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

The interrogation room light cast dappled shadows on Zhang Lijun's face. His gold-rimmed glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose, revealing bloodshot eyes—the red veins looked like countless struggling worms crawling densely across the whites of his eyes. "I just wanted to scare him," his voice trembled with tears. The scar on his right ring finger was particularly noticeable under the light; the mark left from surgery three years ago was now twitching slightly with the trembling of his finger. "He forced me to pay back the money and even said he would report me to the hospital's disciplinary committee for embezzling research funds... You know, a doctor's reputation is more important than life itself."

Wang Shuai's pen paused on the notebook, the ink from the nib spreading across the words "evening of May 12th." "Do I need to prepare cyanide to scare him?" He suddenly slammed the scalpel numbered "037" on the table, the crisp sound of the metal handle striking the surface echoing in the enclosed space. "How do you explain the LV leather fibers on the handle of your personal scalpel? The fibers in Zhang Lihui's fingernails are exactly the same as those on the knife in your office drawer!"

Zhang Lijun's shoulders jerked as if burned by the cold glint of a scalpel. He instinctively pushed up his glasses, the frame leaving a red mark on his nose. "That's...that's from when I accidentally scratched him while treating his wound." His Adam's apple bobbed, and the swallowing motion made the veins on his neck bulge like earthworms. "He injured his hand when a shelf fell on him in the store last month, and I stitched him up..."

"Using a neurosurgeon's scalpel to sew up someone's hand?" Wang Shuai sneered, flipping through the head nurse's testimony. "On May 10th, when you applied for potassium cyanide, you specifically requested it be individually packaged in a black plastic bag; the pharmacy's surveillance cameras captured it clearly." He suddenly raised his voice, slamming his pen nib heavily on the table. "At 9:15 PM on May 12th, your car appeared on the county road leading to Wolf Valley. The car's GPS showed you stayed in the valley for 1 hour and 20 minutes—what were you doing during that time? Sewing up the air?"

Zhang Lijun's fingers suddenly gripped the armrests of the interrogation chair tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force, and the scar on his right ring finger was squeezed into a twisted red line. "I...I just wanted to have a proper talk with him," his voice began to tremble, like a candle flame about to be extinguished by the wind, "He said he would drop the charges if I returned 50,000 yuan, so I arranged to meet him in the mountain valley, where it's secluded and no one will bother us..."

"So remote that it's suitable for murder and arson?" Wang Shuai pushed a photo of a farm tricycle in front of him. The inner wall of the tin bucket in the truck bed was covered with bluish-black rust. "The cyanide residue in this bucket is exactly the same as the bottle in your office safe. Your father-in-law's farmland has used organic fertilizer for twenty years. When did he ever need you to drive out in the middle of the night to pick up chemical fertilizer?" The tin bucket in the photo looked like a wide-open eye under the light, staring intently at Zhang Lijun's pale face.

Zhang Lijun suddenly slumped back in his chair, his glasses sliding all the way down to the tip of his nose, his eyes brimming with tears. "He looks down on me," his voice laced with years of suppressed resentment, saliva forming a glistening thread at the corner of his mouth. "He's always said I was adopted since I was little. He runs a luxury store and makes a fortune, while I work myself to the bone in the hospital and he still calls me poor..." He suddenly raised his voice, slamming his right hand heavily on the table, the handcuffs clanging against the metal surface. "What right does he have! Just because his father is richer than mine?"

Wang Shuai underlined the words "medical malpractice compensation" with his pen: "Last year, you compensated the patient 800,000 yuan for the accident, 500,000 of which was misappropriated research funds, right?" He stared at Zhang Lijun's trembling lips. "Zhang Lihui found your ledger and used it to blackmail you into returning that 100,000 yuan, otherwise he would report you—isn't that the real reason you killed him?"

These words were like a scalpel, precisely dissecting Zhang Lijun's last line of defense. His shoulders trembled violently, tears mixed with snot streaming down his white coat, blurring the words "City First Hospital" into a patch of indistinct stain. "At 10 p.m. on May 12th, I waited for him in the mountain valley," his voice broke, like a tape recorder stuck in malfunction, "When he arrived, he called me a thief, saying he'd make sure I couldn't stay in the hospital..." Zhang Lijun suddenly grabbed his hair, the scalp peeking out between his fingers turning red from the force, "I threw 5 yuan in front of him, and he stepped on the money and spat, saying that this amount wasn't even enough for him to buy a tie..."

"And then you threatened him with the scalpel?" Wang Shuai pushed the scalpel closer, the blade gleaming coldly under the light. "Or did you just pull out the cyanide?" Zhang Lijun's breathing suddenly quickened, his chest heaving like a broken bellows. "I originally wanted to... to dilute the cyanide with water, to scare him into thinking we'd die together..." His Adam's apple bobbed. "But he grabbed the bottle and threatened to call the police, and in a moment of panic... in a moment of panic, I poured the whole bottle into his mouth..."

This statement plunged the interrogation room into a brief, deathly silence, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. Zhang Lijun suddenly covered his face, blood seeping from the red welts on his wrists from the handcuffs: "When he fell, his eyes were wide open, his right hand still clutching that LV belt..." His voice suddenly rose, filled with an almost manic fear, "I was afraid he wasn't quite dead, so I dragged him to the pile of pine branches I'd already prepared, poured gasoline on him... When the flames rose, I saw his watch stop at 11:05..."

Wang Shuai's pen flew across the recording paper, the sound of the pen tip scratching the paper mingling with Zhang Lijun's sobs. "When you used the farm tricycle to transport pine branches, didn't you think you'd leave any traces?" he suddenly asked. Zhang Lijun's crying stopped abruptly, and he looked up blankly: "I thought... I thought that once it was burned, everything would be gone... A doctor's hands should be clean..." He looked down at his hands, hands that had once held scalpels to save lives, but now, under the interrogation room lights, they revealed a hideous appearance stained with blood.

When the interrogation record required a signature, Zhang Lijun's hands trembled so much he could barely hold the pen, and it took him three tries to finally sign his name in the "suspect" column. His signature was crooked and shaky, the last stroke trailing off like a long tail, like a snake struggling on the paper. As Wang Shuai closed the record book, the morning light shone through the gaps in the blinds, casting a pale band of light on Zhang Lijun's white coat—a light that ultimately failed to cleanse his hands, stained with sin.

As Wang Shuai stepped out of the interrogation room, the motion-activated lights in the corridor turned on, illuminating the slogan "A Doctor's Benevolent Heart" on the wall. He suddenly remembered the gilded fountain pen in Zhang Lihui's office; perhaps what it truly wrote wasn't a debt dispute bill, but rather the twisted humanity of two men, their fates intertwined, distorted by desire and hatred.

The day after Zhang Lijun's arrest, police escorted him to the scene of the cremation. (End of Chapter)