Chapter 405: She Was Too Steady

"I have something to handle, I'll be going first."

Yu Dazhang called out to Ye Lin, then walked quickly toward the outside.

Ye Lin noticed his mood was a bit off, and a trace of worry welled up in her heart, so she called out loudly behind him:

"Do you need any help?"

Yu Dazhang didn't reply, but raised his hand and waved it.

If you turn to the Ministry of State Security for help with everything, then what's the point of having criminal police like them around.

Mutual aid at critical moments is fine, but in daily work it's still better to each stick to their own duties.

Once outside, he immediately took out his phone and called Captain Hua.

"Where are you?"

"On the road back to Liancheng, already on the highway." Captain Hua's voice carried puzzlement:

"Are you done enjoying yourself? No, I mean, are you done with your personal business?"

Yu Dazhang ignored his teasing and said hurriedly:

"Turn around, get off the highway, then call me."

"You can't make a U-turn on the highway!" Captain Hua protested loudly:

"How exactly am I supposed to turn around?!"

Yu Dazhang hung up the phone directly; he was sure Captain Hua would find a way.

Actually, he didn't want to make things hard for Captain Hua either, but right now he was alone in Baling, with no one to rely on, and he just couldn't feel at ease.

Standing by the roadside, Yu Dazhang took a deep breath, trying his best to calm himself down.

If Yang Jieru and the others were after the child, then whoever took the child was the one who slipped through the net.

Zhang Chao's mother!

Yu Dazhang's heart skipped a beat, and a bad premonition rose in his chest.

Taking out his phone again, he dialed Qi Fang directly.

"Arrange people to go to Zhang Chao's mother's house right away. If she's home, get her under control first."

"Understood." Qi Fang replied.

To confirm whether Zhang Chao's mother was home, there was no need for the task force to go in person.

The fastest method was to contact the local police station and have the community police go.

With a new investigative direction, Yu Dazhang now listed Zhang Chao's mother as a suspect and began to re-examine the entire case.

As a direct relative of the main suspect, Zhang Chao's mother naturally had to be investigated.

In fact, previously not only was her identity and background investigated, she was also placed under covert surveillance.

At that time Zhang Chao hadn't been caught yet.

Therefore, surveillance of his mother, besides investigating whether she herself was involved in the case, had another purpose: to stake out Zhang Chao.

Judging from her identity information, she was just an ordinary housewife.

Widowed early on, she had remained single ever since.

Because she had no stable job, she often took odd jobs, never staying at any one of them for long; over the years no one knew how many jobs she had switched through.

Even the investigators from the provincial department couldn't precisely tally how many jobs she had actually held.

If you only looked at her identity on paper, she really had nothing to pick at.

But once she came under suspicion, the holes in her story would be exposed.

The more one strives for perfection, the more flaws there are.

First of all, the frequent job-hopping itself is abnormal.

If it were for survival, she would have found a relatively stable job.

Odd jobs were never a long-term plan—the Sanhe drifters proved that with their real-life example.

If she wasn't short on money, she had even less reason to go out and work.

What she was doing looked very much like deliberately covering up her work history.

Could it be…

The one who worked at the detention center back then was Zhang Chao's mother?

The moment this thought arose, Yu Dazhang suddenly felt the whole thing becoming clear.

Yang Jieru had lied!

The reason it wasn't spotted at the time was that the work history she gave was all real—only those experiences belonged to someone else.

She had forcibly grafted Zhang Chao's mother's work history onto herself.

No wonder her account back then came out haltingly at first, only growing smoother later on.

Turns out the one who planned all this from the very beginning wasn't her.

And the Yang Jieru of that time was only 19, a young girl who had just entered society, her mind not yet mature enough.

Even after working at the detention center for two years, she wouldn't have suddenly turned into someone who would stop at nothing.

That was the part that least fit the logic.

But if it was Zhang Chao's mother, it would be different.

Widowed, a single mother—clearly someone who had been through the wringer of society.

Once such a person encountered a chance to turn her life around, she would seize it tightly.

That's right, it had to be like this… at this moment Yu Dazhang felt the whole case flowing much more smoothly.

The previous feeling of something not quite clicking gradually faded, and the case became clear.

"She was too steady." Yu Dazhang couldn't help muttering to himself.

He had met Zhang Chao's mother twice, but she had deceived him both times, which inevitably gave Yu Dazhang a sense of frustration.

People grow shrewd with age, ghosts grow clever with age.

She was facing the police investigation with an ordinary mindset, and precisely because of this, no slip-ups had appeared.

There was another layer of reason within this: common sense.

Who could have imagined that a mother could use her own son as a chess piece, while she herself had been playing at hiding in plain sight all along?

Common sense doesn't hold!

It was precisely because of this reason that Yu Dazhang had not discovered any suspicious points about Zhang Chao's mother.

He only remembered "only mother is good in this world," but forgot another line...

A woman's heart is the most vicious.

Just then, his phone suddenly rang. Yu Dazhang glanced at the caller ID — it was a call from Qi Fang.

Unconsciously, he had already been standing by the roadside for over ten minutes.

He pressed answer and immediately asked:

"How did it go?"

"No one's home." Qi Fang on the other end said quickly:

"The police officers went with a locksmith. The house was empty, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary — daily necessities and clothing were all there."

"Also, there were leftovers in the fridge, and half a pot of cooked rice still left in the rice cooker. The food hasn't spoiled."

This means she had only just left home not long ago... Yu Dazhang quickly drew a judgment from Qi Fang's words.

Cooked rice at room temperature will usually spoil and develop an odd smell after 24 hours.

Since it hadn't spoiled, it meant Zhang Chao's mother had been away for less than 24 hours.

"Arrange for people to stake out Zhang Chao's mother's house."

Yu Dazhang ordered:

"Gather all members of the task force back, and have them on standby at any moment."

After ending the call, he walked toward a taxi pickup/drop-off point not far from the roadside.

As he walked, his mind was analyzing the current situation they faced.

Looking at it now, Zhang Chao's mother was definitely involved in the case.

And she was very likely the principal offender.

In the face of enormous profit, the most stable relationship is not husband and wife, but direct blood relatives.

This includes the mother-son relationship.

This also explains why their organization, over all these years, had never had any internal strife.

And after Yang Jieru was caught, the five days she stubbornly held out were to buy time for Zhang Chao's mother.

But why did it have to be five days?

Yu Dazhang had by now arrived at the pickup/drop-off point. He watched the taxis coming and going, did not continue forward, but stood in place quietly watching.

"I went to see Zhang Chao's mother on the third day after Yang Jieru and the others were caught," he muttered to himself.

At the same time, he was also calculating the days in his mind.

By that time she had already taken the child over, and also knew that something had happened to Zhang Chao and his wife.

Since she already knew the case had broken, why didn't she run at that time?

(End of this chapter)