Once again, it was like the bird had lost its wings[1]. She went back to the station dejected and asked her colleague where Lin Qiupu was. Apparently, he was still talking to Li and his lawyer.

Lin Dongxue paced back and forth in the foyer as Xu Xiaodong pleaded, “Stop pacing! My eyes are spent just looking at you.”

“How could it be Li!” Lin Dongxue stood still and pondered.

“Damn, your expression is a bit like Detective Conan.”

“Aphrodisiac. Why is there an aphrodisiac in the stomach of the deceased? Did they stuff it in when they dismembered the body?”

“Impossible, I have seen the autopsy report, and the stomach bag of the deceased was intact.”

Lin Dongxue didn’t listen to a single word Xu Xiaodong had said while she was piecing together her thoughts in her head.

“Where did it go wrong?! Where is it wrong?!” Lin Dongxue began to scratch her head.

“Stop pulling at your hair. Be careful of baldness.”

At this time, there was a commotion in the office. Lin Qiupu’s roaring voice bellowed out from the room. “Stop spouting nonsense here! You’re just grasping at straws now!”[2]

Another voice soothed, “Captain Lin, you need to calm down. My client really said this.”

Lin Qiupu kicked open the door and called a policeman. “Go to the school, find a girl named Mary, and bring her here.”

Lin Dongxue went up and asked, “Brother, what happened?”

“He said...” Lin Qiupu glanced at the interrogation office. In the half-open door, a man in a suit was calmly drinking tea. “His lawyer noted that at the time of the incident, he was opening a small stove with another female student!”

“What does it mean to ‘open a small stove’?”

“It means molesting and sexual assault!”

“So, he was not willing to say what he was doing at the time of his death because of this?”

“No, it's wrong! It must be wrong! This is definitely just one of his tricks. Call the girl to verify this.”

The entire task force was anxiously waiting and did not even eat lunch. At about two in the afternoon, a young girl was brought in. She looked at the full house of adults. Lin Dongxue was the only woman present, so she took the initiative to ask, “Little sister, don't be afraid, we are here to help you... Can you tell sister here what happened on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 28th, after school? Where were you?”

The little girl began shaking. “I... I went home.”

“Really?”

The little girl's eyes filled with tears and nodded.

No matter what they asked, the little girl continued to say that she went home, but her expression hinted that she wasn’t telling the truth. Nobody knew what to do, so Lin Dongxue offered, “Then, I’ll take you home, okay?”

She took the little girl away and walked towards the door. Suddenly, the little girl burst into tears and begged, “Auntie, can you not tell my mother about this?”

Lin Dongxue squatted down to wipe her tears and reassured the little girl. “Okay, I promise not to say anything to her.”

“Teacher Li, he... He called me into the house... And then...”

After listening to the little girl's narrative, Lin Dongxue was itching to go in and slap Li right that instance. She suppressed her anger and said, “Let the forensic aunty give you a health check, okay? Don't worry, we will keep this secret.”

The little girl nodded.

A female forensic doctor examined the little girl as everyone stood outside and waited. After the examination, the female forensic doctor acknowledged, “She does have signs of a recent sexual assault.”

“Bastard!” Lin Qiupu kicked a trash can in the hallway.

This fierce material let Li immediately evade the crime of murder, but he still has to stay in the detention room to wait for the trial of this other crime.

Lin Qiupu sat in his office in defeat. Lin Dongxue walked in trying to comfort and encourage him. “Brother, don't be discouraged. The case is not over yet!”

Seeing Lin Qiupu’s silence, Lin Dongxue continued, “This is not your fault. Someone tried framing him.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Chen Shi pointed this out to me before, but this case has a strong scent of framing. You see, the whole thing was laid out too perfectly...”

“Then doesn’t that mean I volunteered to be a fool?!” Lin Qiupu smiled.

“I have something to ask you. Is the aphrodisiac found in Li's home the same as the one found in the stomach of the deceased?”

“It's the same kind. Old Peng ran some experiments and it’s actually from the very same box!”

“Where did you find it?”

“Garbage bag.”

“Garbage bag!? You told me it was his home?”

“It was in the garbage bag that he put outside his house...” Lin Qiupu's eyes suddenly rounded. “You mean this is also part of the framing?”

“Yes, the murderer knew that Li had a dishonest character, so he poured dirty water on his head.”[3]

“How did this aphrodisiac get into the belly of the deceased? The deceased is a 12-year-old child! Surely he wouldn’t have taken it randomly?”

This was the biggest problem in the case at present. Lin Dongxue couldn’t answer it. She bit her finger. “But the murderer knows that he ate it, so they put the same box of medicine in the garbage bag in front of Li’s residence. Are there fingerprints on it?”

“Ah yes, fingerprints!”

Lin Qiupu rushed out and ran to the forensics lab. He was in such a rush and so flustered that he couldn’t eloquently express anything, “Old Peng... Pill box... Fingerprints... Hurry!”

Peng Sijue used ultraviolet light to illuminate the inside and outside of the kit. He did not find any fingerprints. To put it accurately, someone had very carefully wiped all prints away from the box. He shook his head. The spirit of Lin Qiupu’s which had just been lifted once again languished.

“If this pill is really Li’s, it is impossible to not even have his own fingerprints on it.” Lin Dongxue asked, “Captain Peng, who would buy this type of aphrodisiac?”

“A couple or a lover,” listed Peng Sijue.

“When it is eaten, what effect will it have? For example, will the body heat up?” Lin Dongxue blushed.

“No, I have analysed the ingredients. This drug is not really useful at all. It purely relies on placebo... The ability to purchase this overseas is also fake. It is only produced by small domestic workshops here locally and does not have the licence required to sell overseas.”

Lin Qiupu asked Lin Dongxue, “What leads have you found?”

“I can’t say it’s a lead per say, but I’ve found a person particularly suspicious.”

“Tell me more.”

Lin Dongxue told her story and Lin Qiupu challenged, “Wait, you’re trying to say that the child killed the victim just for a game console? And that the parents helped him dismember the body?”

Several police officers on the scene laughed. Lin Dongxue was a little dissatisfied and was about to counter. Lin Qiupu reminded, “Investigating cases is not based on the mouth. You must have evidence. You must obtain evidence! Without evidence, it means nothing.”

“Then I will look for evidence for you.”

Lin Dongxue turned away when she suddenly received a text message from Lin Qiupu. He said, “Sister, if you need help, just ask. I will support you.”

She found this funny and frustrating. Then her thoughts returned to the case. How can I find evidence? Do I need to slip into Wang Jinsong’s home quietly?

No, as a policeman, this illegal thing can't be done.

Whilst she reached a stagnant point in her thinking, Xu Xiaodong came out of nowhere and teased, “When did your thinking become so bland? Can’t you think outside the box? If there is dismemberment, then there ought to be blood that got washed into the sewer!”

“The words you speak are the equivalent of you not saying anything at all. They won’t even allow me to look into their bathtub, let alone go in and check their sewer system and water pipes.”

“We don’t necessarily need to enter their house in order to check the pipes. For example... We could go downstairs!”

Lin Dongxue suddenly widened her eyes. If she didn't like Xu Xiaodong, she really wanted to wrap her arms around him and give him a big kiss. This idea was very good! It’s like the God’s pen.[4]

1. Return empty handed after failure.

2. I used this expression instead of the one that they originally spoke of, which is to sacrifice all his chess pieces in order to retain the life of just one. However, it sounded a bit better to just say that Li was using desperate measures at this point.

3. Used him as a scapegoat.

4. Upon a writer’s block, the writer might have a sudden jolt of inspiration, almost like a God, fairy or deity has wielded the pen with them in order to speedily finish the piece. It is an expression that describes a situation where someone receives “godsend” help.