Animal Detective-Chapter 49: Eye Drops

"I don’t know."

That was Gao Jinrui’s answer.

"In that instant, my mind just exploded. I’m not kidding you, it really just went blank!"

Even though it had been seven years, it was as if Gao Jinrui was reliving every moment, his face filled with an indescribable terror.

"I was so scared I fell right on my ass. I was completely frozen, couldn’t even move. He reached his hand out to me and seemed to say something, but I couldn’t hear him at all. I only found out later what he said."

"He said, ’Medicine!’"

Chen Chao’s gaze sharpened as he thought of the bottle of eye drops.

"Didn’t you ever think about taking him to the hospital? He might have survived."

Chen Chao retorted in a heavy voice.

Gao Jinrui shook his head bitterly. "No. I didn’t even have time to think. Like I said, my mind just exploded, a total blank. By the time I came to my senses, he wasn’t moving again. I gave him a little push—no reaction. I checked his nose... no breath."

"And then I looked up and saw the dog."

Gao Jinrui’s head snapped up, and he stared intently at Chen Chao.

Zhao Tianxing secretly shivered.

"The dog was just standing there, about twenty meters away, staring at me. It didn’t bark, just stared. I waved at it, tried to shoo it away, but it wouldn’t leave."

"Honestly, that’s when I completely panicked. I couldn’t think about anything else. I just dragged the kid into the grave and started burying him."

Chen Chao silently shook his head.

Gao Jinrui’s reaction made it clear he didn’t know whether Wu Jiawang was dead or alive at that moment.

However, Chen Chao leaned toward the latter.

Human life is fragile, but at times, it can also be incredibly tenacious.

Besides, by only checking for breath at the nose, especially in his state of extreme panic, Gao Jinrui probably wouldn’t have been able to feel a faint breath.

So, if Gao Jinrui had come to his senses and chosen to take Wu Jiawang to the hospital back then, the boy might have been saved.

「In the observation room.」

"That bastard!"

Sun Zhao slammed his hand on the table in anger.

The room fell silent.

Shen Xin clenched his jaw, his emotions in turmoil.

There was no way to prove anything now, but the mere thought that Wu Jiawang might have been buried alive made Shen Xin’s chest tighten, suffocating him.

’An eight-year-old child... He’d finished lunch, said goodbye to his grandpa, and run off to play. When he was done playing, he didn’t forget to buy his grandpa’s eye drops. He had his dog with him, the eye drops in hand, probably thinking about how his grandpa would praise him for being a good, filial boy when he got back. He was skipping along, lost in thought, and just like that, tragedy struck. And when he woke up, he probably had no idea what had happened. He only remembered one thing: the eye drops he’d bought for his grandpa. He even grabbed at Gao Jinrui’s pant leg, thinking this ’uncle’ would save him. But he never imagined that Gao Jinrui would bury him in a dark, sunless grave.’

Back in the interrogation room, Gao Jinrui buried his face in his hands, anguished.

Chen Chao took a moment to compose himself before asking, "And then? After you buried him, you decided to get rid of the car?"

Gao Jinrui nodded.

"At first, I thought about going straight home, but then I realized that wouldn’t work. My car was damaged, and my wife would definitely ask what happened."

"Plus, there was blood in the car. I had to clean it. So I went to my cousin’s house. His family settled down in Anjing and only comes back occasionally for the New Year, so they gave us a key and asked us to look after the place."

"I called my wife and told her I had to go on a business trip for work and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Then I went to my cousin’s place and washed the car."

"That’s when I decided I couldn’t keep the car. But I was afraid the damage from hitting a person would be too obvious, so I found a concrete block and intentionally crashed into it again."

At this point, he looked up and asked Chen Chao if they had found his Nissan Teana.

Chen Chao nodded. "We already have Zhang Xuwei in custody."

Gao Jinrui gave a bitter smile.

Seeing that he had fallen silent, Chen Chao prompted him, "And what about you sneaking into Wu Zhicun’s house later on?"

Gao Jinrui froze, surprised. "You know about that too?"

He seemed taken aback.

Chen Chao nodded and said in a low voice, "Gao Jinrui, we know far more than you think. So don’t get any ideas about holding back. Tell us everything."

In reality, Chen Chao only knew about these few things.

"I wasn’t planning on hiding it. I was just about to tell you," Gao Jinrui said, shaking his head with a sigh. "The same night I hit the kid, I found out who he was. My wife called and told me a child had gone missing from the neighboring Xianghong Village, and that we needed to keep a close eye on our son."

"I couldn’t sleep at all that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see the kid’s bloody face. He was reaching out to me, talking."

"Like I said before, I only found out later what he was saying to me then. It was ’eye drops.’"

"Earlier, when I was washing the car in my cousin’s yard, I found a bottle of eye drops under the front passenger seat. I thought it was strange, I figured they belonged to my wife, so I just tossed them in the center console."

A chill went down Chen Chao’s spine. He now understood how the fingerprints got on the eye drop bottle.

’Gao Jinrui must have gotten his hands dirty while washing the car, then picked up the eye drops to look at them, accidentally leaving his fingerprints behind.’

"I crashed the car again, then deliberately drove to Xinqiao and found a random auto body shop to get it fixed. Then I went home and told my wife I’d gotten into a minor accident."

"She didn’t think much of it. That day, I asked around about what happened in Xianghong Village and learned that the kid I’d hit was named Wu Jiawang, and that he had a blind grandfather."

"For the next two days, I didn’t sleep at all. My mind was racing, thinking, ’What if I get caught? I’m finished. Someone’s dead. I’m going to prison.’ It got so bad I started hallucinating. When I’d go to the bathroom, I’d feel like someone was standing behind the curtain."

"And my son... I’d clearly hear him call for me, but when I went to him, he’d say he hadn’t."

"I was really on the verge of a breakdown at that point."

Chen Chao said nothing, just watched him quietly.

He could tell from the sheer despair in Gao Jinrui’s tone that if this was how he sounded just describing it, his state of mind back then must have been even worse.

Seeing Gao Jinrui pause, Chen Chao thought for a moment, then took out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to him.

Gao Jinrui shook his head, indicating he didn’t smoke.

But then he changed his mind and reached out for one.

Chen Chao lit it for him.

Smoke swirled, shrouding his face. He coughed violently before continuing, "I happened to ask my wife about the eye drops, and that’s when I found out they weren’t hers."

"That’s when it hit me. They belonged to the kid. They were the eye drops he bought for his grandpa. They must have fallen out when I put him in the back seat."

"I was terrified. When I was transferring the car’s title, I took the eye drops."

"As soon as I left the DMV, I threw them into a roadside planter."

"But that very night, I had a nightmare. The kid was in my dream, tugging at my pant leg, saying, ’Eye drops... eye drops...’"

"I felt so guilty about what I’d done to the kid. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I got this idea to return the eye drops to his grandfather. I thought maybe then he’d stop haunting me."

"So I went back to the DMV and actually found the bottle of eye drops. It was right there, perfectly fine."

"Then I started trying to figure out how to return them to his grandfather. I paced around outside his house several times but never had the courage to go in. The police were always coming to see him back then, and he was always crying and making a scene."

"This went on for about half a month. I carried that bottle of eye drops with me the whole time, and I kept having the same nightmare, with the kid shouting ’Eye drops!’ at me."

"I couldn’t take it anymore. One night, I snuck over. I figured, ’He’s blind, so he won’t see me anyway.’" 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"I was planning to leave them on his grandfather’s nightstand, but somehow, the old man suddenly woke up and yelled at me. I was terrified and scrambled back out."

"I ended up leaving the eye drops in the kid’s room on the east side and then ran for it."