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

After receiving the notification, Zhang Guojun's wife held her husband's portrait and cried all night. Lalamove also offered condolences to the family. As Zhang Hui closed the case file, the moonlight streamed through the blinds, casting a soft silver glow on the words "Case Closed."

This bloody incident, triggered by a 3,000 yuan shipping fee, ended in the most tragic way. The lights in the interrogation room remained bright, but they couldn't illuminate the dark corners of humanity; the community's water tank remained silent, but it forever remembered the evil and cries of that night. Zhang Hui rubbed his throbbing temples and picked up the next case file—criminal investigation has no end, and the pursuit of justice is a never-ending journey.

Less than a week after Zhang Guojun's case, the Criminal Investigation Detachment received another report.

The morning mist over the Beihe River had not yet dissipated. Li Baochang squatted in the reeds on the riverbank, his fishing rod stuck diagonally in the mud, the fishing line floating on the murky water. His fingers gripped his soaked trouser leg tightly, his knees sinking into the cold mud. When he saw the flashing police lights approaching, he suddenly collapsed to the ground as if he had lost his soul, the murky river water dripping down his clothes.

As soon as Lu Chuan's police car came to a stop on the riverbank, police tape was set up along the shore. He approached, wading through ankle-deep dew, and was immediately hit by a stench of water plants and silt. A male corpse floated on the surface, face down, the hem of his black jacket billowing in the current, revealing pale wrists, like a waterlogged leaf.

"Protect the surrounding area and don't disturb the footprints." Lu Chuan ordered in a deep voice into the walkie-talkie, his gaze sweeping over the muddy riverbank. This was a shallow beach in the lower reaches of the Beihe River, where reeds grew taller than a person. The muddy bank was covered with footprints of varying depths, the clearest being the muddy rubber shoe print of Li Baochang, like an ugly flower blooming on the wetland.

Yang Lin, carrying his survey bag, disappeared into the reeds. The beam of his survey lamp pierced the thin mist, drawing bright lines on the muddy ground. "Found a set of size 44 leather shoe prints," he said, crouching down to measure with a ruler. The pressure surface of the forefoot of the shoe prints was concentrated on the outer side, with fresh river mud clinging to the edges. "Stride length 78 centimeters, stride width 16 centimeters, stride angle 6 degrees outward, estimating height 178-183 centimeters." The shoe prints extended from the riverbank to the water's edge, with a clear pause at the location corresponding to the body. Debris of aquatic plants was embedded in the pattern on the heel.

Yang Sen was shining a footprint lamp on the surrounding reeds, where several broken reed stems were stained with dark red stains. "The reed stalks have fresh breakage marks, with the cut at a sharp 45-degree angle," he said, picking up a stained leaf with tweezers. "They're about 120 centimeters from the ground, which is about the height an adult would reach when leaning against or pulling on them." Three meters away in the grass, he found a half-smoked cigarette butt; the saliva stains on the filter were still fresh, and the degree of burning of the tobacco indicated that it had been hastily extinguished.

Wang Shuai placed the interrogation record book on the hood of the police car. Li Baochang's fingers trembled incessantly as he traced the date "5:20 a.m. on June 15th." "I come here to fish every day," his voice trembled with tears, the chattering of his teeth particularly clear. "Today, I had just cast my line when I saw something black floating on the surface. I thought it was trash, so I rowed over to try and pull it up. But when I hooked it, I saw it was a person... their face was white from being submerged in water. It scared me to death!"

Yang Lin's survey light flickered on the water's surface, with tiny bubbles floating around the body. "The body is floating steadily, back up," he observed the direction of the current. "The current is 0.3 meters per second, and there's a whirlpool three meters downstream of the body. Clothing fibers are caught on the reed roots." There was a drag mark in the muddy bank, about 40 centimeters wide, stretching from the riverbank to the water's edge. The aquatic plants in the mark were flattened, and black fabric fibers were still stuck to the edges.

"Has anyone been around here recently?" Wang Shuai's pen drew crooked lines on the paper. Li Baochang suddenly slapped his thigh: "Yes! Yesterday afternoon when I was reeling in my line, I saw a man in a black jacket loitering on the riverbank, carrying a black cloth bag, acting suspiciously." He gestured his height, "About your height, a little hunched over, always walking with his head down, smoking a lot, and leaving cigarette butts all over the ground."

Yang Sen made a new discovery in the rubble pile on the riverbank. A silver button was half-buried among the stones, with four round holes and a worn pattern on the surface, consistent with the common style of jacket buttons. "There was a black fiber wrapped in the buttonhole," he carefully put it away in an evidence bag, "about 5 centimeters long, made of polyester, consistent with the preliminary judgment of the body's clothing." In the soil next to the rubble pile, there was also a lighter, with the words "Smooth Sailing" engraved on the metal casing and fresh fingerprints on the bottom.

Yang Lin followed the drag marks up the riverbank and found more clues in a sunken pit. "There are traces of a heavy object here," he said, measuring the pit with a ruler. "It's about 120 centimeters long, 60 centimeters wide, and 5 centimeters deep, with black cloth friction marks on the edges." There were a few drops of dark red stains on the grass around the pit, which tested positive after being wiped with an alcohol swab—suspected bloodstains.

Wang Shuai's inquiry turned to the river's hydrological conditions. "Do boats usually pass through this river?" he asked, pointing to the ripples on the surface. Li Baochang shook his head: "There's a sluice gate downstream. The current is usually slow, and apart from our small fishing boats, very few boats come here. But last night the wind picked up, and the waves were quite big. Maybe something was washed down." He suddenly remembered something, "Last week I caught a black cloth bag here with some old clothes inside. I thought it was bad luck, so I threw it back into the water."

Yang Sen found a series of blurry tire tracks on the bank opposite the body. The tires were about 18 centimeters wide, typical of car tires. “The tire track spacing is 150 centimeters, and the wheelbase is 270 centimeters,” he said, covering the tire tracks with rubbing paper. “The tread depth is 2 millimeters, and the wear is uniform, suggesting the vehicle was 3-5 years old. There is fresh river mud at the edges of the tire tracks, indicating that the vehicle recently came close to the water.”

As technicians prepared to retrieve the body, Lu Chuan's gaze fell upon the surveillance camera pole on the riverbank. "Check the footage from this camera," he said, pointing to the camera at the top of the pole, "focusing on the footage from the afternoon to the evening of June 14th, especially the man in the black jacket and the suspicious vehicle." The reeds in the distance rustled in the morning breeze, as if telling the secret that had been submerged by the water.

As Wang Shuai closed the notebook, Li Baochang was still muttering about the floating corpse. "His right hand seemed to be holding something," the old man's voice trembled, "swaying back and forth in the water, like a bunch of keys." Yang Sen suddenly spotted a metal ring in the mud by the water's edge. He pulled it out and saw it was a bunch of keys, with a car remote hanging from the keychain, covered in the same mud as the one next to the cigarette butt. (End of Chapter)