Free Web NovelChapter 38: Chapter 38 Truth_1
December 13, 2010 freewebnovёl.ƈom
Early in the morning, as soon as Zhou Ning entered the office, he saw Zhao Xinli cleaning the floor.
His diligence made Zhou Ning feel somewhat at a loss.
"Why are you cleaning the floor for me?"
Zhao Xinli placed the mop at the door and came over with a smile on his face.
"Isn’t it just to show some initiative? Besides, the interrogation ended early last night, and the boss asked me to wait for you to arrive, get all the forensic results from the city bureau sorted out along with your autopsy reports, and submit them directly to him."
Zhou Ning wasn’t surprised by this outcome; however, the reports had already been given to them, and as for the forensic results, that email account was public, accessible to the entire team.
Clearly, Zhao Xinli felt that he had been somewhat downhearted yesterday and wanted to come over for a chat.
In fact, Zhou Ning had already come to terms with it last night, but facing Zhao Xinli’s kind intentions, he could only play along and continue the conversation.
"Has Wang Ye confessed?"
Zhao Xinli let out a relieved sigh, pulled up a chair, and began recounting to Zhou Ning who was sitting across from him.
"When Mr. He went to bring him in, he left him some dignity; handcuffs were put on only after getting into the vehicle. Once at the station, he just asked one question: ’The person who did a health check on my daughter this morning, was that arranged by you all?’ Mr. He nodded, and Wang Ye asked for a cigarette, then started confessing.
During your autopsy, didn’t you say that there were signs of healed fractures on the deceased’s nasal bone? That was caused by Wang Ye. On November 6, Wang Ye’s wife was on a business trip, and he took his daughter, Wang Xinyi, over to Yu Jingwei’s house for a visit. The adults were drinking upstairs while the two children went downstairs to play in the square.
Later, Wang Xinyi disappeared, and Yu Leilei came back home to call for help. Yu Leilei said that they were playing hide and seek, and that an old man even gave them candy. Later on, they couldn’t find where Wang Xinyi had hidden herself."
A few half-drunk men started searching for the child, checking surveillance footage, and asking people in the community. Eventually, they saw Wang Xinyi running out from Building 18, an old man was grabbing at her sleeve, her hair all disheveled; the child was screaming in terror.
Wang Ye hurried over, knocked the old man down with a punch, and picked up his daughter, continuously consoling her. Wang Xinyi was terrified, and when Wang Ye asked her what had happened, the child was shivering uncontrollably and kept crying and saying she wanted to go home, not wanting to play there anymore.
Yu Jingwei and Song Luqing, seeing the old man knocked over, were also worried about being extorted and dragged Wang Ye away. Naturally, the drinking session broke up. After getting home, Wang Ye spent a long time calming his daughter down, and eventually, she stopped crying, but whatever had happened, Wang Xinyi never spoke of it.
That very night, Wang Ye’s wife returned; her mother had suddenly passed away. The couple hurriedly sent their child back to her grandmother’s and rushed to deal with the funeral, not returning home for a week.
Once they were back, they noticed the child’s walking was strange and took her for a checkup. That’s when they found injuries to her genitals, and only after going to a psychologist for counseling did the child reveal what had happened. Anyway, it was inhuman what he did to her, even stuffing things... in her mouth."
Zhou Ning clenched his fists; not just Wang Ye, even he felt his blood boiling now, listening to this. This was a monster.
Zhao Xinli patted Zhou Ning’s shoulder and then continued speaking.
"Wang Ye got angry then and wanted to call the police immediately. His wife stopped him, claiming that after so many days had passed and considering the child was taken to their own house, nobody would believe them if they spoke out. He agreed with his wife on the surface but couldn’t get over it in his heart.
Yu Jingwei came to Wang Ye on November 28, saying he was going on a trip and asked Wang Ye to look after his dog, to come by and feed it once a day. Wang Ye agreed, and that night he went to Yu Jingwei’s home.
He then took out binoculars to observe Chen Zhenya’s movements, knew he’d return late from fishing, no one lived upstairs, and even stealthily watched him enter the door code. On the evening of December 1, he secretly entered the victim’s home.
Waiting until the victim came home and took off his coat, Wang Ye, hiding in the spare bedroom, sprang out and strangled the old man. The old man thought it was a burglar and said he would pay money to be released, offering one or two million yuan. Wang Ye cursed and tightened the nylon rope.
After strangling the man, he used a kitchen knife from the victim’s house to mutilate the victim’s face, then he closed the door and left. Two days later, he felt it wasn’t enough to leave it at that and thought dumping the body in the river would be safer.
So, in the early hours of December 4, he went back to the initial crime scene, packaged the body, and moved it to Yu Jingwei’s home, only he hadn’t expected that Song Luqing looking for cigarettes would disrupt his plan."
After hearing all this, Zhou Ning sighed and handed Zhao Xinli a cigarette. The two of them just smoked, not saying anything more.
Zhou Ning reflected on Zhao Xinli’s account when suddenly his smoking gesture froze.
Zhao Xinli looked up at Zhou Ning and raised his hand to stop him.
"Don’t, you don’t need to say that Chen Zhenya got what he deserved; we all know he deserved to die, but Wang Ye has broken the law, and it’s not for us to decide his fate. We have to prepare the evidence, especially the rice green fluid you found and Aunt Fatty’s statement; it serves as circumstantial proof."
Zhou Ning shook his head and patted the fat man’s shoulder.
"Don’t interrupt, that’s not what I’m talking about. When Chen Zhenya was being strangled, did his first thought was to give Wang Ye money? Did he immediately mention a sum of one or two million?"
Zhao Xinli paused in surprise, then nodded, his face soon filled with confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"It’s nothing much, but this person is retired from the finance bureau. Inside the bureau, they said it’s because Chen Zhenya was not honest with a female colleague, but I feel like there might be more to it than just that. Even though he’s dead, we can still look into his financial income.
After all, supporting a child who studies and lives abroad, even for a civil servant, is a very high cost. And for him alone, relying solely on his regular income, it would have been quite difficult to sustain."
Zhao Xinli thought for a moment, his eyebrows slightly furrowed.
"Are you saying that he was corrupt? But this is an economic case... Wait a minute, are you hoping to help Wang Ye from this angle?"
Zhou Ning shook his head.
"I just feel like while we’re grasping for straws, we might as well do what comes to hand. It just needs economic investigation to take a look over it, and I think Xu Da would be very willing to do this."
Zhao Xinli nodded vigorously. He highly approved of Zhou Ning’s sharp mind; such a scumbag indeed shouldn’t just ’pass away quietly’. It’s important to let people know what kind of person he was.
"I’ll go talk to Xu Da."
Zhou Ning raised his hand to stop Zhao Xinli.
"Don’t rush. If the girl from that family Aunt Fatty mentioned can come forward to testify, it would be beneficial for Wang Ye’s trial. After all, since he’s dead, their reservations are gone too. What we can do is only so much."
Zhao Xinli sighed and then left. Liu Yongxin stood at the door, watching Zhou Ning and smiling as he walked in. Obviously, he had heard everything Zhou Ning had said. Zhou Ning slightly hung his head; as a forensic doctor, he shouldn’t give more advice than necessary.
However, Liu Yongxin didn’t say anything else but walked up to Zhou Ning and patted his shoulder.
"You’ve already done a great job. I think Wang Ye will thank you. As a father, the moment he chose this path, he knew the consequences. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have confessed so readily after being caught."
Zhou Ning shook his head.
"I don’t want Wang Ye’s thanks. I just hope that Wang Xinyi, when she grows up, won’t be pointed at by others. After all, she’s only eight years old. I will always remember that innocent smile on that little girl’s face."
Liu Yongxin’s smile faded, and he sighed.
"I’ve said before, in our profession, what we see most is the darkest side of human nature. Don’t let cases affect you. After all, this is just the beginning of your career. By the way, haven’t you been in touch with Doctor Lu recently?"
Zhou Ning was startled. Liu Yongxin’s abrupt change of topic had taken him by surprise. But after thinking about it, he realized that he truly hadn’t contacted Doctor Lu recently, who had left him several messages on QQ.
"I haven’t been in touch. I was busy learning painting with Mr. Xia before, and then I got caught up with this case. Did Doctor Lu reach out to Xu Da?"
Liu Yongxin waved his hand and pointed to his phone,
"Doctor Lu gave me a call. It was on the tenth when we went to the scene, and you went upstairs to do the investigation, your phone was off, so he called me instead. When I asked for help from the city bureau’s forensic center this time, someone inquired about you. It seems that the article you published in the journal has caught their attention. You’ve become famous, kid."
Zhou Ning was somewhat surprised, since everyone involved in publishing articles knew that many of those scholarly papers in journals were mainly for evaluation and professional titles, containing little substance and rarely being read closely. It seemed this journal of forensic science was different.
Thinking of the last facial reconstruction technology he had obtained, Zhou Ning reflected for a moment. The technology was solid, but how many skulls could one person reconstruct?
It was the era of new technology. He had heard that some software related to this had been researched abroad, but he hadn’t heard of any practical applications being developed. This was indeed a promising direction, yet he needed to further develop his own abilities.
Liu Yongxin poked Zhou Ning’s arm and looked at him puzzledly.
"Hey, kid, what are you thinking about? Are you listening to me? Come on, tell me, what have you been working on lately? I see you tapping away at your computer when you’re not on a case. Share with your master, will you?"
