Chapter 55: The Missing Infant Incident

"A delivery worker?" Huo Yan looked at Ning Shuyi in confusion.

"Yes, that delivery worker!" Seeing his expression, Ning Shuyi asked, "Don't you usually order food delivery?"

Huo Yan shook his head. "I just eat whatever is available. I'm not that particular about food and drink."

Ning Shuyi couldn't help but chuckle. Her new colleague truly was one of a kind. After all, in this day and age, food delivery had become an almost indispensable part of most people's lives; it was rare to meet someone who had never ordered takeout before.

Even Uncle Ning, a retired veteran chef, would sometimes take a shortcut and order delivery.

"No wonder you had that look on your face," Ning Shuyi nodded with a sudden understanding. "Generally speaking, whether it's a food delivery worker or a courier, when they arrive at someone's doorstep and get no answer after knocking, their very first reaction is definitely to make a phone call!

The elderly gentleman said he heard someone walking up the stairs in the hallway, so he went out to check. By the time he went up half a flight of stairs, he saw a delivery worker up there knocking on the door directly opposite the crime scene.

After the old man reminded the delivery worker that no one was home, the person chose to curse and swear as they walked downstairs and left.

When I first heard that part of the statement, I just had a vague feeling that something was a bit off, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

Looking at it now, if a delivery worker finds the address is wrong or nobody is home, they will definitely make a phone call to contact the customer and confirm at the very first instance.

It makes no sense that once he had already reached the doorstep, upon hearing a complete stranger of an old man say the house was empty, he would immediately conclude that he had been scammed and leave while cursing."

Although Huo Yan never ordered takeout through apps and lacked experience in this area, once Ning Shuyi explained it like this, he understood as well. "So that person wearing a delivery worker's uniform—or something similar to a delivery worker's uniform—his original intention might have been to continue walking further up. But upon hearing someone from the downstairs neighbor coming up to check, he improvised on the spot and stopped on that floor to knock on the door opposite the crime scene."

"Anyway, I've never seen a delivery worker who doesn't carry a phone with him or fail to get in touch with the customer immediately when encountering a problem," Ning Shuyi nodded. "There's a high probability that person was Chang Junchaos.

He might have originally been hiding somewhere on the rooftop, sneaking out to buy things every day when it was deep in the night, but he didn't expect the building's construction quality to be poor with particularly bad sound insulation, and he was heard by the elderly couple living downstairs.

After being startled by the old man, he probably changed his hiding place."

Huo Yan's brows knitted tightly, but they quickly relaxed again. "He might not have gone too far.

If he wanted to flee far away, he should have made his escape as soon as possible after committing the crime; that would have been the best timing.

Since he didn't leave then, fleeing abruptly after we started our investigation would pose an even greater risk to him."

"I think so too. Let's go discuss it with Captain Dong and see if we can dispatch a few more people to set up a stakeout in that area for a while," Ning Shuyi had already made her plan. "In addition, we also need to contact Deng Qingrong's hometown to see if there are any valuable clues."

The two of them shared the same thought and went to find Dong Weiwei to report their ideas. After weighing the options, Dong Weiwei agreed to arrange personnel for the stakeout and urged them to contact the public security organs in Deng Qingrong's hometown as soon as possible.

After all, Chang Junchao was already thirty years old. Regardless of what had happened before, those were events from twenty or thirty years ago, and getting a clear picture of them probably couldn't be resolved with just a single phone call. Striking early was the only prudent course of action.

As soon as Ning Shuyi returned from Dong Weiwei's office, she immediately set about contacting the public security organ in Deng Qingrong's place of origin, explaining the situation here.

Just as Dong Weiwei had worried earlier, because of the passage of time, the local public security organ was somewhat troubled after hearing her request and could not guarantee they would definitely be able to provide valuable clues, promising only to assist with the investigation as much as possible.

The person who answered the phone was a senior officer in his fifties, who also explained the existing difficulties to Ning Shuyi.

"You're young, so you might not understand," the senior officer said over the phone. "Thirty years ago wasn't like it is now. Back then, in many of our rural areas, people still liked to have midwives come to their homes to deliver babies. Unless they encountered something they truly couldn't deliver themselves, nobody wanted to go to the township health center.

Birth certificates weren't popularized yet either. Many children were born, and then their families would just carry them to the police station to register their household residency. When the child was actually born and where they were born were often recorded vaguely.

Therefore, when registering, whatever date the family members stated was written down as the birth date, and there was simply no way to verify it.

We will do our best here to help you check the archives from that year and see if there are records of the type you want to know about, but as for the outcome, I really can't guarantee anything."

Ning Shuyi quickly expressed her gratitude over the phone. Investigating matters from thirty years ago indeed posed a very high degree of difficulty.

However, this senior officer's words also indirectly helped her resolve a doubt, which was the unreasonable age gap between Zhang Guanghui and Chang Junchao.

On the one hand, Zhang Guanghui's birth date was accurately remembered because her adoptive parents were more attentive and careful, and her registration was handled quite rigorously, but Chang Junchao's birth date might not be his true one.

On the other hand, the blood relationship between Deng Qingrong and Chang Junchao was in question. Only a few days had passed since the crime, and the DNA test report had not yet come out. Their speculation about whether the deceased was Chang Junchao and whether Chang Junchao truly had a parent-child relationship with Deng Qingrong could not be given a definitive answer for the time being.

As a result, they couldn't rule out the possibility that Chang Junchao was not born to Deng Qingrong, and that Deng Qingrong had deliberately lied about the child's birth date when registering the household residency in order to cover up a certain truth.

After all, against a backdrop of having neither a birth certificate nor hospitalization records, who on earth would have a way to verify it!

Ning Shuyi hadn't dared to hold out much hope in the first place, but she hadn't expected the senior officer to understate things initially only to deliver a pleasant surprise—after just half a day, he proactively contacted them again with quite a few gains.

Some materials were quickly sent over. Ning Shuyi hurriedly examined them carefully, and the more she read, the tighter her brows knitted.

"What's wrong?" Huo Yan had gone to inquire about the progress of the DNA comparison, and without receiving a definitive reply, he had just returned to the office to find Ning Shuyi frowning at several printed documents with a very serious expression.

"In Deng Qingrong's original hometown, an infant abduction case really did happen thirty years ago. The senior officers at the local police bureau helped us find the report from back then," Ning Shuyi sighed slowly.