On the other side, the criminal investigators were still running around for Ye Jian’s case. Although the investigation hadn’t yet achieved a breakthrough, Li Feng’s interrogation work had brought Deputy Director Lu Zheng’s disappearance to the surface. In the interrogation room, Zhang Yi’ang and Wang Ruijun, Song Xing, and others sat together with grave expressions, collectively staring at Li Feng, who was handcuffed to a chair across from them. They had just received an extremely sudden piece of intelligence.
The reason Li Feng had so many murder cases on his hands was purely because of his wife Jiang Ying at the beginning.
He and Jiang Ying had grown up in the same village. Jiang Ying was one year younger than him, and they had been childhood sweethearts since youth. When Jiang Ying was sixteen years old, she was raped by her uncle from the same village. The uncle was a local tyrant, and Jiang Ying’s parents, threatened by his family, didn’t dare speak out. After Li Feng learned of this, he went to settle accounts with him. During the struggle, he accidentally killed the man and was sentenced to twelve years. After being released from prison, Li Feng found Jiang Ying and learned that she had already married. Her husband, despising her past experience of being raped, not only showed no sympathy but also subjected her to domestic violence, and later even forced her into prostitution. So Li Feng, in a fit of rage, went all the way and killed Jiang Ying’s husband’s entire family. He was caught on the spot by villagers and escorted to the township police station.
This was a major case. The police station immediately notified the higher public security authorities, but before the main force could arrive, he took advantage of people’s unpreparedness that night, injured the guard police, seized firearms and escaped, taking Jiang Ying with him and fleeing. From then on, they began their life on the run.
He continuously maintained their livelihood through theft and robbery, during which he killed multiple innocent civilians. He committed crimes as he fled from place to place. The reason he ended up hiding in San Jiang Kou was supposedly because someone had hired him to kill a person. When it didn’t work out, he temporarily settled down there.
“You previously confessed that you came to San Jiang Kou because someone hired you to kill someone. Then you discovered the target was a police officer and didn’t go through with it, is that right?” Song Xing asked.
Li Feng’s facial expression was utterly bland. Since being caught, he had always been like this—neither antagonizing the public security authorities nor living in constant fear. He knew he faced the death penalty. He was very cooperative in confessing to the case, except that he consistently claimed all the deeds were done by him and had absolutely nothing to do with his wife Jiang Ying, begging the police to let her go.
“Right, Xiao Fei found me. Xiao Fei is someone I met when I was serving time in prison before—you can check. Later, when I was on the run with multiple murders to my name and had fled to Jiangsu, I happened to be recognized by him on the road once. I originally wanted to kill him to silence him, but at the time he treated us couple to a meal and even gave me two thousand yuan for travel expenses, so I couldn’t bear to do it. That day after drinking, he told me someone had asked him to go to San Jiang Kou to kill a person for one million yuan. He had never killed anyone before and was willing to give me five hundred thousand to do it, so I agreed. Only after arriving in San Jiang Kou did I learn that the target was an old police officer, and a leader at that. Killing him would cause big trouble. My wife firmly refused to let me do it anymore. I thought about how the child was so young and there would be many places requiring money in the future—even if I got caught after doing this job, leaving them some money would be good. So I told Xiao Fei that killing a police officer required two million from the employer, with half paid as a deposit first. Later, after some days passed, I never encountered Xiao Fei again. My wife and I had been running for all these years and were tired, so we simply rented a small shop in San Jiang Kou and settled down.”
Song Xing pulled out a photograph of Lu Zheng and asked, “Is this the police officer you were supposed to kill?”
“Right, that’s him. I remember his surname is Lu.”
“Called Lu Zheng?”
“That’s the name.”
“So who killed Lu Zheng later?”
“Was Lu Zheng later killed by someone else? I didn’t participate—I don’t know. But I think it shouldn’t have been Xiao Fei. That kid doesn’t have the guts. Perhaps the employer didn’t just find him alone.”
“Lu Zheng really wasn’t killed by you?”
Li Feng smiled faintly, “Leader, why would I deceive you? What I did before is already enough to be shot ten times over. If I really did it, I would definitely admit it.”
“Where did Xiao Fei go?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t at ease with him and didn’t dare let him keep my phone number. I agreed with him to meet every evening at seven o’clock at a road intersection to make contact, but after that, I went there many consecutive days and never saw him. I thought that perhaps after he reported the two million to the employer, the employer felt he was unreliable and directly killed him to silence him.”
“Do you know who the employer is?”
Li Feng shook his head. “Xiao Fei wouldn’t say. He probably feared I would directly approach the employer to take the full contract. There are rules in the underworld—I didn’t ask in detail.”
After interrogating Li Feng, Zhang Yi’ang hurriedly returned to the office and convened a meeting with several key personnel.
Everyone unanimously believed that Director Lu had definitely been murdered.
Lu Zheng had been missing for so long that physical evidence certainly couldn’t be found now. The only lead was witness testimony—namely, this person called “Xiao Fei.” Xiao Fei had served time in prison with Li Feng, so his identity would be easy to investigate. The only fear was that Xiao Fei, as Li Feng guessed, had been killed by the employer to silence him. If so, the witness testimony line would be completely broken.
Whether they could uncover the truth about Lu Zheng’s disappearance next depended on finding Xiao Fei, but whether they could find the person could only be left to fate.
After discussing for a long time, everyone still turned their attention back to Ye Jian’s case.
In this small city of San Jiang Kou, within half a year two important criminal investigators had been killed. Probability-wise, this shouldn’t be a coincidence—there must be some connection between the two cases.
Zhang Yi’ang had everyone first compile the investigation results from the past few days in order to decide on the next direction.
The forensic examiner’s work had made no progress. They only knew that before death, Ye Jian was first hit by a car and then stabbed with a knife, but with so many knife wounds in inconsistent directions on his body, how did the killer accomplish this? It remained an unsolved mystery. Zhang Yi’ang sent people several times to urge him, but they were all sent back by Forensic Examiner Chen: “I’ve been a forensic examiner for over twenty years. If I can’t figure out the results, who else can? Don’t rush me—I’ve been constantly trying to figure it out!… My lumbar spine has nothing to do with the autopsy conclusion!”
On the physical evidence side, no directional evidence pointing to suspicious persons had been found at the crime scene.
Lu Yibo, the owner of the Maple Forest Evening Grand Hotel, had already been preliminarily questioned by police officers. According to his description, on the night of the incident, he and Ye Jian had dinner together. After that, Ye Jian left first while he stayed at the banquet until quite late before returning. He didn’t know why Ye Jian was killed.
In several major directions—the corpse, physical evidence, witness testimony—there were no results, but some clues had been uncovered after all.
Song Xing introduced, “On the night of the incident, after Ye Jian finished the reception, he hailed a taxi at the hotel entrance and came near the crime scene. We’ve already found the driver—he had no impression of Ye Jian’s condition at the time. We think, why would Ye Jian come to the crime scene alone late at night? He must have arranged to meet someone!”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Song Xing continued, “We also checked Ye Jian’s text messages and phone calls. On the day of the incident, Ye Jian didn’t receive any suspicious calls or text messages. Technical personnel also checked his WeChat messages and found no abnormalities either. Only after retrieving the surveillance footage from the hotel entrance did we finally understand the reason.”
Song Xing opened a surveillance video clip on his computer. In the footage, Ye Jian could be seen walking alone to the hotel entrance, with his back to the camera. He fished out a note from his pocket, looked down at it for a few moments, then tore the note to pieces and threw it into a nearby trash can. He lit a cigarette, turned to survey the hotel interior in a circle, then quickly walked out of the frame.
“Our judgment is that someone left Ye Jian a note, arranging to meet him that night at the crime scene, which then led to the murder. Clearly, the person who left the note has an extremely high probability of being the killer!”
Li Qian asked, “Can we trace the source of the note?”
Song Xing shook his head. “We’ve tried various methods. Who gave the note, when it was given—we still know nothing.”
Li Qian thought for a while and drew a conclusion: “Someone left Ye Jian a note, arranging to meet him late at night in such a remote place as the crime scene. Ye Jian also went alone, which indicates that between Ye Jian and this person, there must be certain secrets.”
She rarely participated in case analysis. After stating her conclusion, she looked expectantly at everyone. Everyone just casually nodded, saying her words made a lot of sense, but in their hearts they all thought, any police officer would think this way. But knowing that Ye Jian and that person shared secrets—what damn use was that for solving the case?
Everyone was waiting for Song Xing to continue when he unexpectedly lowered his head: “For now… for now, these are the only leads we’ve found.”
For a moment, the discussion came to an abrupt halt. Everyone fell silent. This case had neither witness testimony nor physical evidence—how should they proceed with the investigation?
Zhang Yi’ang calmly looked at everyone. He could see that everyone was confused about the next direction. He sighed inwardly—the San Jiang Kou criminal investigators’ case-solving abilities were indeed very limited. In the end, it still depended on him from the provincial bureau to take action. So be it, so be it—who told him to be the leader?
Zhang Yi’ang coughed and prepared to prompt his subordinates: “You all have collectively fallen into a blind spot in your thinking, forgetting precisely the most important clue left at the crime scene.”
“The most important clue…” Everyone frowned and muttered. Li Qian’s eyes suddenly lit up: “The director’s name!”
Zhang Yi’ang looked at her very dissatisfied.
Wang Ruijun quickly saved the situation: “It’s the VIP card—the spa center!”
“See, Jun caught the key point again—the spa center!” Zhang Yi’ang nodded at him in encouragement. “Ye Jian took out the spa center card from his wallet and hid it under his body before dying. He must have been trying to tell us some extremely important information. That information is this spa center VIP card.”
Song Xing clenched his fist and said straightforwardly, “How about we raid the entire spa center under the pretext of cracking down on prostitution and bring everyone back for interrogation?”
“No,” Zhang Yi’ang directly shook his head in rejection. “We don’t know what information Ye Jian left behind actually represents. How would we investigate? How would we interrogate? Acting rashly would only alert the enemy.”
“Then what should we do?” “Right, there’s no other way either.” Everyone fell into confusion.
“How about this…” Zhang Yi’ang pondered for a moment and said in a deep voice, “To be on the safe side, I’ve decided to personally conduct a private investigation in plain clothes!”
“That can’t be!” As soon as he finished speaking, everyone cried out in unison.
Zhang Yi’ang looked at everyone. Their expressions varied. Li Qian’s cheeks flushed red—she couldn’t believe the leader was this kind of person. Meanwhile, honest old Section Chief Xu’s expression was currently the most complex.
Zhang Yi’ang couldn’t help but ask him, “Old Xu, you seem to have some concerns?”
“Uh… concerns aren’t quite it. I’m just worried that the audit department might not approve this investigation expense later. Heh… heh heh, it’s still several thousand yuan.”
“I’m going in without paying—what do they need to approve?”
Wang Ruijun tried to advise as tactfully as possible: “If the establishment knew your identity as director, they wouldn’t dare charge money. But if people from other departments found out, overall… overall it wouldn’t look too good.”
Zhang Yi’ang was slightly stunned. He shook his head with a disdainful expression as he looked at him: “I mean going in casual clothes, calling the madam down separately for questioning, making it clear to her that if she doesn’t cooperate with our work, we’ll raid the place immediately!”
So the private investigation was only this much. Everyone smiled again, harmonious all around, offering various suggestions.
After a moment, Wang Ruijun remembered something and expressed his concerns: “This is indeed a method, but if we don’t reveal our identities, I’m afraid we can’t get in and won’t be able to call out the madam either. I’ve heard this establishment is very strictly managed. To enter, you must first call and say a password. The password changes once a month and is only sent to regular customers’ phones. Without the password, outsiders simply aren’t allowed in.”
Zhang Yi’ang frowned and thought, then asked, “Do you know the password?”
Wang Ruijun nodded. “I know!”
Under everyone’s astonished gazes, Wang Ruijun quickly corrected himself: “I mean, I can find out the password through an informant.”
“Then that’s fine. You arrange this matter. In any case, tonight I want to see the madam!”