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

Zheng Biao pointed ahead: "I grabbed his work clothes by the collar and dragged him towards the door. The fabric got caught on the iron frame and tore open..." Sure enough, there was a half-strand of dark blue thread hanging on the edge of the warehouse iron frame, which was exactly the same as the fibers left on Zhang Kaiqi's work clothes.

When Zheng Biao reached the bottom of the ventilation vent, his breathing suddenly became rapid. "Later he stopped moving, and I was afraid of being discovered, so I tried to hide him." He pointed to the metal mesh of the ventilation vent, "I stood on the cargo box and took this apart, trying to stuff him in, but the mesh was too small..." This confirmed Yang Lin's discovery during the investigation—the ventilation vent screws had fresh signs of being turned, and Zheng Biao's fingerprints were still on the inside.

When they were escorted to Su Wanjun's house, the sun had already pierced through the clouds. Zheng Biao stood in the center of the living room, his gaze sweeping over the two coffee stains on the coffee table, when he suddenly slumped to the floor: "He was sitting right here, holding Xiao Su's necklace." He pointed to the gap between the sofa and the coffee table, "As soon as I entered, I saw them leaning against each other, the necklace pendant lying on the carpet, a heart-shaped silver lump..." The forensic doctor later detected fragments of Zhang Kaiqi's skin tissue in the carpet fibers at that location.

"How many times did you hit him?" Zhang Hui's voice echoed in the small living room. Zheng Biao's fingers tapped unconsciously on his knee, the rhythm matching the "three blunt force wounds" recorded during Zhang Kai's autopsy: "The first was on the shoulder, the second on the back of the head... When he fell, his head hit the corner of the coffee table with a dull thud." Sure enough, there was a fresh dent on the lower right corner of the coffee table, and the trace amount of blood on it was identified as belonging to Zhang Kaiqi.

Standing in front of the bedroom wardrobe, Zheng Biao's voice trembled with tears: "Xiao Su was hiding inside, I heard her crying." He gestured as if dragging, the width of his outstretched arms perfectly matching the length of the scratches on the wardrobe door. "I dragged his feet out the door, his hair brushing against the floor, leaving a black mark..." The DNA from the hair remaining in the cracks of the floor was Zhang Kaiqi's.

When pointing out the truck cab, Zheng Biao's gaze fell on a wrench hidden in a compartment. "After the blood dried, I wiped it with a rag," he said, his fingers sliding in the groove of the wrench, "but there must still be something left in these gaps..." The technician shone a UV lamp on it, and the surface of the wrench immediately showed a pale green fluorescent reaction, which perfectly matched the fluorescence spectrum of Zhang Kaiqi's bloodstains.

The final stop was the drag marks outside the warehouse. Zheng Biao stared at the red mud on the ground and suddenly laughed: "When I stuffed him into the truck, his hand moved and grabbed a handful of mud." He grabbed a handful of red mud and crushed it. "Later, when I buried him, this hand was sticking out, so I kicked the mud up to cover it..." Yang Lin's on-site investigation record of "mud residue on the right palm of the body" finally had a reasonable explanation.

The identification process lasted a full four hours. When Zheng Biao was escorted back to the police car, sweat mixed with mud streamed down his face, leaving deep furrows. He suddenly shouted towards the warehouse, "I really didn't mean to kill him... He bumped into the coffee table himself..." This statement perfectly matched the conclusion in Zhang Kai's autopsy report that "there was a conning fracture in the occipital region of the skull, consistent with blunt force trauma combined with impact."

As the police car drove Zheng Biao away, Zhang Hui stood at the warehouse entrance, watching the technician compare the video footage of the identification process with Yang Lin's investigation report, point by point. Every detail was meticulously matched: from the angle of the wrench strike to the length of the dragging trajectory, and the distribution of fingerprints on the ventilation vents, everything formed a closed loop with the evidence left at the scene. Sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone on the warehouse's corrugated iron roof, finally revealing the most gruesome form of the truth, which had been covered by blood and mud, in the stark white light of the identification scene.

On the way back, Zhang Hui reviewed Zheng Biao's identification record and suddenly noticed a detail—Zheng Biao said that when Zhang Kaiqi collapsed in the warehouse, his left hand was clenched into a fist. This echoed Yang Lin's record during the investigation that "the deceased's left ring finger had a ring-shaped indentation." Perhaps the missing ring was hidden in some undiscovered corner of the warehouse. The logistics park outside the car window gradually receded into the distance, but Zhang Hui knew that this murder case, intertwined with emotion and violence, had finally come to a definitive conclusion with the last moment of the on-site identification.

A week after the Zheng Biao case, the Criminal Investigation Division was busy processing related case materials, but less than two days later, the Criminal Investigation Division received another report.

The motion-activated lights in the underground parking garage snapped on as Lu Chuan stepped in, the stark white light illuminating the gray shadow in the corner with exquisite detail. The flashlight held by security guard Lao Liu was still trembling; its beam swept across the huddled figure, casting an irregular outline of the dark red stains seeping from the collar of his gray pajamas onto the concrete. "I smelled something strange during my check-in at 6:15," Lao Liu said, tapping his rubber baton rapidly on the ground. "When I got closer, I saw it was Lao Zhao, lying on the left rear of the Passat, a slipper lying at his feet."

As Lu Chuan crouched down, his trousers brushed against the sycamore leaves on the ground. The deceased's eyes were wide open, his mouth half-open, and the sleeves of his gray cotton pajamas were rolled up to his elbows, revealing several parallel scratches on his forearms. "Yang Lin, secure the body's position and condition," he said, pointing to the black sedan 0.8 meters away from the body. "Yang Sen, focus your investigation on this Passat, especially the door handles and the trunk." His fingertips hovered over the deceased's ankle, where there was a dark brown ligature mark with a few silvery-white fibers clinging to the edge.

Yang Lin had already laid out the investigation mat and was drawing circles along the outline of the body with chalk. "Male, about 45 years old, fully clothed but two buttons are popped off," he said, his gloved fingers brushing across the deceased's chest. "There's the outline of a hard object in the inner pocket of the pajamas, like a wallet." He suddenly stopped to the right of the deceased, where there was a blurry mark on the cement floor. "A size 42 rubber shoe print, diamond pattern on the forefoot, blurred by a third of the water stain, with a notch at the heel."

Yang Sen was aiming a laser rangefinder at the Passat: "The front left wheel of the vehicle is 1.2 meters away from the body, the right rear door is not fully closed, and there is a 3-centimeter gap in the window." He opened the driver's side door, and a smell mixed with leather and sweat rushed out. "There is a clean area at the three o'clock position of the steering wheel, covered with a thin layer of dust, as if someone wiped it with a cloth." Several business cards were scattered on the passenger seat, and the handwriting on the top one, "Zhao Jianguo Shengda Trading," was half-bleached by coffee stains.

As Wang Shuai helped Lao Liu into the duty room, the tea stains at the bottom of his enamel cup rippled in the hot water. "Anything unusual about the garage lately?" His notebook lay open on the table, the pen tip hovering over the "Nighttime Entry/Exit Personnel" section. Lao Liu's hands, still trembling, held the cup. "Last Wednesday night, a white van lingered at the entrance for a long time. When the security guard questioned it, it said it was in the wrong place; the license plate was covered by camouflage cloth." He suddenly slammed his hand on the table. "That's right! Lao Zhao's parking space is always occupied by a red Civic. Last Thursday, he even argued with the owner, and that young man pointed at him and yelled, 'I'll get you sooner or later!'" (End of Chapter)