Genius Detective

The car that had the body sitting in the backseat was temporarily placed in the little community. Chen Shi threw the car keys to the security guard, and told them that other policemen would come to collect it. He asked them to pass on the car keys before walking out of the community with Tao Yueyue.

Tao Yueyue asked, "Why not drive?"

"Take a guess."

"Well... The box is so big that it must be very tiresome to drag around, so the murderer must live nearby."

"I’ll correct you slightly. They are not necessarily murderers. They are just the ones that abandoned the corpse. If they drove, could this be likely?” 

Tao Yueyue shook her head. "If they drove, they would drive in directly like us. They didn’t need to move the big box.” 

"Really smart!" Chen Shi patted her head.

Tao Yueyue smelled the aroma of omelettes from outside the community and said, "Uncle Chen, I am hungry!"

"Didn’t you eat the cucumber?"

"The cucumber is not going to fill me up. I’m going through puberty! Don't you know that?"

“Okay, okay!” Chen Shi went to the stall selling the omelettes and asked for two of them. He took the opportunity to ask the stall owner, “Is there a place in this vicinity that only opens at night?”

The stall owner was a big sister. She looked at Chen Shi and asked, "What do you want?"

"To investigate a case. I am a police officer."

"An officer bringing a child...? The place you talked about is on the street at the first left. That seems to be the place that most closely resembles the place you’re asking about.”

"What is that place?"

"You’ll know when you go... Here’s your omelette."

Eating the omelettes, Tao Yueyue remarked, "This game of posing as a policeman is really fun."

"What do you mean by pose? I am one!"

"The nose will grow longer and longer if you lie."

"I’ll tell you a secret. In fact, I am an undercover policeman."

Tao Yueyue looked him up and down, before saying, "Liar, you are not handsome."

“Is that even relevant?”

"In the movies, the undercover officers look very handsome."

"Stop watching all those movies that are only full of violence and death."

"You adults are all like this. If you can’t win an argument with a child, you’ll change the subject and just forcefully say they’re not allowed."

"Okay, okay. I’ll admit defeat, okay?"

"Wow, hamster!"

Tao Yueyue ran to a stall selling hamsters, squatted down, and smiled at the hamster running in the cage non-stop. The stall owner urged, "Buy one for your daughter! See how happy she is?"

"He is not my father!", "She is not my daughter!" The two exclaimed almost in unison.

The stall owner smiled with a shy smile and speculated about the relationship between the two.

Tao Yueyue looked at Chen Shi with pitiful eyes and Chen Shi responded in turn, "As long as you get 80 points or more by the end of the school year, I will buy it for you."

"Sly! I haven't promised to go to school yet. Your condition is equal to two conditions."

"Less nonsense. You must continue your education."

Tao Yueyue was upset again. Chen Shi forcefully pulled her away and lectured. "If you don't go to school, you won't have knowledge. If you don't have knowledgere, you have to sell hamsters like him."

"Is that bad?"

"Going to school is like upgrading your game. If you don't upgrade, your equipment will be poor and your level will be bad. Others can kill you in a second."

"So, the dead uncle back there is dead because he didn’t go to school?”

Children’s questions were too complicated, rendering Chen Shi speechless. He negotiated, “If you agree to go to school, then I’ll agree to buy you a hamster.”

"I want to raise four!"

"Okay, four."

"Five!"

"No, only four."

Tao Yueyue smirked evilly, "Then, I will let them give birth to four hundred."

When they arrived at the aforementioned street, Chen Shi found that it was a red light district. There were some suspicious hair salons along the street. The lights were dimmed and some women dressed in revealing clothes were loitering around. Chen Shi walked into one of them. A big sister remarked, "Big brother, you’ve really got guts bringing a child to this kind of place.”

"I want to inquire about something. What time do you start business here every day?"

"Why? Did you come to take care of my business? We open at two in the afternoon until four in the morning."

"Every day?"

“It’s like this every day. Even if we open up early, there won’t be any customers.”

"Thanks."

Leaving the store, Tao Yueyue asked, "Is that aunty a prostitute?"

"Yes; don't ask anymore."

Tao Yueyue’s mood suddenly became gloomy. Chen Shi asked, “What’s wrong?”

"I thought of my mother. Did my mother do this too?"

Chen Shi knew that he couldn’t hide these things from her. Tao Yueyue was a very intelligent child, and not the general kind of intelligence. Her IQ was high at 143.  

He stroked Tao Yueyue’s hair and explained, “Your mother also did this, but the profession did not represent her character.”

"Uncle Chen, you don't have to comfort me. I know that my mother was not a good person."

"We should continue to investigate the case."

"Ok!"

At the end of the street, there was a nightclub. In this place, the content could be imagined. Chen Shi did not walk in directly, but went to the road next to it and looked at it. The road was lined with trees[1] and the street lights were very old. In the evening, it looked very dark and eerie. The bottom of the walls on the east side were painted with graffiti.

The first floor of the nightclub was empty, piled up with some dusty bicycles. There was a lot of rubbish thrown around. To get to the second floor, an escalator needed to be taken.

Chen Shi looked at the ground and turned on his mobile phone’s flashlight. Tao Yueyue pointed at something. "Uncle Chen, look there."

"It's too narrow; I can't reach it. Can you help me?"

Tao Yueyue nodded and went into the gap between the wall and the bicycles and pulled out a tooth. Chen Shi looked at it on the palm of his hand. It was a ceramic denture. He asked Tao Yueyue to take out the photos to compare it. The deceased indeed was missing a molar. 

Chen Shi surveyed the area and used the HD mobile phone camera bought by Tao Yueyue to take photos of a certain spot on the ground. Tao Yueyue asked, "Was the body thrown here?"

"A large area on the ground has the dust wiped off, and there are also water stains. It seems that this is the case.”

"So, the uncle who died was actually killed by someone else, thrown here, and then thrown into the stinky bucket?"

"That seems to be the case."

"Poor uncle."

"Let's go up and ask."

The nightclub was not officially open yet. The waiters came over and asked what they were doing. Chen Shi issued a “police badge” and the waiter said, “Oh, officers, we only operate honestly here.”

"We are not investigating this. I wanted to ask whether this nightclub has performances at night.”

"Yes!"

"What kind of performance?"

"This season we invited an unnamed rock band to come and perform. They perform every night"

"Let me see their props."

After hearing that it was something regarding bands, the waiter was happy to take them to investigate. They went to a room full of performance instruments. Tao Yueyue pointed to a huge box and noted, "This is the one."

The waiter looked blank as Chen Shi asked, "Please call the manager over."

"Okay…"

After he left, Chen Shi checked the box. One of the boxes was obviously cleaner than the others. He smelled it and called Tao Yueyue to smell it as well. Tao Yueyue said, "The smell of detergent... And the scent of smelly fish and shrimp."

"This should be evidence; let us take it away!"

"Hey, can the police take whatever they want?"

"Yes."

"It’s so nice being a police officer."

---

1. The author wrote 夹道树. As far as I know, this can mean any tree that’s usually fairly tall, with or without leaves that are closely planted together, creating a barrier almost. Like this: http://dingyue.nosdn.127.net/2gOseZAWRvPoWOO9WTkNhkDRvjGh4qrzBRckbZRuVtDrW1538439591323.jpeg 

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