Chapter 241: Small Broken Building
The old man also smelled it and asked in confusion: "What is this thing that stinks so bad?"
Zhou Yi and Shi Tao had already started searching in the house because they were familiar with the smell, it was the stench of a rotting corpse.
Seeing the old man about to come in, Zhou Yi reached out to stop him and asked him to stand outside the door.
Then he asked, "Did you notice anything unusual when you came in last time?"
"No...no, I just checked to see if there was any damage to the furniture or appliances."
"Has anyone else been here since then? Like, did the tenant come back quietly?"
The old man shook his head repeatedly: "No, I changed the locks. He can't open the door even if he comes back."
It seems that the source of the stench was there when the old man changed the lock, but it had not yet rotted.
"Zhou Yi, come here quickly!" Shi Tao shouted in the bedroom.
Zhou Yi ran over quickly, and the old man at the door stretched his head and looked at him eagerly.
As soon as he entered the bedroom, Zhou Yi felt that the stench was even stronger.
Shi Tao squatted beside the bed, covered his nose with his hand, and pointed under the bed.
Zhou Yi also squatted down and lay on the ground to look under the bed.
Fortunately, I didn’t see a dead face or anything.
But there was a black suitcase covered with a layer of dust.
Zhou Yi and Shi Tao looked at each other, and Shi Tao raised his eyebrows, meaning: Please come in.
Zhou Yi reached out and dragged the suitcase out from under the bed.
As soon as I exerted force with my hands, I felt something was wrong because the suitcase was very heavy and it was obvious that there was something heavy inside.
After dragging it out, it turned out to be a 24-inch black suitcase, a bit old, with severely worn edges and corners, and the zipper puller was broken in half.
As soon as the suitcase was dragged out, the smell became even stronger. It was obvious that the stench of the corpse was coming from inside.
"Captain Shi, get ready to call the forensic doctor." Zhou Yi said as he slowly unzipped the suitcase.
When the lid of the suitcase was opened, Zhou Yi and Shi Tao had complicated expressions on their faces: surprise, disgust, and confusion.
"This..." Shi Tao pointed at the suitcase and said, "What a pervert!"
In the suitcase, there was not a human body, but a cat's body.
It was already highly decomposed, but one could vaguely make out the bodies of three cats inside, and judging by the remaining hair, they were of different colors.
"Captain Shi... In this situation, do we still need to call a forensic doctor?" Zhou Yi asked blankly.
"Probably... not necessary..." Shi Tao answered blankly.
The two men pinched their noses and carefully checked the suitcase, confirming that there was only the corpse of a cat that was rotten to the point of being infested with maggots.
Although Zhou Yi is not a forensic doctor, he can see that these cats have serious knife wounds on their bodies, indicating that they were all tortured to death.
The two men closed the lid of the suitcase and began to check the house. They found no ID card, money, or valid identification information.
The tenant did leave behind a lot of things, but they were basically clothes and other things that were not very valuable.
Finally, after moving the bedside table away, Zhou Yi found a business card covered with cobwebs.
The name above is also Meng Qingtong, who works at the Hongcheng office of a company from another province and is the sales manager.
After finding no more useful clues or signs of murder, Zhou Yi and Shi Tao walked out of the house.
Seeing the old man looking at them worriedly, Zhou Yi told him about the suitcase in the bedroom, which scared the old man. He even said that the young man looked so gentle, how could he do such a cruel thing. No wonder there were always people losing cats in the community before.
It seems he is still a habitual offender.
Seeing the two men about to leave, the old man asked anxiously: "Comrade police, what about...the suitcase?"
Shi Tao said, "You can throw away the suitcase and the dead cat first, and leave the rest alone for now. Once we've verified everything is fine, you can clean it up later."
After seeing the two men leave, the old man stood at the door, not knowing whether to go in or leave, feeling torn.
They were busy until after noon, and Shi Tao found a small restaurant nearby and treated everyone to a simple meal.
When it was time to pay the bill, Zhou Yi wanted to pay, but Shi Tao stopped him, saying that the meal was for the Third Brigade, but it couldn't be paid for by you, Zhou Yi, and he would ask Old Wu to reimburse him later.
We ordered some dishes and everyone was not picky, knowing that they would have to continue working after eating. After all, they had only finished checking a little over one-third of the food in the morning.
"Captain Shi, why don't you eat?" Gu Changhai asked.
Shi Tao took two puffs of his cigarette and said, "I'm not hungry. I'll smoke two to get rid of the smell."
Then he turned his head to glance at Zhou Yi, who was eating heartily with his bowl in hand, and thought to himself, "This kid is really born to be a criminal investigator. He still has such a good appetite. When I first started working, I saw the victim's body and I lost my appetite for three days."
To some extent, this is one of the reasons why he works against gangs, so that he doesn't have to look at the bodies of victims who died in miserable conditions every other day.
While eating, everyone communicated and synchronized their investigation progress.
In addition to Zhou Yi and Shi Tao's discoveries, there are two more suspicious situations.
The first one was found out by Qiao Jiali from a conversation with the old men and women in the community. They said that there was a young widow in Building 16, and strange men came to her house every now and then. Once, two men ran into each other and fought over it. One of them had a broken head, but it is not known whether they called the police.
The aunties' evaluation of this is: The young widow is too wild. Even if she wants a man, she can't do it like this. Sooner or later, something will happen. She might end up like Zhang Hui, who was chopped into pieces by a man and flushed down the toilet.
The second suspicious person was Room 301 in Building 34. After knocking on the door, it opened a crack, and a young man in his twenties looked warily at the officer from Team 2 through the crack. During the interrogation, the man never fully opened the door, and just spoke to him through the crack.
This was quite suspicious. In order not to alert the enemy, the brothers of Team 2 silently wrote down the house number.
Shi Tao immediately said that after dinner he would go and meet this person to find out what was going on.
Gu Changhai said that the biggest problem now is that many residents of Donghai Community have moved out after being affected by the Zhang Hui case.
This resulted in incomplete survey work and many omissions. Although they made records, this problem needs to be solved later.
Zhou Yi pulled out the population registration form from the neighborhood committee and handed it over. "Teacher Gu, this is the population registration information for Donghai Community at the end of February. You can compare it with the permanent resident data. I think we can find some information."
Gu Changhai took it and nodded repeatedly: "It's much better to have this thing."
Shi Tao said, "Old Gu, I'll leave this to you. Go back to the bureau and do the comparison later."
"Captain Shi, I'll leave the Donghai community to you for now. Sister Qiao and I will go check on Meng Qingtong later. He is the most suspicious person at the moment." Zhou Yi said.
"Okay, the young widow I just mentioned, and the guy who didn't open the door, I will have a good meeting with these two this afternoon." Shi Tao rubbed his hands and said.
Meng Qingtong’s business card reads “Dinghua Group’s Hongcheng Office”.
The name seems quite intimidating, but at the same time, it is impossible to figure out what this so-called Dinghua Group does.
Zhou Yi and Qiao Jiali drove to the location of the business card. Zhou Yi looked up at the building in front of him, then looked down at the address on the business card and scratched his head.
"Sister Qiao, am I going the right way?"
Qiao Jiali came over and took a look, "Yes, it's here."
In front of the two of them was a dilapidated little building. Zhou Yi felt that this building was even older than Wu Yongcheng. There was not even a sign at the door, and many of the window glass was broken.
If you come here in the middle of the night, you can just treat it as a haunted house.
Isn't it a large group? Isn't this Meng Qingtong the sales director?
Aren’t public toilets more upscale than this one?
Forget it, since I’m here, I’ll just wait and see.
The two entered the dark corridor and found that there was no one inside. The stairs were made of wood and creaked when they stepped on them.
The address on the business card is the third floor. The entire building has only three floors, and there is not even a ghost on the first or second floors.
When he went up to the third floor, Zhou Yi discovered that one of the doors was closed.
But this door only looks closed. The lock is broken and it opens with a push.
Compared to the dilapidated building, this room had actually been renovated. The walls were painted white and there were several desks.
But what was even more strange was that there were obvious signs of having been smashed and looted in the house. Although there were not many things in it, it was still a mess.
Zhou Yi picked up a dirty white cloth with many footprints on it. When he opened it, he saw several words printed on it: Dinghua Group Hongcheng Office.
Hey, that’s fucking true.
What the hell is this, a shell company?
Ten minutes later, Zhou Yi was about to congratulate himself because he had guessed it.
He walked to the window and looked, but found nothing unusual.
Qiao Jiali suddenly lowered her voice and said, "Zhou Yi, someone is coming."
Zhou Yi listened carefully and heard a chaotic sound of footsteps outside. The wooden stairs kept making strange noises like a chicken being stepped on.
It sounded like there were quite a few people there, so Zhou Yi and Qiao Jiali immediately reached for the holsters on their waists.
Outside, the sound arrived before the person arrived.
"I saw two people come in with my own eyes. They must be from that kid's gang."
A few seconds later, the door was kicked open.
The already dilapidated wooden door suddenly suffered damage that it should not have endured.
Collapsed with a loud bang.
But strangely, Zhou Yi saw that the person who raised his foot at the door had a look of confusion and fear on his face, as if the collapse of the door was completely beyond his expectation.
Seeing this, Zhou Yi took his hand away from the holster. It looked like he was not a gangster.
The man who kicked the door finally reacted, put his foot down, pointed at the two men and said fiercely, "You...are you in cahoots with that Meng? Pay me back. If you don't pay me back today, you...you won't be able to leave here."
Zhou Yi didn't waste any words. He took out his ID and said, "Police. Come on, tell me what's going on."
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