Attending ex-girlfriend's wedding, arresting the groom's officer on the spot

In Sun Lijuan's jewelry store, the crystal chandelier illuminated the interrogation table as bright as day. The female boss with flaming red lips wiped the diamond ring on her ring finger for the umpteenth time: "So what if Li Kaijun and I are lovers? I was at a jewelry auction on the night of the incident. I can provide surveillance and sign-in sheets. I can provide any evidence you want." She suddenly approached Wang Shuai, and the smell of perfume made him frown. "But I know a secret - Li Kaijun has another little lover outside, named Qin Lili, a wild girl from the mountains."

Following this clue, the police quickly found matching information in the household registration system. Qin Lili, 25 years old, was registered in a border town. She came to Haizhou three years ago and was registered as a "jade salesperson." When the technical department used AI to compare the photo of the deceased woman with the household registration photo, the result of 98.7% similarity made the entire office fall silent.

In the urban village where Qin Lili rented, there was a recruitment advertisement for Li Kaijun's Jade Shop on the mottled wall. Wang Shuai pushed open the rusty iron door, and the smell of mold mixed with cheap perfume hit him in the face. Unopened pregnancy test strips were scattered on the bed, and a half-bottle of imported folic acid tablets was placed on the dressing table. The landlord smacked his lips and said, "This girl is usually very quiet, but I always see her leaving with different men in the car late at night. After the 15th of last month, she has not been seen since."

During the search, Yang Sen found an encrypted USB drive under the mattress. After cracking it, hundreds of photos inside revealed the truth like a sharp blade: photos of Qin Lili's growing belly, screenshots of Li Kaijun's transfer records, and two secretly recorded conversations. In one of the recordings, Li Kaijun's voice was clearly anxious: "Wu Tiancheng will not let me go. He said the child must be disposed of."

"Wu Tiancheng?" Lu Chuan immediately pulled up the Jade Chamber of Commerce information. "He is the president of the Haizhou City Jade Chamber of Commerce and also Li Kaijun's biggest business partner." He pinned Wu Tiancheng's photo to the center of the whiteboard and linked the names "Qin Lili," "Li Kaijun," and "Sun Lijuan" in red pen. "When Sun Lijuan provided clues, she specifically emphasized that Qin Lili was a 'wild girl.' This detail is very intriguing. Is she deliberately guiding us, or is she trying to kill someone with a borrowed knife?"

When Lu Chuan circled Wu Tiancheng's photo in red in the middle of the whiteboard, the atmosphere in the task force seemed to freeze. Flight records, warehouse ledgers, threatening words in the diary, all clues entangled the president of the Jade Chamber of Commerce like a spider web. However, the investigation results showed that the other party seemed to have no problems.

"Wu Tiancheng was at the Waidi Jade Auction from July 7 to 15. Here are his exhibitor pass and hotel check-in records." Zhang Hui threw a stack of documents on the table. "What's more terrible is that the surveillance cameras at the auction clearly captured him participating in the bidding throughout the entire process. Even when he went to the bathroom, there was a security guard to testify."

The marker in Lu Chuan's hand hovered over the whiteboard, and the tip of the pen almost pierced the photo marked with "Wu Tiancheng". From July 7 to 15, Wu Tiancheng was abroad the whole time.

Customs records show that he left the country on the evening of the 14th and entered the country in the early morning of the 21st.

"I have checked the public disk surveillance footage frame by frame—" Zhang Hui said here.

He suddenly pulled the remote control of the projector, and the live scene of the jadeite auction immediately popped up on the big screen. "Did you see it? At 15 am on the 10th, he held up the bidding card No. 88 to compete for a piece of ice-type rough stone. Even the action of wiping sweat was captured by three cameras from different angles."

Wang Shuai leaned closer to the screen, his eyes sweeping across the electronic clock in the corner of the screen: "Even if you take the fastest flight, it will take five hours to fly back to China from abroad, not to mention the drive to the crime scene." His voice gradually lowered, his fingertips unconsciously stroking his chin, "Unless he can teleport, it is impossible for him to commit the crime." Lu Chuan suddenly pressed the pause button, and the screen froze on the scene where Wu Tiancheng raised his glass and clinked glasses with the foreign mining minister: "Check his personal belongings. The entire auction was recorded, but it doesn't mean he didn't have a backup plan. Zhang Hui contacted the foreign police and retrieved all the surveillance footage of the hotel where he stayed, focusing on whether there was any contact with any suspicious persons; Zhang Hui, take someone to check his company's freight records, the jade smuggling and the murder case may be hidden in the same line."

Three days later, a video from overseas police stirred up the case. Surveillance showed that at 7 a.m. on July 16, Wu Tiancheng's assistant Chen Feng drove a black business car out of the hotel and returned alone 2 minutes later. However, the onboard recorder suddenly went black at a critical section of the road, and when it was restored, the vehicle was on the way back to the hotel. "This period of time is enough to drive back and forth to the industrial park." Zhang Hui projected a map on the wall, with red markings extending from the hotel all the way to the abandoned warehouse 37 kilometers away.

Lu Chuan stared at the ever-expanding network of relationships on the whiteboard and suddenly grabbed the car keys: "Go to Wu Tiancheng's office. Since he can create a perfect alibi at the public auction, he must have left some self-satisfied evidence." When the police dog sniffed blood under the study carpet, the criminal investigation personnel pried open the floorboards and found a blood-stained jade ring lying in the secret compartment - it was the treasure of Li Kaijun's jade shop that was stolen last year.

Faced with the hard evidence, Wu Tiancheng showed an unexpected sneer: "I admit that I want to teach Li Kaijun a lesson. He embezzled my smuggled raw stones and made Qin Lili pregnant! But I didn't kill him." He loosened his tie and took out a stack of tapes from the safe. "Listen to this. On the whole night of July 7, I was discussing cooperation with overseas jade representatives. The whole process was recorded."

The recording was mixed with the sound of jadeite knocking and Burmese conversations, and the electronic clock in the background clearly told the time. After 72 hours of analysis, the technical department confirmed that the audio had not been edited.

"We have been misled." Lu Chuan suddenly turned the photo of Wu Tiancheng to the back. "Wu Tiancheng's alibi is indestructible, which just proves that he was not the one who directly did it. The real chess player is hiding behind the chess pieces that we have ignored." Heavy rain was pouring outside the window, hitting the glass curtain wall of the Criminal Investigation Detachment, just like the countless concealed truths in this murder case, waiting to be cut open by a sharp blade.

The investigation into Wu Tiancheng has reached a deadlock. Judging from the current investigation results, Wu Tiancheng is indeed not a good person. He is involved in some other criminal clues, but no matter what, Wu Tiancheng's affairs seem to have nothing to do with Li Kaijun's death.

At this point in the investigation, Lu Chuan decided to shift the investigation and shift all attention from Li Kaijun's interpersonal relationships to Qin Lili.

Wang Shuai led the team members to carefully sort out Qin Lili's mobile phone communication records, social account dynamics and daily consumption tracks, trying to find key clues.

At the beginning of the investigation, the police found an account marked "A Feng" in Qin Lili's WeChat chat history. (End of this chapter)