Chapter 218: Hastily Dumping the Corpse
Li Qihan looked at Xia Lili and said, "Recall that man's characteristics carefully again."
His voice was low. "For example, when you drop a cat, are there any special marks on your hands?"
Xia Lili closed her eyes in deep thought, then suddenly opened them wide: "When he grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck, his hands were shaking..."
She paused, "I thought I was using too much force..."
As her memory flashed back, she suddenly thought of Zhou Yingxing's facial paralysis, which was caused by an illness: "Just like Zhou Yingxing's symptoms, could the cat abuser's hand tremors also be caused by some kind of illness?"
Li Qihan nodded slightly: "It's very likely, but there are too many diseases that can cause hand tremors."
He suddenly remembered something. "You said that person in the hallucination was talking nonsense. Does he seem to have a mental illness?"
Xia Lili raised her eyebrows: "Indeed!"
She recalled, “That manic state was very consistent with the characteristics of bipolar disorder.”
She tapped her arms with her fingers. "Especially the words he kept repeating..."
"You mentioned that the man kept repeating 'I told you to look down on me' in his hallucinations?" Li Qihan's eyes showed thought.
Xia Lili nodded: "Could it be that he killed someone because of a conflict with the victim in the suitcase?"
Li Qihan's eyes darkened, and his black windbreaker drew a sharp arc as he stood up: "This sentence reveals the motive for the crime."
He walked to the whiteboard and quickly wrote down a few key words, "work, money, feelings—the most likely emotional disputes."
"Considering the size of the 28-inch suitcase, the victim is most likely an adult female." He paused heavily on the word "emotion".
"Besides," he turned around with sharp eyes, "the murderer should live nearby and have a fixed residence, perhaps sharing the apartment with his girlfriend."
Xia Lili had just finished calling her parents and arranged for Xiao Lihua to be temporarily fostered in a pet hospital.
Her grip on the phone tightened slightly. "If there really is a body in the suitcase, I don't know if the victim is dead or alive now."
"Could it be that... this cat-torturing man has already killed her?"
"Don't lose heart, he's probably still alive," Li Qihan said solemnly. "Based on the bloodstain pattern you described, the victim died not long after the man killed the cat."
"It takes more than 12 hours for human blood to completely clot. The fact that it can seep out of the box and form dripping bloodstains indicates that the blood has not yet completely clotted."
He picked up the color cards from Xia Lili's painting. "Furthermore, a small amount of dripping blood dries faster than a large pool. The color and viscosity of these bloodstains confirm this."
Li Qihan suddenly asked Xia Lili, "Do you think this was premeditated murder or a crime of passion?"
Killing in the heat of the moment is a legal term for killing someone in an outburst of emotion or sudden loss of reason.
Xia Lili suddenly felt nervous as if she was being called by the professor in class.
She calmed herself down and analyzed the situation clearly: "I'm more inclined to committing a crime of passion."
"The murderer was still active in the alley at 4:30 in the morning. If he had walked to the river to dump the body, it would have been close to 5:00."
She pointed to the time period on the map when the sky was gradually getting brighter. "This is when people start to jog along the river. A premeditated murder wouldn't be done at such a dangerous time. It's more likely to be around 3:30 in the morning."
A barely perceptible glint of approval flashed across Li Qihan's eyes: "Good analysis."
He added, "The murderer was likely delayed cleaning up the scene, forcing them to wait until 4:30." His slender finger tapped lightly on the timeline. "This also explains the hasty disposal of the body."
Xia Lili sighed: "I don't know if we can find the suspect's residence in time."
Li Qihan lowered his eyes and stared at the electronic map in front of him, his slender fingers sliding across the screen.
The electronic pen in his hand drew a striking red circle at the north exit: "Judging from the location of the cat abuse scene, the murderer should have left in the direction of the north exit."
Xia Lili's gaze followed the blue ribbon of water on the map, symbolizing the river, and suddenly a thought occurred to her: "The north exit is close to the riverside scenic area! Could he be planning to dump the body by the river?"
Li Qihan raised an eyebrow when he heard this, and turned his electronic pen towards the west exit: "Interestingly, the west exit is closer to the river."
There was a thoughtful pause in his voice.
"It's really strange..." Xia Lili bit her lower lip lightly. "Unless he lives closer to the north exit, so going from the west exit would be a longer detour?"
Li Qihan's electronic pen quickly sketched several routes on the map, finally highlighting an area. "If the suspect lives in buildings 11 to 15 in area three, choosing the north exit would make more sense."
His voice was filled with confidence, "The detection range can lock onto this area."
Xia Lili looked at the red circle drawn on the map with a look of surprise, and felt the qualitative change that reasoning brought to the handling of cases!
With this key judgment, the direction of the case's investigation suddenly became clear.
The scope of investigation was suddenly narrowed a lot, and the police's workload was greatly reduced.
At the desk, Leng Xiaohe put down the phone and shook her head: "The neighborhood committee said that this residential area has a large floating population, and they have no impression of this person."
Li Qihan's expression remained unchanged. "No problem." He buttoned his windbreaker quickly. "Now that the area has been narrowed down, let's check the real-time surveillance footage of buildings 11 to 15 in Area 3, and the replays of the past 12 hours."
The workload that originally required checking more than 50 buildings has now been precisely narrowed down to five buildings!
Time passed minute by minute, the clock on the wall pointed to four o'clock in the afternoon, the sky outside the window gradually darkened, and the atmosphere in the office became more tense.
"Captain Li!" Luo Xiao suddenly shouted, "Last night at 9:30, the target person entered the residential area from the west alley entrance."
He zoomed in on the surveillance footage. "Look carefully. He's holding his phone in his left hand and something in his right. He's most likely left-handed. That fits Mr. Xia's description!"
Another police officer immediately added: "Subsequent surveillance footage didn't capture him leaving, so he should still be at home."
Xia Lili's eyes lit up: "If I go home at half past nine..."
She quickly calculated, "We should arrive at the residence before 9:45."
The scope of searching for information from the surveillance footage was narrowed down again, to the surveillance footage at the entrance of the unit building, Buildings 11-15, Area 3, from around 9:30 to 9:45 last night.
The police officers acted quickly, and the hope of solving the case was finally visible, and everyone's morale was high!
Half an hour later, a police officer excitedly shouted, "Officer Xia! Captain Li! We found it!"
Xia Lili and Li Qihan quickly gathered in front of the screen.
In the surveillance footage, the streetlight in front of the apartment building illuminated the man's figure with exceptional clarity. Xia Lili's pupils suddenly constricted—this man's gait and demeanor perfectly matched the cold, crazed figure in her hallucinations.
"Confirmed that the target has entered unit building 14." The police officer reported excitedly.
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