Chapter 62 The Real Murderer
The incandescent lights in the Criminal Police Brigade's conference room were blindingly bright, and the tubes on the ceiling emitted a slight hum, clearly illuminating the fatigue and confusion on everyone's face. Yu Hao stood at the head of the conference table, his fingers pressing heavily on two files - those were the closing reports of the Wang Shun case and the Guo Zhong case. The red "Case Closed" stamps shone glossily under the light, making them particularly glaring. "Captain Yu, you said you wanted to reinvestigate?" Lu Chao was the first to break the silence, and the pen in his hand fell to the table with a "bang", rolling half a meter away. "Wasn't this case closed a long time ago? Sun Yong has pleaded guilty, and the chain of evidence is closed! The procuratorate came to urge for the materials last week!" A chorus of agreement suddenly rang out in the conference room. Liu Kai pushed his glasses up, which had slipped to the tip of his nose, his brows knitted into a knot. "Yes, Captain Yu, overturning a verdict right now is no small matter. Director Ma just fell, and the bureau is hoping to stabilize public sentiment with this case. If we stir up trouble now, what if it leads to something else..." "We can't rely on a wrongful conviction to stabilize public sentiment. Nothing is more important than getting to the bottom of this case," Yu Hao interrupted him, his voice low but undeniable. He flicked on the projector, and a floor plan of rooms 201 and 202 instantly appeared on the white wall. The locations of the two wardrobes were circled in red. He picked up the laser pointer, and the beam paused on the small dot at the bottom of the wardrobe. "Liu Lu, tell everyone about the situation." Yu Hao had already given everyone a basic introduction to Liu Lu in front of the conference room. Liu Lu took a deep breath and stood up. She measured the size of the hole on her chest, explaining that her figure hadn't changed much in the past decade or so. The hole was roughly the same width as her shoulders, about 30 centimeters. The laser pointer's beam moved to the nearby physique analysis report. The figures on the table were shocking: "Sun Yong is 182 cm tall, 52 cm wide at the shoulders, and weighs 82 kg. Even if he ripped out his ribs one by one, he wouldn't be able to fit through this hole." The conference room was utterly silent, with only the gentle whirring of the air conditioner vents. Lu Chao opened his mouth, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed back what he wanted to say. "In other words..." Zhang Min's voice trembled with disbelief. "There's someone else who could have fit through the hole?" Yu Hao nodded, his gaze sweeping across everyone present like a searchlight. "Why would Sun Yong lie? Why would he admit to entering Room 202 through the passage?" He paused, tapping his knuckles lightly on the table, and spoke word by word. "Because he..."
The incandescent lights in the Criminal Police Brigade meeting room were blindingly bright, and the tubes on the ceiling made a slight hum, clearly illuminating the fatigue and confusion on everyone's face.
Yu Hao stood at the head of the conference table, his fingers pressing heavily on two files - they were the closing reports of the Wang Shun case and the Guo Zhong case. The red "Case Closed" seals shone with an oily luster under the light, making them particularly dazzling.
"Captain Yu, you said you want to re-investigate?" Lu Chao was the first to break the silence. The pen in his hand fell on the table with a "bang" and rolled half a meter away.
"Wasn't this case closed a long time ago? Sun Yong has pleaded guilty, and the chain of evidence is complete! The procuratorate even came to press for the materials last week!"
There was a sudden echo of agreement in the conference room.
Liu Kai pushed up his glasses that had slipped to the tip of his nose, his brows knitted into a knot. "Yes, Captain Yu, overturning a verdict right now is no small matter. Director Ma just fell, and the bureau is hoping to use this case to stabilize public sentiment. If we stir up trouble now, what if it leads to other problems..."
"We can't rely on wrongful convictions to stabilize people's hearts. Nothing is more important than finding out the truth of a case." Yu Hao interrupted him, his voice not loud but full of unquestionable power.
He pressed the switch of the projector, and the floor plans of rooms 201 and 202 instantly appeared on the white wall. The locations of the two wardrobes were circled in red, which was particularly eye-catching.
He picked up the laser pointer and the beam paused on the small dot at the bottom of the wardrobe: "Liu Lu, tell everyone about the situation."
In front of the conference room, Yu Hao had already introduced Liu Lu's basic situation to everyone. Liu Lu took a deep breath and stood up.
She gestured at the size of the hole on her chest and explained that her figure had not changed much in the past ten years. The hole was basically the same as her shoulder width, about 30 centimeters.
The laser pointer moved to the body analysis report next to him. The numbers on the table were shocking: "Sun Yong is 182 cm tall, 52 cm wide at the shoulders, and weighs 82 kg. Even if he ripped out his ribs one by one, he wouldn't be able to fit through this hole."
The conference room was completely silent, with only the faint whirring of the air conditioner vents. Lu Chao opened his mouth, his Adam's apple bobbing as he tried to say something, but swallowed it back.
"That is to say..." Zhang Min's voice trembled with disbelief, "There is someone else who can pass through the cave?"
Yu Hao nodded, his gaze sweeping over everyone present like a searchlight. "Why did Sun Yong lie? Why did he admit to entering Room 202 through the passage?" He paused, tapping his knuckles on the table as he spoke word by word, "Because he wanted to protect the person who actually entered through there."
The laser pointer's beam suddenly swung to the corner of the screen, and a one-inch photo slowly enlarged. The boy in the photo wore a blue and white school uniform, his collar neatly tied. His eyes held a calmness that belied his age. "The only people who could fit through a 29-centimeter tunnel are those under 150 centimeters tall and thin. And there's only one person Sun Yong is willing to protect with his own life."
"That's unlikely!" Liu Kai stood up suddenly, the chair legs scraping against the floor. "Sun Lei is only in the sixth grade! He's only twelve years old! I saw him last time I went to school to look for his homeroom teacher. How could he have killed someone?"
"I know this is hard to believe." Yu Hao's voice was low and firm. He pulled a transparent evidence bag from his pocket, which contained a red pin. "We still haven't found the source of this pin found at the Wang Shun crime scene. I just confirmed that it was a reward given by Yucai Primary School to the top student in the grade—Sun Lei has been top of the grade for many years in a row."
The evidence bag was passed around, and each person's fingers trembled slightly when they touched the plastic bag. The pin shone eerily under the light, like a blood-red butterfly resting on the palm of their hand.
Yu Hao's gaze fell on the empty seat in the front row of the conference room, which he had reserved specifically for Qin Guoan. "I spent New Year's Eve at Sun Yong's house. He was drunk that day, and he kept repeating one thing: 'It's all for the children.' At the time, I thought he was talking about buying a house, but now I understand... what he meant."
The air in the conference room seemed frozen, even the sound of the air conditioner becoming unusually clear. Sun Lei's photo on the screen stood out in the silence, his clear eyes silently accusing him of something.
"Zhang Min," Yu Hao suddenly spoke, breaking the suffocating silence, "How's the surveillance footage of Xiao Yan's car accident going?"
Zhang Min snapped back to reality, as if pricked by a needle. She quickly pulled up a grainy video. The screen was dimly lit, with only the faint green glow of the emergency lights. "The surveillance camera in the mall's underground parking lot captured this."
In the picture, a thin figure wearing a hoodie slid into the undercarriage of a silver van like a nimble cat. Although his face couldn't be seen clearly, his slightly pigeon-toed gait was strikingly similar to the photo of Sun Lei they had taken at school.
"Fifteen minutes before the accident, he entered the parking lot through the ventilation duct." Zhang Min's voice was filled with unconcealed pain as she quickly switched images. "Three minutes after the accident, he left through the fire escape. The surveillance camera captured him discarding his black gloves." At this moment, a clear face appeared before everyone, and everyone began to discuss again.
Yu Hao closed his eyes, and countless fragments flashed through his mind - Sun Lei's lonely back on the playground, the wood carvings he carved, and his resolute steps as he left with his schoolbag clutched on the day of the parent-teacher meeting... It turned out that those seemingly irrelevant details had already been woven into a huge net, trapping everyone in it.
"Why are Liu Feng's fingerprints on the knife handle?" Lu Chao's voice was as hoarse as sandpaper. He took out his cigarette case and wanted to smoke, but then remembered that smoking was prohibited in the conference room and put it back in annoyance. "Could it be Sun Lei's fault too?"
"That's him." Yu Hao opened his eyes, a hint of fatigue in his tone. "I was eating at Aunt Liu's Wonton Shop the other day and saw Liu Feng bump into Sun Lei. Sun Lei's wooden carving fell to the ground, and Liu Feng helped him pick it up." He paused. "During the interrogation, Liu Feng said that the handle wasn't the same as before."
"Because the handle was replaced." Yu Hao continued, "Sun Lei replaced the handle he carved with the murder weapon. A twelve-year-old kid set up a scheme from the very beginning that even fooled us."
"This is incredible..." Zhang Min's voice was as low as a whisper, and she covered her mouth.
"Sun Lei is too small, just over 1.4 meters tall." Yu Hao's eyes fell on the evidence bag, and his voice was filled with a heavy sense of powerlessness, "To kill Wang Shun who was drunk on the bed, you had to climb onto the bed and then stab the knife into his chest. The pin fell out of his pocket at that time, maybe he didn't even notice it..." He didn't say anything else, but everyone understood what he wanted to say.
Every detail matched, like scattered beads strung together by a thread, forming a creepy shape.
"What about Guo Zhong?" Lu Chao pressed on, the veins on his forehead throbbing. "Was Guo Zhong also killed by Sun Lei? That kid was too ruthless!"
"No, Sun Yong killed Guo Zhong." Yu Hao shook his head and pulled up Sun Yong's call log. The screen showed that Guo Zhong had called Sun Yong seven times in the three days before the murder. "After Wang Shun's death, Guo Zhong must have guessed the murderer from the hole in the wall and began threatening Sun Yong. To cover up his son's crime, Sun Yong simply killed Guo Zhong and took the blame for both crimes."
He pulled up a surveillance video, which showed Sun Yong stalking Luo Xin. "Did you notice? The videos of Sun Yong stalking Luo Xin only appeared after the Wang Shun case." Yu Hao's voice was heavy with sadness. "He deliberately aroused our suspicion, making us think he killed Luo Xin because he loved her. During the interrogation, he was initially stalemated, but then suddenly confessed—all for show, to convince us he was the murderer."
The conference room fell into deathly silence. Only the clock on the wall was still ticking tirelessly, and the sound of the second hand was like a countdown bomb.
Everyone's face was filled with shock and pain.
"What's the motive?" Zhang Min's voice was filled with tears. She took out a tissue and wiped the corners of her eyes. "Why did Sun Lei do this?"
Yu Hao closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were already filled with tears. "We always thought that Sun Yong wanted to protect Luo Xin, but in fact... it was Sun Lei who wanted to protect Luo Xue."
"We don't know what Wang Shun did to Luo Xue before he died. But in Sun Lei's eyes, Wang Shun was a demon who threatened Luo Xue. He felt that only by killing Wang Shun could he protect Luo Xue."
"And Sun Yong..." Yu Hao's voice choked. He turned his head to look out the window. The night was already too dark to dissolve. "In order to protect his son, he also chose the most extreme path."
This answer was like a heavy hammer, hitting everyone's heart hard. A twelve-year-old child, in his own way, protected the person he wanted to protect; a father, in his own way, protected his son by destroying himself.
This sounds like a carefully choreographed tragic movie, but it is actually happening right before their eyes, in the seemingly peaceful land of Nan'an Village.
Yu Hao felt his legs go limp, unable to support his weight any longer, and he collapsed onto the sofa behind him with a thud. The leather sofa made a dull thud, a particularly harsh sound in the silent conference room.
He looked at the chandelier on the ceiling and felt his eyes sore. The bright light pierced his eyes like needles.
What happened? Why did it become like this?
How many unknown secrets are hidden beneath those seemingly calm surfaces?
No one spoke in the conference room. Only the moonlight from outside the window shone through the gaps in the blinds, casting long, thin shadows on the floor, like countless pairs of eyes, quietly watching everything.
Lu Chao picked up the evidence bag on the table, and the red pin glowed coldly in the moonlight.
The clock on the wall pointed to twelve o'clock midnight, and the second hand was still moving tirelessly, as if counting down for this belated truth.
In the direction of Nan'an Village, the night was deep, and no one knew whether the boy curled up in the duty room had fallen asleep at this moment.
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