I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 35: Chapter 33: The Murderer Confesses

"Zhuang Yanzheng! I’m going to report you! I’m going to report you to your superiors for abusing your power and framing me!"

Cai Ke shouted as he tried to stand, but he was restrained by the interrogation chair and couldn’t get up at all.

He began to struggle, thrashing his body about.

An officer immediately held him down. "Quiet! Behave yourself!"

Pinned down, Cai Ke glared at Zhuang Yanzheng. It took a long moment for him to calm down.

The officer released him.

Cai Ke said, "That only proves I went to the abandoned amusement park. On what grounds are you saying I buried the body? What evidence do you have? Also, my son was home all day Sunday. He was playing video games the whole time; I even yelled at him for it that night. He was home, so how could he have killed someone? They were classmates. It’s not abnormal for there to be a struggle and for the victim to have some of his blood under their fingernails, is it? On what grounds are you saying my son is the killer! So what if we have a knife at home! What makes you say it’s the murder weapon!"

"Chen Mingrui has already confessed to everything, in great detail," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "And your son wasn’t home at all on Sunday. The game logs show it was your brother’s kid who was playing. We’ve already verified it. He’s a minor, so he can only use your ID to register an account. Anyone could have been playing on it."

Cai Ke said nothing.

Zhuang Yanzheng continued, "Chen Mingrui has already detailed everywhere he and Cai Xi went last Sunday, and I’ve pulled the surveillance footage for all of it. Your son wasn’t just ’not at home’—he didn’t return home at all from Saturday until seven o’clock Sunday evening. Cai Ke! Why did you lie!"

Cai Ke flinched at the force of his voice.

"Cat got your tongue?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"I killed him. It was me," Cai Ke said suddenly. "I killed him, and I got nervous that night, so I went back to the scene to bury the body."

Zhuang Yanzheng watched him.

From the very beginning, Cai Ke had a two-pronged plan.

First, deny everything to the bitter end.

Second, if he was found out, he would take the fall.

After all, the knife found in his home only had his fingerprints on it.

"If you’re the one who killed him, why did you fabricate evidence that your son was at home?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"Because... because... because..." Cai Ke couldn’t come up with an answer.

"Do you know where this knife came from?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked another question.

"I bought it at a brick-and-mortar store," Cai Ke said, already flustered. The moment he learned they had the DNA, he completely fell apart.

He understood that all his plans had failed.

He answered out of pure instinct.

"Chen Mingrui paid a hefty sum to have this custom-made. We went to the shop and verified it; they have a record," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "On Saturday and Sunday, the two of them carried this knife around everywhere, showing it off. We can find plenty of witnesses."

Cai Ke was speechless.

"Anything else to say?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

Cai Ke slumped into the interrogation chair as if his spine had been ripped out.

His arrogance over the past twenty-four hours was matched only by how pathetic he looked now.

...

Zhuang Yanzheng left the interrogation room.

Not long after, Cai Xi also gave a full confession.

Hearing the result, Su Miaoyi let out a sigh of relief. "I’m heading back."

"Have a meal before you go," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"Is the cafeteria open again?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"I’ll treat you to some noodles," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"What kind of noodles?" Su Miaoyi was indeed quite hungry.

"Let’s go." Zhuang Yanzheng waved his hand.

Su Miaoyi followed him to his office.

Then she sat on the sofa, waiting for the cup of instant noodles in front of her to finish cooking.

Su Miaoyi stared at the cup.

This cup of instant noodles.

’What is this?’

’Instant noodles.’

"I still have some follow-up work to do, so I can’t get off just yet. Let’s make do with this for now. I’ll treat you to something better next time," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"Then why do I have to eat here too?" Su Miaoyi didn’t understand.

"We share weal and woe, go through thick and thin together," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "The thought of you going home to feast while I’m stuck here makes me miserable. I won’t be able to work overtime, alright?"

Su Miaoyi: "......"

The noodles were ready.

Su Miaoyi blew on her noodles to cool them.

Meanwhile, Zhuang Yanzheng...

Su Miaoyi felt that, to put it dramatically, he had devoured a cup of noodles and two tea-leaf eggs in the blink of an eye.

Su Miaoyi looked down at her own bowl, from which she had only taken two bites. "Do you want more? I’ve only been eating from my side; I haven’t touched the rest."

"No, thanks." Having finished his, Zhuang Yanzheng looked at it with disdain. "Tastes awful."

Su Miaoyi: "......"

She ate by herself.

Zhuang Yanzheng sat across from her, leaning back on the sofa and staring blankly at the ceiling.

Su Miaoyi figured he was exhausted, so she quietly finished her instant noodles.

"Finished?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"Yeah."

"Wait a bit. The driver will be here soon to take you home," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"What driver?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"My dad’s driver," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"I can just get a taxi home," Su Miaoyi said.

Zhuang Yanzheng crossed his arms and looked at her. "Do you really not have a clear grasp of your situation?"

"But there’s no need to go this far, being on guard all the time," Su Miaoyi said. "If it goes on like this, I’ll scare myself to death long before they ever find me."

Zhuang Yanzheng looked at her. "You’ve got a lot of nerve."

"Whatever happens, happens. Just keep a level head," Su Miaoyi said in the tone of a seasoned veteran. "Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big deal. And I don’t think they’ll be coming back anytime soon."

’Those words... "The next time we meet, I hope you’ve grown stronger."’

’She had a feeling he wouldn’t be back for a while.’

’After all... getting stronger takes time.’

’Besides, even if they were provoking the police, the police were no pushovers.’

’No matter how arrogant he was, he wouldn’t be brazen enough to show his face again so soon.’

Zhuang Yanzheng let out a huff of a laugh.

Su Miaoyi sat on the sofa and waited for a while. Seeing that the driver still hadn’t arrived, she couldn’t help but ask, "How did you guys discover the body buried at the abandoned amusement park?"

"We received a tip from the public," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "A dog ran into the amusement park, started digging, and uncovered the body."

Su Miaoyi nodded. So that was how it happened.

No wonder so many media outlets had shown up.

"I heard from my younger brother that Shi Tianyu’s family reported him missing, saying he’d been gone since Friday afternoon," Su Miaoyi asked again.

"Shi Tianyu didn’t go home after leaving school on Friday afternoon," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "He went to his part-time job. His parents are divorced, and neither pays child support. His grandparents are elderly, and their household only has expenses, no income, so he works on weekends."

Su Miaoyi didn’t speak.

"He occasionally wouldn’t come home on weekends, so his grandparents didn’t think anything was wrong," Zhuang Yanzheng continued. "It wasn’t until Monday, when Shi Tianyu didn’t show up at school all day, that the teacher contacted them. Only then did they realize he was missing. They reported it to the police the next day."

Su Miaoyi nodded. "Did he run into Cai Xi and the others on his way back from work?"

"Possibly," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

Su Miaoyi let out a soft sigh.

For a moment, they both fell silent, neither saying a word.

Both were lamenting a lost life.

"Oh, right," Su Miaoyi said, suddenly remembering something. "Lu Zhishen... is acting weird."

"How so?"

"It’s like he’s trying to figure out the pattern of when I see things. And I get the feeling he’s really invested in this, almost... anxious," Su Miaoyi said.

Zhuang Yanzheng fell silent.

Su Miaoyi looked at him.

"It’s because I knew he’d be like this that I didn’t tell him anything about you at first," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

"Then why did you end up telling him?" Su Miaoyi asked, curious.

"That ancestor... one wrong word and he’s threatening to pack his bags and go back to Jiangcheng," Zhuang Yanzheng said, gritting his teeth as if he wanted to bite someone. "To get him to come to Jinghai, I must have run to Jiangcheng eight, if not ten, times. I can’t just let him run back. If I didn’t tell him, what choice did I have?"

Su Miaoyi raised an eyebrow.

’So Lu Zhishen had a side like that.’

"Is there something going on with him, then?" Su Miaoyi asked tactfully.

"It’s his family matters," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "Who doesn’t have some psychological trauma?"

"Do you have any?" Su Miaoyi asked.

Zhuang Yanzheng thought for a moment and said, "My biggest psychological trauma is probably that my family is too rich. I can’t spend all the money. There’s just no way to spend it all."

Su Miaoyi stared at him.

She chanted inwardly.

’Up to three years. Up to three years. Up to three years.’

’Don’t do it. Don’t do it!’

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