Carrying a Jurassic on me-Chapter 1320 - 643 Officer Xu_2

Especially when the autopsy report from the Sancha River village clinic was released, and someone suggested cremating the thief’s body, Officer Xu was initially a bit angry and refused; the subtle mood inside the police station had become somewhat evident.

Was he wrong?

Young people can sometimes be blindly confident, even arrogant, but that doesn’t mean youth prevents reflection.

Xu Changsheng had been pondering one question: Had he mishandled any aspect of this case?

Was he wrong to arrest the suspect after the thief was killed? Was he wrong to request an autopsy to make a judgment? Was it wrong to temporarily keep the thief’s body at the hospital as evidence to better handle the case?

No!

After much deliberation, Xu Changsheng believed he had done nothing wrong.

But the attitude of his colleagues at the station left Xu Changsheng puzzled: Should he ask someone for advice?

When it came to asking for advice, Xu Changsheng didn’t even need to look up numbers in a phonebook; several relatives and acquaintances in the public security system came immediately to mind, either relatives or their former subordinates.

But he decided not to ask. Having come to Sancha River village and never even caught a petty thief before, a case finally arose, and now he was supposed to ask his family for help? That went against his initial resolute intention to gain experience and grow independently.

After chewing his tea leaves for a long time, Xu Changsheng spat out a mouthful of tea residue into the trash can and stood up to gather the stacks of case files on his desk—files he had pulled out from years of cases at the Sancha River village police station, in search of answers.

But after a long look, he couldn’t make much sense of it; instead, it left him more confused.

Many cases in the village were truly inconceivable. Especially some of the cases from previous years, which seemed utterly bizarre, making him feel as if he had stepped back into ancient times—apart from reading about village residents fighting over land and water in history, he had no idea such disputes could still happen in today’s society.

To him, it seemed absurd. Disputes over land were merely about boundaries; how much difference could moving a boundary by one or one-and-a-half meters make? How much more grain could that land produce? How much more money would it be worth?

And when dividing land, if the areas were almost equal, but the geographical location slightly differed— even with differences, how much could the output vary? Was it worth going to war, even escalating to armed conflict?

And other issues like the order of watering or using threshing grounds.

In Xu Changsheng’s view, these were hardly worth brawling over: Even if there was some variation in crop yield, how much more could it really be or how much less? And the matter of the watering and threshing schedule, what difference did it make to be a little earlier or later?

Thankfully, other cases, such as the murders over verbal disputes while drinking from the previous two years, were understandable to Xu Changsheng.

Since there was too much he did not understand, why not take a walk outside?

So Officer Xu simply left the messy pile behind and decided to wander around the streets.

What he ended up hearing made him quite unhappy. Were the rumors in this village too rampant? As the chief, he hadn’t yet issued a statement, so how could it be that these people talking seemed to have already concluded the case?

The autopsy report from the clinic had only been in his hands for a short time, yet even the toothless old man collecting at the street markets seemed to know that the thief had died of a cerebral hemorrhage?

Although inexperienced, Xu Changsheng realized that this was probably deliberately spread by someone.

But when he pretended to shop around on the street, roaming extensively, he found that the village people rather enjoyed the idea that the thief had died of natural causes.

Speaking of the person who had killed the thief—an ordinary rural young man—his popularity couldn’t be that great, right?

Xu Changsheng could even hear people betting whether Guo Liucai would be able to return home for the New Year — New Year’s Eve was just around the corner, and to find out who would lose or win the bet wouldn’t take too long.

"Nonsense, he’ll definitely make it home for the New Year," a man obstinately shouted at a younger man. "He just beat up a thief, and it was the thief’s own fault for dying. He might be released any moment now. Who would miss the New Year over that? What a joke!"

The younger man chuckled, "It’s easy for you to say he’ll be released, but it takes a few days for the police station to close a case! The holiday is coming up; they won’t be taking holidays, and by the time they return from their break to handle it, the New Year will be long over."

"The police station got a case like this and you think they’re still celebrating the New Year? They surely will have to close the case first!" the man insisted, unconvinced. "If hitting a thief a few times gets you locked up and you cannot even go home for New Year, who would bother catching thieves then?"

"Exactly!" chimed in someone nearby, clearly loving the argument. "It’s not a big deal to hit a thief a few times. If we can’t hit thieves, I might as well start stealing too because no one would dare hit me if I got caught, and I’d only be in the police station for a few days..."

Xu Changsheng somewhat understood now; killing a thief, in the eyes of the townspeople, wasn’t considered a true issue?

Was the life of a thief not a human life? Xu Changsheng almost couldn’t hold himself back from interjecting, but he ultimately remembered that he had come in disguise, managing to swallow the words that had reached the tip of his tongue.

The legal mindset of these people was woefully inadequate! After all the legal training I did here, was it all for nothing?

After listening for a while, Xu Changsheng stopped listening and, feeling quite displeased, he returned to the police station.

He couldn’t stand listening anymore, not just because people were talking about the thieves, but because more people were discussing the local entrepreneur, Boss Yan Fei. Some even said that Boss Yan had taken charge of the situation, and the suspect who beat the thief definitely wouldn’t face any trouble.

What infuriated him even more was that people said if the suspect who beat the thief if convicted, Boss Yan would still give money to the suspect’s family — did they think I, the police chief, couldn’t enforce the law strictly, or were they afraid I would?

Indeed, during Xu Changsheng’s time here, he recognized that the local entrepreneur had made many contributions to Sancha River, not least in terms of public safety, which were evident to all.

But ever since his arrival, Yan Fei began to stay away, with no real interaction between the two of them. Now, with an incident occurring, Yan Fei seemed to be everywhere, just like in a song, "your shadow is everywhere." Officer Xu felt rather uncomfortable about it — although he knew that the former chief, a relative of Boss Yan Fei and whose wife even worked at the cattle farm, had transferred the position to him.

Just as he returned to the station, Officer Xu couldn’t help but summon one of his officers and asked, "Weren’t you able to contact the thief’s family? Why haven’t they responded yet?"

"We managed to make contact, but... it seems like they are not planning to come to collect the body," the summoned officer hesitated before quietly responding.

"What’s the problem?" Officer Xu was ready to get angry. "Do you know the reason?"

It was no wonder he was furious. The thief that had been brought into the station had confessed everything from the beginning, including the identity of the deceased thief.

Subsequently, Officer Xu had people contact the deceased’s family. To his surprise, it took them half the day just to make contact — the thief who had been beaten to death came from a village in a nearby city. Contact was made through their local police station to this village and finally to the family. It took so long that it was enough to infuriate anyone.

Even more infuriating was that when contact was finally made, the family claimed they didn’t have any such person.

It took great effort to get the family to acknowledge the deceased, and now they were saying they wouldn’t come to collect the body...

Could anything go smoothly?

The officer seemed to understand the reasons better: "I’m guessing it’s mostly because it’s seen as shameful, and also, from what they’ve heard from their village committee, the transport here isn’t convenient. Coming here to claim the body would be too troublesome..."

"Troublesome?" Officer Xu, who was pouring tea, quivered and spilled it on the table. "That’s their family member, the parents in their household. Are they really not coming to collect their son’s body just because it’s too much trouble?"

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