Chapter 63
After Yu Aiai was taken to the hospital by ambulance, the nurse removed her long nail polish to facilitate monitoring of her fingertip blood oxygen saturation.
First cut off the excess part, then use nail polish remover and a file to remove the part that is bonded to the natural nail, and clip the oximeter on the fingertip.
When Forensic Doctor Xie arrived, the cut nails had already been swept away by the cleaning staff and mixed with other medical waste.
At this moment, Forensic Doctor Xie held the nail art piece and said with deep sorrow, "Do you know what I dug up in the trash can to find these nail art pieces? Imagine the trash can in the emergency room..."
"I don't want to imagine." Chang Ting refused decisively. "Did you find anything on the nail? Is there any trace of flesh or blood?"
Chang Ting was thinking that if Yu Aiai had fought with the murderer, she might have scratched the murderer, leaving traces of his DNA in the cracks of her fingernails.
Forensic Doctor Xie said, "There was blood, but upon examination, it was all Yu Aiai's own blood, likely from the fall. But I discovered this."
He brought the manicure on the tweezers closer to Chang Ting, "Did you see that?"
Chang Ting looked closely and saw a thin strand of light-colored fiber hanging from a rhinestone on the nail art. "This is..."
"It's a clothing fiber. To be more specific, it's a 1.5cm long piece of light camel cashmere fiber. I've ruled it out as coming from Yu Ai's clothing."
Chang Ting's eyes lit up: "So, it might have been hanging from the murderer's clothes!"
Doctor Xie nodded: "A girl who loves beauty will clean up foreign objects on her nails in time and will not let them stay on her nails for a long time.
"So I infer that it's most likely from the murderer's clothing. Of course, this is just an inference. The possibility that it was hung up long ago but no one noticed can't be completely ruled out."
Forensic Doctor Xie carefully put the nail art clippings back into the evidence bag.
Chang Ting scratched his head worriedly: "The murderer's clothes only lost a single fiber, I'm afraid there won't be any signs of damage left."
Forensic Doctor Xie shook his finger and said, "This fiber is not ordinary. It contains 95% cashmere, which means it is a pure cashmere product. It must have come from a relatively high-end cashmere product.
"If it's a cashmere sweater, the market price is around 2,000 yuan. If it's a famous brand, with the brand premium, it's even more expensive."
Chang Ting gasped: "What kind of fool buys such expensive clothes?"
Forensic Doctor Xie glanced at him with disdain: "Stay away from me, you're so poor."
Chang Ting's phone vibrated. Zhou Zhengzheng sent him a picture, which was obviously a surveillance screenshot from a bird's-eye view. The picture showed a person dressed as a cleaner.
Before Zhou Zhengzheng could follow up with the written explanation, Chang Ting had already noticed something was wrong.
The cleaner looked very simple, but he was wearing a pair of business-style leather shoes.
*
Zhou Zhengzheng once again went to the Aegean Apartment property to retrieve the surveillance footage. This time, he retrieved the elevator surveillance footage from the morning after the incident.
Sure enough, the suspect was spotted.
At 6:30 in the morning, a man who looked like a cleaner entered the elevator from the 17th floor.
Like other cleaning staff in the apartment, this person wore a blue coat and a blue work hat with a brim.
But at this point in time, it was not yet the cleaning staff's working hours.
The elevator camera was shooting from the top, making it difficult to judge the person's height. All we could tell was that this "cleaner" was quite tall. The blue coat was too loose, making it hard to tell their figure.
The brim of his work hat was pulled down low, and he was wearing a blue mask. He deliberately avoided the camera and his face was not captured.
There were other people entering the elevator on the middle floor, but the man always faced the corner of the elevator, apparently to avoid having his facial features seen by others.
In the Xu Candong case, there was a suspect wearing maintenance work clothes, nicknamed "repairman."
This time, they can be called "cleaners".
The surveillance footage showed that the elevator reached the underground garage floor, and the cleaner walked out of the elevator and disappeared into the garage.
The garage is very large and the surveillance coverage is limited, so the man was never captured again.
Zhou Zhengzheng found Xiao Qiang, the owner of Yunju B&B on the 17th floor, and asked him to see if this person was a cleaning worker for the property or B&B.
Boss Xiao immediately gave a negative answer.
He said that in order to reduce costs, the apartment building hired older cleaners, who were also responsible for cleaning the homestay.
The person in the surveillance video is obviously younger.
But the work clothes are indeed the cleaner's.
Boss Xiao called the cleaning staff to ask, and found out that a work coat and a work hat were missing from the cleaning truck parked on the 17th floor.
The blue mask worn by the suspect was probably also taken from the work vehicle.
So it can be inferred that this person is the second person in Yu Aiai's room.
After wiping away all traces inside and outside the room, the man left the room in the morning, stole clothes and hats from the cleaning cart, pretended to be a cleaner, and slipped away.
The gown and work hat are too concealing, making it difficult to see personal features.
Zhou Zhengzheng was unwilling to give up, so he watched the elevator surveillance again and again, and finally stopped at one picture.
From this angle, you can clearly see the trouser legs and the front half of the shoes. The trousers seem to be black trousers and the shoes are a pair of black leather shoes.
The shape of the sole can be roughly seen from the shoe upper, which is very similar to the shoe prints on the steps of the small door on the rooftop.
Zhou Zhengzheng enlarged the image of the leather shoes and could see the style clearly, but not the brand.
After sending the screenshot to Chang Ting, he attached the following text:
[The suspect was wearing a pair of business leather shoes. I'm looking for the brand based on the shoe prints on the steps to see if I can identify the purchaser through the sales channel.]
…
In the forensic room, Chang Ting looked at the screenshots, stroked his chin and muttered quietly: "Business leather shoes, high-end cashmere sweater. This is inconsistent with the portrait of the murderer who killed Xu Candong."
The people who attacked Xu Candong and Yu Aiai were all imitating the plot of the comics, so it is natural to suspect that they were committed by the same person.
In addition, the shoe prints retrieved from the crime scenes on both occasions were size 44, which deepened this suspicion.
But the murderer of Xu Candong had two characteristics: first, his method of committing the crime was cruel; second, he mastered auto repair technology.
Based on these two points, Chang Ting judged that the murderer was a person from the lower class of society.
This is quite different from the image of someone wearing business leather shoes and high-end cashmere sweaters.
Medical Examiner Xie heard his mumbling and said, "That might not be inconsistent."
Chang Ting raised his head: "What do you mean?"
Forensic Doctor Xie raised his finger and said, "First, isn't burning someone alive just as cruel as throwing them from a tall building?
"Secondly, people's social status can change. A scoundrel who was once at the bottom of society can, through some legal or illegal means, transform himself and rise to the upper class. Aren't there many examples of this?"
"That's right!" Chang Ting suddenly understood and clapped Forensic Doctor Xie on the shoulder. "Older people are more experienced!"
"You are old, your whole family is old!"
"Okay, okay, you're as tender as a flower, okay?"
Chang Ting jokingly turned around and saw the bags of items packed in evidence bags. He asked, "Are these Yu Aiai's personal belongings?"
"That's right."
Chang Ting went forward and rummaged through it.
Forensic Doctor Xie warned, "Don't mess it up!"
"I know, I know." Chang Ting flipped through the book for a while and asked, "Where's the hairpin?"
Forensic Doctor Xie raised his head and asked, "What hairpin?"
Chang Ting played Yu Aiai's "last words video" on his mobile phone. In the video, Yu Aiai's big wavy hair was tilted on her left shoulder and was braided with a black velvet butterfly hairpin inlaid with rhinestones.
“That’s the hairpin!”
Forensic Doctor Xie took a look and shook his head, saying, "This thing wasn't found in the guesthouse room, at the place where she fell from the building, or among the personal belongings that the doctors at the hospital removed from her body."
Chang Ting immediately made a call.
"Zhou Zhengzheng, do you remember if there was a black butterfly-shaped hairpin in Yu Aiai's hair after she fell from the building?"
Zhou Zhengzheng on the other end of the phone recalled for a moment and said, "Her hair was loose at the time, and I didn't see any hairpin. Maybe it fell off when she fell? Wasn't it found in the physical evidence examination?"
"No. She had this hairpin when she recorded her suicide note video, and then it disappeared."
Zhou Zhengzheng suddenly understood something and gasped, "Could it be that the murderer took it away again?"
Spoils of war—these three words popped into the minds of both people at the same time.
Last time it was a lighter, this time it was a hairpin.
After committing the crime, they take away items related to the victim as "trophies", which is a collector's personality and a characteristic of serial killers.
Chang Ting had a vague feeling that Xu Candong was not the first soul killed by this man.
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