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

Lu Chuan put the relationship map of Chen Yongqiang and Chen Yonggang on the conference table, and the words "Yongsheng Car Rental Company" marked in red pen were glaring. "Chen Yonggang lost contact completely after dumping the body. The communication records show that his last call was to Haizhou." His laser pen swept across the location of Haizhou on the map, "Focus on checking their network of relationships there, and don't miss any abnormal rental or transaction records."

The investigation team led by Wang Shuai and Zhang Hui conducted an overnight investigation. The humid sea breeze from Haizhou, carrying a salty smell, rushed into their collars at three in the morning. According to the investigation data of the police station below, Chen Yonggang rented a duplex apartment in the old city west of the city three months ago. The landlord recalled that the tenant was generous and paid half a year's rent in one lump sum.

The old town in the west of Haizhou City was filled with a damp and musty smell. Wang Shuai pinched his nose and pushed open the door of Room 402. The pungent smell of rotten meat mixed with cheap air freshener hit him in the face. "Put on a gas mask!" Before he finished speaking, Zhang Hui had already started coughing violently. The flashlight beam swayed on the wall, illuminating the mess on the ground - the overturned instant noodle box was full of cockroaches, the empty wine bottle was shining coldly in the moonlight, and there was an unfinished takeaway on the coffee table, and the meat had already turned black.

"This smell is wrong." Yang Sen squatted down and picked up the brown debris on the carpet with tweezers. "It's not ordinary decay. A lot of industrial preservatives have been used here." His eyes suddenly fixed on the upright freezer in the corner. The humming sound of the compressor was particularly clear in the dead silent room. Fine water droplets condensed on the edge of the freezer, winding down along the metal shell and forming dark water marks on the ground.

The moment Wang Shuai grasped the handle of the freezer, cold sweat broke out on his palms. With a slight "click", white mist with a strong stench gushed out. Chen Yongqiang curled up at the bottom of the freezer, wrapped in a black plastic bag, and the nylon rope wrapped around his neck was deeply cut into his swollen skin. His face was blue-gray due to the low temperature, his pupils were cloudy, and the tip of his tongue was slightly exposed, maintaining a hideous expression of suffocation.

"The time of death was at least ten days." Yang Sen put on rubber gloves and carefully spread the dead man's stiff fingers. "But there is no corpse green on the surface of the body, and the joints are still elastic. It should have been frozen immediately after death and injected with formalin." He pointed to the strangulation marks on Chen Yongqiang's neck. "It is exactly the same as the modus operandi in the Li Xiaomin case, even the number of circles of the rope is the same."

The inspection lights came on one after another, illuminating the basement in a pale white. Zhang Hui found a syringe and an empty medicine bottle at the bottom of the freezer, and the words "formaldehyde solution" on the label were blurred. Wang Shuai found a bloody iron rod in the corner, and the hair and tissue debris on the metal surface were clearly visible under the magnifying glass: "The murder weapon has been found, and the blood on it is most likely from Chen Yongqiang."

The technicians began to carefully collect evidence, and the fingerprint powder raised a white dust on the table. Yang Sen suddenly pointed to the inside of the freezer: "Look here!" The dark red bloody handprint fluoresced under the luminol reagent, and the twisted fingers seemed to be silently calling for help. What was even more frightening was that the inner wall of the freezer was engraved with crooked handwriting: "He started it first. I had no choice."

The search continued until dawn. In the master bedroom closet, the police found a black raincoat and rubber boots covered in mud. The pattern on the soles of the shoes matched the footprints at the Beiyang River dumping site. In the drawer of the bedside table, a wrinkled diary recorded Chen Yonggang's fear and struggle in detail: "Brother is going to turn himself in. He's crazy! If those things are told, we will all die." The last page was written in sloppy handwriting and blurred by water stains.

The air in Room 402, West of Haizhou City, was still pungent with the smell of rotten meat and formalin. At this moment, Yang Lin half-knelt in front of the freezer, the magnifying glass in his hand almost touching the words engraved on the inner wall. Those crooked scratches glowed coldly under the investigation light, "He started it first. I had no choice." The depth of the scratches on each word was different, as if you could see the trembling hands of the engraver at that time.

"Yang Sen, come and take a look at this." Yang Lin called without even looking up. Yang Sen walked over quickly, holding a bag of evidence, which contained trace fibers extracted from the bottom of the freezer. "These fibers are different from the material of Chen Yongqiang's clothes," Yang Lin pointed at the image of the fibers under the microscope, "They look like the material of some kind of industrial dust-proof clothing, and they are stained with special oil stains."

Zhang Hui came over to look at the microscope, frowning: "The reflectivity of this oil stain is very special. Could it be related to Chen Yonggang's whereabouts?" Yang Sen nodded thoughtfully, took out the test paper he carried with him, and gently wiped it on the oil stain. After a while, the test paper showed a light purple color, "It is mechanical lubricant, and it contains phosphorus. This formula is rarely seen in ordinary auto repair shops, but it is more commonly used in large machinery processing plants."

Wang Shuai immediately took out his tablet and pulled up a map of Haizhou. "Within three kilometers to the west of the city, there are only two factories that meet the requirements, one is Haizhou Heavy Industry and the other is Liming Machinery Parts Factory." He zoomed in on the mark on the map. "Haizhou Heavy Industry is a state-owned enterprise with strict security. Liming Machinery Factory was restructured last year and its management was lax. Maybe..."

Yang Lin suddenly interrupted him, his eyes falling on a metal box in the corner of the freezer. The surface of the box was covered with rust, and the edges were stained with black glue. "This is sealant," Yang Lin carefully opened the box with tweezers, and inside lay a soaked mobile phone. "If I'm not mistaken, this should be the communication tool that Chen Yonggang tried to destroy."

The technicians quickly took the phone back to the temporary command center for data recovery. Meanwhile, Yang Sen and Yang Lin continued to search for clues in the room. Yang Sen found a mass of black hair with blood at the root of the hair at the sewer outlet of the bathroom; Yang Lin found a crumpled long-distance bus ticket under the flower pot on the balcony. The departure time was three days before Chen Yongqiang's body was found, and the destination was Cangyan County in the neighboring province.

"Cangyan County?" Lu Chuan stared at the ticket, his finger moving quickly on the map, "There is a large scrap metal trading market there, with all kinds of people, it is indeed suitable for hiding. But Chen Yonggang can't walk there, he needs transportation." Before he finished speaking, the technicians brought good news: part of the data of the soaked mobile phone was successfully recovered, including an unsent text message draft, which contained only a license plate number and the five words "See you at the old place".

Through the cooperation of the traffic department, the police quickly locked the vehicle corresponding to the license plate number - a silver-gray Wuling van, which was sold at a second-hand car dealership in Cangyan County three days ago. The buyer registered with a fake identity. "Retrieve the surveillance of the second-hand car dealership!" Lu Chuan immediately issued an order. The surveillance footage showed that the man wearing a peaked cap and a mask habitually scratched the back of his head with his left hand when looking at the car - this action is completely consistent with Chen Yonggang's daily habit. (End of this chapter)