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

As the sun set, its afterglow tinged the canal with a dark red hue. Suddenly, Sun Zhiguo burst into tears, his face streaked with snot and tears: "I was wrong! I was really wrong! But I had no choice. Those construction site bosses forced me, and Li Baoquan forced me too!" His cries echoed through the empty canal, startling a flock of crows that fluttered and flew into the dark sky.

Lu Chuan looked at the distraught man, his eyes cold yet resolute. The judgment of the law may be delayed, but it will never be absent. Those consciences devoured by desire, those crimes committed out of greed, will ultimately pay the heaviest price when the truth is revealed. And Li Baoquan, the ordinary man who lost his life to expose the darkness, has finally received the justice that was long overdue.

Less than three days after the Li Baoquan case concluded, before the follow-up procedures were even complete, the criminal investigation team received another report.

The wind blowing from the top floor of the Haorui Building, carrying the reflections from the glass curtain wall, slammed into Lu Chuan's face. He looked up at the entrance to the rooftop on the 32nd floor. The cordon had been set up at the fire exit, and the property staff in blue overalls were huddled together in a corner. One of the men, wearing a hard hat, was constantly rubbing his hands together, the grease on his palms making his cheeks streaked with black and white.

"Team Leader Lu!" Yang Lin's voice came through the walkie-talkie, carrying the caution characteristic of someone investigating a crime scene. "The body is inside the elevator machine room, half-pressed by a hydraulic device. Preliminary assessment indicates the time of death exceeded 12 hours." As Lu Chuan pushed open the safety door, the metal hinges made a piercing creak. The height of the 32nd floor made the wind tremble. He adjusted his hat brim and saw several muddy footprints scattered at the entrance of the machine room, leaving dark dots on the smooth floor tiles.

The elevator machine room reeked of a mixture of engine oil and rust. Yang Lin was squatting beside the hydraulic pump, his gloved fingers hovering two centimeters above the corpse. The red dot on the laser rangefinder was on the back of the deceased's neck: "178cm tall, male, fully clothed but pockets turned inside out, watch stopped at 21:47, watch crystal with impact cracks." He turned to the side, letting Lu Chuan see the deceased's posture—curled up in front of the control panel, his right hand still clutching half a severed wire, the skin on his fingertips showing obvious scorch marks from electric shock.

Yang Sen held up a wide-angle camera and took pictures around, the sound of the shutter being particularly clear in the enclosed space: "There are three different sets of fingerprints on the inside of the machine room door. One set matches the deceased, and the other two sets need to be compared with the property staff database." He scanned the ground with an ultraviolet light, and several pale green fluorescent traces extended from the doorway to the body. "It's diluted hydraulic oil. Gait analysis shows that the deceased had staggered around here before his death, his stride gradually getting smaller, and finally he collapsed."

"Team Leader Lu!" Wang Shuai's voice came from the fire escape. He was half-squatting in front of the maintenance worker, the handwriting on his notebook trembling slightly in the wind. "The person who reported the incident is Mr. Zhang from the property maintenance team. He came to fix the elevator noise at seven o'clock this morning and saw this as soon as he opened the door."

Mr. Zhang's safety helmet was still hanging around his neck, the strap tightening so much that his Adam's apple was red. He swallowed hard, his voice trembling uncontrollably: "Yesterday... I came to inspect it at five o'clock yesterday afternoon, and there was nothing there! The elevator was working normally, just making a strange noise. I thought I'd come and check it out this morning." He suddenly pointed to the toolbox next to the body, "That's my toolbox! One wrench is missing from inside, the most commonly used 19mm open-end wrench!"

Yang Lin used tweezers to pick up fibers from the deceased's collar and examined them carefully against the light: "Dark blue polyester fiber, 30% blend, different from the composition of the property management uniform." He opened the deceased's palm; there was a thin callus on the web of the hand, but the fingertips were smooth. "Not a manual laborer, probably an office worker." The most crucial discovery was the half-broken access card in the deceased's left breast pocket, with the chip exposed and the gold-stamped "Holcim" lettering on the card half-stained with blood.

Yang Sen sprayed a developer on the buttons on the control panel, and several clear fingerprints emerged: "Besides the deceased's, there is also an oily fingerprint, the pattern of which matches Zhang's tool bag." He suddenly pointed to the ventilation vent in the corner of the wall, "There are fresh wiping marks here, as if someone deliberately cleaned it. There is also a brown hair hanging on the ventilation grille, about 12 centimeters long, which needs to be compared with DNA."

Lu Chuan stared at the cell phone at the body's feet; the screen was shattered, but still flickering faintly. "Technical Department, restore the data immediately." His gaze swept across the rooftop outside the server room, where a fresh scratch was visible on the railing. "Check the attendance records of all employees in the building, focusing on males between 175-180cm tall who didn't clock in yesterday." The wind carried the sounds of car horns from below, and he suddenly noticed grass clippings on the deceased's trouser leg—this type of clover had never appeared in the green areas of the Haorui Building before.

Wang Shuai's questioning continued when Mr. Zhang suddenly remembered something: "Oh right! Around 10 PM last night, I received a call from security saying that someone was trapped in the elevator on the 18th floor, and it was Engineer Li from the technical department who handled it!" His fingers twisted the hem of his work clothes. "Engineer Li... Engineer Li's height seems to be about the same as this person on the ground."

After Lu Chuan and the others left the scene, only Yang Lin and Yang Sen remained on the top floor of the Haorui Building. A cold wind howled across the 32-story building, causing the glass curtain wall to tremble slightly. Yang Lin removed the lens cap from his DSLR camera, switched to macro mode, and began photographing the muddy footprints on the ground.

"Yang Sen, take the plaster cast of the footprints and fix these footprints in place first." Yang Lin said as he squatted down and carefully measured the length and width of the footprints with a laser pointer. "Look at this stride, the spacing between the footprints is uneven, the deceased should have been in an unstable state before death."

Yang Sen nodded, skillfully taking out the footprint plaster powder and measuring cup, and mixing the plaster paste according to the ratio. "Indeed, the pressure points of the footprints are also strange. The forefoot area is obviously subjected to more force than the heel, which doesn't seem like the result of normal walking." He slowly poured the mixed plaster paste into the footprints. "However, people come and go in this building every day, so it's hard to say whether we can extract any useful information from these footprints."

After photographing the footprints, Yang Lin began taking panoramic photos of the entire rooftop. He set up his tripod, set the camera to panoramic mode, and slowly rotated the pan and tilt head to capture the entire rooftop environment in the frame. "Judging from the position of the body, the deceased was likely murdered while being moved from inside the elevator machine room," Yang Lin said, pointing to the bloodstains and drag marks on the ground. "However, these marks are quite damaged, probably caused by maintenance personnel entering the scene."

After securing the footprints, Yang Sen put on his headlamp and began inspecting the rooftop railing. (End of Chapter)