Chapter 130

Su Ruonan felt a bit awkward and was just thinking about how to answer when a young man said in a gentle voice, "We are from the Jiangdong Criminal Police Brigade. Although this lady is not one of our own, regarding the child's matter, please tell us the situation from back then in detail. Our Captain Gu will find a way!"

The one who spoke was Luo Fei. He saw that this female manager had told some lies to persuade Zhang Qiang, but he was truly impressed by how calm and decisive she could be in such an urgent situation. Therefore, seeing her awkwardness, he spoke up in time to help her out of the predicament.

Seeing the police speak this way, Zhang Qiang stopped pestering Su Ruonan with questions and said in a low voice, "Captain Gu, Xiao Zhi was abducted right here in this plaza..."

Seeing that Zhang Qiang was no longer dwelling on the matter, Su Ruonan let out a sigh of relief. She nodded at Luo Fei gratefully to show her thanks, but then she saw Luo Fei suddenly blush for no reason. She couldn't help but let out a "Pfft!" laugh, but immediately felt it was inappropriate in such a situation and hurriedly covered her mouth with her hand!

Gu Changzheng gave a light cough and said, "Luo Fei, take Mr. Zhang down. Let's talk more when we get back to the bureau."

Luo Fei responded, then lowered his head and helped Zhang Qiang downstairs. Su Ruonan was left standing in place, murmuring, "Luo Fei! This person is actually quite interesting!" As she said this, a smile appeared on her face.

At the Jiangdong Branch Bureau, Gu Changzheng was carefully flipping through the case file regarding the disappearance of Zhang Qizhi.

According to the case file, Zhang Qiang's son, the then 3-year-old Zhang Qizhi, went missing on June 1st, 2009, at the Ginza Plaza. Zhang Qiang reported it to the police only after searching for nearly an hour himself. Later, the police officers from the local station who received the report retrieved the plaza's surveillance footage and discovered that Zhang Qizhi appeared under the camera at 10:34 AM on June 1st. At that time, he was being held by a person whose physique appeared to be female. Then, the camera captured them getting into a van together. Later, through tracking the license plate, it was discovered to be a fake plate.

Afterward, the van completely disappeared after getting onto the highway leading to Yunan Province. At the time, some police officers believed the vehicle likely abandoned the road or turned off somewhere along the provincial highway, entering a certain village directly.

The police searched along the route the traffickers might have taken, but they did not find any abandoned or damaged vehicles. Along the way, there were hundreds of natural villages; trying to find that van there was simply like looking for a needle in a haystack!

After reading the file, Gu Changzheng carefully recalled Zhang Qiang's words. Through the professional level the other party displayed, he realized this was not an isolated case that happened by chance; it was definitely a professional child-trafficking gang.

Since it was a gang operation, the number of abducted children must be quite large! He hurriedly called for Luo Fei and instructed him to immediately look up unsolved child disappearance cases in the city and surrounding cities in recent years to see if any cases had a modus operandi similar to the Zhang Qizhi case.

This investigation actually led Luo Fei to discover quite a lot!

———

Just as Gu Changzheng took over the Zhang Qizhi abduction case after Zhang Qiang, who had lost his son, attempted to jump off a building, the eldest young master of the Jiang family, Jiang Xiao, was getting very cozy with a mysterious woman who called herself Xu Li.

This day, an old man took a photo of a girl around 20 years old and the woman who called herself Xu Li into the largest professional plastic surgery hospital in Zizhen City.

The old man was none other than the retired former captain of the Municipal Criminal Investigation Detachment, Lu Haoxuan!

After following the mysterious woman and Jiang Xiao from the branch bureau that day, he had been keeping an eye on them for the past few days. During this period, he also used the photo taken back then to simulate a photo of A-Lan from that year through Liu Han of the branch bureau's technical section.

Although the mysterious woman Xu Li gave both him and Gu Changzheng the feeling that she was indeed the A-Lan from back then, looking at her facial features, they felt they were two completely different people. Lu Haoxuan therefore wondered if A-Lan had undergone plastic surgery. Thus, he made an appointment with the hospital's director, Hu Hui.

Hu Hui took the photos Lu Haoxuan brought and had the staff compare them against the client files, but not a single one was similar. When Lu Haoxuan proposed taking the client files away, he was refused. Later, he thought about it and could understand; after all, doing so would infringe upon the privacy of ordinary citizens.

Just as Lu Haoxuan thought the investigation into the mysterious woman Xu Li had fallen into a predicament, Hu Hui, perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed for flatly refusing him, said, "Captain Lu, please don't blame me! It's truly inconvenient. However, I have an idea. I don't know if it might be of any help to you in finding this person?"

Lu Haoxuan said, "Director Hu, please tell me."

Hu Hui said, "Actually, the development of the plastic surgery industry in our Zizhen is far behind that of first-tier big cities. Since the person you are looking for wasn't found here, I estimate there is a high probability she didn't have it done in Zizhen. If that's the case, it will be too hard to find. Why don't you leave the photo with me, and I'll ask around for you in the industry circle."

Lu Haoxuan hurriedly thanked her, "That's great! Thank you so much! If there is any news, please notify me in time."

After coming out of the plastic surgery hospital, Lu Haoxuan thought of his daughter Lu Yuxi, who had been living in Shadao. Shadao was relatively close to South Korea; was it possible A-Lan had undergone plastic surgery abroad? He decided to let his daughter help him ask around in Shadao.

———

Returning to Luo Fei, under Gu Changzheng's instructions, he queried child disappearance cases that occurred in Zizhen and cities within a radius of two to three hundred kilometers over the past three years. He actually discovered that there were thirteen child disappearance cases that had not yet been registered. Excluding five cases where the children were confirmed to have gotten lost and were later found, the other eight were all unsolved legacy cases.

Among the abducted children, the oldest at the time of abduction was a boy named Wei Junzhe from a neighboring city, who went missing in 1997 and was already 6 years old at the time. The youngest was a female toddler who went missing in 1999; she had just turned one year old when she went missing, and she was taken away from her home!

These child disappearance cases all occurred within a radius of three hundred kilometers of Zizhen City. The common point was that they were all young or even infant children, and the gender of the children seemed to have no pattern. According to the few case records that had eyewitnesses, the suspects who abducted the children were all suspected to be female!

Clearly, these child disappearance cases were very likely committed by the same gang! However, for the cases that occurred in other cities, they only obtained some information from the child disappearance case assistance bulletins. More detailed situations would require going to the local public security bureaus to review them, and Gu Changzheng was still investigating the mysterious woman A-Lan.

Just as Luo Fei was preparing to volunteer to go to other cities to ask brother units to provide more specific data, the team received a police dispatch order: a vicious incident had occurred at the Ziweihua Hotel where a drunken guest was holding hotel staff hostage! And the person being held was none other than the female manager who had just cooperated with them to rescue Zhang Qiang during the building-jumping incident—Su Ruonan!