Chapter 042: Traces of Tools

These local thugs, after joining the gang, all had their own affairs to attend to. When they returned to the village, it was usually each man to his own home; rarely did they come back as a group. Yet this time, Luo Feng had brought every one of them back together. I seized one of them by the head, my voice cold as I said, “Don’t wait for me to ask each question—tell me everything. Why did you return to the village that day? Explain it all to me, now!”

My threat worked; the subsequent questioning proceeded smoothly. They told me that today, each of them had received word that an old villager had died, so they hurried back to check. These thugs, though fierce toward outsiders, were always protective of their own people.

However, upon arriving in the village, before they even saw the deceased elder, Luo Feng’s men intercepted and questioned them, then brought them in. I asked Luo Feng if anyone had passed away in the village today. His men replied that they had not seen any such thing. In that instant, I understood—the thugs had been lured back to the village on purpose.

These thugs wandered all over daily; it was perfectly plausible that they couldn’t account for their whereabouts on the day Old Ninth disappeared. Still, that made them all the more suspicious. Luo Feng cursed, “So you’re saying someone wanted us to catch them?”

I nodded and asked the group who had delivered the message. They all claimed it was given to them by Daxi.

“Damn, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have let Daxi go just now!” Luo Feng spat.

“No need to rush. Investigate whom Daxi has met with these past days—perhaps that will lead us somewhere,” I told him.

Luo Feng summoned a few men and sent them out. I glanced at the thugs. They did seem suspicious, and they were locals, but knowing they’d only returned upon receiving a message, I suspected someone was once again interfering with our investigation.

Luo Feng temporarily detained them. By the time we left the arcade, dusk was falling. Half a day had slipped by in our three-day window. Luo Feng asked if I had confidence in solving the case. I considered it, then replied, since we’d made a promise, we had to see it through. Luo Feng inquired where I’d go next—I said I wanted to visit Fei Ji’s house. After Fei Ji’s death, I hadn’t examined the crime scene thoroughly, and later, strange events prevented me from going.

Luo Feng drove us to the modest villa complex where Fei Ji had lived. Once inside, we vaulted the iron gate outside Fei Ji’s home and jumped down. Fei Ji had been dead for days; the police, guided by Chen Fan, had scoured the place, but to no avail—no clues were found.

We planned to start inside the house. The front door was locked, so we circled to the back, smashed one of the windows, and climbed in. The crime scene had not been cleaned; blood still stained the bed in Fei Ji’s bedroom.

After circling the house and finding nothing, we moved to the backyard—the true scene of the murder. The patch of flattened grass from that day had risen again, but I remembered the spot where I believed Fei Ji had fallen.

I walked to that location, intent on reconstructing what had happened.

“Fang Han, are you saying Fei Ji fell dead without even a struggle?” Luo Feng asked.

I nodded. That day, only one patch of grass had been pressed down, and its shape suggested Fei Ji had collapsed there. The rest stood tall and undisturbed. Luo Feng was incredulous. He pointed out that, though Fei Ji had been frightened and was overweight, he was still a police officer; no one could simply slice his throat with a knife, whether from the front or the back, without a struggle.

“There should’ve been a fight, at least,” Luo Feng said.

There was very little blood on the grass. A simple absorbent mat could have caught it. There were no traces in the house; the killer need only have been careful moving the body and cleaning up. Even the spirit money stuffed in Fei Ji’s mouth wasn’t truly bizarre. The strangest thing about the murder, in fact, was this: Why had Fei Ji died without resisting?

In other words, the real question was: how did Fei Ji die?

Luo Feng’s words set me thinking. If someone had crept up with a knife, Fei Ji—being a police officer—would certainly have noticed and fought back. A struggle would have trampled more grass and left traces.

The backyard was overgrown. Ordinarily, no one would venture there at night, yet Fei Ji had died precisely there. Perhaps he’d heard something, been lured out, and thus was alert. For a killer to take him by surprise with a single blow was even less likely.

I narrowed my eyes and asked Luo Feng, “What if it wasn’t a person who approached Fei Ji, but only a knife?”

Luo Feng was startled, glancing around. “If there was no one, how could a knife get near Fei Ji, let alone kill him? Don’t tell me someone’s martial skills are so great they could throw a knife and slice a man’s throat with precision.”

I simply smiled and said no more, positioning myself at the spot where Fei Ji had fallen. I recalled the direction in which the grass had been pressed and soon deduced the posture of his body—he’d fallen on his side. I surveyed the backyard; apart from a single tree and the grass, it was quite empty.

The tree was not tall. I walked over to it, then back to the spot where Fei Ji had died, making gestures with my hand. Luo Feng, uncertain what I was doing, did not interrupt. Eventually, I found the angle I’d been seeking and told Luo Feng, “The knife must have flown from this tree.”

Luo Feng was stunned. He laughed, “Fang Han, you really believe someone threw a knife to kill him? If you said he was hacked to death, I might believe it, but slicing a throat? That’s impossible.”

From the tree, I walked straight towards the wall at the edge of the yard. When I reached the spot where Fei Ji had fallen, I stopped and had Luo Feng walk with me. He followed, albeit confused, and soon we reached the brick wall. Luo Feng, impatient, asked what I was looking for. I told him to examine the wall carefully.

Though Fei Ji’s villa was modest, it was fairly new. The wall was built of bricks and coated in smooth cement. I searched for a bit and found what I was after—a small, irregular indentation.

It was tiny and shallow, but compared to the smooth surface, it stood out. It looked as if someone had accidentally tapped the wall with an iron nail, leaving a small, uneven pit.

“What’s this?” Luo Feng asked.

“It’s the mark left when a knife, thrown with force, struck the wall,” I replied.

This was a classic tool mark. By comparing it to models in my mind, I could immediately tell it was made by a knife tip colliding with the wall. In forensic terms, tool marks are the plastic deformations left when a tool contacts and damages a physical object. I was intimately familiar with the patterns of most such marks.

Luo Feng’s astonishment grew. He stared and asked, “So someone really could throw a knife and slit a man’s throat with precision?”

I smiled. “Who said it was thrown by a person? You just reminded me—if someone with a knife had approached Fei Ji, there would have been signs of a struggle. So, the only thing that got close to Fei Ji was the knife. A person couldn’t achieve it—but a device could.”

The indentation in the wall was the best proof. My gestures by the tree were to deduce the knife’s launch point. The knife had to have been propelled with great force to travel so far and still leave a mark. The most likely force was some kind of spring mechanism.

I reconstructed the scenario: Fei Ji, hearing something in the backyard, approached cautiously. While crossing the grass, he stepped on some sort of trigger. Instantly, a knife was launched from the tree, shooting toward his throat, slitting it, and then striking the wall, leaving behind the tool mark.

Luo Feng frowned, still reluctant to believe. “What kind of device or trap could cut a man’s throat so precisely? And in such a large backyard, how could the killer guarantee Fei Ji would step on the trigger?”

He speculated further, “Maybe there was no trigger. The killer was hiding in the tree and launched the knife after Fei Ji arrived?”

I smiled. “It’s just a hypothesis. Honestly, I haven’t figured out what kind of mechanism or trap could so accurately slit a man’s throat.”

Luo Feng paused. “With so little to go on, you’re still smiling? It’s nearly dark. In twelve hours, our seventy-two-hour window will be up. Aren’t you worried?”

I shook my head. “The killer must be more anxious than we are. There will be a way to draw him out.”

At that moment, Luo Feng’s phone rang. After answering, he told me that Daxi had met with Yun Gao today.

“Yun Gao again! It must have been him who had Daxi lure those thugs into the village to sabotage us!” Luo Feng fumed. “Yun Gao isn’t the killer, and he has no one to protect—why is he always interfering?”

His words made my eyes widen. “I understand now.”