The Mystery of the Inner Demon

Chapter 292 Falling to Death in the Middle of the Night
Then, they all turned their gazes to Song Yun.

"A murder has occurred in Huantai Residential Area." Qi Fei looked at Song Yun with a stern face. The woman's reaction made him even more suspicious—she didn't seem very surprised. There were only faint ripples on her face, which was just the expected autumn wind and falling leaves.
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A midnight rainstorm caused the temperature in Nancheng to drop sharply, and it was already time to wear a jacket.

Across the community garden, a crowd had gathered at the foot of the building south of Ma Ziqiang's home.

The cordon couldn't stop people's curiosity; many held up their phones and took pictures from a distance.

In fact, they wouldn't be able to film anything. Qi Fei walked through the crowd of onlookers and saw the crime scene.

In the flower bed below the apartment building, a male corpse, dressed in pajamas, lay face down in the grass. Rainwater soaked the hair on the back of his head, strands clinging to his bloodless scalp.

"The deceased was discovered this morning by the community gardener while maintaining the greenery. It can be basically confirmed that he is a resident of the 18th floor of this building," the police officer at the scene said, pointing to the top of the apartment building.

Qi Fei looked up and saw that the north-facing window on the 18th floor and the grille of the air conditioner unit had been knocked askew and were swaying precariously in the autumn wind.

Xiao Tao had arrived and was carefully examining the deceased's condition from his toolbox. Without looking up, he said to Qi Fei, who was standing close to him, "Lower limb fractures, spinal compression, and skull base fracture are consistent with death from a fall from a height. The deceased has multiple wounds on his body, which need to be taken back for further examination to determine whether they were caused by the fall or were premeditated."

"But you mean he was alive when he fell?" Qi Fei's question was somewhat presupposed.

Xiao Tao nodded: "The open fracture has a hematoma, which means he was probably alive when he fell. Hmm? What's this?" As he spoke, he grabbed the deceased's hand. Because of the fracture, the arm could be raised at any angle like a rubber tube. In addition to dirt and bloodstains, there were brown scratches on the palm.

"Rust?" Qi Fei leaned closer to look and guessed, then looked up again at the air conditioner unit grille swaying in the wind outside the 18th floor, and vaguely guessed what it was.

After carefully checking, Xiao Tao stood up and said to Qi Fei, "Give me a hand and turn him over."

Qi Fei had no choice but to follow Xiao Tao's instructions, reaching his hand under the deceased and lifting him up with Xiao Tao.

The moment the body was lifted, Qi Fei felt a strange sensation. Unlike a normal stiff corpse, this body was like a sack full of bone fragments, loose and crumpled—the person's bones and internal organs had been shattered by the impact of the fall from a great height.

What's even more horrifying is his face. Because he fell face down on the ground, his entire face was flattened, making it impossible to recognize his original appearance.

"Uh, no matter how much I feel down in the future, I will never jump off a building to commit suicide." Qi Fei couldn't help but sigh upon seeing this.

"We knocked on the door, but no one answered. We've already called a locksmith to pick the lock," the policeman said, as a locksmith-looking man arrived.

"Huh? The door is locked?"

"Not entirely. The deceased's house used a combination lock. Once it was closed, it was essentially locked unless the password was known." "In other words, the fact that the door was locked doesn't confirm whether he was alone when he died." Qi Fei frowned.

The elevator doors opened, and the "18F" sign directly in front of him made him feel as if he had arrived at Ma Ziqiang's home.

The moment the door was pried open, a strong gust of wind rushed in, leaving the room in a mess, with blueprints scattered everywhere.

On the entryway cabinet were a wallet and car keys. Qi Fei found an ID card in the wallet with the name "Lin Yu" on it. Soon, the face on the card caught Qi Fei's attention. It was the face of a young man, with decent features but not handsome. He looked like an ordinary person, but Qi Fei felt like he had seen him somewhere before, but he couldn't remember where.

With this question in mind, he looked around the room. Next to the open window was a desk with a laptop open and a cup of coffee beside it, half-finished.

As Qi Fei moved the mouse, the computer screen, which had been dormant, lit up again, leaving a design drawing forever in its unfinished state.

The last time the blueprints were saved was 2 a.m., so it seems the deceased fell from the building in the middle of the night. No wonder no one noticed the unusual noise. Qi Fei checked the computer's contents and wondered, would someone who was working diligently until the middle of the night suddenly choose to commit suicide?
He walked to the window and found a small piece of scalp below it. Looking further down, he could clearly see eight bloodstains on the air conditioner unit's grille, in groups of four. It seemed that the deceased had fallen out of the window and tried to grab the grille high up, but unfortunately, he couldn't hold on and fell.
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In the monitoring room, Qi Fei watched the footage several times, but ever since Lin Yu returned home at midnight, the elevator had never stopped on the 18th floor again.

In other words, no one went upstairs at all. Huantai Residential Complex is designed with two apartments per floor, but no one lived in the apartment opposite Lin Yu's. This means that no one except Lin Yu went to his apartment that night.

"Brother Fei, why are you so sure the deceased didn't commit suicide?" Wu Shanqiu asked, puzzled, as Qi Fei repeatedly checked the surveillance footage. "We don't have any direct evidence to suggest that Lin Yu was murdered."

Qi Fei didn't answer, but paused the camera on Lin Yu walking out of the elevator and suddenly said, "There's something wrong with this surveillance footage. The dirty clothes Lin Yu threw on the sofa aren't the ones he was wearing in the video."

"Hey Fei, do you suspect the surveillance video has been switched?"

The property manager, however, raised an objection: "That's unlikely. Our community's surveillance system is a fixed whole system, and there's no way to replace the content of this elevator separately."

“Look at the footage of him walking into the residential area; the clothes don’t match, which confirms my guess is correct.”

He immediately opened the surveillance footage of other locations in the community and spotted Lin Yu at the entrance. However, to his disappointment, his suspicions were unfounded. In the footage, Lin Yu, who was walking into the community gate, was carrying a backpack and wearing the exact same clothes as the one in the elevator.

Qi Fei was puzzled and muttered, "Could it be that the clothes on the sofa weren't from that day?"

Just as he was trying to find an explanation, Wu Shanqiu behind him suddenly exclaimed, "There's definitely something wrong with this video! It rained last night, but the ground in the surveillance footage wasn't wet at all! Fei-ge, you're not wrong, someone has replaced all the surveillance footage!"

Qi Fei looked up at the property manager standing to the side and asked, "You just said that the surveillance footage cannot be replaced individually, so what about the entire set of footage?"