Family murder mystery (8)

Chief Han Lin frowned. This was the only physical evidence that could prove You Shenghua was the murderer. He picked up the test report, read it over and over again, and asked in confusion: "Aren't the sizes correct? Could the suspect have cleaned it up?"

Wang Wei picked up the transparent bag containing the fruit knife. "Look, this knife has a wooden handle. If it is soaked in blood, I believe it cannot be washed away no matter how hard you wash it. But we did not detect any blood."

"So, he is not the murderer?" Korean Director Lin Yan simply did not believe it.

"Not entirely..." Wang Wei said hesitantly, "What if the suspect switched the weapon? He destroyed the weapon and left this clean knife. But I just don't believe why he would do this. After all, why didn't he just destroy the weapon!"

Han Changlin pondered for a moment, then put away the test report and said, "Okay, Xiao Wang, thank you for your hard work."

"Of course it's the Korean team."

Back in the interrogation room, he stopped the interrogation and detained You Shenghua.

In the office, Han Changlin stood in front of the crime board with his arms folded, puzzled by the dense information.

Meng Siqi put the notebook down and when he looked up, Feng Shaomin and Tang Xiaochuan had both walked up to Han Changlin's side. None of them spoke, and their backs looked somewhat lonely.

She knew that physical evidence against You Shenghua was missing and the suspect's motive for murder alone was not enough to convict him.

After 24 hours, if no new evidence is found, You Shenghua will be released without charge.

She stood up and walked to the front of the crime board, standing behind them and carefully observing the information written on it. After checking all the way, it seemed that she had found everything she should find. Could it be that there are still criminals in this world who appear and disappear out of thin air?

After a while, Tang Xiaochuan said: "Team Korea, is it possible that You Shenghua is not the murderer at all?"

Although no one believes this result, it seems to be the case now. You Shenghua's motive for murder is too obvious. If he had planned it in advance and really wanted to commit the crime, he would never mention it to the villagers. If he killed in passion, he would never have made the crime scene so flawless.

Commander Han Lin finally turned around and ordered: "No matter what, we will make one last effort in the next two days and search carefully again in the places in the city where You Shenghua appeared." He felt that even if it was impossible, even if You Shenghua destroyed the real murder weapon, he would dig deep into the ground to find it.

*

After intensively searching for evidence for a day and a night, Director Han Lin sat up in a chair, his eyes somewhat dull as he looked at the crime board.

Meng Siqi was recording the clues from the nearly 24-hour search on the crime board as required. In fact, these clues could only prove You Shenghua's recent whereabouts, but could not prove the nature of his crime.

There are still two hours before You Shenghua is released, and it seems that there is no possible way to break through.

"Captain Han!" A policeman ran in from outside the door and said in a hurry, "A murder occurred in the neighborhood near Cangyun Road."

Meng Siqi's fingers holding the chalk stopped moving. Han Changlin almost jumped up from his chair and asked the policeman, "What's going on?"

"A man and a woman, who seemed to be a couple, died at home. The medical examiner has passed."

"Okay," Han Changlin clapped his hands, and the gloom on his face just now disappeared, "Everyone wake up and go to the scene immediately."

Except for Tang Xiaochuan, the other four members of the second team were there, and Zhao Leiting drove all the way to the neighborhood where the accident occurred.

Maybe the news had not spread, so there were not many people gathered at the gate of the community this time, and some people were still asking what happened in the community.

Turning into the parking lot in the community, Han Changlin got out of the car first. A residential building was surrounded by a cordon.

At the door of a room on the first floor, Meng Siqi could already smell blood, but it was not strong.

While putting on shoe covers and gloves, a young forensic doctor who had arrived beforehand introduced the situation to Han Changlin: "Captain Han, the situation inside is a bit dire! Come in and take a look first."

Meng Siqi followed him into the house. Everything was quiet in the living room, with no signs of damage. Several colleagues from the Trace Examination Department were already searching for evidence.

The forensic doctor led everyone directly to the bedroom door. As Han Changlin and Feng Shaomin entered, Meng Siqi's sight also fell on the bedroom.

This scene made her a little unbelievable. The dead man and woman were both naked, except for a sock on the woman's foot.

The ground was covered with blood. The man was lying on his back with his legs on the bed, intertwined with the woman's legs. His entire chest and face were covered in blood.

What's horrifying is that there were two small fruit knives stuck in the man's face, one in the middle of his left eye, and the other below his right eye.

The woman was lying on her back on the bed, with blood dripping from her neck, and the mattress was stained red.

The bedroom was not very large, and the floor and bed were covered with scattered clothes. There seemed to be no obvious signs of a fight, and the items on the bedside table, including the family planning supplies, were all intact.

A trace investigator is picking up a torn condom package.

This time, Meng Siqi watched the murder scene with bated breath. Ever since she had experienced the tragedy of her entire family being wiped out last time, her psychological quality had raised her threshold. This time, she did not feel any obvious stomach discomfort, but just felt a little uneasy.

After reading these details, she retreated towards the door. The smell was too pungent and she might not be able to hold on for long.

She finally understood the tragic words that the forensic doctor had said at the door. The two people were probably doing something when they were killed, and then they were ambushed and killed.

Chen Jierong was checking the wounds of the female victim. At this time, she turned around and introduced to the Han team: "The female victim should have died of a ruptured carotid artery and massive bleeding. There are no other obvious wounds. The male victim was initially inferred to have intrathoracic organ damage. The murder weapon should be a relatively long single-edged sharp knife. Han team, I feel that this murder weapon is somewhat similar to the murder weapon that killed Zhu Gongyou and his family!"

This sentence made everyone present nervous. Could it be a serial murder case?

Han Changlin asked: "Are you sure?"

"We need to go back for further autopsy."

Han Changlin asked again: "Where is the knife wound on the victim's face?"

Chen Jierong said: "It is preliminarily speculated that these two knives were inserted after the death of the deceased. Just now, colleagues from the Trace Examination Department found two knives missing from the knife holder in the kitchen. Judging from the gaps, they may be these two knives."

Han Changlin said hesitantly: "In other words, the murderer took out two knives from the kitchen after killing the victim and directly stabbed them into the victim's face. What was his purpose in doing this?"

“This is indeed very confusing,” said Chen Jierong.

"Can the time of death be estimated?"

"The initial guess is around 11 to 12 o'clock last night."

In the second half, when Han Changlin was still discussing in the bedroom, Meng Siqi came out with her nose covered. After calming down, she walked around other places in the house. Apart from the signs of normal life, there seemed to be nothing else suspicious. Just as Chen Jierong said, the knife block in the kitchen had been moved, and the two notches for inserting knives on it had a smaller diameter, which should match the knife on the victim's face.

She carefully observed the marks on the knife holder. At this time, a colleague from the Trace Inspection Department came in and said to her, "There are no fingerprints. We didn't find any in the whole room."

Meng Siqi nodded. The murderer in this case was the same as the murderer in the case of Zhu Gongyou’s family massacre. The whole process was very careful and it was estimated that there would not be any clues left.

When Meng Siqi walked out of the kitchen, she found Han Changlin and Feng Shaomin standing in front of the living room window. Han Changlin was rubbing the windowsill with gloves on. He said, "The suspect must have climbed in through the window."

Zhao Leiting stood on the lush grass outside the window and shouted, "Captain Han, we didn't find any obvious footprints. The suspect must have protected his shoes before climbing out the window."

This is on the first floor. Perhaps because the house was rented, the deceased did not install anti-theft measures on the windows, and there were indeed no valuables worth stealing in the house.

After checking the scene, the group arrived at the door. A police officer unfolded a notebook and said, "Captain Han, I just went to the property management company to learn about the situation. The male deceased was named Qi Xiaowei. He was unmarried and worked in a printing shop. This house was rented. However, the female deceased was not Qi Xiaowei's girlfriend, or she may not have been registered in the community."

"Who discovered the scene?" asked the Korean team.

"Landlord, the rent is overdue, I came to collect it today, and when I found out about this, I called the police directly."

Han Changlin gave instructions right at the door: "Old Feng, take Xiao Zhao and Xiao Meng to visit this neighborhood and the surroundings to see if you can find any clues. Focus on investigating the printing shop where the deceased worked and the landlord."

"good."

However, the three of them spent the whole afternoon investigating and found nothing useful. The landlord had an alibi last night, and according to him, he did not have a backup of the rental key, which meant that the murderer was more likely to have climbed through the window.

In the printing shop, Qi Xiaowei's colleague said that today was his day off, so he didn't know what had happened to him.

In their eyes, Qi Xiaowei is a good person, works hard, is usually not talkative, and is a relatively introverted type, not to mention that he has any enemies.

Generally speaking, when it comes to the murder of men and women, people usually think of murder.

But what was strange was that none of his colleagues at the printing shop knew that Qi Xiaowei had a girlfriend.

A woman no one knew appeared in Qi Xiaowei's home and was killed together with him. What secrets are there? Unless the identity of the woman is found.

The next day in the office, everyone was in a dilemma about the direction of the case. The Trace Inspection Department concluded that the size of the murder weapon was highly similar to the murder weapon used in the Zhu Gongyou's family murder case. Both were single-edged sharp blades with a blade length of 13 cm and a blade width of 3 cm. However, this could not prove that the murderer was the same person, because this type of fruit knife could be bought everywhere in the market.

Feng Shaomin suddenly asked, "Captain Han, is it possible that this was a copycat crime?"

When Feng Shaomin put forward this point of view, Han Changlin's face changed and he clenched his fists.

Meng Siqi realized that Han Changlin must hate the Shixin Evening News reporter Wen Huizhi to the core.

Ever since Zhao Leiting brought up Jack the Ripper last time, Meng Siqi has tried to understand that the term copycat crime originated from the once sensational Jack the Ripper case, which was later imitated by many murderers, forming a copycat effect.

The murderer imitated the characteristics of existing cases to create a highly similar crime scene, which would confuse the criminal police's judgment, delay the arrest time, and allow the murderer to escape the law.

There is no doubt that the police kept all traces of the crime in this murder case highly confidential, and the only leak was Wen Huizhi's report.

"Where is the newspaper?" asked Han Changlin.

"It's with me." Zhao Leiting hurriedly picked up the newspapers and handed them to Han Changlin.

Han Changlin took it in his hand, read it quickly, threw the newspaper on the table, and said through gritted teeth: "I want to beat her up."

The atmosphere suddenly fell silent, and everyone was in a heavy mood. After a long while, Zhao Leiting said cautiously: "Captain Han, the picture in this newspaper doesn't seem to show the murder weapon."

The photos in the newspaper were of the murders of Zhu Gongyou and You Meihua. Although some parts were blurred, a lot of key information was still exposed. However, Zhu Gongyou was stabbed in the chest and he was lying on the ground, so the murder weapon could not be seen. You Meihua only had a cut throat wound, and it was also difficult to identify the murder weapon.

Feng Shaomin picked up the newspaper, glanced through it and said, "No, the article mentioned that it was an ordinary fruit knife."

Han Changlin said: "How did Wen Huizhi know that the murder weapon was an ordinary fruit knife?"

"Maybe she heard the forensic doctor's conversation at the scene," Feng Shaomin explained.

Everything made sense, and Meng Siqi couldn't help but agree with this new discovery. This also meant that the next direction of investigation would become more complicated.

"Wait." Just when everyone was at a loss, Han Changlin said, "Why didn't the female victim have any new injuries?"

Meng Siqi understood that in these two cases, all the details were highly similar, especially the bodies had suffered some brutal destruction, except that the female victim in Qi Xiaowei's case had not been destroyed.

Han Changlin's question has raised a new direction, but no one can answer this question. Han Changlin said: "Perhaps the murderer wants us to treat it as a copycat case. This is his intention, so we still need to handle the case together to buy us more time. We must find out the identity of the female victim as soon as possible."

Korean Governor Lin gave the order seriously and everyone responded together.

The investigation immediately focused on the unknown female deceased. However, after a new round of careful interviews, there were still no clues. The only thing they could do was wait for someone to report her missing.

Finally, a day later, someone reported a missing person. It was a girl from a hair salon who reported that her sister Ning Xiangjuan had gone out at night and had not returned.

The female victim also worked in a hair salon. At around 9 o'clock that evening, someone asked her out, so she went out alone and never came back.

Now everyone seemed to understand that the female deceased was probably a sex worker who went to Qi Xiaowei's residence alone that night and met with an accident.

In the next few days, we checked everyone around the couple again, but the clues we got were still confusing.

These days, Meng Siqi found that Han Changlin was staring at the crime board all day long with a worried look on his face. Although the information on it could hardly be written down, there seemed to be little useful information.

A second tragedy occurred while You Shenghua was in detention. If the murderer is indeed the same person, then the possibility that You Shenghua is the murderer becomes extremely small. Therefore, You Shenghua has almost become a target of abandoned investigation.

In the director's office, Han Changlin was once again criticized by Director Liu.

Director Liu said sternly, "Han Changlin, what happened? I won't tell you about the leak of the news to the newspapers. The provincial government is now paying close attention to this case. Do you know how big the social impact is?"

"Right now, the people of Jinyang are in a panic. All their safety depends on you, Han Changlin. Are you going to let a third tragedy happen?"

Han Changlin's eyes were slightly red, "Director Liu, I'm sorry, I must..." Due to long-term fatigue, there was a slight stagnation in his throat.

Director Liu sighed and said in a lighter tone: "I don't mean to put too much pressure on you. If you can't solve the case, I can't wear this hat. Do you need any help? Can you ask Lu He to work with you for a few days?"

"In fact, Director Liu, Lu He's Hong Zhuang murder case is still unsolved!" Han Changlin didn't know where he got the courage to say this.

"…" Director Liu knocked the table hard with his index finger. "You've learned to talk back at me. Just tell me, how many days will it take to solve the case?"

Chief Han Lin was unsure, but he couldn't be unsure. Just as Director Liu said, Jin Yang's safety depended on him. Did he really have to prove his incompetence, take off his police uniform as the captain of the second team, and let Lu He take over?

There was no way he would admit defeat.

"Director Liu, I can't guarantee it. Please give me ten days. If I don't solve the case in ten days, you can fire me!"

He spoke passionately, and Director Liu's expression finally softened a little: "Okay, remember your bold words! If the case is not solved in ten days, I will report it to the provincial department for investigation."

Jinyang City is not considered a big city, and it is not even ranked among the top cities in Haijiang Province. The eight counties under it are generally poor, so if the county police station receives a major case, it must report it to the municipal bureau and transfer it to the municipal bureau's criminal police team.

If there are major cases in the city that are not progressing well, the provincial department (Provincial Public Security Department) will also need to send experts to assist in the investigation.

Director Liu's tone was serious, and it was different from what he said when he mentioned Lu He "provoking" him. It was a military order as heavy as a mountain.

Han Changlin knew clearly that if the provincial department came to assist in the investigation, he would naturally be unwilling to accept it.

What a boast! Han Changlin felt his legs go weak on the way back. He was just acting on impulse. Ten days? Who the hell is the murderer?

*

Seeing the anxious expressions on the faces of the Han team and the second team members, Meng Siqi also became anxious. She had placed the regularization application form in the drawer but had not submitted it yet. It seemed particularly inappropriate for her to do these things at this time.

Two days of the ten days passed quickly, and the most work she did during these two days was to carefully filter all the clues and records she had written down from beginning to end.

Without missing anything, she marked every detail with a pen, but stopped at one place.

Originally, she could get some magical pictures, but why did she get nothing these times? What was the reason?

The place where her pen stopped was the record of her visit to the site of Zhu's home. She found that she had never seen the body of Zhu's daughter Zhu Xinting from beginning to end.

She immediately closed her notes and walked quickly to the forensic studio. Doctor Chen Jierong was the chief autopsy doctor, and she believed she could learn something from her.

After explaining her purpose, Chen Jierong readily agreed to let her examine Zhu Xinting's body.