Strange Investigations Team Vol 1 Chapter 3

From the information we gathered, the medical university’s female ghost case was likely connected to the murder in room 106 ten years ago. And so we decided to head to the library to lookup the files for the female students back then and continue our investigation.

Most university campuses had a library, and hidden in each one was a secret that most people didn’t know about. Of course, digging into this secret wasn’t an easy task, otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret.

When we arrived at the library, there weren’t many people present. In the huge s.p.a.ce, there were only a few people. Rather than quiet, it felt more like it was deserted. It seemed that students nowadays didn’t really spend their time on studying. The library administrator seemed to have disappeared somewhere as well. After asking a few students, it seemed she’d gone to eat.

Student records were probably locked in the archives. If the administrator wasn’t present, staying here would be a waste of time. And they couldn’t just ‘smash into the door’ as Zhenzhen suggested.

In our rush to catch the killer, we hadn’t even eaten lunch. Now our stomachs were grumbling. Since staying here would just be a waste of time, why not go out for a meal first. So I made the suggestion, “Why don’t we go out to eat first?”

As soon as I mentioned eating, Zhenzhen seemed to have recalled those nauseating corpses from the dissection room, unable to find even the slightest bit of an appet.i.te. “You go ahead. Just bring me back a few plain buns.”

“How can you just eat plain buns?!” I suddenly thought of a good place to go. “I heard Yaxian mention that the restaurant by the school gate is pretty good, especially their pig’s heart soup. Once you eat it, you’ll get addicted. Want to try it out…”

“Go to h.e.l.l!” Zhenzhen sent me flying with a kick.

I arrived at the restaurant Yaxian mentioned, and it was filled with people. They were pretty much all students, boys and girls alike, gathered in small groups. With some difficulty, I finally found a seat. After I ordered two side dishes and a serving of pig’s heart soup, I sat quietly and listened to the students chattering around me. The students mostly talked about games, lewd jokes, and their ‘evil’ teacher. Of course, the thing they talked about most was relationships. Some of the older students also talked about job interviews and internships. Although most of it was useless information, occasionally, I would hear something that might help us…

“Xiao Ma, do you think Professor Xiao sells the hearts? The dissection room is full of all sorts of specimens. The only thing missing is hearts.” The speaker was a boy with gla.s.ses at the next table.

Xiao Ma’s face was full of disdain. “Wow, you just figured it out? I heard one of the seniors say that after one of their dissection cla.s.ses, someone saw him secretly walk out with the hearts!”

A student with longish hair asked, “No way. Who did you hear that from? What’s the point of taking the hearts away? The bodies were stored in the freezers for quite awhile, so they can’t be used for transplants. Who would buy them?!”

The guy with the gla.s.ses quipped, “How would I know? Maybe he sells them to some perverted collectors!”

Xiao Ma joked, “I think he just takes them home to stew, haha!”

A girl from another table interrupted them, “Stop being so disgusting! We’re all trying to eat here!”

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As I drank my pig’s heart soup, I wondered about the students’ conversation. Why did this Professor Xiao take away the corpses’ hearts? From reason, corpses used for dissection cla.s.ses probably wouldn’t be preserved with too much care, so they wouldn’t be able to be sold in the organ trade. If it was to make items for collectors, wouldn’t eyes be better? Why did he choose hearts? Perhaps I ought to look into this Professor Xiao. Every time the female ghost killed, she took away a heart. Maybe there was some connection between these two.

Just as I was about to strike up a conversation with the kid called Xiao Ma, an urgent cry came from outside, “The library’s on fire!”

Zhenzhen was still in the library, so I had to hurry over to check on her. I called for the bill and quickly dropped the money on the table before running out. As I headed out the door, I seemed to have heard a female voice inside calling out, “Supervisor, check please…”

The fire in the library was burning fiercely. When I arrived, the sky was lit up in a fiery red. After some searching, I finally found Zhenzhen among a crowd of people, a decent amount of her hair burnt off. I asked her what happened.

“I’m not sure how to say it. Not long after you left…” With a frightened voice, Zhenzhen recounted the events that happened after I’d left—

Not long after you left, the library administrator, Pan Qiuxia, returned. I told her that I wanted to find the files of some girls who lived in the dorm ten years ago, and she told me that the files were in the archives room. But since I only knew when the girls were at the school and I didn’t know their names, it would probably take awhile to find the files. She brought me to the archives room and helped me search.

The number of files in the archives room wasn’t an ordinary amount. The room was more than 100 sqm with twenty shelves. Each shelf had three layers. Looking at it all already made me a bit dizzy. Thankfully I had the administrator’s help, otherwise I wouldn’t have even known where to start. She said that since we didn’t have the student’s names, heading directly into the files wasn’t a good idea. She suggested we start with the dorm logs. Since no one lived in room 106 after the incident, we’d find their names as the last occupants of the room.

The dorm records were located at the shelf in the very back. After searching a bit, we found the records from ten years ago. But when I flipped through the logs, they somehow caught fire. We wanted to put out the fire, but we were unable to, so the whole archive room went into flames…

“Ah…” I sighed. “I’ve seen a lot of idiots, but there haven’t been that many who were as dumb as you!”

“You can’t put all the blame on me. Who knew that the records would start burning for no reason? And all the white smoke left me unable to even open my eyes. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have turned out this badly.” Zhenzhen was trembling as she asked nervously, “Do you think it was that female ghost causing trouble and preventing us from investigating?”

I found a problem with what Zhenzhen told me. “Are you sure there was white smoke coming from the records?”

“Mm,” she nodded her head. “So much that I couldn’t open my eyes.”

“How did the files catch fire in the first place? Tell me in detail.”

“I just flipped open the log book and turned to the records for room 106, and then my fingers started feeling warm. I think I saw some light too. And then the white smoke came out. Scared, I dropped the book onto the ground. Who would have expected the book to just catch on fire then? The nearby records caught on fire too. Because of the debris, the fire got out of control. I tried stomping out the fires and the administrator went to fetch fire extinguishers, but they were all broken.  We couldn’t use any of them.” Zhenzhen showed me her burned fingers.

“Mm, it definitely wasn’t the female ghost intervening…” Perhaps this case was hiding even more unknown secrets.

The next morning, I walked into the SIT office and saw Zhenzhen with a new haircut chatting with Miao Miao.

“Why did you cut your hair? Bad breakup?” Miao Miao circled Zhenzhen curiously.

Wei ge, who’d been typing quickly on his keyboard, suddenly stopped and stretched his neck out to eavesdrop.

“There aren’t even any guys after me, how can there be a breakup!” Zhenzhen retold the story of the fire at the library, explaining that she didn’t have a choice with the haircut. When the girls continued on with their insignificant gossip, Wei ge yawned and went back to his keyboard.

“Good morning!” I greeted everyone. Then I feigned surprise towards Zhenzhen, “Wow, your new haircut isn’t bad!”

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“Good morning? Take a look at what time it is.” She rolled her eyes at me.

I checked my watch. “I’m only twenty minutes late. That’s early enough. Better than Xueqing…”

“Someone calling me?” Xueqing appeared behind me, like a ghost, scaring the living daylight out of me.

“She got here really early, even before us,” Wei ge said as he yawned again.

“Comrades, good work!” I saluted before quickly changing the topic. I asked Miao Miao, “Did you find the files about the case from ten years ago?”

Miao Miao laughed apologetically. “There are so many cases, how can I find it by myself? And it’s so boring. After an hour and a half, I started getting sleepy. Thankfully Xueqing jie helped me…”

“Wah, so the cold Xueqing jiejie was actually quite the warm-hearted model citizen! Applause!” I clapped, a mischievous smile on my face.

Xueqing looked at me calmly, her eyes light, as if not feeling anything. She spoke indifferently, “There was no record of the case, which means it probably wasn’t formally filed.” She paused and then added, “I’m a year younger than you. You can just call me by my name, no need to add the jiejie.”

Whether they were a beautiful woman in their early 20s or an old white-haired woman, age was a very important number. If you guessed they were younger, there was no harm. If you guess older, you might bring an unexpected calamity. Xueqing, the ice beauty, was no exception. In the future, I’d have to remember to be more cautious with my words. One wrong word, and I might end up more wronged than Dou E. (Note: see The Injustice to Dou E for more)

“No way! That’s too outrageous! Lives were lost and they didn’t file for an official investigation?” Zhenzhen was shocked.

Zhenzhen had never worked in the CIB, so she didn’t understand that this was a very normal occurrence. I gave her a quick catch up lesson. “The less you do, the less you do wrong. Avoiding something entirely to avoid the wrong is the motto for a lot of people. For a case like this, it wouldn’t be surprising if the family of the diseased wanted to keep things quiet. After all, the killer had a serious mental condition, so the court will use some discretion. The sentencing wouldn’t have been too harsh.” Then I asked Wei ge, “Did you come out empty-handed as well?”

“Give me another fifteen minutes.” Wei ge yawned and continued, “This kind of physical labor doesn’t require any skill at all. So boring.”

“Then I’ll give my report to the boss first and come back.” Zhenzhen and I headed to the team leader’s office.

In the team leader’s office, Boss was staring at the fluorscent computer screen. He didn’t look away when we entered. I casually sat down and lit a cigarette, which was quickly extinguished by Zhenzhen. I really missed my days of partnering with Xiao Xiang. He never put out my cigarettes, and when I didn’t have any on me, he’d cover me. I wonder how he’s doing now. Perhaps he’d already left this world… Let’s hope he was still alive though, even if it was already two years since there’d been any news about him.

After reminiscing about my old partner, it was time to get back to business. I reported the results of yesterday’s investigations to the boss and started giving my opinion, “This case is more complicated than I’d originally thought. All that can be certain of right now is that the female ghost with a baby is just a pretense. Perhaps there’s someone who’s using the murder case from ten years ago to cover up an unspeakable secret.”

“How can you be so sure?” Boss’ eyes were still fixed to the computer screen and his eyes were very steady, as if he hadn’t even heard the content of my report.

I gently lifted up Zhenzhen’s burnt fingers and explained, “The log book catching fire wasn’t a ghost causing trouble. Rather, someone had coated the page with white phosphorous. Under normal circ.u.mstances, there would be nothing strange with the log book, but once you flip to the page coated in white phosphorous, a person’s body temperature coupled with the heat generated from the friction of turning the pages would be enough to ignite it.”

Zhenzhen looked at her fingers and then came to a realization. “You mean that someone’s pretending to be a female ghost to murder people, and they also messed with the log books? But what would their motive be?”

Sitting in the chair, I stretched out my limbs. “I’m not sure. If it was just to keep the students away from the woods, there wouldn’t be a need to kill, because that would attract the attention of the police. And we didn’t find anything in the forest either.”

Boss kept staring at his screen, with no intention of speaking. Instead, Zhenzhen asked anxiously, “So what are we supposed to investigate now?”

That was simple. “Since they want to destroy the files of the people who lived in room 106, we’ll definitely be able to find some clues with the four girls who lived there.”

She seemed to have run into some trouble comprehending, as she furrowed her brows. “The archives room was burnt down. How are we supposed to find the four girls?!”

“We’ll have to see how good Wei ge’s skills are.” I lit another cigarette, and this time she didn’t put it out.

“Mm, we’ll continue investigating in this direction. Xueqing and Xiao Miao will check out Professor Xiao. Let me know if you find anything.” The boss’ tone probably made Zhenzhen feel that he wasn’t paying attention. As we were leaving, she tried getting a glimpse of his screen.

“How can the team leader be looking up stocks this early in the morning!” she asked when we left his office.

“Stocks are his specialty. If you have the money, you should play with him,” I joked.

Face full of disdain, she said, “I’m not playing in the stock market. It’s just the same as gambling.”

“Of course they’re not the same. Gambling is illegal, but the stock market is legal. You even have to pay taxes!” After joking with her, I walked over to Wei ge. “Did you get the info for the four girls?”

“All you gave me was when they were enrolled at school, and you want me to find them? You’re holding me to quite a high esteem.” Wei ge’s smug face made me think of a rather graceless description– full of himself.

“So what did you find? …century’s greatest hacker.” I handed him a cigarette.

“Well spoken, well spoken. Here…” Wei ge handed me two sheets of A4 paper. A graduation photo and a list of names. “I went through the Xiaonei Network and cla.s.s lists, available to any ordinary internet user, and found that the creator of one of the lists mentioned a murder case right before graduation. What he described fits the case of room 106, so you’re probably looking for students on this list. I copied the graduation photo and student list directly from the site. Not a lot of people posted to that group. There was only one IP posting, and they hadn’t posted in a long time. (Note: Xiaonei, now Renren, was a social networking site for college students)

The graduation photo was enlarged, but the original resolution wasn’t that good to start with. The image wasn’t very clear, and you could only really see that there were 31 students in total. You could just barely make out who was male or female, but it would be impossible to find someone from the image alone. The cla.s.s list simply had 33 names on it, no method of contact. It didn’t even list the genders of the students. The list of students had two more names than there were people in the photo, and they were likely the murderer and victim from room 106. But the graduation photo seemed to hold pretty much no value.

I scratched my head and asked, “You have anything else?”

“A normal person would only be able to give you this, but I’m a hacker. Of course I wouldn’t be such a disgrace.” Wei ge sat in his chair and let out a puff of smoke. With satisfaction, he said, “I’ve already tracked down the IP addresses of the poster and visitor. The poster’s IP is from abroad, so I can’t pinpoint a specific location right now, but I’ve already sent her an email. As for when and if she’ll reply, I don’t know. The other IP is from the provincial general hospital. Going through the hospital’s computer system, I found out the IP originated from a computer on the seventh floor. If you take a trip over, I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Thanks!” After thanking Wei ge, I got ready to head out to investigate with Zhenzhen, but he stopped me. “Don’t run off so quickly. Let me tell you something else that’s very interesting. It might be related to this case.”

I halted my steps and listened.

“As I was hacking into their system, I discovered some encrypted files. They were mostly accounts of neglect and mistakes of the staff, things like causing a death by administering the wrong medicine and other sensitive stuff. But then there were also mentionings of stolen hearts from the corpses in the morgue in recent years. Presently, there have been maybe thirty or forty stolen, once every one or two months.”

Hearts!

Missing hearts!

More missing hearts!

Was there some unknown connection between the general hospital and the female ghost? Very complicated. This case was getting increasintly interesting.