Half an hour later, Michael's wife was taken to the hospital, and the police left after examining the scene.
They believed it was an ordinary and obvious case of breaking and entering, robbery, and assault. To be honest, such cases were nothing new in the Bayer Federation. There were always some lazy, unwilling-to-work poor people who would take risks and obtain money through illegal means.
The police had not come away empty-handed, however. At the very least, they believed the escaped criminal was probably very familiar with Michael's home. He knew Michael was away on a business trip, that the children were still at school, and that only Michael's wife was at home.
The fact that the robbery had turned into an assault was even considered evidence that the criminal probably knew the family—hatred.
The house stood empty and dark, completely deserted. Wearing gloves, Lin Qi pushed open the courtyard gate and entered, then closed it behind him.
He pulled out the homemade lockpicking tools from his pocket: a twisting piece modified from a wine opener, and a pick modified from a crochet hook. Both items could be bought at hardware stores or tool shops.
The principle behind old-fashioned door locks was extremely simple. Put plainly, once the pins were pushed into the pin chambers, the lock cylinder could be turned and the door would open.
Using a key made this easy. Without one, a certain amount of torque had to be applied to the lock cylinder.
The torque caused a minuscule misalignment between the cylinder and the pin chambers. That tiny misalignment was enough to keep the pins pushed into the chambers from falling out. Once every pin had been pushed into the correct position by the pick, the door would open.
After two rounds of rhythmic clicking, the lock gave a soft snap. Lin Qi glanced around, twisted the doorknob, and slipped through the gap into the room.
The room was somewhat messy. The police had lingered here briefly while collecting evidence. He took out the flashlight he carried with him, turned it on, and felt his way up to the second floor.
A few minutes later, he found the study.
Unexpectedly, Michael, the hot-tempered investigator, actually enjoyed reading. Looking at the rows of neatly arranged books, Lin Qi could not help feeling that Michael had read every one of them for nothing.
He searched around and found a safe, but he did not touch it.
He had learned how to open this kind of old-fashioned safe. In fact, once one understood the principle, picking its lock was not difficult at all. This kind of old-fashioned combination lock was essentially a set of wheels.
Turning them alternately to the left and right changed the positions of the markings on each wheel. Once all the markings were aligned, a small spring attached to the wheels—or a notch—would line up. At that point, turning the handle would let the bolt retract smoothly into the safe door.
Some movies used a stethoscope to distinguish the sounds made by the internal wheels as they turned. That did work at first, but manufacturers soon fixed this obvious flaw, making it difficult to hear any movement at all.
For a highly skilled craftsman, however, relying on touch was actually easier. Of course, that was beside the point.
The safe contained nothing more than some money, evidence that might be useful to Michael but was completely useless to him, a notebook, or something similar. None of that matched the purpose of his break-in.
He walked around the room and pulled open several drawers beneath the desk. In the drawer on the right, he found some loose change. An idea immediately came to him. He placed the Gold Ring he had been carrying into the second-to-last drawer, restored everything to its original state, checked it over once, and only then left.
This was one of his main objectives today: putting the Gold Ring in Michael's house. Then he needed to deal with another problem—Newspaper Boss.
Newspaper Boss had successfully escaped by now. The police in this era had an appallingly low case-solving rate. To protect personal and public privacy, among other reasons, the Bayer Federation had no surveillance system whatsoever.
That meant that all physical and facial characteristics related to suspects came from indirect clues and eyewitness accounts.
Without eyewitnesses, cases such as the burglary of Lin Qi's room were basically impossible to solve, unless the criminal was caught during another crime and an outstanding interrogator managed to make him confess to everything he had done in the past.
Otherwise, no one should expect the police to accomplish much.
This case was somewhat more serious and involved the Tax Bureau Investigation Team Leader. The Sabine City Police Station had dispatched additional officers. They were still waiting for Michael's wife to recover from her shock and provide a more accurate description of the suspect's appearance.
The community's security guards provided a sketch of the suspect. However, they had confronted him on the unlit first floor, with all their illumination coming from the community streetlights. The guard had used far too many vague and uncertain words to describe the person he had seen, so the sketch based on his account was not particularly meaningful.
At that moment, Newspaper Boss, who was being sought, had already returned to his own little territory. His heart rate had only just come down from one hundred and eighty. The pistol clenched tightly in his hand was the only thing giving him any sense of security.
He felt that he had been rather stupid. He had only wanted to make that woman suffer a little, threaten her, and see if he could recover the evidence in Michael's hands.
But somehow, a terrifying desire had suddenly taken over his heart, to the point that he had wanted to do such a thing.
Now that his emotions had stabilized, he realized that he had made a huge mistake. That woman had seen his face, and he was certain it was the kind of image she would remember until the day she died.
Tomorrow or the day after, and no more than a week from now, Wanted Orders bearing his likeness would be plastered throughout Sabine City. Too many people here knew him. Once that happened, he would be finished.
He could already completely imagine Michael's fury. Even at this point, Newspaper Boss was still afraid of Michael. That was a fact he could not change.
Although he was reluctant, he made up his mind. He had to leave this place—leave Sabine City and hide somewhere else for a while.
Once the heat died down, he might simply stay away and never return.
He had money. Over the years, he had managed to save tens of thousands of dollars, and he had not put any of it in a bank. It was all in a shoebox somewhere in his room.
He also had a gun. With the money and the gun, he could go somewhere else, assume a new identity, and either start a small business or return to his old profession.
With that thought, he stopped hesitating. Ignoring the children in the dormitory, he returned directly to his room, dug the shoebox out from a pile of seemingly worthless garbage, gathered a few things he could not bear to throw away, and left under cover of darkness.
He thought no one had noticed what he had done, but several of the oldest children in the dormitory had seen him.
After he had shot one of the children's thighs yesterday, the children had seemed to become obedient again. In reality, however, they had developed an emotion that Newspaper Boss himself had not even noticed.
Less than a minute after he left, several of the oldest children chased after him, carrying the knives they usually used to chop vegetables and some foot-long steel rods they had "found" at a construction site, one end sharpened to a point.
At the same time, Lin Qi had also chased his way to the vicinity. He was thinking about how to deal with Newspaper Boss without making a sound when he saw Newspaper Boss rush out with a bag on his back, followed closely by several short figures hurrying after him.