Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 127 The Suitcase Corpse Disposal Case 8
Qi Ziqin could not answer this question.

She looked confused, pale and thin, staring blankly at her agent.

Meeting her agent's glaring, anxious gaze that demanded explanations, she lowered her head in frustration, her fingers digging into the back of her hand, her lips pressed tightly together.

"It really wasn't me," she murmured.

This phrase appeared so frequently in every case that Tan Jia was sick of hearing it.

"What compelling evidence do you have to prove that you weren't the murderer?" she asked.

Then he looked at Qi Ziqin's agent: "Judging from your reactions, she wasn't with you at the time of the incident, and you probably don't know where she went either."

The agent glanced at Qi Ziqin and said stiffly, "She finished work around 9 p.m. last night, and I don't really manage her afterwards. After all, artists also need their own private space."

Indeed, otherwise so many celebrities wouldn't have been exposed for having problems; most of them were caught doing so in private.

But if you finish work and return to the hotel around 9 PM, how can you have enough time to prepare for the murder?

The agent, probably realizing this explanation wouldn't help at all, emphasized again, "But she couldn't have killed anyone!"

Then, looking at Qi Ziqin, he shouted with exasperation, "Where did you go last night? Explain yourself! Being taken away in front of the entire crew, do you know how serious the consequences are? Don't you remember how much you sacrificed to get this role and play it well?!"

Qi Ziqin clenched her fingers tighter, staring at the pale photograph of the deceased. After taking several deep breaths, her rationality returned, and she pieced together a favorable piece of evidence.

She said, "I left the hotel at 10 p.m. last night and didn't get back until around 4 a.m. The person in the surveillance footage is definitely not me."

Xiao Chen immediately checked the previous surveillance footage and found that it was true; she returned to her room at 9:36 and came out at 10:01.

But that's even stranger.

"What time did you arrange to meet the deceased?"

"...11 o'clock."

"You arranged to meet him at eleven, but you left at ten?" Zheng Yan paused for a moment before adding, "That's why you gave him the room key in advance, because you anticipated you wouldn't be in the room at that time?"

"Yes, I'm not sure if I can get back to the hotel by 11 o'clock sharp, so I told him to go in as soon as he arrives, as waiting outside would attract attention."

It sounds reasonable, but—

"Do you know that your reason carries another risk?" Tan Jia couldn't help but ask.

"Even if the murderer wasn't you, but your twin sister, someone impersonating you, or even a genetic clone of you, the fact that the surveillance footage didn't show that person entering the room between 10 and 11 o'clock means she was already in your room."

"And your act of letting the deceased enter your room on his own after you left can be interpreted as you knowing that someone was in your room all along, deliberately inviting the deceased to come, and deliberately letting that person kill him."

Qi Ziqin stared blankly, her face turning even paler.

"Someone has been in my room all along... Impossible, I live in there, there couldn't be anyone there..."

"Is that the main point? You need to have evidence to prove your innocence. For example, how can you prove that you are not the murderer? How can you prove that you did not know that someone was in your room? Also, where did you go between 10 pm and 4 am? Was anyone with you?"

Tan Jia's tone and attitude were not as serious and imposing as Zheng Yan's, but they had an undeniable firmness that made people unconsciously follow her words.

"Yes, someone is with me!"

"Who is it?" "...Qin Jianan."

The agent's eyelids twitched.

Tan Jia sensed something was amiss and asked, "Is this a very famous celebrity? What's your relationship with him?"

"He's my...boyfriend." After answering, she subconsciously glanced at her agent.

The agent gritted his teeth and said, "It's okay, I and the PR department are here. Dating is better than murder, right? Just tell me!"

Qi Ziqin opened her mouth, then forced herself to continue, "I've been dating Qin Jianan for a few months, but no one else knows because I'm promoting a drama with Tang Tianyu, who's a member of a boy band. We can't let paparazzi and reporters take pictures of us meeting."

“Recently, well, some things have happened recently. We had a fight and I was planning to break up, but he followed me here yesterday and wanted to talk to me. So after I finished work, I went to the restaurant he had arranged to meet and stayed until about 3 a.m. I got back to the hotel around 4 a.m.

Tan Jia seized on the loophole: "You arranged to meet the deceased at 11 p.m., and the reason you gave him the room key was that you were worried you wouldn't be able to come back on time. This 'won't be able to come back on time' should refer to a very short time difference, right? Why did you not come back until 3 or 4 a.m.?"

Her gaze swept over Qi Ziqin, and she said, "You were talking to your boyfriend, whom you were about to break up with, for four or five hours straight, while the deceased's rumored boyfriend was waiting in your room the whole time. Don't you think that makes no sense? Did you really not know that there was someone already in your room?"

Four or five hours! She stayed for so long before coming back; that's enough time for the murderer to kill her several times over.

Qi Ziqin shook her head in a panic: "I really don't know! My room key is only shared by me and my assistant. My assistant is with me on set every day, and the room key given to Tang Tianyu was taken from my assistant. Both room keys are still here, how could someone have hidden them in?"

She's either on set or in the hotel every day. If there really is a pair of eyes watching her remove her makeup, wash up, and go to sleep from some corner of her room, listening to her breathing at night, and maybe even getting up in the middle of the night to do something... how terrifying would that be?

Upon hearing this, the hotel manager realized that neither room key had been lost, so the problem must lie with the hotel's management. They quickly conducted an internal investigation and retrieved all the surveillance footage from the past three months.

The police investigated together and eventually discovered that for the past two weeks, a suspicious person had been loitering on the 5th floor, staring at Qi Ziqin in room 508.

Then yesterday afternoon, while they were visiting other rooms and hadn't closed the door, that person slipped into room 508.

Good news: the other party only stayed in Qi Ziqin's room for half a day and did not spy on her day and night.

The bad news is that the other person's build is almost identical to Qi Ziqin's, and they are intentionally imitating her clothing. For example, the black clothes, black hat, and black mask they wore at the time of the incident.

“This person is imitating you,” Zheng Yan said.

"It's a stalker!" the agent suddenly said through gritted teeth. "It's definitely a stalker! I thought it was crazy enough to just squat at the door and keep knocking, monitor phone records, block flights, and occupy seats on high-speed trains, but I never expected there to be such a psychopath!"

"My illegitimate child?" Qi Ziqin froze, then looked down again at Tang Tianyu's pale corpse in the photo, and murmured, "My illegitimate child killed him?"

It seems that just because there's the character of the stalker, they can immediately conclude that she's not the murderer, and all they need to do is start attacking the stalker.

But Tan Jia felt there were still many problems.

"You're still obscuring the key points. What exactly was your relationship with the deceased? Why did you leave him waiting at the hotel instead of coming back to see him, and why weren't you worried at all?"

The agent chimed in, "That's not the point. The point is that you just need to ask Qin Jianan if he was with her last night, or find out who this stalker is, and you'll know she's definitely not the murderer!"

“Actually, there’s a simpler way to verify it,” Zheng Yan pointed to the killer’s clothes in the surveillance footage. “Their clothes are the same. We just need to check if there is the victim’s blood on her clothes, or if they are snagged.”

Just as the agent was about to agree, Qi Ziqin suddenly went limp, her face turned deathly pale, and she fainted on the ground.

(End of this chapter)