Jania walked some distance with Marlene Judith. She didn't get many details because Marlene Judit looked distraught. Her family lives near the woods, and she will inevitably be gossiped about by her classmates next Monday.
"Can you tell who died?" Jania asked.
"No, I heard what Nick said...he said it was the body of a tourist. Not from our town."
Jania glanced at the devotee again. The beast was indifferently raising its legs to urinate at the root of the tree. It couldn't have been the dog, and although Jania believed it could actually kill an adult, the traces left behind would clearly point to it. If the dog really went crazy, the police might not know who the dead person was before DNA testing.
"Tourist," she pretended not to care, "lost?"
"I have no idea."
"Then, how did it get there?"
"I don't know either."
Jania asked no more questions. Marlene Judit was so anxious, so she said lightly: "It's just a tourist. There are people who get lost in the woods every year. No matter how it died there, I think it has nothing to do with our town." relation."
Marlene Judit nodded vigorously. The devotees looked up at them, and the wrinkles on their foreheads looked like laughing mouths. Jania didn't hate the Bulldog breed, but Devotional was a hard dog to like.
She and Marlene were separated on the edge of town. Marlene will return to her own home to face her father and arrogant brother who are suspected of having mental problems. Jania went to Doppler Colon's dog park. She saw how much Marlene didn't want to go home, but she couldn't invite her to go to the dog farm because there were three or four ferocious dogs there. Old Colon went to great lengths to tame them. But if they see the devotees, the situation may not be under control.
Doppler Colon is carrying a bucket of bloody raw meat. When he saw Yu Xiaorong push open the iron door, a meaningful smile appeared on his face.
"I knew you were coming," he said.
Jania crossed the threshold nonchalantly. Leo was already whimpering with desire, so she leaned over and untied the leash, allowing Leo to run and play with the dogs in the cages. Her eyes glanced around the inner room to see if any police officers were visiting.
"If you want to know what was discovered in the woods this morning," said Doppler Colon, "all I can say is that I have no inside information."
He hit Zhaniya's mind, but she didn't blush at all: "I heard from Marlene Judit that there are corpses in the woods, belonging to tourists."
"Ah, her house is closest to that place. Of course the poor girl is scared."
"I think she might have made a mistake. Calling an animal carcass a human, or calling an injured person a dead person. Her brother Nick has always been a jerk, and he would make it serious just to scare her."
Old Colon grabbed a handful of mixed raw meat and added it to the food bowl of the Caucasian dog Butres. He looked back at Zhannia again, seeming to be aware of the feud between her and Nick Judit.
"At least," he said slowly, "Nick didn't lie to her this time."
"Someone really died."
"Yes. And you care too much about it, Jania. It has nothing to do with you young people."
"I'm just worried," Jania defended. "Just yesterday I got an anonymous package. Now there's a guy dead in the woods."
"I don't think that's the case," Old Cologne said. "That package was more of a joke, girl. Someone sent you a strange painting to make you suspicious, or maybe you're having a baby with some stupid boy. Secret, maybe he once compared you to a female monster, and now he used a painting to hint at your agreement——"
"I don't have any secrets like that."
"You know it yourself, Jania." Old Cologne said with a wink, "Don't worry, I won't mention a word to your foreign brother."
Jania didn’t explain anything more. Old Cologne knew Lenny Colin and Tilman Blair, and with her past deeds as evidence, it was difficult for her to convince him that she had done nothing. Well, she had a little secret, but it wasn't the kind Old Cologne imagined.
She helped Old Colon move another bucket of mixed feed and clean water, and then distributed it to the dogs in cages. Among the dozens of dogs, her favorite is Katis, a gentle and intelligent golden retriever. It can almost read the thoughts in her head, and attaches great importance to group order, and will not even allow other dogs to fight in front of it. Old Cologne also valued it and wanted to train it into a reliable search and rescuer. But Jania also has to admit that Derek is worthy of being Old Cologne's favorite when it comes to finding lost things and providing support.
The dogs were already in a commotion, looking around in the cage. Jania divided the raw meat into the food bowls while judging whether each dog was familiar to her. Derek followed her legs calmly and gracefully, preventing the restless dogs from baring their teeth and barking at Jania. It has established authority within this group. Jania thought to herself that Old Colon must have let the dogs fight with each other behind her back. They are indeed cute when tamed, but inside they are an out-and-out class society. Oddly enough, this doesn't make her disappointed with dogs, and she seems to have learned how to deal with people in the process of taming Leo. It was not simply loyalty and selflessness or cruelty and self-interest, but a certain kind of balance within the group, suppression and compromise, friendship and competition. She felt that there was not that big a difference between human society and dog groups in these matters.
She shared a whole bucket of raw meat. The work was not complicated, but it made her tired and sweaty. Her hands were covered with sticky flesh and blood, and Old Colon threw her a wet, hot but fishy-smelling towel.
"Where are all the people you hired?" she asked while wiping her hands.
"I sent them to help in the woods."
Jania stopped wiping her hands, and Old Cologne said with a strange smile: "Short of manpower, it's always like this."
"It's not that complicated, right?" Zhannia said coldly, "How many people do it take to move a corpse?"
"Oh, no, it's not that. They want help finding something."
"The murder weapon?"
"They haven't figured out what the murder weapon was yet. It's quite strange. It's certainly not something you would see in a kitchen."
Doppler-Colon shrugged. He must have known how intently Jania was listening, but he pretended not to notice that he was leaking inside information. Jania didn't think there was any problem with this. If she converted all the time she spent helping Old Colon into community service, it might be enough for several delinquent minors to complete community corrections.
"What does the body look like?" she asked. "You have to see the face clearly, right? Otherwise, how do you know it's not from our town?"
"It was a man, he must have been forty years old. He must have drunk a lot before he died. But he was not a familiar face - not from our town, nor from a neighboring town. He was more like a foreigner, carrying all the It's something in English, but I won't say it to death, little girl. Now foreigners are moving here in droves, and I don't see what attracts them here. Anyway, even now The police couldn't say for sure that he knew everyone in the neighborhood."
Doppler Colon paused for a few seconds and then said as if nothing happened: "They don't know your brother either."
Jania put down the towel—she could tell there was more than just what he meant. The old clone wanted to remind her of something.
"What's wrong?" she asked bluntly, "He just came yesterday."
"The body was found this morning, but he died yesterday. The Gede man is actually a good person - I knew him before I retired. He was a very responsible young man. But he doesn't trust outsiders very much, especially..."
He replaced the second half of the sentence with a gesture. Jania looked at him with pursed lips, trying her best to appear not offended, but with little success. She was indeed a little angry.
"My brother came here by taxi," she said simply. "Coming from the city's airport, there's no need to go near the woods."
"Then Gade has nothing to say, right? You can find out the flight information as soon as you check it."
Zhannia said bluntly: "Maybe he should know who the dead person is first, and then start looking for suspects."
Doppler Colon laughed.
"No, girl, it's not like that at all." He said cheerfully, "Of course it's like that in theory, but if you follow the procedure completely, you will find that you will accomplish nothing in the end. You can't wait for the answer to come to your door. In reality, Even when nothing happens, you always have the names of several suspects in your mind. Who looks most like a thief? Who looks most like a murderer? You don’t have to say it to save trouble, but you always have it in your mind. There will be a name, a place where you can try to start. That's what Gad did, but he didn't want to believe that anyone in our town could do such a thing, so he would probably start with a stranger. "
"He will go to my brother?"
"If we don't find out who the dead man is, I think he might. But I don't think there's anything to worry about. He just went to have a chat and ask your brother how he feels here. He can't do anything Take your brother away because he doesn't speak German."
Jania was still a little angry. But the elder Cologne repeatedly assured her that Gerd Schilling was neither an extreme racist nor would he deliberately make things difficult because the other party could not speak German. Furthermore, he pragmatically pointed out that her brother was not a penniless wanderer or a refugee, but the son of a well-known local lawyer. He has such a strong protection that the police will not mess with him.
"I hope he won't just kidnap homeless people," Jania said.
"Sometimes you might wish he did it," Colon Sr. said, "when you find some police officers doing nothing. But no matter which fruit you choose, you will find that they all taste equally sour. This business is what makes everyone People are unhappy.”
He opened the dog cages in batches and let them go to the training ground to have fun. Then he shared the fresh beer and fried sausages in the refrigerator with Jania. They watched as Leo and Apu chased and fought each other, almost causing a melee among the dogs, until Candice ferociously knocked the two of them away. Zhannia finally got the details of the body from Old Cologne.
"It must be something sharp," Old Colon said. "It's about fifteen centimeters wide, but very long, or it doesn't have a handle. It's very, very thin."
"Some kind of special metal plate?" Zhannia guessed.
"The wound is not straight. The scar that runs through the chest and back has a curved arc, like when you hold a twig gently."
"Long scimitar?"
"It's fifteen centimeters wide." Old Colon took a sip of beer. "I think any assassin with such a scimitar would be stared at by passers-by. It would be possible if it was placed in a car or a house. It’s passable.”
"Then...the woods are not the first scene?"
"They are still trying to figure it out. From the current scene, it looks like the dead man walked around here by himself. They can find his footprints and there is mud from the woods on the soles of his shoes. There is no dragging nearby. There were blood stains, and they also borrowed a few dogs to try.”
"The results of it?"
"Nothing was found. The dogs were very quiet - a little too quiet. They smelled the corpse and stayed put."
Jania choked. Old Cologne's eyes fell on her, and she calmly wiped away the sprayed wine foam with her fingers.
"This wine is too cold," she said. "I don't like cold wine with hot sausages."
"You young people are becoming less and less accustomed to traditional tastes," the elder Colon said. "Philip hated sauerkraut when he was a kid, and I thought that was weird enough."
Zhannia said in a deliberately rough voice: "That doesn't stop him from growing so big. If you want to survive, mind your own business, old man."
Old Cologne laughed again and never mentioned the corpse in the woods again. It wasn't until Zhannia put the leash on Leo again that he suddenly held her shoulders again: "I'm serious, you'd better not go to the woods alone during this period. The body has been moved away, You won’t get anything there.”
"Are you afraid the murderer is still hiding there?"
"I can't tell. This thing is quite strange. Even if you don't believe it, it's best not to risk your own life."
Old Cologne's gaze was facing the direction of the woods. He stared at the shadows in the afternoon sun and said thoughtfully: "The denser the woods, the more legends about those strange things."
Jania fastened the fastening ring of the traction rope: "I thought you didn't believe that."
"When I was awake, armed with hunting dogs," Old Colon said, "I didn't believe there was anything in the woods at all. But you say that when I woke up from my dream in the middle of the night, there was even a knife next to me. None, I still heard the wind screaming in the woods, it’s times like that... you just can’t be 100% sure.”
Before Jania finally left the dog park, she took advantage of Old Cologne's break to gather the dogs and walked to the blue trash can and threw the old newspaper ball in her pocket into it. Then she stepped through the iron gate and walked onto the gravel path sandwiched between two woods. This summer was extremely hot, and many local elders even claimed that Regenberg had never been so hot in history. There was very little rain, leaving a trail of cracked dog footprints on the side of the path. Leo sniffed up and down, slowly crawling towards the leafy beech trees, using his nose to dig through the dead leaves and fallen flowers accumulated at the roots of the trees. Jania held on to the leash to prevent her from slipping unintentionally deeper into the woods, even though she was half-tempted to do so.
She looked up at the old trees. Their gray-black bark has pitted knots and scars, and the noise of cicadas can be heard from the lush green leaves high up. Malcolm was particularly fond of these old trees. When spring passed, he turned their pale green catkins into gelatin specimens. At the end of autumn, he secretly took the fallen fruits to the studio and roasted them with Jania. Her mother didn't like them eating random things in the forest, and always used the example of an old man who accidentally ate wild poisonous orphans. But beech fruit is not poisonous.
An unspeakable depression came over her. She suddenly felt a little missing Malcolm, the man who could hear all her thoughts and still keep them secret. He was indeed not a very reliable adult, but he could always make her happy. What is he doing at this moment? Maybe studying the paint ratios for a certain angel fresco in an ancient Spanish church. He can also tell many stories about Reigenberg's woods, such as the false road signs that lure passers-by into getting lost, the little red house that lights up in the middle of the night, the forest glade where hunting dogs will go crazy with fear when they step into it... not All stories contain dead people, but they are still unsettling because people cannot understand what they mean. Malcolm was particularly fond of telling a story, probably one he had made up, about Jania having been saved by a woodland fairy. Jania did get lost in the woods as a child and had a very rough night, but she didn't remember any fairies.
Leo lay down on the pile of leaves, then collapsed on his side, pretending to be too tired to walk. Jania pulled hard on the leash, showing that she had seen through its trick.
"No, Leo," she said mercilessly, "we're not going into the woods today."
Leo twitched his ears angrily, stood up and left a puddle of urine next to the root of the tree. By the time they turned back to the right road and turned left and right back to No. 15, the sun had already set toward the roof. Her brother was standing in the yard watering the grass, the sprinkler nozzles making a flashing silver rainbow. Jania looked at him from outside the fence and noticed that he had changed from the white-on-gray twill shirt he wore that morning to a brightly colored pullover T-shirt. He always wore this silly style of clothes in Regenberg, and the shirt must have been changed for "business matters". This reminded Jania of something she firmly believed in: everyone has many faces.
She remained silent for a moment and continued to stand there observing her brother. Not only was she looking at him as Jania Dubois, but she was also trying to see him from a more detached and objective perspective. If she were a passerby, a bird or a dog, what would this person look like to her? Can he really be trusted? Would he pick up a knife in a deserted place and plunge it into another person's chest? It's not impossible. she said in her mind. Given the right conditions, anyone is a potential murderer.
People in the yard finally found her.
"What are you doing standing there?" her brother said, shaking the hose towards Leo. Leo happily bit the water column, not caring who was controlling the water column. This scene made Zhannia feel a little relieved, but she didn't know if another dog could behave as naturally as Leo.
She walked into the yard and helped Leo take a shower. Leo loves to play with water by nature and will never miss an opportunity when he can swim. However, like most dogs, he still hates bathing and always tries to shake the water on her. She had to pretend she was playing with it so she could rub the mud off its tail. By the time the bath was over she felt so exhausted that she could only sit on the porch to catch her breath.
At times like these she felt she hated life. Life is like this, repeated wastage and unnecessary worries, dirty and washed, washed and dirty, nothing new, never getting ahead. She even had to say that this was a good thing, a really good thing. If one day Gerd Schilling or someone else with the ID came into her house and told her that she had bad news to know, then she would be very concerned about it. A boring life is desirable.
Her brother came over, patted her, and asked her to come in for dinner.
"I'm not hungry," she said listlessly.
"There's cold tomato soup and vinegar shrimp, frozen in an ice bucket."
Jania stood up and went inside. She sat at the table with a sullen face, scooped out a bowl of cold soup that was bright red but not spicy at all, and put two lemon vinegar shrimps in from the ice tray. Her brother watched her eat with slight suspicion, still wondering if she really didn't need hot food. He did try hard, trying to tell her in a roundabout way that too much cold food might cause gastrointestinal upset. But Jania also has a usual counterattack: eating too hot for a long time will cause esophageal cancer.
"Cat tongue," her brother cooed.
"Most animals don't eat anything that's too hot than their own body temperature," Jania said. "That's just not natural."
"You grew up with fire, Velvet."
"I only use electric stoves."
Her brother wanted to say something, but the doorbell rang. Zhannia's hand ladling the soup paused for a moment, but she did not stand up and open the door. She saw the surprise on her brother's face.
"Your mother came back really early this time." He said, putting down the bowl and answering the door. Zhannia almost wanted to call him out and tell him that the person coming was probably a policeman in black leather. The situation now was like the big bad wolf knocking on the door in the fairy tale, and her brother was the little pig who thought he was greeting his mother. But she also understood that it was too late to tell her brother now. She really didn't expect Gerd Schilling to come so quickly, which was a bit rude.
The door opened. Facing him were three cardboard boxes stacked high, hovering in the air, completely blocking the view from both sides of the door.
The person holding the cardboard box is Yu Qingshu. She held the cardboard boxes underneath with both arms, a little greedily trying to move them all into the house at once. When she realized that the person opening the door was helping to hold the carton, she finally breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't wait to kick off her uncomfortable pair of leather shoes with heels. She took off her suit jacket in one go and threw it on the shoe cabinet, unbuttoned the first two buttons of her shirt, and fanned herself with her palms, as if she had just won a big game.
She exhaled, with excitement in her eyes, and called to her daughter loudly: "Rongren!"
"Here you are," Zhannia said, still sitting firmly at the dining table.
"We're having a big dinner tonight! I have two good news for you, one of which you may not like very much, but I promise it's not too bad..."
Jania didn't hear what her mother was promising. When her brother poked his head out from the carton with an awkward smile and made eye contact with Yu Qingshu, the second half of the sentence stopped abruptly. Zhannia scooped up the soup base, guessing in her mind what the news she didn't like very much might be.
"...These two pieces of good news." Her mother said in a daze.
"Three." Zhannia said calmly, picking up another vinegar shrimp for herself.
