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

When the SWAT officer kicked open the wooden door to the mezzanine office, he was using a lighter to burn Zhang Feng's IOU, the flames leaping over the words "100,000 gambling debt." "Zhang Feng forced me to do it all!" Tiger said, his gold chain wrapped around his wrist as he was pinned to the ground. "He said if Li Youcai died, I wouldn't have to pay back the money, and he even asked me to provide steel pipes, saying he'd give me 20,000 after it was done..."

The truth was revealed in the call log on Hu Zi's phone at 9:17 p.m. on July 12. "Zhang Feng said the person was taken care of," he said with a mournful face as he looked at the record book, "and told me to deal with the bloodstains on the steel pipe. I wiped it three times with hydrochloric acid, thinking I could get away with it..." The technicians found an opened bucket of hydrochloric acid in his garage, and the chemical composition was exactly the same as the corrosion marks on the steel pipe.

When Zhang Feng's and Hu Zi's confessions were put together, the whole picture of the case finally became clear: On July 9, Zhang Feng was threatened by Hu Zi because of gambling debts, and conspired with Zhao Xiu to kill Li Youcai by taking advantage of his accidental near-death experience; on the evening of July 12, the two intercepted Li Youcai in a cornfield, and Zhang Feng used a steel pipe provided by Hu Zi to kill him, and then dumped the body in a pigsty; Hu Zi was responsible for disposing of the murder weapon and paying hush money, trying to cover up the root cause of the gambling debt dispute.

At three in the morning, the lights in the interrogation room were still glaring. As Zhang Feng signed his confession, the pen tip pierced the paper, creating an eerie echo with the trembling handwriting on Li Youcai's IOU. Hu Zi's gold chain was put into an evidence bag, and the bloodstains on the clasp were found to belong to Li Youcai—he had gotten them while helping to move the body.

As Wang Shuai walked out of the interrogation room, the sky was already beginning to lighten. The train station's announcements were still broadcasting delay information, and the first squeal of a pig came from the direction of the pig farm. Zhang Feng and Hu Zi's confessions and Zhao Xiu's testimony fit together perfectly; from the source of the steel pipe to the details of disposing of the body, every point in time formed a closed loop with the evidence at the scene. When the technicians finished comparing the DNA samples of the three men with the fibers and bloodstains at the scene, the entire chain of evidence in the case finally formed a perfect closed loop in the morning light.

A week after the case at the breeding farm was closed, the criminal investigation team received another report.

A murder was discovered in an abandoned parking lot on the outskirts of the city. As the parking lot's iron gate was pried open with a crowbar, rust crumbled in the twilight. Lu Chuan walked forward, stepping on the shards of glass scattered everywhere. His rubber boots sank half a foot into the weeds, the stench of decay mixed with the smell of waste engine oil filling his nostrils, making him wince involuntarily. Security guard Lao Li, squatting outside the police line, his overcoat collar stained with vomit, saw Lu Chuan approaching and suddenly clutched his chest, coughing violently: "It was in that blue van… When I patrolled to the third row, I saw the back window was cracked open, and the smell… was worse than a dead rat."

Yang Lin was squatting on the front left side of the van, adjusting the multi-band light source. The blue-violet beam swept across the scratched door, casting a faint fluorescence on the inside of the door handle. "Yang Sen, look at this lock cylinder," he said, wedging a probe into the keyhole. "The pins are misaligned by 12 degrees, and there's brass powder at the base of the latch. The oxidation indicates it was pried open within the last 72 hours." He had the technician take a sample from the keyhole. "The door's sealing strip has fresh tear marks, and the rubber edges are curled, indicating it was cut with a blade, not opened normally."

Yang Sen, carrying a surveying lamp, went around to the back of the vehicle. The spare tire's mounting bolts showed signs of being loosened. "The rust on the nuts is 40% less than on other parts," he said, using a laser rangefinder to measure the exposed length of the bolts. "The threads of the third bolt on the left have dark brown fibers stuck to them. The sample collected by the vacuum cleaner needs to be analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, but judging from the luster, it looks like some kind of coarse cotton thread." He lay on the ground to examine the underside of the vehicle. There was a dent in the exhaust pipe's heat shield. "The deformation indicates that it was hit by a blunt object with a diameter of about 5 centimeters. The paint in the dent is covered with grass-green fabric fibers."

Wang Shuai had already drawn a simple map of the parking lot in his notebook, marking the locations of 28 abandoned vehicles. "Is this parking lot usually guarded?" he asked Lao Li, who was wiping his nose with his sleeve. Two buttons on his military overcoat were missing, revealing a yellowed undershirt underneath. "Have any suspicious vehicles or people come in or out recently?" Lao Li's voice was trembling with tears: "I'm the only one guarding the place, and I sleep in the gatehouse at night. The day before yesterday afternoon, I saw a white sedan drive in, park for less than ten minutes, and then leave. I didn't pay any attention at the time... The rear license plate of that car was covered in mud, so I couldn't see the number."

Yang Lin's inspection light shone on the van's left front wheel, where a withered leaf was stuck in the tire tread. "A Dunlop ST30," he said, measuring the tread depth with calipers. "Only 3 millimeters of tread remain, classifying it as a scrap tire, but there are fresh scratches on the shoulder, and the wear pattern of the rubber indicates they were formed last night." He instructed the technicians to take samples from the scratches. "The remaining red paint particles need to be analyzed in the lab, but judging from the reflectivity, it looks like the original paint from some kind of domestically produced sedan."

Yang Sen suddenly shouted from the weeds behind the van on the right: "There's a complete shoe print here!" He was pouring plaster powder into the print. The forefoot of the shoe print had a wavy pattern, and there was obvious wear on the heel. "Size 42, it should be a men's sneaker. The mud on the sole is mixed with rust powder, which matches the environmental sample from the parking lot." He measured the distance from the shoe print to the van using pacing: "The straight-line distance is 7 meters, but there are back-and-forth footprints, which means someone lingered near the vehicle."

“There’s something reflecting light in the back seat,” Yang Lin’s voice came from the car window as he examined the interior with an endoscope. “It looks like a piece of metal, half-covered by a dark blanket.” There was a circular hole in the window, with shards of glass scattered in the door seams. “The hole is about 8 centimeters in diameter, consistent with being smashed with a tool like a fire axe. The freshness of the glass shards indicates it was formed within the last three days.” He had a technician use a vacuum cleaner to collect the dust around the hole. “We found dark brown coarse cotton fibers, exactly the same as those on the spare tire lug nuts.”

In Wang Shuai's notebook, Lao Li's description gradually became clearer. "Around 11 p.m. last night, I heard noises in the parking lot," he said, pulling his military overcoat tighter, his teeth chattering. "It sounded like someone was trying to break into a car. I called out but there was no response, so I didn't dare to come out and check." He suddenly remembered something. "Oh right, this morning when I was on patrol, I saw that the back window of this blue van was ajar, while the windows of the other cars were all closed. I immediately felt something was wrong, and when I got closer, I could smell something... Ugh..."

Yang Lin made a new discovery on the steering wheel of the van. "There's a blurry fingerprint on it," he observed with a magnifying glass. "The central pattern is whorl-shaped, but the details are insufficient for direct comparison." (End of Chapter)