Chapter 10: prologue 3

“What’s your reason for suspecting me?” The man seemed very calm despite my accusation.

“Because you’re the only one on the bus who’s been looking left and right the whole time.”

“That can’t prove anything.”

“Of course, I have a more convincing reason.”

“What’s your more convincing reason?”

“When I yelled out that my wallet had been stolen, everyone’s first reaction was to check if their belongings were still on them and you were the only one who didn’t react at all. You didn’t react because you were confident that your own wallet couldn’t have been stolen, and that’s because YOU’RE the pickpocket!”

After saying that, all the passengers were convinced by my serious and detailed conjecture. They started clapping and cheering, and even that tall and skinny man couldn’t help but applaud me as well. “That’s a good analysis, but unfortunately, I’m not the pickpocket.”

I laughed loudly and said, “That’s not up to you to say.”

He asked me curiously, “Then who is it up to?”

“The police!” I replied firmly.

He burst out laughing as well. “Then it is really up to me after all,” he said as he pulled a small item out from his pocket and passed it to me.

I took it from him only to find that it was actually his police badge, complete with his photo and name.

I was in shock but he just smiled faintly at me and explained calmly, “You’re right. I knew that my wallet couldn’t have been stolen because I’m a policeman myself! My surname is Ji and I’m Inspector Ji from the North District Police Station’s criminal investigation team.”

He glanced at me and suddenly asked, “What do you think makes me different from ordinary cops?”

I quickly took the chance to butter up to him, “You’re an inspector and the rest are just police officers!”

“That’s just what you see on the outside. You’ve got to look past the surface and look deeper,” Inspector Ji continued trying to lead me to the answer with a smile on his face.

I had no idea what answer he wanted, so I shook my head.

He didn’t seem bothered by my ignorance and decided to tell me the answer, “The difference between myself and ordinary cops is that…I’m extraordinary!”

After saying that, he glanced at me again and continued praising himself, “Most cops look at the case from only the police’s perspective. But not me. I would look at the case from the perp’s perspective to analyze the situation and crack the case.”

Once he had explained his philosophy, he applied it to the case at hand, “Let’s take this case as an example. If I were a thief on a bus, the first thing I would do would definitely to check out what would be a good item to steal, then find a chance to steal it. That’s why I was looking around on the bus the whole time. I was looking around to see who would be the likeliest target on this bus.”

Hearing his explanation made me feel really depressed. Inspector Ji had not looked at me even once earlier. He clearly didn’t think a thief would target me.

But even so, I was still hopeful as I asked if he had any clues.

To my surprise, he brimmed with confidence as he replied, “Of course I know who the thief is!”

“Who is it?”

Inspector Ji smiled without saying anything. He reached his large palm into the crowd and dragged a suspicious looking man out.

This man had a shifty expression like Inspector Ji did, but this guy definitely looked like a real thief.

Now that he was in front of the in-bus camera and the citizens of the city he served, Inspector Ji became especially aggressive when it came to cracking the case. He shouted sternly, “You’d better come clean right now!”

The pickpocket was scared out of his wits from how frighteningly Inspector Ji had shouted at him, but he continued to insist that he was innocent, “I didn’t steal any wallet!”

Since the man was being so uncooperative, Inspector Ji decided to tell a lie just to scare the man into a confession, “How dare you deny any wrongdoing! I saw you stealing earlier! I didn’t want to call you out until now because I felt that you would eventually own up and I really hoped that you would repent before it’s too late. The owner of the wallet has already realized that his wallet has gone missing and you’re still not willing to tell the truth?!”

The pickpocket didn’t sound like he was from around here as he insisted in a different accent, “I really didn’t steal his wallet!”

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Inspector Ji was enraged and yelled, “Would you prefer me to search you instead?”

The pickpocket seemed guilty as he quickly covered his pant pockets with his hands.

Inspector Ji noticed what the man did and raised his voice impatiently, “The wallet you stole is in your pocket! Why are you still trying to hide?” He was very determined to solve the case, so after he finished speaking, he shot his right hand out swiftly into the man’s pocket.

Before doing this, he seemed to have already calculated the camera angle at which this whole thing would be captured. He had to make sure his actions were swift and smooth, but he also had to ensure that he had a smile on his face when facing the camera, since this footage would eventually make the news.

But to his surprise, after he reached into the man’s pocket, his hand didn’t hit anything that felt like a wallet. Instead, it was something squarish and hard. It seemed…to be a phone!

His first reaction was to think to himself, crap, I’ve got the wrong item. His next thought was one of disappointment. When the news made a report on how he had cracked this case, they would edit this part of the video out since it wasn’t relevant.

As these thoughts ran through his mind, his hand remained in the man’s pocket and he refused to take it out again. The other passengers started feeling puzzled and I was even more anxious than before, so I pressed him, “Inspector Ji, did you find my wallet in his pocket?”

Even when faced with such an embarrassing situation, Inspector Ji remained calm and quick witted, as a policeman ought to. He smiled faintly and quietly asked me, “Sir, are you sure that you’ve only lost your wallet and nothing else?”

I was so touched by how considerate this policeman was. I immediately checked my pockets all over again and answered him with certainty, “Only my wallet.”

He was afraid that I might not have checked my pockets thoroughly enough, so he tried to hint at me, “Are you sure your phone hasn’t been stolen?”

“Nope, it’s right here!” I said as I took my phone out and even unlocked it for him to see. Then, I hurried him again, “Take my wallet out of his pocket! I want to see if any of my money is missing!”

He gave up trying to push me towards the answer he wanted and had no choice but to fish out whatever he found inside the man’s pocket first before finding some excuse to cover up his mistake. To his surprise, the minute he pulled that phone out of the man’s pocket, one of the passengers exclaimed, “Isn’t that my phone? When did he steal it?”

Inspector Ji was beside himself with joy to see that this awkward situation had actually produced some results and quickly seized the chance to say, “AHA! You’re a thief after all! Hurry up and hand that wallet over now!”

But the thief seemed determined to maintain his stance on this matter. He continued to insist that he hadn’t stolen any wallet.

Inspector Ji flew into a rage. He shot his hand out again to display a technique that must have hailed from Shaolin* as he proceeded to actually fish out a wallet from the man’s clothes.

The man explained that this wallet was his own. Inspector Ji didn’t believe him, so he passed it to me to take a look.

I glanced at the wallet and shook my head to confirm that this really wasn’t mine.

But Inspector Ji was not ready to give up just yet and was on the verge of stripping the man to search him. Since he hadn’t gotten anything out of this man, his many years of experience in the police force gave him another idea. The pickpocket might have taken the money out of my wallet and thrown the wallet away. So, he asked me, “How much money did you have in your wallet?”

I was a little embarrassed to say that I only had ten dollars inside. While it was true that a pickpocket on the bus made him everyone’s foe, stopping an entire bus load of passengers over ten bucks might also draw public ire.

I couldn’t choose not to answer a policeman, neither could I lie to him. But just when I thought I had no choice but to tell the truth, an idea hit me and I answered, “The total value is about 50 dollars.”

This wasn’t entirely untrue. The wallet had cost me 40 dollars and it contained ten dollars, so it did have a combined value of 50 dollars.

Thankfully, Inspector Ji didn’t smell a rat and asked me, “Was it one bill or several bills?”

“Just one bill.”

What I meant was that I had just one ten dollar bill inside the wallet, but Inspector Ji obviously misunderstood and thought I meant that it was one 50 dollar bill. He looked very certain that this man was guilty and said, “If I find a 50 dollar bill in this wallet of yours, I’ll be curious to hear how you explain that away!”

Unfortunately for Inspector Ji, the man had nothing but one dollar bills. This fellow was definitely a professional bus pickpocket.

Inspector Ji was running out of ideas on how to handle this situation and decided to just call it day by hauling the man back to the station for questioning.

But I didn’t want things to just end like that, so I asked Inspector Ji, “I was the one who called the police and someone else found his phone in the process. But what about my wallet?”

Inspector Ji guessed that my wallet must have been stolen by a different pickpocket, but he was afraid that I would insist that he find the other pickpocket if he said so, so he tried to shake me off by saying, “Could you try to think of where else it could possibly be?”

Those words immediately annoyed me. He wasn’t worried only because he wasn’t the one who had lost a wallet. I was about to argue with him when my phone suddenly rang.

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