Xiao Gu knew about Uncle Wang's case. He told me to wait, and I heard keyboard tapping on the other end of the phone. After a while, he told me he couldn't send me the case file, so I went to the police station.
Xiao Gu was a young man in his twenties, with a crew cut, a short, muscular build, and bronze-colored skin. He looked very strong. I'd heard he'd joined the military while he was in college and even earned some kind of medal. He was supposed to stay in the army, but his father had suddenly died, and he didn't want to leave his mother alone. So he'd left the service and returned home, where he became a local patrol officer at the station.
Xiao Gu let me into the office and gave up his seat for me. "Take a look, Brother Qi. This is it."
I thanked him and quickly began reading the case file.
After Auntie Wang disappeared, the local station handled the case at first, treating it as a missing-person report. They checked surveillance footage from the area but couldn't find her. A few days later, they suspected that her disappearance wasn't ordinary, so the case was transferred to the main police bureau.
The police had good reason to be suspicious. Auntie Wang didn't appear on any of the nearby surveillance footage. People didn't just vanish without a trace. Either she'd gotten into a vehicle or she'd entered some building. In either case, she was in danger.
The police focused their investigation on Jintian Road. They investigated all the shops there but found no clues. Then they searched outward from Jintian Road as their center, but that didn't get them anywhere either. They couldn't even settle on a suspect, and the case became unsolved.