79: Old woman who staged an accident
Zheng Guolin, who had hung up the phone, looked at Shen Xiaoyun with a face full of apologies and said, "Xiao Shen, why don't I give Director Gu a call and see if he can make arrangements."
Shen Xiaoyun stood up directly: "Don't trouble my uncle, I'll wait for the next opportunity."
After speaking, she strode out.
Looking at Shen Xiaoyun's lonely back, Zheng Guolin could only sigh: "Why does she insist on being a criminal police officer? Isn't it good to stay in our Police Station?"
The next morning, Lei Zhen got up early to groom himself, picking up his Auxiliary Police Officer uniform.
"Today is the last time I'll wear you. Don't blame me for being fickle, because after today, I will be a true member of the Jiangcheng City police force."
It took a month to go from Auxiliary Police Officer to official police officer, which was within Lei Zhen's expectations.
The Eye of Sin still had two months of use left. After today, he had to make good use of it.
However, the system upgrade had not been completed, and although he had points now, he couldn't buy anything in the mall.
Lei Zhen wasn't in a hurry; he would wait until after receiving the award.
Jiangcheng City's annual summary meeting is a grand event for the Jiangcheng City police force, a key juncture that connects the past and future of the overall work. It is not only a systematic review of the past year's work in combating crime, maintaining public order, and serving the public, but also a core tool for clarifying the direction of work for the new year and building consensus within the team.
This grand event invited the directors of more than 600 Police Stations across Jiangcheng City, as well as advanced workers who had received various meritorious medals in the past year.
In other words, besides the directors, only those who were receiving awards had the opportunity to attend this grand event.
So, in addition to Lei Zhen, Gu Qingcheng and Ade were also invited to attend this annual summary meeting.
Originally, Lei Zhen was going to take Ade with him, but Gu Qingcheng took Ade home first.
Zhao Gang was also very excited. He was not just attending the summary meeting to applaud Lei Zhen and Gu Qingcheng, because Qinghe Police Station had already been awarded a 'collective second-class merit' by the Provincial Department.
Zhao Gang had been a director for over ten years, and before this, let alone a collective second-class merit, he wouldn't even have dared to dream of a collective third-class merit. He never expected that because of Lei Zhen, he would receive a collective second-class merit that he couldn't even imagine.
The key was that he might very well be promoted to deputy director of the sub-bureau through this collective second-class merit.
Thinking of the strong possibility of sitting on the deputy director's seat in the future, Zhao Gang was so excited that he couldn't sleep all night.
He got up early the next morning, tidied himself up, and then called Lei Zhen.
"You can go directly to the Municipal Bureau, hurry. The summary meeting starts at nine in the morning, so don't be late."
Lei Zhen was already preparing to go downstairs when he answered the phone. He also called Gu Qingcheng, who was clearly also excited, and the two agreed to meet in the Municipal Bureau lobby.
Lei Zhen went downstairs, bought some breakfast, and ate it while driving towards the Municipal Bureau.
The car entered the Beijiang District from Nanwan District, and ahead was Xiaoshiba.
However, as he passed an intersection, he saw a crowd of people gathered, seemingly due to a car accident.
Lei Zhen glanced briefly, seeing what appeared to be an electric bicycle hitting a pedestrian.
In Jiangcheng City, such incidents were countless every day, and Lei Zhen didn't pay much attention, but when he saw the Old Woman on the ground, he was stunned on the spot.
It was that old hag!
Lei Zhen knew this Old Woman. Just the month before last, Lei Zhen had personally witnessed this Old Woman extorting a middle school student.
That day was around six in the afternoon, dismissal time. The Old Woman deliberately went to a place not far from the school, pretended to be hit by a student, and demanded compensation. At that time, a sixth-grade elementary school child was extorted three hundred yuan in this way.
Lei Zhen happened to be there at the time and saw the entire process clearly.
Then, when the Old Woman was crossing the road, he deliberately went to help her, and after crossing the road, he asked her for three hundred yuan as a service fee.
At that time, the Old Woman thought Lei Zhen was a small hooligan, and under his intimidation, she actually gave him the money. However, as soon as Lei Zhen returned the money to the little boy, he was caught by the police.
That time he was detained for three days before being released. He had almost forgotten about this incident, but he never expected to run into this old swindler here.
He didn't expect her to be incorrigible, running out onto the main road to extort people again, not even fearing being hit and killed by a car.
Lei Zhen was now a police officer, so of course, he couldn't stand by and do nothing when someone was doing something bad. So, he parked his car in a nearby parking space and got out to see what was happening.
After a quick look, he could basically confirm that the Old Woman was extorting money.
From the way she was sitting on the ground, holding the wheel with one hand, combined with her unconvincing expression of pain, he knew she was perfectly fine.
The person she was extorting was a young woman in her twenties, who probably hadn't encountered such a thing before. The girl was panicked and didn't know what to do.
The onlookers nearby were discussing animatedly, though no one really knew what was going on.
"Oh, my leg! You hit my leg!" cried the Old Woman loudly, clutching her calf with one hand and grabbing the front wheel of the electric bicycle with the other, as if afraid the girl would run away.
The girl, looking confused, bent down to examine closely but found no injury on the Old Woman's leg.
"Grandma, you suddenly darted out like that, I didn't have time to brake. Are you okay?" the young woman asked politely.
"How can I be okay? You almost killed me!"
The young woman reached out to lift the other party's pant leg to check, but the Old Woman swatted her hand away: "Don't touch me. Just tell me, what are you going to do? Send me to the hospital or just pay me directly?"
The young woman was a bit confused: "How much do I need to pay?"
The Old Woman thought for a moment: "How about this, I see you young people don't have it easy. You give me two thousand, and I'll go to the hospital for a check-up myself."
"Two thousand?" The young woman was startled; this amount seemed to exceed her expectations.
"What? Do you think two thousand is too much?" The Old Woman's eyes widened in anger: "I'm telling you, I'm in too much pain to get up right now, it must be a fracture. When I go to the hospital, let alone two thousand, two hundred thousand might not even be enough."
This statement instantly scared the young woman senseless.
Two hundred thousand yuan, for her, who had just graduated and been working for less than a month, was an astronomical sum.
Let alone two hundred thousand, she couldn't even come up with two thousand right now.
Lei Zhen heard their conversation from a distance and couldn't help but sneer inwardly.
It seemed the Old Woman's appetite was growing; she was asking for two thousand right off the bat.
Just then, Lei Zhen saw a restaurant nearby with a sign that read [Brother Qi's Snake Farm]. At the entrance of the restaurant, there were two iron cages stacked on top of each other, likely to attract customers.
This was a chain restaurant specializing in rat snakes. There were also two branches in Nanwan District. A few years ago, when Lei Zhen was short on money, he used to catch snakes in the wild and sell them to this place.
Lei Zhen simply turned and walked towards the snake farm. At the entrance, he glanced into the iron cage and, sure enough, there was a rat snake over a meter long inside.
Lei Zhen went directly inside to find the boss. Soon, he spent five hundred yuan to buy a lively large rat snake.
His nomadic life from a young age had forged Lei Zhen into a man of iron guts. In winter, he slept in warm graveyards; in summer, he slept with black-tailed rat snakes. Things that would make others recoil were nothing to him.
What he feared most as a child was not snakes, not ghosts, but hunger!
Lei Zhen directly grabbed the rat snake in his hand, its long body coiling around his arm, and then he swaggered towards the Old Woman.
More and more people gathered. Guided by the Old Woman, the young woman finally decided to settle the matter with two thousand yuan.
In fact, even she began to suspect that the other party was extorting her, but lacking evidence, the young woman could only accept her bad luck.
However, just as she had borrowed money from a friend and was about to scan the QR code for the Old Woman, Lei Zhen suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and a long 'scarf' was directly placed around the Old Woman's neck.