Bird on Fire Chapter 8

The policemen laughed, did not answer, and went on with their own business.

Feng Kai put the bedding on the shabby little desk with a puzzled look on his face, and the desk shook violently a few times. Feng Kai quickly held it up and said, "Oh my God, this desk is going to fall apart."

Grant Gu didn't mind at all. He opened the drawers one by one, and then put the mimeographed textbooks and his notebooks he brought back from school into several drawers according to categories. Finally, he took out a rag and wiped every corner of the desk and chair carefully.

Feng Kai sat on a stool that was a bit uncomfortable for his B*tt0cks, waiting for Grant Gu to clean up his desk. Then he picked up the bedding, twisted the keys around his fingers, and said, "You are so diligent. Come on, help me clean up the dormitory."

The two of them left the gate of the Public Security Bureau, walked along the wall to the back of the Public Security Bureau, and arrived at the center of several three-story tube buildings. In the tube buildings of that era, each floor had a long corridor connecting the single rooms. At the end of the corridor were two public washrooms and toilets. Although the conditions were a bit difficult, Feng Kai felt fresh and didn't have to be as restrained as living in Grant Gu's house, so he was still very happy.

Feng Kai walked in front with his bag on his back, whistling as he ran up the stairs two steps at a time. When he reached the entrance of the corridor, he almost bumped into a little girl who was struggling to hold a quilt. The little girl staggered and supported herself with the back of her hand against the wall of the corridor, thus avoiding falling.

Before he could apologize, Feng Kai recognized the girl with two pigtails in front of him. It was none other than Wang Jinye. This shock made Feng Kai break out in a cold sweat.

"Why are you here?" Feng Kai swallowed the "sorry" that was on the tip of his tongue and turned it into a question.

Wang Jinye was nearly knocked down. Seeing that the person who knocked her was the "long-tongued man" Feng Kai, she glared at him angrily. But then she saw Grant Gu following behind her, and her expression eased a little.

"I live here, why can't I be here?" Wang Jinye said, freeing up one hand, taking out a white handkerchief embroidered with green asparagus fern from his pocket, and wiped the dust off the back of his hand.

"You live here? Did you come to the right building? This is the Public Security Bureau dormitory!" Feng Kai shouted.

"Who said this is the dormitory of the Public Security Bureau? This is also the dormitory of our hospital, the dormitory of the Taxation Bureau, the dormitory of the Grain Bureau, and the dormitory of the court. Stupid!" Wang Jinye said a lot of things.

Feng Kai stood in the corridor and looked around. Yes, although this dormitory was behind the Public Security Bureau, it was also in front of the People's Hospital with a red cross hanging on it. There were government units on both sides, so this area was a dormitory built by multiple units.

Feng Kai was stunned for a moment, and Wang Jinye ignored him and walked into Room 207 with the quilt in her arms. Feng Kai silently raised his hand and looked at the door key of Room 206, feeling extremely depressed. What a coincidence, I happened to live next door to this girl. There will definitely be many quarrels in the future. She is really haunting, and I can meet her everywhere.

Feeling depressed, Feng Kai dragged Grant Gu to clean up the dormitory. Actually, there was nothing to clean up in the dormitory. There were only two beds and a table like the ones in the Criminal Police Academy. The only thing he could do was to clean the bed and table.

Seeing Grant Gu wiping one bed and then another, Feng Kai said unhappily, "No need to wipe that bed. It's not needed anyway."

"It's necessary." Grant Gu's voice was like a mosquito humming, "I'll come and live here too."

Feng Kai was frightened again and broke into a cold sweat. He jumped up suddenly, but soon calmed down. Indeed, Mark Chief said that this dormitory belonged to the two of them, and Grant Gu could choose to live here or at home.

"Why do you come to live here? You can't even take a shower. It would be much more comfortable for you to live at home." Feng Kai tried to soften his tone and advised.

"You have to go to the bathhouse to take a bath in winter, but in summer you can just take a cold shower." Grant Gu said in a low voice.

"You don't go home even though you're so close, aren't you afraid your mother will be sad?"

"My dad will be sad if I go back every day. I can go home on Sundays."

Feng Kai felt deeply powerless. He knew very well why Grant Gu stayed to live with him, but he didn't want to point it out for fear of hurting Grant Gu's fragile self-esteem.

After working all morning, Grant Gu went home to get his bedding and daily necessities, and then it was time for lunch as Section Mark Chief said. Because of Wang Jinye's sudden appearance, Feng Kai almost forgot his curiosity about "opening up". In fact, the "opening up" that Section Mark Chief mentioned did not refer to any novel sports, but just a dinner party. In fact, the Public Security Bureau has a canteen, and the quality of the food is about the same as that of the Police Cadre School of the Ministry of Public Security. Whenever there are overtime or important days, several people from the Criminal Investigation Department will pool money for dinner together, similar to the current AA system. But this time they also added some entertainment elements to it. The specific way to play is that Section Mark Chief draws a big tree on a white paper, and there are eight roots under the tree. On each root, the words "one yuan", "two yuan", "free food" and "running errands" are written, and then the roots are folded up. Each policeman chooses a whisker and then pays according to the amount of "one yuan" or "two yuan" he draws. Finally, the person who draws the "errand boy" draws the money to go to the state-owned restaurant to buy some food, and that's considered a dinner.

Although these old men were having a great time, Feng Kai didn't think this was very interesting. Instead, he was very depressed because he got "two yuan" and even thought that these old men must have cheated somewhere. But what surprised him was that the errand boy, Lao Ma, actually bought a bottle of bulk Lao Baigan and drank more than one or two Tyler Tao of it for each person. Drinking at noon was incredible to Feng Kai. Since he had an impression of the police profession, he knew that police were absolutely forbidden to drink at noon on weekdays. Mark Chief's explanation for this was that the tasks in the afternoon were very light, so a little wine was needed in the ceremony of welcoming newcomers, but it was okay as long as they didn't drink too much.

Only after they had eaten and drunk their fill did Section Mark Chief stop keeping them in suspense and tell Grant Gu and Feng Kai their afternoon mission - taking a bath. The mission goal was to wear casual clothes and take a bath in a bathhouse near the Public Security Bureau. After taking a bath, they would occupy the bathing bed in the bathhouse for resting after bathing and would not come out until notified by their superiors.

"What kind of mission is this?" Feng Kai was disappointed after receiving the mission. He came to a new era and the first mission of his police career was to take a bath, which made him feel not so glorious.

In this era, people can only take a bath in public baths in winter, and there don't seem to be many public baths in Longfan City, because when Feng Kai and Grant Gu arrived at the door of the bathroom, they found that there was already a long line at the door. The bathroom manager was explaining to everyone that the bathhouse was full today and they needed to wait patiently or come back another day. But no one would come back another day, after all, the Chinese New Year would come in two or three days, and there would be more and more people as time went by.

Just when the two were worried that they might not be able to enter the bathhouse and complete the task in the entire afternoon, a man came over and waved to Feng Kai and Grant Gu, then led the two of them into the bathhouse from the back.

"This, isn't too bad?" Grant Gu felt a little embarrassed. He couldn't go through the back door as a public security officer. Fortunately, they were not wearing police uniforms.

"I think it's good. I can finish the task early and go home to sleep early." Feng Kai didn't care. He was still thinking about how to break up Grant Gu and Wang Jinye.

This old-fashioned bathhouse is no different from what Feng Kai remembered when he was a child, with tiled floors and walls, turbid water, and a rusty shower room without a shower head. When walking in the bathroom, you have to be careful to prevent the floor from being too slippery and causing falls. Outside the bathroom is a rest room with more than a dozen bath beds. The wooden structure of the bath bed is wrapped with sponge and artificial leather. There is a lid in the middle of the bath bed that can be lifted up, and under the lid is a box for storing clothes. After taking a bath, go to the rest room, and the administrator will throw you a hot dry towel. After wiping your body, lie on the bath bed, which is very comfortable. Feng Kai only experienced this feeling when he was a child. In the mid-1990s, there were very few public baths like this.

There were more than a dozen people in the bathroom, most of whom seemed to have been seen at the Public Security Bureau in the morning. It was basically determined that the bathroom had been controlled by the Public Security Bureau. It seemed that this was not an easy task.

Feng Kai and Grant Gu hadn't taken a bath since they came back from the train, so they took a nice bath, and then followed the instructions to lie on the bath bed to take a seat. Grant Gu felt a little restless as he listened to the people outside the door cursing and swearing.

"Hey, can you lie down?" Feng Kai was annoyed by Grant Gu standing up and sitting down, so he said, "We are completing the mission, don't let the enemy see it."

"Enemy?" When Grant Gu heard these two words, he instantly became nervous and got goose bumps all over his body.

"Don't be nervous, we are just extras." Feng Kai said, "Come on, talk, so that you can be more normal. By the way, have you improved from the nightmares you always had recently?"

Grant Gu lay down on the bed, bit her lip and thought for a while, then said, "I still have nightmares from time to time."

"Your mental quality is too poor." Feng Kai said, "It's just one person's death. Is it necessary to cause you psychological trauma for half a year?"

"It's not about the death of a person," said Grant Gu. "Because I was the first to arrive at the scene, I remember seeing a shoe print next to the machine. After learning about trace detection, I felt that this shoe print was not simple."

As they were talking, a tall man and a thin man walked into the bathroom from the back door drunk. Seeing their drunken appearance, Feng Kai thought they might be the targets of the police, otherwise how could non-public security personnel walk in from the back door. The two found two empty beds next to Feng Kai, took off their clothes and put them in the box, and then walked in to take a shower while chatting. As soon as the two men opened the curtain and walked into the bathroom, two men who had just rested on the bath bed came over, opened the thin man's box, and looked for something inside.

As expected, the police were secretly searching the suspect's belongings. Feng Kai thought that they were asked to play a supporting role because people in this era like to meddle in other people's business. If there were people inside and saw someone rummaging through other people's boxes, they might be sent to the police station. So to be on the safe side, they let the police in the bathroom have their own people, so there would be no problem. In an era without technical support, the police really dared to think of any way.

"That footprint is the footprint of ordinary Liberation shoes that everyone wears. I remember that the deceased, that female worker, was also wearing Liberation shoes, so I didn't think much about it at first. After all, I didn't know anything about trace detection technology at that time." Grant Gu didn't notice that someone else was turning over the box of the bed next to him. He was still whispering about the doubts in his heart recently. "Look, the machine is in the northeast corner of the factory. The machine belt runs from east to west. The shoe print is on the frame on the north side, which means that the owner of the shoe print is on the north side of the machine. They determined that the female worker used her feet to poke the stuck coke and was sucked into the machine. If so, the female worker must have stood on the north side of the machine, facing west, and poked with her left foot. Then the shoe print on the frame of the machine should be left by her left foot, because it is inconvenient to use the right foot to poke with the left foot as a support foot ( As shown on the left side of the picture below). But if she was pushed into the machine by someone, then the murderer must have pushed her facing south, because if she lost her center of gravity, it is possible for either foot to step on the frame of the machine. So the key is whether the shoe print is from the left or right foot. The arcs of the corresponding positions of the arch and the instep of the Jiefang shoe are similar. It is difficult to judge the left or right foot based on only half of the forefoot print. But from the overall perspective of the shoe print, the area on the south side has a heavy indentation. Generally, the tread Mark Chiefs are in the first metatarsal area, that is, the first metatarsal area has the heaviest indentation, ah, that is, the area under the big toe. If the indentation on the south side is in the first metatarsal area, then this is the shoe print of the right foot, and it should not be left by the female worker (as shown on the right side of the picture above). Of course, this is just my own guess. After all, I was very scared at the time, and I couldn't remember clearly whether the shoe print was actually what I remembered. "

Grant Gu kept muttering to himself, and Feng Kai hardly listened to what he was saying. Feng Kai lay on the bed, squinting his eyes, but his attention was focused on the two colleagues who were turning over the bath bed box. The two police officers checked the thin man's top and bottom clothes, but did not find anything different. However, a bunch of keys hanging around his waist caught the attention of the police. They took out plasticine and made molds of each key. The two police officers' actions were very covert. In order to see more clearly, Feng Kai even pretended to sit up and stretched his waist to shorten the distance of his peeping.