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

“Officer, Zheng Qiang and I did have a bit of a disagreement,” Qin Baosheng said, twirling a cigarette between his fingers, “but it’s nowhere near the point of murder.” His gaze drifted to the security camera in the corner of the freight station. “On the night of the 15th, I was drinking with clients in the city. The KTV’s surveillance footage proves that I didn’t leave from 7 p.m. until 1 a.m..” Zhang Hui noticed a band-aid wrapped around his right index finger, with dark red scabs around the edges. “Oh, that… I got pricked by a nail while moving goods last week.”

However, the cargo station's attendance records showed that Qin Baosheng left at 4 PM on May 15th, two hours earlier than usual. "The customer changed the time at the last minute," he explained, noting that his phone records did show a 3:50 PM appointment. "I went home to change my clothes before going to the KTV." Zhang Hui suddenly asked, "Do you know how to tie a fisherman's knot?" Qin Baosheng's fingers paused, then he laughed: "I used to work on ships; I can tie that knot with my eyes closed." He picked up a nylon rope and quickly tied a standard fisherman's knot, then proudly swung the end of the rope.

The technical department's preliminary comparison results came quickly: Qin Baosheng's fingerprints matched six characteristic points with the unfamiliar fingerprints on the truck's cab floor mats, and the Yellow Crane Tower cigarettes he smoked belonged to the same batch as the cigarette butts in the ashtray on the passenger side. Even more suspiciously, the freight station's refrigerated truck GPS showed that at 8:10 PM on May 15th, a refrigerated truck with license plate number Ji B3692Y appeared near Wangjiagou and stayed for seventeen minutes—this period coincided with Zheng Qiang's death window.

“That was a delivery of frozen meat,” Qin Baosheng pulled up the delivery slip, the recipient being the cold storage in Wangjiagou. “The driver, Xiao Zhou, can testify that he stayed in the truck the whole time.” But Xiao Zhou’s statement had a flaw: “The boss told me to wait at the intersection, saying he was going to relieve himself in the cornfield next door. He came back about ten minutes later, covered in mud.” Zhang Hui immediately had the technical department inspect the refrigerated truck. In the toolbox in the trunk, they found a dark green hemp rope with fiber composition exactly the same as the one found at the scene, and the end of the rope had some dark red stains.

When Zhang Hui laid out the photos of the fisherman's knot, the refrigerated truck's tracking information, and the rope identification report on the table, Qin Baosheng's fingers, which were holding a Zhonghua cigarette, suddenly froze. The ash fell with a "plop" onto the brass buckle of his Crocodile brand belt. He stared at the sharply defined knot in the photo, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as if something was stuck in his throat. Fine beads of sweat instantly appeared on his usually shiny forehead, gleaming palely under the fluorescent light.

“What…what does this prove?” His voice suddenly trembled, the last syllable like a taut string. Before Zhang Hui could speak, he jerked back, the four legs of the wicker chair scraping across the concrete floor with a piercing scream before crashing with a loud bang against the cargo box. The gold ring scraped haphazardly on the table, the sound of the ring face rubbing against the report paper like fingernails scratching glass, leaving several winding black marks.

"He started it!" Qin Baosheng suddenly sprang up from his chair, then slumped back down, his Rolex watch chain wrapping around his finger in the chaos, leaving a red mark. He grabbed a photo of a fisherman and slammed it on the table, the glass frame cracking with a spiderweb pattern: "That day in the cornfield, he parked his truck across the road and yelled at me through the window, calling me a 'snatching dog,' saying he'd get my brother-in-law to shut down my freight station!"

Spittle splattered on the Wangjiagou section of the refrigerated truck's route map. He suddenly lowered his voice, the muscles at the corner of his mouth twitching: "He also said... that my wife had an affair with a shareholder of the fishing port, otherwise how could she have gotten the dedicated line..." These words felt like a red-hot iron burning his tongue. He clenched his fist tightly, his knuckles turning white as if they were about to crack. "Is that the kind of thing a human being would say? My wife and I have worked our way up from street stalls to the freight station, how dare he insult us like that!"

Zhang Hui's fountain pen scratched on the notebook, the sound of the nib piercing the paper startling Qin Baosheng. He suddenly grabbed the enamel teacup on the table; the tea stains at the bottom shimmered like a distorted map under the light. "I just wanted to teach him a lesson," he said, the teacup warped in his grip, "I grabbed a rope from the freight station, intending to tie him up in the cornfield and let the mosquitoes bite him a few more times to vent my anger..."

Before he could finish speaking, he slammed the teacup against the corner of the wall, shards of coarse porcelain mixed with brown tea stains scattering across the floor. "But then he suddenly clutched his stomach and squatted down," Qin Baosheng's voice choked, tears mingling with sweat streaming down his neck, "His face was as white as a sheet, he was panting heavily, and he grabbed my trouser leg, saying, 'Take me to the hospital…' I was terrified. My mind was filled with thoughts of his brother-in-law's influence; what if he got ripped off…"

His fingers unconsciously mimicked a dragging motion, his nails leaving messy marks on the table: "When I saw he wasn't moving, I... I used a rope to loop around his ankles and dragged him to the cellar. The corn leaves cut my arm so badly, and his head hit the stone with a 'thud,' but I didn't dare look back..." At this point, he suddenly covered his face, suppressed sobs leaking through his fingers, the Rolex dial reflecting a cold light as it trembled.

“That fisherman’s knot was tied on purpose,” Qin Baosheng’s voice squeezed out from between his fingers, like a piece of iron being sanded down. “Old fishermen in the fishing port all tie this kind of knot. I wanted the police to think they did it… I threw the hemp rope at the bottom of the toolbox and even sprayed disinfectant in the trunk of the refrigerated truck, thinking it would cover up the smell…”

The ceiling fan in the freight station warehouse turned slowly, mixing the fishy smell with Qin Baosheng's panting. Suddenly remembering something, he frantically ripped open his shirt collar, revealing scratches on his collarbone: "He scratched me like this. Before I fell, he held on tightly to me, his nails almost digging into my flesh..." The scratches had already scabbed over, the dark red scars like centipedes crawling on pale skin, silently echoing the skin tissue sample under Zheng Qiang's fingernails.

Zhang Hui stared at the man who had collapsed in an instant, then suddenly noticed the blood seeping from under the bandage on his right hand—not from a nail, but more like a cut from something, the shape matching the metal buckle on Zheng Qiang's truck cab. Qin Baosheng followed his gaze and looked down, suddenly feeling all his strength drain away. He slumped into his chair, muttering to himself, "It was from the pendant on his steering wheel… When I dragged him to the cellar, the pendant caught on my sleeve…"

The roar of a refrigerated truck starting up came from outside the warehouse. Qin Baosheng's gaze suddenly became vacant as he stared blankly at the banner on the wall that read "Honesty is the Foundation." The banner had been awarded last year when people were being recognized for their outstanding work. Its edges were yellowed from cooking fumes, and it trembled slightly in the draft, as if mocking this farce that had arisen from greed and anger.

The day after Qin Baosheng's arrest, police escorted him to a cellar in Wangjiagou to identify the site where the body was dumped. (End of Chapter)