The moment the door was opened, Wu Shuqi felt a strong smell of blood rushing towards her face. Then, she saw a short-haired woman lying in a pool of blood, motionless. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the large patches of blood on the white patchwork floor had already congealed, and the victim seemed to have no signs of life. Surprised, she turned her head and said to Wu Zhi behind her, “There may have been a murder here. Protect the scene!”
Wu Zhi was also very surprised. He stretched his head to look into the room, and a chaotic scene strongly impacted his visual senses—although he was accustomed to all kinds of murder scenes, the bloody scene in front of him was so tragic that he couldn’t help but be shocked.
When Feng Suhui and Cheng Ling heard that a murder had occurred, they, who had never encountered such an extreme situation, were immediately frightened, their faces turned pale, their legs weakened, and they stumbled down the stairs.
Wu Shuqi turned her head and waved to Cheng Ling, who was standing in front of the fire hydrant, gasping for breath: “Girl, come up and identify whether the victim is Chen Qian.”
Cheng Ling couldn’t help but shrink back. After struggling with her thoughts for a moment, she walked upstairs with her hands covering her pounding chest. She went to the door and looked into the room—although she had been mentally prepared, she couldn’t help but open her mouth in an “ah” sound and quickly said, “That’s right, she is our beauty salon’s manager, Chen Qian!” Before she finished speaking, she turned around and ran downstairs “thump thump thump”, then bent down and couldn’t help but retch.
Wu Shuqi and Wu Zhi put on shoe covers and carefully entered the room to check the situation. They found that the victim had no vital signs and appeared to have been dead for a long time. It could be seen that the victim had multiple knife wounds, with the fatal wounds on her chest and neck. There were a large number of spattered bloodstains on the ground, which were shocking.
In addition, they also found signs of a fight in the room—there were fragments of glass water cups on the ground next to the coffee table; a plastic stool stained with blood was lying on the ground; and there was a sofa cushion on the floor with the sponge exposed by sharp instruments.
Wu Shuqi and Wu Zhi believed that this was a major criminal case, so the two immediately divided their work: one reported the police situation to the Municipal Bureau, and the other reported the situation to the Branch Bureau Command Center.
After reporting the police situation, the two continued to investigate the scene.
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This is a two-bedroom apartment. They searched all around the living room for half a day and did not see any suspected tools for the crime.
Wu Shuqi walked to the bedroom door, pushed open the half-closed coffee-colored wooden door, and immediately smelled the lavender scent mixed with the bloody smell. She turned on the light and looked inside, seeing a single bed with the quilt folded neatly, and a dressing table next to the bedside table, decorated with plastic green leaves around the dressing table. She searched carefully for a long time, but did not see any suspected tools for the crime.
Another bedroom contained a solid wood double bed, with a few old newspapers spread under the bed frame. Apart from that, the entire room contained no other items. Wu Zhi carefully checked this room and did not see any suspected tools for the crime either.
They also went to the kitchen and bathroom to search, but found no suspected murder weapon.
They guessed that the tools for the crime had probably been taken away by the murderer.
Wu Shuqi used her mobile phone to take photos and collect evidence at the scene, and then dialed Chen Qian’s mobile phone number. The mobile phone ringtone with “Moonlight on the Lotus Pond” music as the background suddenly rang, and the sound came from the corner of the sofa covered by the sofa cushion. She went over and removed the sofa cushion, and a pure white dazzling Huawei mobile phone appeared in front of her. She picked up the mobile phone and found that the mobile phone was not locked.
Wu Zhi glanced at the mobile phone and then looked at the blood-stained necklace under the victim’s neck, and said, “Team Wu, the victim’s mobile phone and necklace are still here, this case does not seem like a burglary and murder; in addition, judging from the victim’s clothing condition, it does not seem like a rape and murder either. There are only two possibilities left: revenge killing or love killing. Do you think it is love killing or revenge killing?”
Wu Shuqi felt that it didn’t make much sense to make a judgment now: “This requires further investigation to reach a conclusion.”
Wu Shuqi and Wu Zhi walked out of the room and happened to see the owner of the opposite house closing the door and going out. The old lady did not know that a murder had occurred here, and looked surprised when she saw the blue shoe covers on Wu Shuqi and Wu Zhi’s feet.
Wu Zhi told the old woman about the murder in this room. Although he spoke in a relatively gentle tone, intentionally comforting the old woman, the old woman was still frightened and trembled all over. She quickly closed the door and stammered that she was going to her daughter’s house and she didn’t dare to live here.
Wu Shuqi was worried that the old woman would be unsteady and fall because she was so shocked, so she supported her and walked downstairs. Wu Zhi stayed to protect the scene.
“Madam, from last night to this morning, did you see anyone entering or leaving the room where the incident occurred?” Wu Shuqi wanted to get some information related to the case from the old woman.
“What did you say?” the old woman asked, tilting her ear.
Wu Shuqi thought to herself that she forgot that she was hard of hearing, and repeated what she had just said loudly.
The old lady recalled: “Last night when I came back from square dancing, I saw a woman squatting in front of your door smoking. She was wearing a white short-sleeved T-shirt. When she saw you, she got up and left, and smiled at you. I have seen that woman several times, twice in this corridor and twice in the open-air dam in this area. She should be very familiar with that murdered woman.”
“What time did you see her last night?”
“About nine o’clock.”
“Did she have any knives?”
“I didn’t see her with a knife, I only saw her carrying a white backpack.”
“Thank you.”
Wu Shuqi retrieved the surveillance video of the area where the incident occurred, and after being identified by the old woman, she locked onto the criminal suspect. The suspect was seen entering the area from the outside on the surveillance video at 8:51 last night. The surveillance video showed that the suspect left at 1:07 in the morning.
The suspect was in a hurry, with a black cloth strip wrapped around his wrist—he did not have a cloth strip wrapped around his wrist when he entered the community, nor was there any sign of injury. If the suspect used the cloth strip to wrap the wound, then he was likely injured during the murder.
Wu Shuqi then asked Cheng Ling to identify the suspect’s identity information, and she immediately recognized that the suspect was Cao Huailiang.
Cao Huailiang is a major suspect.
Cheng Ling was very sad about Chen Qian’s tragic death. She said that the manager was a good person. Ten days ago, her mother in her hometown was ill and needed a major surgery. She didn’t have money to treat her mother. The manager knew about her difficulties and lent her two thousand yuan without saying a word; she also said that if Cao Huailiang killed the manager, Cao Huailiang had serious psychological problems, belonging to the kind of person who was very suspicious and extremely selfish. He couldn’t stand the manager being on good terms with other men, and once he found out, he would severely warn her, and even insult her with vulgar language.
Cheng Ling also revealed to Wu Shuqi the manager’s abnormal behavior in the past few days—she always looked preoccupied, was not in the state at work, and the day before yesterday she suddenly said that she had done something that she regretted very much.
“What wrong thing did she do?” Wu Shuqi wanted to know the exact answer, so that she could provide assistance for the next investigation.
Cheng Ling wiped her moist eyes with her arm: “I don’t know; my colleagues and I are all very curious, we asked her what it was, she just smiled bitterly, but didn’t tell us the inside story. She seemed to say that unintentionally.”
Then, Cheng Ling said with great regret: “After the two boys who shared the rent with the manager moved away half a month ago, my colleagues and I all advised the manager to move in with us, but she said that her mother was going to bring her son over next month… if she had moved in with us, maybe she wouldn’t have been killed.”
Due to the needs of the investigation, Wu Shuqi asked Cheng Ling to talk in detail about the contradictions between Chen Qian and Cao Huailiang. Cheng Ling said that she had only been working in the beauty salon for two months and did not know much or in detail about their contradictions, and asked Wu Shuqi to ask the old employees in the store or her boss, Miss Qin. She said that Miss Qin and Chen Qian were friends for many years, and Chen Qian should have told Miss Qin her private matters.
Wu Shuqi came to the beauty salon, and Miss Qin happened to be there. She learned from Miss Qin these important situations: Chen Qian, from Bijie, Guizhou, 28 years old, divorced, with a four-year-old son. The court awarded her custody of the son when she divorced, and the child was usually taken care of by her mother in her hometown;
She and the suspect Cao Huailiang were fellow villagers. Her daughter had an illness a year ago that required surgery, and she accepted Cao Huailiang’s initiative to send her 20,000 yuan in assistance;
Cao Huailiang lent money to Chen Qian with a purpose, that is, he wanted her to be his wife; Chen Qian had always had a bad feeling about Cao Huailiang, but after the two got along, she gradually discovered that he was selfish, narrow-minded, suspicious, and even crudely interfered with her normal interpersonal interactions. She was very disappointed in him, so she returned the 20,000 yuan to him, told him not to look for her again in the future, and wanted to completely get rid of him, but he still went to find her shamelessly.
Wu Shuqi asked Miss Qin when Chen Qian returned the money to Cao Huailiang. Miss Qin thought for a while and said it was a month ago.
After being reminded by Wu Shuqi, Miss Qin said that Chen Qian had told her that Cao Huailiang said that he wanted to retaliate against Li Yuehua, because once Cao Huailiang looked through Chen Qian’s WeChat chat history and found that Li Yuehua had sent her a few relatively explicit ambiguous messages, so he suspected that she had an improper relationship with Li Yuehua.
Miss Qin also told Wu Shuqi that Cao Huailiang had been in jail because he used “three-step down” to poison dogs and sold the dog meat, and was caught by the police.
Wu Shuqi knew that the main substance of “three-step down” was cyanide. In order to verify whether what Miss Qin said was true or not, she immediately went online to check, and also found a news report that Cao Huailiang was sentenced to two years and six months in prison by the Bijie Court in 2012 for illegally storing cyanide and other toxic substances; for the sake of caution, Wu Shuqi used mobile police communications to conduct information comparison and found that the suspect Cao Huailiang was the same person as the previously convicted Cao Huailiang.
Wu Shuqi was very excited, as if she saw the dawn of solving the “7.18” poisoning case. She organically connected the following things: Cao Huailiang illegally stored sodium cyanide, Cao Huailiang said he wanted to retaliate against Li Yuehua, Chen Qian had access to Li Yuehua’s house key, Ning Yaohong and her son and others died of cyanide poisoning, Chen Qian said she did something she regretted very much, and Chen Qian was inexplicably killed in the rented house, and analyzed:
This time, Li Yuehua put his house key in the Loris Beauty Salon, and Cao Huailiang happened to know about it. Out of jealousy for Li Yuehua playing ambiguous with Chen Qian, he took the key and made a copy, and then obtained cyanide through familiar channels and planned to poison and retaliate against Li Yuehua. Later, Chen Qian broke up with Cao Huailiang, which intensified his retaliatory mentality, so he took the opportunity to sneak into Li Yuehua’s house to poison. After Chen Qian learned that Ning Yaohong, Lü Yuchan, and others died of cyanide poisoning, she suspected that the murderer was Cao Huailiang. Cao Huailiang was worried that Chen Qian would report him to the Public Security Bureau, so he brutally killed her.
Wu Shuqi believed that Cao Huailiang should belong to a paranoid personality type. This is a very dangerous personality type, characterized by suspicion and paranoia. People with this personality disorder are prone to falling into their own subjective emotions, often act impulsively, and do not consider the consequences.
She said angrily in her heart: “The wicked do evil, and the law cannot tolerate it. I, Wu Shuqi, swear that I will definitely bring the criminal suspect to justice!”