Fire to the Abyss

"What? Let people run away like this?" Xia Lin yelled at the phone, "Xia Yan, you are such a waste! Don't call me again if you don't catch anyone!"

On the other side of the receiver, Xia Yan held the receiver far away, as if Xia Lin's saliva could be sprayed out through the receiver. When Xia Lin was cursing to the fullest, Captain Xia of "Heroic and Great" asked weakly: "Brother , will you go home for the New Year this year?"

"I'll give you a chicken feather!" Then there was only a mechanical busy tone.

Xia Yan closed the file, rubbed the center of his brows, picked up his military overcoat and casually draped it over his shoulders, lit a cigarette, and then opened the office door and walked out.The detachment is actually non-smoking, but the Chengzhou detachment at ten o'clock in the evening is empty, so it doesn't matter.

Disappearing with Zero was Chen Zhifeng, the old team leader of the Chengzhou detachment, who dismissed the case hastily as an accident.The puppet doll left by Zero is the unique token of the notorious criminal organization "Puppet Master". "Puppet Master" is a malignant sore that has been entrenched in Chengzhou District for nearly ten years. Its members are code-named by English numbers and have committed countless major and minor cases. This is the main reason why Chengzhou District has the lowest detection rate in the country.

At this point in the investigation, the nature of the case has undergone earth-shaking changes.

Xia Yan rubbed the center of his brows, poured some water on the neglected green plants on Chen Zhifeng's desk, then turned off the lights in the corridor one by one, and walked out with a cigarette in his mouth.

Old Zhao in the duty room watched Xia Yan approaching from a distance, and smiled furiously: "Captain Xia, you will be fined [-] for smoking."

Xia Yan held the cigarette in his hand, poked his head into the small window of the duty room, and skillfully took out a cigarette from the cigarette case on Lao Zhao's desk, "Oh, you smoke better than me", and then Zhao pinned the cigarette to his ears in surprise, and spit a smoke ring on Old Zhao's face, put his hands in his pockets, and walked away gracefully.

Old Zhao muttered to Dui Xia's back in military coat like a handicapped person: "Hey, this little bastard, he's just like his father!" congratulations.

Xia Yan stood outside the gate of the detachment compound for a long time, suddenly feeling confused about where to go - a few days ago, he would go directly to his girlfriend Zhong Qing after work, but now he is an ex-girlfriend, but His kennel was the only alternative to depraved entertainment.

Xia Yan hesitated for a while before walking towards his kennel.That was the house that Xia Yan bought in order to realize his dream of "more money, less work, closer to home", and it was only three crossroads away from the detachment.Apart from being ruined like a doghouse by him, there are no other shortcomings. After all, "more money and less work" is impossible, and only "close to home" remains.

Xia Yan really couldn't figure out why his girlfriend who had been dating for seven or eight years broke up as soon as they said they broke up, and broke up cleanly overnight, packed and sent all his luggage and items, all social software was blocked, and the phone number was blocked.He asked himself that he had never done anything to be sorry for the other party, except that he occasionally stayed away from home and didn't contact him, occasionally missed dinner appointments, was occasionally late for appointments, and occasionally forgot birthdays and anniversaries...

"Hey, woman..." Xia Yan sighed unconsciously.

"Oh? Team Xia was finally dumped?"

Xia Yan raised his eyes and saw a slender man leaning against the street lamp, his face could not be seen clearly from the light behind him.However, Xia Yan could tell who it was with his eyes closed due to the coquettish perfume smell and the deliberately drawn-out voice.

Xia Yan's sad face disappeared in an instant: "Tsk, why are you here?"

The man under the lamp raised his eyebrows and smiled: "The puppet master appeared again, I guess you must be very irritable, come and see you."

Xia Yan was upset by Zero's incident, and he was angry with his younger brother. There happened to be a human punching bag in front of him, and this punching bag comrade always refused to fight back. It was not for nothing.

"Aren't you the puppet master?" Xia Yan pinched the cigarette on his fingertips, tilted his head and looked at him from the corner of his eye, his tone was quite rude: "Lu Yuan, Seven, I won't be upset if I don't see you. "

Lu Yuan straightened up, walked slowly in front of Xia Yan, and whispered in his ear, "I've never heard of the code name Zero before. If it's not a copycat, it's the organization that advanced before me. These old members They usually have direct contact with Eleven, so it's not easy to check."

"Okay, please contact me if you have any news. I will never admit that the puppet was wrong, unless your boss is short of money and made a lot of puppet dolls to sell as handicrafts." Xia Yan poked him on the shoulder with a look of disgust. , took a step back and distanced himself from Lu Yuan: "There is no one here, so you don't need to get so close to talk."

Lu Yuan stretched out his hands to straighten his crumpled clothes, and slightly raised his thin lips: "In such a cold day, I specially brought information to Team Xia, and Team Xia didn't even ask me to smoke a cigarette, it's really heartless—— "

"Speak well." Xia Yan is very shameless for Lu Yuan's lazy tone, soft as if he hasn't eaten enough, and adding a long tail sound from time to time. Every time he listens to him speak like this, goose bumps all over his body You can't stop jumping out.

Xia Yan glared at Lu Yuan, who was smiling naughtily, and took off the other cigarette from his ear and handed it to him.

However, Lu Yuan stretched out his arm, and with a light flick of his finger, he took away half of the cigarette butt caught between Xia Yan's fingers, "I just want this, thank you for your hospitality."

Lu Yuan put the half of the cigarette butt in his mouth, and walked briskly into a small black car.

"Tsk, bastard." The tail lights of the car disappeared from view, and Xia Yan belatedly kicked a small stone in the direction the car was leaving, and even knocked his foot so badly.

The next day, when Xia Yan stepped into the Chengzhou Detachment with his messy hair, he found that the big office was empty.

How dare someone go to work later than him?Xia Yan was about to have an attack, but he heard a loud voice coming from the corridor. He strode towards the corridor and found that his office was the source of the sound.

The last time his palm-sized office was full of people was when his girlfriend Zhong Qing came to visit him. Did she change her mind?

Xia Yan hastily stretched out his hand to pluck his hair, cleared his throat, and stood outside the door solemnly putting on the airs of a leader: "What are you looking at? You don't need to work?"

"Hey, Captain Xia, why didn't you tell us that you have such a handsome brother? Do you have a girlfriend? How old are you?"

"Captain Xia, the clue to the Chengda poisoning case was originally provided by your brother."

"Hey Captain Xia, are you shorter than your brother?"

This development seemed to be unexpected, Xia Yan ignored the airs, and rudely pushed aside the onlookers, and sure enough, he saw Xia Lin sitting on his chair, smiling very harmlessly: "Captain Xia, your hair style is so real!" Like a bird's nest, no, calling it a bird's nest is a blasphemy to the bird."

"Bah, is this kid as handsome as I am? He's not interested in a girlfriend, so give up on me, silly Rong, this guy has no other advantages except his brains, he's basically a piece of trash, whoever gets it is unlucky—and, ah, I Let me state that when he was young, he always liked to sit on my shoulder and play, which made me not taller than him." Xia Yan looked around pretending to be majestic, and then looked at the file that he hadn't collected in time last night calmly. , and pressed it well under the morning newspaper, without any trace of being flipped, then put away his serious face, and said to Xia Lin very doglegly: "Hey, why are you here? Don't you have to go to class?"

"It's going to be a holiday soon, and there are no classes." Xia Lin got up from his seat, pointed to the two little detectives with bruised noses and swollen faces outside the door: "I came here specially to ask you for an explanation."

The two criminal policemen immediately bowed and apologized nonstop to Xia Yan: "I'm sorry, Team Xia, it's all because of our lack of ability!"

"Captain Xia, we were exposed, sorry!"

Looking at the miserable two, Xia Yan had a toothache: "Okay, okay, you two go to deal with the injury first, and the task will stop first. I'm sorry, my brother and my father have learned a few tricks, and the shots are too ruthless." gone."

The father of the two brothers, Xia Zhaoan, was once recognized as the number one fighting force by the public security system in Chengzhou District. He was already known as the "God of War" before Xia Lin was born. It's a pity that the bodyguard died in the line of duty three years ago.Xia Lin learned more than a few moves from his father. Since he was sensible, he has been pestering his father to teach him boxing kung fu. Xia Yan, who defeated him for the first time when he was 40 years old, if Xia Yan hadn't entered the police academy to practice diligently, he would probably still be able to fight. Living in the shadow of being beaten by his younger brother.

Xia Lin smiled apologetically: "I'm sorry you two, I didn't know you were policemen before I shot."

"Yang Ming, drive everyone away! Which detachment is as undisciplined as you?"

Everyone quickly made eye contact, and finally Yang Ming converted what everyone wanted to convey into a look and handed it to Xia Yan, and the group of people scattered like birds and beasts.Although there was no verbal communication during the whole process, thanks to the good team understanding, Xia Yan understood the meaning of the eyes at a glance: You are the most sloppy in the whole team, and you still have the face to talk about others!

Xia Yan closed the office door rudely, Xia Lin had already laid down on his sofa chair, put his long legs on his desk, folded his arms, with an expression of "you can start to explain".

Xia Yan took out a cigarette, habitually held it in his mouth and was about to light it. When he raised his eyes and saw Xia Lin's slightly frowning brows, he had no choice but to put away the cigarette resentfully, wondering whether he owed him a lot of money in his previous life.

Mother was not early, and father often had to go out for ten days and a half months with just one phone call. Xia Lin basically grew up under Xia Yan's care for more than ten years of his life, until his father died in the line of duty.Of course, the way of taking care of him was quite extensive, Xia Yan himself felt that it was a bit inconceivable that his younger brother didn't look crooked.

Xia Yan picked up the stack of materials with the file on the desk, and put it on the bookshelf beside him as if nothing had happened: "Sending two brothers to follow you is also to protect you. Zhao Yang is always a threat outside."

Xia Lin: "Oh? There's still a wanted warrant posted outside, I don't think he'll attack me at this cusp, besides, I'm not as easy to deal with as Li Xueen, unless he takes extreme measures or has a lot of money I don't think he has these methods. Besides, he probably wants to play with me again."

Xia Yan poured himself a glass of water, but there was only one chair in the office, so he could only hold the water glass and lean against the door: "This person is completely abnormal, you can't measure it with normal thinking. Also, the methods you mentioned , even if he doesn’t have one, the organization behind him does.”

Xia Lin looked surprised: "What organization, why didn't you tell me clearly?"

Xia Yan curled his lips helplessly: "How can you casually talk about such an important case on the phone? We found a puppet doll at the scene, which is a token of a criminal gang 'Puppet Master'. Their organization codes are all English numbers, almost Contributing to half of the crime rate in the whole Chengzhou area, there are countless cases of homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping, and fraud, and the nature is extremely bad."

"Have committed so many crimes, why haven't I heard of it?"

"I blocked the news for fear of causing adverse social impact, because the targets they harm are very sensitive, many of them are the children of high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen, in short, they are prominent figures in society, and," Xia Yan paused, raising his eyelids slightly, "still There are police officers and police families."

Xia Lin frowned, and sat up straight unconsciously: "What's the matter with this anti-social organization? It's so bad that it hasn't been eradicated yet?"

Xia Yan sighed: "Oh, who wouldn't want to? It's a long story, and it has to start ten years ago..."

Ten years ago, there was a major case in Chengzhou that shocked the whole country. The version known to the public was that eleven people were killed in a row, the crime cycle was short, and the methods were extremely cruel. But the details that the public did not know were that the eleven people Ten of them are family members of police officers, and one is a retired criminal policeman.There were about one or two hundred stab wounds on each corpse, none of which was fatal, and the victim was bled to death alive - the forensic doctor who performed the autopsy at that time was exhausted and came to such a conclusion.

Each of the dead was placed in various weird poses, exactly the same as the wooden puppet dolls that the murderer kept beside him.The murderer was quite well prepared, leaving no traces except for the puppet dolls left at the scene and a few oversized bloody footprints.On the body of the last puppet doll, there is an extra line of English engraved——Eleven.

Ten years ago, there was no Chengzhou detachment. The urban area of ​​Chengzhou and several surrounding villages and towns were under the jurisdiction of the Dachengzhou District Public Security Bureau. Two of the dead were the two daughters of the second-in-command, Director Zhang. After receiving the news, Zhang The old director immediately rushed to the scene with his old cold legs, but when he saw the blood dripping scene and his two daughters posing in weird ballet poses in the pool of blood, he was so frightened that he had a heart attack on the spot and spent the whole night in the intensive care unit. Didn't make it through.

The murderer committed ten crimes within a year, and the district police urgently recruited talents from all over the country to form a special case team. However, there was no breakthrough within a year. Everyone in the public security system was in danger.The ten victims are the wives, sons, parents, brothers and sisters of five old police officers. Two of the five police officers have retired, one has passed away, and the remaining two are old Chief Zhang, and one is paralyzed in a car accident. Been in hospital for many years.In short, of the five parties who can speak, only two retired old criminal policemen are left. Coincidentally, these two people have different degrees of dementia.

No useful information was obtained from the parties concerned, and no valuable clues were left at the scene. There were almost only sporadic traffic cameras in that era, and no suspects were photographed.Considering the murderer's extremely anti-human modus operandi and the particularity of the victim, the task force believes that the murderer is a man in his prime with an inconspicuous appearance.When committing the crime, he should have brought changeable clothes and specially changed into oversized shoes. No fingerprints or valuable clues were left at the scene. He was calm, meticulous, and thoughtful.He has serious hatred for the police, and it is very likely that he is a person who has been released after serving his sentence or his relatives have a criminal record. He should be a related person in the case handled by the five victimized criminal policemen.The wooden puppets at the scene are exquisite in workmanship, and no similar items can be found in major handicraft stores. It is very likely that the murderer made it himself, and the murderer has certain hand-making experience.

The criminal police of the special case team looked through the case files handled by the five old comrades day and night, but these five comrades had worked in the District Public Security Bureau since the beginning of its construction. Since the Chengzhou Bureau was still a dilapidated small courtyard, they have been Working until the Chengzhou Bureau turned into a chic small building, there were not enough manpower at the beginning of the establishment of the bureau, and they had done all kinds of work in anti-narcotics, criminal investigation, and anti-pornography, and they were all approaching their sixties. In the past ten years, more than 600 cases have been investigated together, and the number of related parties is countless.Comrades in the task force adopted a rotation system to change shifts, but failed to narrow down the scope of suspects to traceable ones.

However, on the New Year's Eve of that year, the murderer finally put a bloody end to the matter.