Chapter 615 - 613-614: Kidnapping? (4)

Three days. The teacher, the students, the driver, and the bus itself had all been gone for three whole days.

There was no progress in the case. The pressure on the police from the public and the parents was mounting.

So many families had children, and a palpable tension gripped the entire Imperial City. Everyone was glued to the news, anxiously waiting for a break in the case.

Su Li was the last person to see the occupants of the bus and had provided a statement on the situation onboard, making her a key witness.

She was already acquainted with Captain Zhang. He was well aware of Su Li’s capabilities and hoped she could help them again this time.

"These are all the persons of interest. We’ve looked into pretty much all of them over the past two days. Does anyone look familiar?"

As the others were discussing, Captain Zhang quietly sat down next to Su Li and asked in a low voice.

Su Li was intently reading a witness statement. Hearing Captain Zhang, she didn’t answer directly but posed a question of her own.

"Captain Zhang, have you investigated the person this teacher mentioned?"

Captain Zhang glanced at it, then said after a moment’s thought, "We did. We went and checked him out yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Is that so?" Su Li asked, pinching her chin. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t shake a strange feeling about this person. The address, too, felt somehow... off.

"What is it? Did you find something?" Captain Zhang asked quietly.

"Not exactly a discovery. I just have a feeling about him," Su Li said, her brow furrowed in thought.

’Captain Zhang and his team have really been giving it their all these past few days,’ Su Li mused. ’They’ve checked everything they could, investigating every possible grudge and enemy.’ After a quick mental tally, she began to mull things over.

’If it wasn’t a kidnapping based on a grudge from a relative or colleague, then that leaves a random act of violence, or a clue they previously overlooked.’

The homeroom teacher who had vanished with the class was young and beautiful, and the police had made her a focus of their investigation.

But they had investigated her relatives, her friends, and even potential romantic interests, and had come up with nothing.

They investigated about ten people connected to her. One lead came from a female colleague of the teacher, who recalled seeing her arguing with a suitor from a distance about three months ago.

The suitor had a limp. He had apparently tried to give the teacher a basket of eggs, but she refused to take it. He then tried to force it on her, and the whole basket fell to the ground.

The suitor, seemingly crushed, had limped away. The colleague happened to witness the whole thing, though she only recalled the details after the police questioned her and she thought hard about it.

Based on the colleague’s information, the police later went to investigate.

"From what I heard, the guy is very timid and frail. Apparently, he’s scared of strangers. My team went to see him before but didn’t find anything unusual."

Captain Zhang stroked his chin. "I’ll go take another look this afternoon," he said after a moment.

"Okay, I’ll go with you," Su Li said at once.

Captain Zhang started to object. After all, you never knew what dangers a police call might entail.

But before he could, Su Li was already leaving. Her cameraman was waving her over from the doorway of the conference room; she’d been summoned by her editor-in-chief.

A summons from the editor-in-chief meant it was important, so Su Li left without delay.

Back at the TV station, Su Li found out that something was indeed up—and it was related to the missing elementary students case.

The daughter of a foreign expert hired to work in Huaguo was also on the missing bus.

Su Li heard the news the moment she got back to the station, and her first reaction was complete bewilderment.

The colleague who met Su Li at the door nodded. "That’s right. The situation is a bit complicated. Among the missing is Alice, the daughter of Mr. Cook, the medical expert we went through so much trouble to recruit to Huaguo."

"The girl, Alice, came to Huaguo with her father. They’re supposed to be here for two years, and she’s learning Chinese. She wasn’t even a student in that class; she was just tagging along on the spring trip with a friend she’d made here."

"Mr. Cook doesn’t speak Chinese, which is causing communication issues. Since this is a high-priority situation, they called you back."

Su Li nodded. "The disappearance happened four days ago. Why are we only hearing about this now?"

That didn’t make sense.

The colleague’s expression became complicated. "I don’t know the full story. In any case, the situation isn’t good. Mr. Cook is frantic."

Su Li understood, even without her saying anything more.

Su Li processed the information as she hurried along, not daring to waste a second before opening the conference room door.

The room was more crowded than she’d expected, with about ten people inside, most of them in white lab coats.

The rest were her editor-in-chief and other station personnel. Li Anna was there too, and she did not look pleased.

She knew a foreign language, but only one, and it just so happened not to be the one spoken in Mr. Cook’s home country.

Seeing Su Li enter, the editor-in-chief let out a visible sigh of relief.

"Su Li, you’re here. Quick, please talk with them."

"Right." Su Li nodded and immediately turned to the man at the center of the issue.

The man in question, Cook, had pale skin, brown hair, and deep-set features. He was very tall and wore glasses, giving him the look of an academic, but right now his face was a mask of anxiety, his eyes riddled with bloodshot veins.

A young man in his twenties, his assistant, stood beside him, his face also etched with worry.

"Hello, Mr. Cook. I’m Su Li." Sizing him up, Su Li stepped forward, extended her hand, and greeted him in his native language.

Hearing Su Li speak his mother tongue, Mr. Cook’s tense expression finally eased a little.

The translator standing nearby let out an enormous sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his brow.

He was in way over his head. He could handle simple, everyday phrases, but a formal conversation like this was beyond his abilities. He’d been about to die from the stress.

It wasn’t just the translator; everyone in the room relaxed when Su Li came in and began speaking directly with Cook.

Su Li got up to speed on the situation as quickly as possible.

The story, as it turned out, was a bit of a soap opera.

Mr. Cook was divorced and had custody of his daughter. After accepting an invitation to work in Huaguo for two years, he had brought her along with him.

Although he was her father, he was a workaholic—a bit of a bookworm, really—and a nanny was the one who looked after his daughter.

He hadn’t even realized his daughter was missing until the next day, at which point he began a frantic search.

The mass disappearance of the students was already in the news, but Cook couldn’t read the reports and didn’t make the connection. He simply reported his own daughter missing to the police.

Through a series of mix-ups, it wasn’t until this morning that a clear lead emerged connecting his daughter, Alice, to the mass disappearance of the students.

Cook was an expert they had gone to great lengths to recruit, and his work was crucial. The best-case scenario was finding Alice safe and sound. Otherwise... things would get very complicated.

"...Alice has a history of bronchial asthma. The attacks are infrequent, but every one is life-threatening. We have to find her as soon as possible..."

As if things weren’t chaotic enough, fate had decided to add another dangerous variable into the mix.

When Su Li left the station this time, her temples were throbbing.

"What’s the plan now?"

Hearing the cameraman’s question, Su Li took a deep breath. "What else can we do? We continue with our original plan."

An hour later, Su Li was waiting at the home of the suspected suitor—the one with the eggs—when Captain Zhang arrived.

"Song Shengfu. Twenty-five years old. A childhood leg injury left him with a permanent disability. His father passed away from an illness three years ago. He now lives alone and manages a farm."

As Su Li finished reading the file, a voice came from inside the house. "Who is it?"

The voice was faint.

"Song Shengfu? It’s the police," Captain Zhang called out. "We were here before. We just want to ask you a few more questions. Could you open the door?"

Silence from within. For a long moment, there was no response.