On the display board in front of Criminal Investigation Captain Wu Shuqi were several photos taken from the crime scene. She was propping her chin up with her fist, staring intently at the photos, lost in thought.
The photos showed a scene of devastation after a fire: three bodies, either lying on their backs or prostrate, were charred beyond recognition on the wet ground – these were the bodies of two adults and a child. The hair and clothing of the three victims were burned, completely stuck to their skin, with only the parts of the bodies in contact with the ground unscathed; the walls of the room were blackened; the sofa was burned into a black charcoal frame; the TV, vases, tea sets, and toy cars were shattered and scattered on the ground; the glass separating the room from the balcony and the multiple window panes were shattered…
This was a shocking and heinous case that occurred on July 18th, nearly fifty days ago. The crime scene was located in Apartment 703, Unit 3 of Prosperity Garden in Jincheng City. It was a two-bedroom apartment.
On the day of the incident, Wu Shuqi, following instructions from the command center, led criminal investigation and technical investigation personnel from her unit, the Golden Sea Tang Public Security Bureau, to the scene. By the time they arrived, the fire had been extinguished by firefighters. Officers from the local police station had arrived before the criminal police from the branch bureau and had secured the scene.
Wu Shuqi saw three severely burned bodies in the living room, and the room was filled with lingering smoke and the smell of burning. The first thing she did when she and her colleagues entered the scene wearing gas masks was to check her watch: 16:52.
The police determined that it was a fire caused by a gas leak (the gas tank and gas stove valve in the kitchen had both been opened, and gas was leaking from the nozzle through a rubber hose). The cause of the gas explosion was likely spontaneous combustion of a charging children’s toy car. The open flame came into contact with the indoor air, which was mixed with a large amount of carbon monoxide. The charred plug of the toy car still plugged into the power outlet on the living room wall was proof of this.
It was inferred that the room had been sealed after the gas leak.
Judging from the posture of the bodies at the scene, it could be determined that the victims were already dead when the fire occurred. If they had been burned to death, the corpses’ legs and arms would usually be in a curled position, and their fists would be clenched.
Judging from the surface of the three corpses where they were in contact with the ground, which showed no burns, the lividity was cherry-red (or possibly bright red. Due to the dim lighting at the inspection site, there may be visual identification deviations), which is consistent with the characteristic manifestations of carbon monoxide poisoning.
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However, whether or not it was carbon monoxide poisoning could only be concluded after the forensic doctor performed an autopsy on the body, because cyanide poisoning can cause the lividity to be bright red – although there are essential differences in the mechanisms behind cherry-red and bright-red lividity, because the two are very similar, it is difficult to distinguish them with the naked eye.
Who opened the gas stove and gas cylinder valves?
Why open them?
If it was carbon monoxide poisoning, the gas leak would have a strong, pungent smell. Wouldn’t the victims have smelled it?
One mystery after another lingered in the minds of the investigating police, and they all looked serious.
When the fire broke out in Apartment 703, the apartment next door was being renovated. The three renovation workers heard a loud “bang,” followed by the shattering of window glass and the falling of mud chips from the walls. The three were so frightened that their faces changed color, and one even fell from a ladder.
The three didn’t know what had happened and ran out of the room in panic. They didn’t realize there was a fire until they saw billowing white smoke pouring out of the window of the next-door apartment. They quickly ran downstairs and called the fire department while escaping.
They were still shaken when the police took their statements.
When the police asked if they had noticed anything unusual in that room after the fire, the three of them said that they hadn’t, they had been working on the renovations inside.
However, a middle-aged worker said that he had seen the woman and the little boy in that room. It was four hours before the fire, when he received a call from his daughter in Shenzhen. He thought the sound of the cutting machine in the room was too loud, so he went out into the hallway to talk to his daughter.
After finishing the call, he took out a cigarette to smoke. Suddenly, he looked up and saw a five- or six-year-old girl leaning against the door, looking at him. The child had a sturdy build, and he smiled at the child. The child turned around and walked back into the room with a blank expression, looking a little timid.
Not long after, a plump woman in a red dress came out and glanced at him, then turned to the room and said, “He is not your father.” Then she went inside and closed the door. He thought the woman was talking to the boy who had just entered the room, so he couldn’t help but smile, thinking to himself that the child didn’t even recognize his own father, maybe he was a little slow.
In addition, the police conducted inquiries and investigations with several residents gathered upstairs. According to a resident on the 9th floor of Unit 3, the owner of the house that caught fire was called Li Yuehua, female, lived alone for a long time, was from out of town, and was doing We-Commerce.
He knew that Li Yuehua was doing We-Commerce because Li Yuehua was always trying to get him to join. Every time Li Yuehua saw him, she would instill in him the idea of how to get rich quickly by doing We-Commerce. He was a little annoyed by Li Yuehua, so he made all kinds of excuses to get past it.
Once, he asked Li Yuehua where her wife and children were. Li Yuehua said that they were all in her hometown. He also asked Li Yuehua why she didn’t bring them over to live with her. Li Yuehua said that she was afraid she wouldn’t take good care of them. He was a little puzzled, thinking to himself that his wife was not a three-year-old child, why would she need him to take care of her? But out of politeness, he did not ask Li Yuehua the reason.
Wu Shuqi called her partner Sun Rumin to the side and said, “Combining the analysis of the resident Mr. Zhou on the 9th floor and the renovation workers, the woman in red and the fat boy should be Li Yuehua’s wife and son. They may have just come from their hometown.”
Sun Rumin agreed, then sighed and said, “The wife took her son to visit her husband, which should have been a happy thing, but she didn’t expect to be separated forever before they even met.”
Wu Shuqi sighed in agreement.
Sun Rumin suddenly thought of a question and said, “If Li Yuehua’s wife and children did just come from their hometown, then how did they get into the house? Could it be that another living person was entrusted by Li Yuehua to pick up the key?”
“We’ll know when Li Yuehua comes back and asks,” Wu Shuqi said. “Has Li Yuehua been notified?”
“Da Wu contacted the property management, and the property management said that he has been notified. He is rushing back from out of town,” Sun Rumin continued. “According to the firefighters who participated in the fire response, they used demolition tools and spent about two minutes to open the security door. The door was not locked from the inside, which means that in a normal, quiet situation, the door would not form an obstacle to escape;
“In addition, no blunt or sharp instrument injuries were found on the deceased, and no blood was found at the scene, so the possibility of human injury causing limited mobility and passively inhaling carbon monoxide can be ruled out. Could it be cyanide poisoning? If that’s the case, it would be incredible! The heavy fog must be cleared by our police. Captain Wu, it looks like we’re going to be busy for a while.”
Wu Shuqi expressed her approval of her partner’s detailed analysis. In fact, that was what she thought too.
At this time, a middle-aged woman ran out of the community like a lost soul. She was Li Yuehua, the owner of Apartment 703, Unit 3.
An hour and a half ago, he was giving product knowledge training to his We-Commerce team in the neighboring city of Wutong City when he received a call. The property management said that a fire had broken out in his house. He immediately stopped his speech and called his wife, but her phone was turned off. He realized that the situation was not good, so he asked an acquaintance at the meeting to drive him, and he rushed over at full speed.
The property management did not tell Li Yuehua on the phone that anyone in his family had died in the fire. This was mainly because they were worried that he would have an emotional breakdown and have an accident on the road. They only asked him to go back quickly.
Li Yuehua looked up at the blackened windows of his house, and then saw several policemen standing outside the unit building passage. He was even more panicked. He stumbled over and asked in a trembling voice, “Where are my wife and son? How… how are they?”
Wu Shuqi looked at the anxious middle-aged woman and asked, “Are you Li Yuehua?”
Li Yuehua “ummed” and said anxiously, “Tell me quickly, how are my family members?”
Wu Shuqi took the SLR digital camera from the police officer Wu Zhi next to her, found the photos of the victims taken at the scene, handed them to Li Yuehua, and said in as gentle a voice as possible, “Please take a look.”
At the same time, Sun Rumin quickly turned on the body-worn camera he was carrying and pointed the lens at Li Yuehua.
Li Yuehua took a closer look, and his face suddenly turned black. He staggered two steps and collapsed to the ground, tearing at his hair with both hands and wailing in despair. Wu Shuqi was not good at dealing with grieving family members, so facing this heartbroken woman, she could only shake her head and sigh softly, but could not think of any words of comfort.
Li Yuehua cried for a long time before looking up at Wu Shuqi and said, “Where are they? I want to… see them!” Saying that, he wanted to get up, but he failed several times.
“The bodies have been taken away. Come to the Municipal Private Security Bureau Forensic Appraisal Center at nine o’clock tomorrow. It just so happens that the forensic doctor is going to perform an autopsy on the body, and you can be there to witness it,” Wu Shuqi’s voice was still gentle.
The reason why the forensic doctor had to wait until tomorrow to perform an autopsy on the bodies of Li Yuehua’s wife and children was because there were still two bodies parked in the forensic laboratory waiting for the forensic doctor to perform an autopsy. The forensic doctor was not a machine and needed to rest properly.
Many onlookers had gathered in the community, and everyone was talking about it, feeling sorry for the huge disaster that had befallen Li Yuehua’s family.
After a long time, Li Yuehua barely stood up and said, “They were fine, how could they be burned…” He shook his head and covered his face with both hands, sobbing again.
Wu Shuqi told him the cause of the fire and the police’s investigation of the scene.
Li Yuehua beat his chest and stamped his feet and said, “If I had come back immediately after receiving her call, they wouldn’t have… woo, woo woo…”
After his emotions calmed down a bit, Wu Shuqi asked him in detail about the identity information of the victims and recorded the key information.
The names of the victims were: Ning Yaohong, Li Zihan, and Lü Yuchan. They were Li Yuehua’s wife, son, and friend, respectively.
Wu Shuqi asked, “Did you ask Lü Yuchan to pick up the key for your wife?”
Li Yuehua choked, his throat seemed to be blocked by something, and it took him a long time to say, “No.”
Wu Shuqi thought to herself, if Lü Yuchan didn’t pick up the key, then what did she go there for? Was her death related to Ning Yaohong? Or was the death of Ning Yaohong and her son related to her? The true relationship between Li Yuehua and Lü Yuchan must be clarified in order to help uncover the truth of the case.
“Tell me about your relationship with Lü Yuchan,” she said, carefully choosing her words, in a gentle tone, trying to avoid stimulating him so that the investigation could not proceed – in her twelve years as a police officer, she had encountered many cases where the families of the deceased refused to cooperate with the police investigation and evidence collection for various reasons, so she was always careful when questioning them.
“We… we have known each other for a while. We are just business partners. Usually, we go back and forth… basically for business needs,” Li Yuehua said with a slight frown.
Wu Shuqi keenly captured the tension in his expression and asked, “What did Lü Yuchan come to your house for?”
“To visit my wife,” Li Yuehua said, lowering his head.
Wu Shuqi pressed on, “Does your wife know her?”
“No… no,” Li Yuehua stammered.
“If she doesn’t know her, why did she come to see your wife?” Wu Shuqi’s eyes became sharper.
“I asked her to go,” Li Yuehua explained, “My… my wife just came from her hometown, Qingqing. I was afraid she wouldn’t take good care of herself, so I asked Lü Yuchan to go and see her.”
“What’s wrong with your wife?” Wu Shuqi asked curiously.
“To be honest, she suffers from schizophrenia. Her condition is sometimes good and sometimes bad. She only called me after she went to Jincheng from her hometown. I didn’t know she was going beforehand,” Li Yuehua shook his head, obviously helpless about his wife’s illness and blaming her for going to Jincheng without telling him.
Wu Shuqi asked, “What was her condition like before she came? Who took care of her in her hometown?”
“In the past four years, she has spent almost a third of her time in a mental hospital. This time, she stayed for nearly three months. She was only discharged from the hospital a week ago,” Li Yuehua said, suppressing his grief, “When she was at home, my parents-in-law took care of her.”
“That is to say, she regained her self-awareness before she was discharged from the hospital, is that right?” Wu Shuqi thought of the wife of one of her classmates who also suffered from schizophrenia and had to be hospitalized twice a year, and was only discharged from the hospital after her mental symptoms disappeared.
Li Yuehua nodded.
Wu Shuqi said, “Please tell me the name and phone number of the hospital where your wife received treatment.”
Li Yuehua told Wu Shuqi the name of the hospital, but he said that he did not remember the hospital’s phone number. As soon as he finished speaking, he burst into tears again.
Although there were many doubts lingering in her mind, seeing that his emotions were extremely unstable, Wu Shuqi did not want to put too much psychological burden on him, so she said, “Okay, that’s all for today. Take care of yourself.”