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

His fingers flew across the touchpad, the photos on the screen switching one by one. "Let's go through them one by one, better to kill three thousand innocent people than let one guilty person go free." The first one was "Sun Hao," a construction worker, whose scar was in the right location but only 3cm long, almost half the length of the deceased's. The second one was "Zhou Jian," a cook with experience working in a fishing port, but his scar was on his right arm and angled. The third one was "Wu Liang," a truck driver, whose features matched perfectly, even the angle of his scar was almost identical. But as he scrolled down, the words "incarcerated" hit him like a bucket of cold water—this man had been imprisoned three years ago for theft and was still in Jidong Prison.

“This system is smart my ass,” Li Bing dragged the third result into the exclusion bar, the mouse cursor leaving an afterimage on the screen. “They even include prisoners? Are the programmers idiots?” He scratched his fingernail on the “truck driver” tag, then suddenly stopped. “Wait, the truck driver profession is interesting. Wasn’t there engine oil residue under the deceased’s fingernails? Truck drivers touch steering wheels and repair cars every day; it’s normal for their hands to have engine oil on them.” Zhang Hui’s eyes lit up, and he immediately adjusted the search criteria, adding “truck driver,” “engine oil contact history,” and “A2 driver’s license” to the keywords. The system’s loading progress bar slowly crawled, eventually re-filtering out seven results. Among them, the name “Zheng Qiang” was like a magnet, firmly attracting everyone’s attention.

“Zheng Qiang, 34 years old, A2 driver’s license, regularly drives the freight route between the fishing port and the city,” Xiao Zhou read the information, his voice trembling slightly with excitement. “The registration information says he has a surgical scar on the inside of his left forearm, saying he was injured by a container while unloading cargo three years ago and underwent internal fixation surgery. He set off from the fishing port at 5 pm on May 15th to deliver a batch of frozen seafood to a cold storage in Wangjiagou, and then went missing. The logistics company reported him missing.” He placed Zheng Qiang’s ID photo and the skull reconstruction of the deceased side by side, splitting the screen in two. The facial features of the two faces were strikingly similar, both with high brow bones and flat noses, even the barely noticeable mole at the corner of their mouths was in the same place. Li Bing suddenly slapped his thigh, almost tipping the chair over: “It’s him! Look at those brow bones, both have prominent brow peaks, and those protruding ears, the shape is exactly the same!”

Zhang Hui frowned, staring at the photo of the scar. He zoomed in on the details on the screen: "The system says it's a surgical scar, but the deceased's scar has slight indentations at the edges, more like a healed scratch. Moreover, Zheng Qiang disappeared on the evening of May 15th, and our estimated time of death is also the evening of the 15th. This coincidence is a bit too much." He pulled up Zheng Qiang's vehicle registration information. A pop-up ad appeared while the page was loading, which he closed irritably. "License plate number: Ji B8275X, Dongfeng Tianlong truck, registered address: Shengda Logistics Company near Wangjiagou—less than three kilometers from the Li family cellar where the body was found!"

The discovery sent a jolt through everyone's weary nerves. Xiao Zhou immediately grabbed the landline on the table, his fingers flying across the keys: "Hello, is this the vehicle management office? Help me check the recent driving trajectory of Ji B8275X, especially the one from the evening of May 15th... Yes, the more detailed the better." Li Bing flipped through Zheng Qiang's traffic violation records, the mouse wheel clicking loudly. He stopped on a parking violation record from February 17th. In the photo, Zheng Qiang was standing next to a truck, smoking, wearing a dark blue work uniform. There was a triangular patch on his left breast pocket, the shape of which matched the deceased's clothing perfectly. "And this," he pointed to a traffic accident record, dated last winter, "Last year, there was a rear-end collision at the Wangjiagou intersection. The other party was a scrap collector on a tricycle, named Liu Laosi. It even went to the police station—could it be related to this case?"

Just then, the landline rang suddenly, the sharp ringtone startling everyone in the silence. Xiao Zhou grabbed the receiver, mumbled a few "uh-huhs," and hung up, his hands trembling: "The vehicle management office called back! Ji B8275X entered the Wangjiagou area at 8:17 PM on May 15th, unloaded its cargo at the cold storage entrance, and drove out at 8:42 PM, then disappeared in a blind spot of the surveillance cameras. Its last known location was less than 5 meters from Li's cellar!" Zhang Hui's gaze fell on Zheng Qiang's medical report, which was from a physical examination organized by the logistics company last year. "He has a history of high cholesterol, and his triglycerides are three times the normal level, which matches the forensic doctor's diagnosis of death from acute pancreatitis!" Xiao Zhou suddenly noticed that Zheng Qiang's emergency contact was his cousin, Zheng Wei, and the phone number showed that the registered address was in an old residential area in the city.

At four in the morning, Zhang Hui dialed Zheng Wei's number. The receiver was filled with deafening snoring, like an old, broken blower. "Who is it? In the middle of the night..." Zheng Wei's voice was hoarse from a hangover, mixed with the breathy sounds of yawning. When he heard the words "Zheng Qiang," "corpse," and "Wangjiagou cellar," he suddenly burst into a heart-wrenching sob, making Zhang Hui hold the receiver away: "My brother has been missing for five days! I thought he went on a long-haul trip, and when I couldn't get through, I thought it was just a bad signal... He has a scar on his left arm, on the inside, from when he was caught in a shipping container three years ago. He needed seven stitches, and the doctor said it damaged the bone. It still hurts on rainy days..."

The chain of events was slowly closing in the darkness before dawn. Zhang Hui ordered the technical department to immediately retrieve Zheng Qiang's DNA file, which he had kept when he took his driver's license test, and to urgently compare it with the deceased's biological samples. Li Bing stared blankly at the photo of Zheng Qiang's truck. The blue truck in the photo was parked at the fishing port dock, its bed piled high with styrofoam boxes. "On the evening of May 15th, he must have suddenly fallen ill after delivering goods, collapsed in pain by the roadside, and was found by that tricycle driver, Liu Laosi..." Xiao Zhou had already found Liu Laosi's information in the population system. The old man on the screen had gray hair and a wrinkled face. "Liu Laosi, 58 years old, a villager from Wangjiagou, has no children, makes a living by collecting scrap and hauling goods for others, owns a blue tricycle, and was seen wandering around near the Li family's cellar last Saturday evening, even asking Li Guojun if he was selling sweet potatoes."

At six in the morning, the sky outside the window was turning a pale white, and the first rays of dawn filtered through the blinds, casting long, thin patches of light on the floor. Xiao Wang from the technical department pushed open the door, holding a freshly printed report, the edges of the pages still warm from the printer. "The comparison results are in," he said, handing the report to Zhang Hui, his voice weary from working all night. "The probability of parentage is greater than 99.99%, the deceased is Zheng Qiang." Zhang Hui slammed the report on the table with a "thud," startling Xiao Zhou awake. The morning light fell directly on the words "Zheng Qiang," casting golden stripes, as if gilding the name with a halo. Xiao Zhou rubbed his red, tear-stained eyes and smiled, tears still clinging to the corners of his eyes. (End of Chapter)