Chapter 32: The Viper Murder Case (11) The Little Note

The three of them drove the police car back to the bureau. On the way, Ma Shi Tu bought a few roujiamo for them to fill their stomachs. Sang Luo didn't care what to eat, so she took the roujiamo and ate it in big mouthfuls. She was only thinking about how to interrogate Zheng Longmen when she returned.

In the interrogation room, Zheng Longmen was brought to his seat. This time, Sang Luo and the master were in charge of the interrogation, and Yuan Xiaohu was listening on the side. It was Sang Luo who specifically asked him to stay.

"Zheng Longmen," Ma Shi Tu said straight to the point, taking out the photos they had taken on the 10th, "We went to your house to investigate and found a hole behind your desk. The hole was right in front of He Taohua's bed. Were you spying on them?"

Seeing this photo, Zheng Longmen's face turned red instantly, he lowered his head and said nothing, but his expression had admitted everything.

"Where were you on the 31st? Did you kill He Taohua and her daughter?" Ma Shi Tu asked sternly.

Zheng Longmen panicked instantly. He said helplessly: "Officer, I didn't do this. I was just peeking. I didn't kill anyone!"

Ma Shi Tu sneered, "Of course you would say that. How many murderers would directly admit to killing someone? Zheng Longmen, I advise you not to procrastinate in vain. I'll ask you again - where were you on the 31st?"

"I was at home that day, studying in my bedroom." Zheng Longmen overturned his previous lie and this time he admitted that he was at home when the incident happened.

Ma Shi Tu nodded: "So you have time to commit the crime. At any time in the morning, you can put the snake into He Taohua's house through this small hole. As long as the mother and daughter touch the snake, they will die for sure."

Zheng Longmen quickly retorted: "No, why would I kill them? I don't even know them!"

"Because of He Taohua's daughter," Ma Shi Tu said his guess, "The child was only six months old, and this is the age when she can cry the most. According to Fu Ainong, the child often cries and makes a fuss. You are preparing for the college entrance examination, and the child next door makes so much noise for you. You must hate her, right?"

"Besides, due to special reasons, it is not easy for your family to move away, so if you want to restore peace, you can only get rid of this child--"

Zheng Longmen shook his head desperately: "No, I didn't kill anyone! Officer, I really hate this child. She is indeed very noisy, and I have complained about her many times, but I am also a person, and I have the most basic conscience. How could I kill someone just because of such a small matter?"

Ma Shi Tu pointed at the photo and said, "How do you explain this? You said before that this hole was used for peeping, and after the crime, the hole was blocked with cement. Aren't you destroying the evidence?"

"I don't know, I really don't know why it turned out like this, I didn't do anything!" Zheng Longmen hugged his head in horror.

"Don't think you can escape interrogation by just pretending to be stupid. I've seen this trick many times!" Ma Shi Tu slammed the table and changed the question. "Okay, if what you said is true, you were in the bedroom on the 31st, and you didn't kill anyone, then you should have heard the child crying, right? Let me ask you, at what time did the child's crying stop?"

"I, I don't know..." Zheng Longmen looked like he wanted to cry but had no tears, as if this was the only sentence he could say.

Ma Shi Tu was a little surprised. This question was actually not difficult to answer. He just wanted to confirm whether Zheng Longmen was at home when the crime occurred. Regardless of whether Zheng Longmen was the murderer or not, as long as he was at home at the time, he should have noticed that the baby's crying had disappeared.

"Since you were at home, how could you not know? You can't tell me that you were so engrossed in your studies that you didn't hear it at all?" Ma Shi Tu asked.

Zheng Longmen stammered, "I...I fell asleep at that time!"

Ma Shi Tu was so angry that he laughed: "Why is the excuse you used exactly the same as Fu Ainong's? Did the two of you collude with each other?"

Zheng Longmen repeated as if he was in a maze: "I don't know, I really don't know, just let me go..."

"You were at home on the 31st, so why did you lie to the police during the first interrogation?" Sang Luo asked.

Zheng Longmen said innocently, "My parents taught me to say that. They did it for my own good, fearing that the police would suspect me if I told the truth. Look, you guys really suspect me, don't you?"

Sang Luo raised an eyebrow at him: "What were you doing on the night of the 30th? Did you go out at night?"

The night of the 30th was the time when the snake was lost from the game shop. If the murderer was Zheng Longmen, he must have gone out that night.

Zheng Longmen rolled his eyes: "I...I was sleeping at home. I didn't go out all night."

Sang Luo couldn't help but emphasize his tone: "You slept at home on the night of the 30th, and you also slept during the day on the 31st. Do normal people need so much sleep? Do you believe what you say?"

Zheng Longmen lowered his head and said in an almost inaudible voice: "I've been told that I don't know..."

Ma Shi Tu angrily shouted: "Don't try to fool the police with these few words!"

Sang Luo suddenly stopped Ma Shi Tu and said, "Wait, Master, maybe he is not deceiving the police. He really doesn't know."

Ma Shi Tu said in disbelief: "You are such a grown-up, but you don't even know where you have been or what you have done. Are you a fool?"

"I'm not a fool, but..." Sang Luo looked up at Zheng Longmen, "Do you often have this feeling? Sometimes you feel that a period of time has passed suddenly, but your mind is blank and you don't know what happened just now."

"Yes, yes." Zheng Longmen looked up at Sang Luo in surprise, "How did you know?"

Sang Luo did not answer him, but continued: "During the period from the night of the 30th to the day of the 31st, your mind was also blank and you didn't know what you did, right?"

Zheng Longmen nodded repeatedly: "Yes! I've been like this lately, I feel like I'm possessed!"

"This is not a case of being possessed by evil spirits. You may have schizophrenia," Sang Luo said seriously. "Do you have hallucinations, illusions, delusions, etc.? When did these symptoms begin?"

Zheng Longmen looked at Sang Luo excitedly, as if he had found a life-saving straw: "Yes! I have time! As for the time... let me think, it was probably more than a year ago. At that time, I had just finished the college entrance examination and received the admission letter. I was admitted to Huzhou University, which is also one of the top schools in the country, but it is still not as good as Jingcheng University. My father did not allow me to go. He said that unless I was admitted to Jingcheng University, I could not leave high school!"

"Then they locked me in the bedroom, pasted test papers all over the wall, and forced me to study every day. I sat in that room day after day. Suddenly one day, I began to see my classmates. I saw everyone standing next to me. They were all laughing at me mercilessly. I saw it clearly. They were right here!"

"I was so scared that I started screaming and ran out of the room. I ran into my parents and I don't remember anything that happened afterwards. In the past year or so, I often saw my former classmates, but I knew that was impossible because they had all been admitted to different cities and were no longer in Baiyun County!"

Sang Luo nodded: "It's just like what I thought. You were forced to suffer from schizophrenia. Your parents didn't let you go to school to repeat your last year, not because they felt embarrassed, but because you had started to go crazy and couldn't integrate into normal life."

Yuan Xiaohu looked at Zheng Longmen sympathetically: "How pitiful! If I were to encounter such a thing, I would probably be driven crazy. Sang Luo, this schizophrenia you mentioned is probably what we often call a lunatic in our lives, right? But I see other lunatics are all crazy and will chop anyone they see. Why is he so normal?"

Sang Luo explained: "Schizophrenia is also divided into many types. There is one called intermittent schizophrenia. The patient only has occasional attacks. When they are not in an attack, they are like normal people and may not even remember what they did just now."

Zheng Longmen's pupils trembled. It was obvious that he had not known that he had become a "madman" in the past year. Sang Luo said slowly:

"When I first visited Chuncha Lane, I was not able to enter House No. 10. No one was at home at the time, and there was a big lock on the door. I noticed the lock at first sight. It didn't look like an ordinary household lock, but more like a zoo lock. At that time, I guessed that there might be someone special in your home who needed to be locked up."

"Later, we entered your home to search, and Xiaohu told us that both bedroom doors had been violently smashed open. I began to suspect that Zheng Wutong and his wife would not break the lock of their own bedroom, so it was you who would do that. You must have had an attack of illness and wanted to break into their room violently and hurt them intentionally."

"The knife marks in their room are also evidence. You were the one who chopped them there. Looking at the marks on the wall, I can even imagine the scene at that time—"

"You went crazy, picked up a kitchen knife and started chasing your parents. People like your parents who valued their reputations certainly wouldn't run into the street, so they could only run into the bedroom. Even though they hid inside and locked the door, you still broke the locks with your knife, then rushed in. You swung the knife, they dodged, and the knife chopped the wall."

"Gu Yixiang once said that Zheng Wutong and his wife had a bad relationship and were always fighting. Sometimes they went to school with bruises on their faces. She was wrong. Those scars were not caused by the fight between the couple, but by you beating them."

Zheng Longmen looked puzzled, unable to digest what Sang Luo said: "Yeah... In the past year, there have been some inexplicable knife marks in my house, and there are even no kitchen knives in the kitchen. My parents are always injured, too. I thought they had a fight, but it turned out to be me... So, I am simply a demon..."

Yuan Xiaohu shook his head and sighed: "It is really a sin for the parents to force their child of destiny to be like this."

"Nie Yu once said that the neighbors next door have a bad influence on children. I think he was not only referring to Fu Ainong, but also you. His family used to live here, but recently they are eager to move out. Nie Yu even signed the house purchase agreement when he had no money in hand--"

"I think this is all because of you. Your condition is getting worse and worse, disturbing the neighbors, so they had to move away." Sang Luo said.

Zheng Longmen covered his face and said, "What's the point of me being alive? I'm really useless. I'm just trash!"

"You hated the noise caused by the baby next door, which prevented you from reviewing. Subjectively speaking, you are a suspect of the crime," Sang Luo explained the case. "So, it is very likely that you committed the crime, but you didn't know it yourself."

"Then...how did you fill that hole..." Zheng Longmen was also confused.

Sang Luo: "Of course it was your parents who did it. They knew someone had died next door, and they also knew that you had always hated the baby next door, so they quickly discovered what you had done. In order to help you erase the evidence, they filled the hole with cement, but it still couldn't escape our eyes."

"No wonder my parents told me not to say anything to the police... Turns out... maybe... it was really me who did it... I killed two people, I really deserve to die..." Zheng Longmen also began to doubt himself.

"Regarding that hole," Sang Luo began to confirm the details of the case, "Did you dig it yourself? The location of the hole is so obvious, why didn't the family next door notice it?"

Zheng Longmen confessed honestly: "I dug it. As you know, I was alone in the room reviewing. No one talked to me all day. It was really boring. And I often heard that kind of noise from next door. I couldn't help it, so I used a long nail to slowly dig a small hole and occasionally leaned in to take a look."

"In order to prevent my parents from finding out, I usually use a desk to block the hole. I also found a broken red brick and used it to grind a ball that was about the same size as the hole. When I wasn't peeking, I would use the ball to block the hole so that at first glance, nothing could be seen."

After he finished his confession, he muttered to himself: "I swear to God, I dug this hole just to get rid of loneliness, but who knew that one day I would use it to kill people? Mental illness is so terrible, I am a lunatic..."

Yuan Xiaohu was a bit puzzled: "Although the case has been solved, it feels like it has not been solved. He didn't explain how he did it, how he got the snake, and how he poisoned it! How should I write the case report? And the most important point is, where did the gun come from?"

Zheng Longmen looked bewildered: "Gun, I still have a gun?"

Sang Luo was also helpless: "There is no way. This is how mentally ill people commit crimes. There are many details that cannot be explained. Even with the most advanced technology, there is no way to completely restore the truth of the matter."

Ma Shi Tu had a serious face. He whispered, "Sang Luo, are you sure he is really mentally ill? You must be careful. This is not a trivial matter."

Sang Luo certainly understood what Ma Shi Tu meant. The law provides different sentencing for mentally ill people and normal people. In the final judgment, the court might not sentence Zheng Longmen to death just because he is a mentally ill person. Ma Shi Tu was worried that Zheng Longmen would follow Sang Luo's words and pretend to be sick to escape the death penalty.

"Master, confirming mental illness must of course go through formal procedures, and a professional psychiatrist will come to confirm it later," Sang Luo whispered, "However, I have a way to let you confirm with your own eyes whether Zheng Longmen is a mental patient."

Although this method was a bit cruel, Sang Luo still said it out loud. That was that she deliberately provoked Zheng Longmen to cause him to have an attack.

Ma Shi Tu nodded in agreement. He believed that with his experience he would not be wrong. If Zheng Longmen was pretending to be sick, he would definitely not escape his sight.

Sang Luo opened the door and went out. A few minutes later, she came back with a book. When Zheng Longmen saw the book in Sang Luo's hand, his eyes widened: "Why is this here with you?"

Sang Luo waved the book at him: "Physics Must-Test Questions, I found this in the small study room specially reserved for you in the school. After guessing your condition, I have been puzzled. Since you have already suffered a mental illness, it is impossible for you to take the college entrance examination like a normal person. Why did your parents insist on applying for a study room at school? Is it to force you to study? Aren't they afraid that you will suffer a mental illness in school? With their face-saving personality, they should try their best to prevent you from going to school."

"I thought about it again and again and came up with a possibility - your parents didn't apply for this room, but you asked them to apply for it. Your parents are very strict with you and don't allow anything unrelated to study to appear in your room. So this small study room may be your secret base, used to store some things that are very precious to you."

"Coincidentally, when I visited your school, I searched this study room and found this book. Although the content of the book is unremarkable, the thing inside the book is--"

Sang Luo shook the book in his hand, and countless small notes floated down and landed on the table like snow.

Zheng Longmen widened his eyes and stared at Sang Luo with anger.

"These are the little notes you and Qin Xing passed secretly in class," Sang Luo said softly, "For three years in high school, you have been dating Qin Xing, the daughter of your father's mortal enemy Gu Yixiang."