I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 159: Chapter 157: Searching the Crime Scene

They set up the police tape.

Behind the crowd of onlookers, they found the owner of the clothing store.

The owner, a woman in her forties, was quite pretty and fashionably dressed.

But she was badly frightened, sitting on the steps, unable to stand for a long time.

Zhuang Yanzheng asked her for the keys, but she fumbled through her bag for a long time, unable to find them.

While she searched for the keys, Zhuang Yanzheng asked a few questions.

The owner said the victim was her employee, a young woman named Xiao Xia from Yue City.

She was twenty years old.

Above the shop was a storeroom, which also contained a small, separate room.

The owner said that since the girl was so young and had come to Jinghai to find work, she’d let her live in the small room upstairs to save her some money on rent.

Who would have thought something like this would happen.

"What’s her full name?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"Just Xiao Xia," the owner said.

"Xia what?" Zhuang Yanzheng pressed.

"Not ’Xia’ something. Her name is Xiao Xia," the owner replied.

Zhuang Yanzheng looked at her. "Is Xiao a surname?"

"Of course it is," the owner said, giving him a look like he was an idiot. She took out her phone, typed a character, and showed it to him. "This Xiao."

Zhuang Yanzheng craned his neck to look at her phone.

The character was... Xiao.

Zhuang Yanzheng: "..."

The officer taking notes nearby silently wrote down the name: Xiao Xia.

"The keys," the owner said, finally finding them. "You go open up. I’m too scared to go over there."

Zhuang Yanzheng took the keys and walked away.

Qi Feng came over to ask the owner for more details.

The other officers began questioning the crowd.

Zhuang Yanzheng opened the roll-up door.

A few officers stayed behind in the first-floor clothing store while Su Miaoyi, Zhuang Yanzheng, and a couple of others went to the second floor.

The second floor was a warehouse, piled high with clothes.

There was also a heavy smell of paint.

Su Miaoyi and the others spotted several buckets of paint by the wall.

Off to the side was a small, partitioned room.

Chu Xingrou pushed the door open and jumped, startled by what she saw inside.

It was a room of a little over a hundred square feet.

The first thing they saw was a sea of red.

The sight was a violent shock. Her heart pounded a few times before she realized it was paint.

Once the door was open, the smell of paint became even stronger.

Zhuang Yanzheng crouched down and touched the paint on the floor. It was already dry.

The room contained only a bed, a table, a stool, and a simple clothing rack with a lot of clothes hanging on it.

The single bed was also piled with clothes.

On the table sat a computer. Next to it was a container of malatang that looked like it was from last night. It seemed to have just been opened, barely touched, before the victim was killed.

Paint was splattered everywhere in the room.

It was on the walls, the bed, the clothes, a cup, the table, under the table, the computer, the window frame—even in the malatang.

Because of this, a lot of traces were covered by the paint.

Su Miaoyi examined the rope tied to a leg of the table.

The table leg was wedged against the radiator under the windowsill, making it very secure.

Zhuang Yanzheng untied the rope.

He and Su Miaoyi pulled on the rope, slowly lowering the hanging body.

Yan Cheng began the preliminary examination of the body on the floor.

Zhuang Yanzheng ran his fingers over the chop marks on the table.

They were made by a blade. There were many marks of varying depths.

They were completely covered in paint.

As Su Miaoyi prepared to spray the tabletop with luminol, Zhuang Yanzheng pulled the curtains shut.

After she sprayed it, there was a reaction, but the blue glow was faint.

If these chop marks on the table were from her hands being cut off, there should have been a lot of blood on the tabletop.

But the paint had clearly interfered, which was why the blue fluorescence was so weak.

Su Miaoyi sprayed a few other areas.

The floor, the tabletop, and the window frame all reacted, but again, the glow was faint in each spot.

Still, it proved that there was blood in all these places.

She collected blood samples from each location that fluoresced.

Then, Zhuang Yanzheng opened the curtains.

Chu Xingrou began to examine the items on the bed.

She found a cell phone under the covers.

It was password-protected and she couldn’t open it.

Next, she found a notebook under the pillow.

"Captain Zhuang, Sister Miaomiao, take a look at this."

Zhuang Yanzheng took the notebook and flipped through it.

"These are all IDs for streamers and online celebrities," Chu Xingrou said. "And some celebrities, too."

Su Miaoyi looked over.

After each streamer’s ID was their real name, address, and phone number.

The same went for the celebrities: name, address, and phone number.

"This Xiao Xia... could she be..." Chu Xingrou trailed off, looking at Zhuang Yanzheng and Su Miaoyi.

Neither of them spoke.

Zhuang Yanzheng handed the notebook to Chu Xingrou. "Bag it and take it back to the station."

"Right." Chu Xingrou placed it in an evidence bag.

Su Miaoyi tried the computer, but it was also password-protected and inaccessible.

Leaving the small room, Su Miaoyi went to check the window at the back of the warehouse.

The window had been open when they first came up.

There was red paint on the windowsill. She held her hand up to it for comparison.

’It looks like a handprint, left by someone grabbing the frame as they climbed out the window.’

’Judging by the paint smudge, the killer wore gloves.’

Su Miaoyi sprayed some luminol. It fluoresced, indicating the presence of blood.

She took out her kit and collected a blood sample. Then she checked the window frame for any fingerprints, hair, or other trace evidence.

She found nothing, so she looked down out the window.

Below, a jumble of boxes was piled up.

’Someone could climb up by stepping on the boxes, and then onto the eaves of the first floor.’

Zhuang Yanzheng checked the paint buckets for fingerprints, then examined the door to the small room.

It had a lock.

There were no signs of forced entry.

In fact, the lock showed no signs of ever having been used.

’If the shop downstairs was locked, the upstairs room might have never been.’

"Captain Zhuang, I’m going to go check on the body," Su Miaoyi said.

"Okay."

Su Miaoyi went downstairs.

Yan Cheng was examining the wounds on the victim’s severed wrists.

Su Miaoyi crouched beside him.

"The cuts are very rough," Yan Cheng said. "Looks like they were hacked off with an axe or a cleaver, and it took multiple blows."

Su Miaoyi touched the wound with a gloved hand.

’She didn’t know how to describe the feeling.’

’There were bone fragments.’

"Time of death was approximately between one and two in the morning," Yan Cheng said. "She suffered a heavy blow to the head, fracturing her cervical vertebrae."

Su Miaoyi looked at the victim’s neck. There were two distinct ligature marks.

"Cause of death: mechanical asphyxiation," Yan Cheng stated.

Su Miaoyi nodded.

’The killer first strangled her to death, then tied a different rope around her neck and hung the body.’

"Find anything upstairs?" Yan Cheng asked.

Su Miaoyi didn’t speak.

Yan Cheng tilted his head and noticed Su Miaoyi was still crouching beside him, motionless, her gaze lowered.

He didn’t dare to disturb her, so he went back to examining the body.

After a long moment, Su Miaoyi let out a cough.

Worried she would reach for her own neck, Yan Cheng gently took hold of her wrist.

’He had figured out her pattern.’

Whenever the victim died of asphyxiation, Su Miaoyi would instinctively touch her own neck, and then start coughing uncomfortably as she snapped out of it.

Su Miaoyi tried to raise her hand but couldn’t. She glanced at Yan Cheng as she coughed.

Yan Cheng watched as the coughing brought tears to her eyes.

"A cleaver," Su Miaoyi said through her coughs, identifying the weapon. "The kind you’d find at a butcher’s stall in the market, for chopping bones."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!