Chapter 105 Media Company
Ghosts... can leave fingerprints?
Tu Lanxun was a little surprised. She told Wen Chong about this matter. Wen Chong was also surprised, but he didn't know how to extract the fingerprints from Tu Lanxun's hands. The usual technical means were no longer useful.
"I'll go to the crime scene at Li Yuanzhi's house first." Tu Lanxun said enthusiastically.
They returned to the old neighborhood, and Li Xiaohong was temporarily settled in with relatives. Li Yuanzhi's bedroom was still sealed, and the criminal police from the physical evidence department were conducting the final evidence collection.
Tu Lanxun took out his monocle and looked carefully. Sure enough, there were several fingerprints on the bedside table in the bedroom, as if a ghost had briefly placed its hand on it.
"That's strange," Tu Lanxun said to Wenchong, "There are slipper prints here, but they don't reach the fingerprints."
Wen Chong quickly determined, "Two individuals came in. One is a living person, and the other is a ghost."
Tu Lanxun suddenly had an idea. He took out an incense stick, scraped off the powder with a knife, and blew it gently on the black and red fingerprints.
Everyone present was silent in shock.
"Come and collect evidence." Wen Chong called the police officers from the physical evidence department and used sticky transparent paper to print the fingerprints of the incense ash.
Tu Lanxun repeated the same procedure on his own palm and took the second ghost fingerprint.
Wen Chong patted Tu Lanxun's shoulder and said, "Sure."
With this discovery, they no longer had to rely solely on searching for ordinary evidence. Xiao Zhang's surveillance footage yielded no results—one of the cameras outside the old residential complex was broken, and aside from a further traffic camera capturing a car entering the complex at 1 a.m., nothing else was seen.
The car's onboard recorder showed that the driver was a resident of Chen Yusheng's unit. After parking, he went directly back to the unit next door and did not go to Li Yuanzhi's unit.
"What does he do? Why does he come home so late?"
"Oh, that guy wasn't a parent accompanying my child to school. He's the owner of a nearby media company. He went out drinking with clients that night and drove back in the middle of the night," the officer replied. "He denied driving under the influence, saying he hadn't had a single drink. The smell of alcohol on him came from two drinks he had downed after returning home to help him sleep. He's now been handed over to the traffic department."
"Where are the cameras in this building?" Tu Lanxun asked, pointing to a probe on the side of the unit door.
Xiao Zhang replied: "It's the property management's fault. The cameras were all broken six months ago and they didn't have time to replace them."
Wenchong said, “Let’s check the cameras installed by the shops along the street.”
There are many shops outside the community, mainly serving students, including stationery stores, bookstores, supermarkets and restaurants. Only one bookstore has a camera installed outside the door. After collecting evidence, only three delivery riders passed through this street in the middle of the night, but no one entered the community.
"Then we can only come from that direction," Wen Chong concluded. "Hey, why didn't you check that milk station?"
The police officer explained, "That milk station closed down two weeks ago because their refrigerated fresh milk and yogurt caused widespread fever and diarrhea in students. Parents made a scene, and now they've been ordered to suspend operations."
Tu Lanxun walked over and found a flowerpot on the raised windowsill of the milk station. There was a faint light close to the flowers and trees. It was a camera!
The investigation soon revealed that the camera was secretly installed by the boss himself. After the incident at the milk station, he was afraid that someone would smash up the store he had taken over, especially damaging the hardware and making it impossible to sell it, so he installed a camera specifically.
"He must be feeling guilty," the officer said. "But he can actually see his camera again. It's facing this side of the neighborhood."
The surveillance footage was quickly retrieved, and Tu Lanxun and the others noticed something unusual: a figure, wearing a mask and a hat, entered the complex in the early hours of the morning. The complex had more than one entrance and exit, likely due to the high turnover of residents, and the regulations hadn't been enforced.
The mysterious man walked out from the other side of the surveillance camera and went straight into the side entrance without a door. There was only the building where Li Yuanzhi lived.
An hour and thirty minutes later, he left.
"He looks like a man, and his gait is a bit sloppy." Wen Chong said, "Pause, pause here, and zoom in on his feet."
The man was wearing a pair of slippers, which were not trendy brand slippers, but ordinary one-size-fits-all slippers.
Tu Lanxun and others were shocked. The footage was sent to the technical processing department, and an estimated result was quickly obtained: the man's slippers were exactly size 40, and he had a pair of small feet.
Xiao Zhang and the others immediately engaged in a more intense surveillance operation, but the more distant surveillance cameras didn't capture any trace of the man, as if he had appeared out of thin air. Finally, while checking a row of cars parked on the street last night, they found the man's car.
He drove here at eight o'clock last night, parked his car in a roadside parking space, and only left this morning.
Following the license plate number, the identity of the mysterious man surfaced: Zhang Hao, 44 years old, works in a food processing factory in the suburbs of Lucheng.
The most amazing thing is that Zhang Hao’s child is also studying in a key high school.
"I have a hunch it's not him," said Tu Lanxun.
Wen Chong asked, "Why?"
Before Tu Lanxun could answer, Zhang Hao confessed everything in the interrogation room. The man had a slick, gangster-like air, but it instantly vanished when the light shone on him.
"Officer, I really didn't do it. I just took a look, and then I immediately got scared. I stayed in the car all night and then went home. My wife even scolded me when I got home." Zhang Hao said, holding his head.
The interrogating officer sternly asked, "You only went to take a look? The victim is truly dead. Where's your murder weapon?"
"It's in the trunk, I didn't even take it out." Zhang Hao held his head, almost crying.
The technical staff came in and passed a message on the communicator: "The shoe prints have been compared and it's not the pair of slippers he was wearing."
Another failure. Frustration spread throughout the observation room.
The officer asked, "What time did you go upstairs to check the place? Did you run into anyone else while you were there? What was your conflict with Li Xiaohong and her son?"
Zhang Hao was stunned: "Huh? What do you mean by going upstairs? Who is Li Xiaohong?"
Under the questioning of the police, Zhang Hao quickly confessed that the place he went to last night was not Li Xiaohong's home, but the milk station on the street, and his child was one of the victims of the milk station's poor quality.
"He stayed in the hospital for two days, missing out on so much schoolwork. The pressure of studying is so great now, and the child cries every time he gets home." Zhang Hao said angrily, "That idiot boss is so rude! He didn't pay the compensation he deserved. At first, he said there was nothing wrong with his milk and that it was just too pure. Screw him!"
So Zhang Hao wanted to throw paint at the entrance of the milk station. He drove there in the middle of the night, and after a few steps he found a camera. He pretended to be a passerby and walked past. He smoked a few cigarettes under another broken camera in the old community, listened to an online novel about tomb-raiding adventures, and then went back to the car to take a nap.
"Why don't you just leave? Instead, stay in the car all night?" asked the interrogating police officer.
Zhang Hao pleaded for mercy: "I've changed my ways. There's a camera over there. If any of the victim's parents are as upset as I am, I'm thinking of stopping them and not letting them get hold of anything. But I'm the only one here, so I fell asleep after waiting until no one showed up."
When Zhang Hao was taken away for criticism and education, he angrily said: "It's all the fault of that black-hearted boss!"
#
The clues were broken again. Based on the footage from several cameras, it can be basically concluded that no suspicious persons entered the old community that night.
Then the only people who could do this are the residents in the community, or even those living in the same building as Li Yuanzhi.
"I didn't find anything during the visit." Xiao Zhang slammed his eye drops, his eyes red from the irritation. "I find it strange. If it was someone from the same building who did it, then they must have been controlled by something. But then the question goes back to the beginning: why would that thing kill people?"
Tu Lanxun suddenly asked, "Are the fingerprint test results out yet?"
Wen Chong shook his head. "It's not in the fingerprint database at all."
The slipper prints were collected from the entrance door, not the corridor. This is because in the morning, students go to school and the footsteps of residents are dense, completely destroying any slipper prints that may have existed in the corridor and stairs. Therefore, it is impossible to determine which floor the murderer came from.
Tu Lanxun stood up and asked, "What about Zhou Dadong? And the bunch of keys that Li Yuanzhi lost? And has the landlord been ruled out as a suspect?"
Xiao Zhang pressed a tissue to his eyes and sighed. "It's ruled out. Captain Li personally led the team there. The landlord left with her husband and children for a trip out of town the day before yesterday, and she had the keys with her. Zhou Dadong didn't have the time to commit the crime. He spent the entire night yesterday playing games with his friends in the internet cafe. There's a video of the game with voice chat."
And the lost key may never be found again.
Li Ao walked in from outside and said seriously and impatiently, "As for their building, if we search thoroughly, the suspect is most likely hiding among the residents."
Tu Lanxun nodded: "Yes, especially those who may be controlled by the weird."
She suddenly remembered the ghost that had possessed the girl at the radio station. Was it really the same ghost that entered the crime scene?
The detection and comparison of ghost fingerprints have also concluded that the fingerprint at the base of Tu Lanxun's palm is shaped like the thumb of a left hand, while the fingerprint on Li Yuanzhi's bedside table is from his right hand.
She was lost in thought for a long time before finally saying, "Since no one has entered or left the unit door, is it possible that the murderer didn't leave through the door?"
This startled everyone present. A diagram of the building's structure was pulled up, and Li Ao pointed to the junction between Units 1 and 2 and said, "Look, this building is U-shaped, with one side longer than the other. If the murderer had escaped through the window of Unit 2, through the air conditioner, and had good mobility, he could have climbed into the window of Unit 1."
The police officers who stayed at the scene immediately began searching and found half a shoe print on an air conditioner outdoor unit in the corridor on the third floor of Unit 2.
The murderer is a resident of Unit 2.
The media company owner, who was returning home at that time, became the prime suspect, although he may have been drinking. When the police knocked on his door with a search warrant and a property witness, the first thing they saw was a pair of giant blue men's slippers and the media company owner's feet.
Everyone sighed in disappointment at first, as this did not match the size of the shoe prints at the scene at all.
But Li Ao keenly discovered that the boss of the media company was rather thin, weighing only about 130 kilograms, or even less than 130 kilograms.
"Hello, is there anything I can help you with?" The media company boss's face changed when he saw Li Ao and others.
After showing him the search warrant, the officers searched the house but found nothing. Li Ao noticed that the media company owner was wearing socks, which was reasonable for this season, but he still said, "Please take off your socks."
Tu Lanxun whispered beside Li Ao, "His expression isn't right. Not only is he nervous, but he also looks tired and dizzy."
A hangover could explain the behavior, but when he took his socks off, everyone fell silent.
The media company boss lowered his head and was not arrested in front of the police. However, on the contrary, there were shallow dents on the instep and under the heel of his feet, which were white and could not be seen unless you looked closely.
This is a mark left by wearing slippers that are too small and putting a lot of pressure on the foot.
Li Ao and the others immediately searched the trash cans around the community. In a bin far from the building, they found a black plastic bag filled with household garbage. At the bottom was a pair of small to medium-sized slippers.
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