were preparing to set up surveillance and wait for a possible ransom call from the criminals."

"But unexpectedly... when our colleagues got there, the place was empty. Liang Yuan's parents had packed up their valuables and left."

"We checked the surveillance footage and found that their car had entered the interprovincial highway! They were heading toward Qilu Province."

Wang Meng gaped. What was going on?

The victim's family had actually fled like criminals?

"There's definitely something going on here!" Wang Meng said.

"No kidding. But that's not our responsibility. Right now, we're in charge of documenting the scene and getting that child to draw portraits of the suspects as soon as possible," the officer said.

Wang Meng was helpless. He was just a low-ranking officer. Criminal cases were not his responsibility. The only reason he had been assigned to guard the scene was because they lacked manpower.

The two documented the scene and took many photographs. But clearly, the scene held little value. A day had passed, and villagers had trampled all over it. There was no longer any point in preserving it.

Still, they submitted a complete report to the county.

However, just as they were preparing to get into the car and find Li Fan, Wang Meng spotted a piece of paper tucked under the police car's windshield wiper.

"Do they issue tickets out in the countryside too?" The officer who had driven over saw it as well. Unable to see clearly in the dark, he asked in surprise.

Who would issue a ticket to a police car in a place like this? But when they walked closer, they saw that it was merely a flyer with writing on it.

Written in neat standard script were the words: "Liang Yuan is in our hands. Bring her parents in exchange for her."

Signed, Lü Zongmin!

Wang Meng and his colleague looked at each other, chills running down their spines.

Had the criminals written this?

The two looked around. The village entrance was pitch-black, and there was no one else in sight.

They had only gone inside the clinic to take some photos. Yet when they came back out, someone had placed a note on the police car!

The criminals were actually this close! And so brazen. Instead of extorting the victim's family after kidnapping her, they had delivered the ransom letter to the police, demanding that the police trade the victim's mother for her?

"They're nearby... They haven't left!"

Wang Meng and his colleague searched the surroundings, then got into the police car and rummaged through it, but found nothing.

Whoever had left the note had likely gone far away already.

Wang Meng immediately called the station chief to report the situation. "...That's the situation. We have the note now, and there's even a signature. It might be a fake name, but we should still investigate it, right?"

The station chief was shocked as well. Kidnappers who wanted the police to help catch someone?

They had even left a name! This was far too brazen. They had nerves of steel!

And Liang Yuan's mother really had fled for no apparent reason.

For this impoverished rural area, Liang Yuan's kidnapping was absolutely the most bizarre case they had ever encountered.

Whatever lay behind it was definitely no small matter.

P.S. Sorry. Please add it to your collection.